It has been a while since I last translated an article by Rostislav Ischenko. In the past I translated such articles as The Great Patriotic War in Ukraine. A historical retrospective by Rostislav Ischenko and Ukraine celebrated its independence – from what?. His political and historical analysis largely centres around Ukraine and the parallels of the present-day historical process to those of the past. Recently he published a number of articles that were mostly of interest to the domestic reader. The one you are about to read now, however, touches upon the wider theme of the anti-Russian racism that has engulfed and consumed the Western world.
Cemetery near Paris: Operation “Derusification” or a global attempt to abolish the Russians
Rostislav Ishchenko, Columnist of MIA “Russia Today”
January 16, 2023
The French authorities are hypocritically sad to announce that they will be forced to close the Russian cemetery in Saint-Genevieve-de-Bois, since Russia has stopped paying for its maintenance. However, Russia stopped paying because the French authorities stopped accepting payments as part of the imposed sanctions.
Saint-Genevieve-de-Bois is a monument to Russian emigration. Emigrants of the Civil War era of the early twentieth century, and then the emigrants of all the subsequent waves are buried there. In addition to Drozdovsky and Drozdov’s followers, Alekseev and Alekseev’s followers, Rodzianko, Yusupov, Grand Duke Gabriel Konstantinovich, Bunin and Gippius, Galich and Nuriev, Taffy and Tarkovsky, Lifar and Merezhkovsky lie there.
This cemetery is a monument to the Russian history of the twentieth century, with all its problems and contradictions. But at the same time it is a monument to the Russians who did not get along in Russia. Some being the losers of the Civil War, some – of the political struggle, whether they left Russia in search of a better life or professional self-realization. But it is also a monument to the Russian culture in its highest manifestations, in which sense it constitutes the integral part of the world culture.
In other words, the French government is trying – under the guise of sanctions – to destroy a monument belonging to all of humanity, just because it testifies to the contribution of Russians to world culture, convincingly demonstrates that without a Russian trace, the culture of humanity will be incomplete, handicapped, curtailed.
Is it accidental, is it a mistake, is it a misunderstanding? No. This is a deliberate action within the framework of the policy of cancellation of Russians. Only illiterate Ukrainian banderites, hired with American money, are screaming about their desire to destroy all Russians, including women, the elderly and children of any age. Meanwhile, the “gentlemen”, without flinching, continue to arm their gorillas. While the “civilized”, “cultured” French will try to erase the very memory of Russians from the face of the planet, while the gorillas armed with their help will try to erase the Russians.
This is a coordinated, consistent policy of the West, led by the United States, and until the aspen stake is driven into the heart of the current American elites, the genocide of Russians will be noted as the first item on the Western agenda.
My mum was born in Chukotka, but she is not Chukchi, my dad was born in Izhevsk, but he is not Udmurt, and I was born in Kiev, but I am not Ukrainian. Because we all spoke Russian from birth to death, considered Russian literature, history and culture as our own, grew up surrounded by Russian people, all of our ancestors, born in the USSR or in the Russian Empire, in the Rus Tzardom or in the Russian principalities were Russians.
In Kiev of my childhood, the Ukrainian language could be heard only in a school lesson (compulsory study of the language of the republic from the second grade). Signs in the Ukrainian language served as a subject for jokes. Petliura and Bandera were comic characters from the Soviet films. No one could have imagined that it was possible to glorify traitors who were ready to kill compatriots for lard and home-brew alcohol.
Seventy years of the existence of the Ukrainian SSR and two attempts at Ukrainization from above have practically not changed this sense of their Russianness with the majority of, at least, the urban population of Ukraine. Moreover, the vast majority of those born in Ukraine had close relatives in Russia, and several million residents of the RSFSR moved to Ukraine after the war, helping to rebuild cities and create a new industry from scratch. Ukrainian-Russian families were not considered mixed, since Stepanenko (a Ukrainian surname) from Moscow or St. Petersburg and Stepanov (a Russian surname) from Kiev or Dnepropetrovsk could have well gotten married.
In general, in Ukraine and Russia, as well as in Belarus, lived truly one nation (one people). But there was also another nation. The Soviet government taught the former Petliura, Bandera and their descendants to be silent and afraid. But they have not forgotten or learned anything. As soon as the united country began to disintegrate, they crawled out into the light in search of new owners. And such owners appeared.
We know that by the end of 1992 in the United States, after a short and unsuccessful struggle of the elder Bush (who was not allowed to be re-elected for a second term because of his idea of integrating Russia into the West), the concept of containing and finishing off Russia won. From this point of view, the United States and its allies had to make every effort to prevent Russia from regaining control (even in the form of an amorphous CIS) over the fallen imperial suburbs. The next stage was to be the destruction of Russia itself, its division into a couple of dozen “independent” states.
Ural Francs, 1991
The idea of creating the Ural, Siberian, and Far Eastern republics and the sovereignization of national autonomies was promoted by the Americans in parallel with their development of post-imperial limitrophes. With some, like with the Balts, everything got realised in one stroke. Central Asia is still fluctuating. Belorussia miraculously survived in 2020. Ukraine, despite the consistent betrayal of its voters by Kuchma and Yanukovych, despite two coups d’etat (2004-2005 and 2007), finally capitulated only in 2014, when the Americans realized that nothing could be achieved “in kid gloves” and allowed the wards of Banderites to shift to the only policy they understood — to take out the axe and start openly stealing, chopping and burning.
It couldn’t be any other way. Following the Russia deterrence concept, the West could not allow 40-50 million people in Ukraine to see themselves as Russians, because reunited within the framework of a single state (and why would Russians need two Russia?) they would have created a two-hundred-million-strong society and restored most of the imperial economic ties.
Brzezinski was wrong when he wrote that without Ukraine, Russia would not be an empire (Russia is an empire according to the very Russian self-consciousness and will be so as long as at least one Russian is alive). But without Ukraine, Russia was losing a serious part of its potential and had to spend time restoring it. The demographic potential in general was unrecoverable. Moreover, hostile Ukraine served as a force restraining Russia, constraining its capabilities, not so much even in the military sense (you can’t stop intercontinental missiles), but with trade and economics (effective cooperation with Europe).
The Americans managed to split Ukraine, to break it into two parts. But it was not possible to completely reformat it. The Banderites felt sick when in 2007-2009 I wrote in my articles and said on the airwaves of the Ukrainian television that I was Russian, because it did not fit into their concept, which claimed that every inhabitant of Ukraine dreams of “killing a Russian within himself.” At the same time, dozens of people wrote to me thanking me for letting them realise that they were not alone, that they were not the only ones disgusted by the growing official Russophobia and the conversion of Russians into non-Russians. There were millions of such people. There are millions of them now, though less than before. It was they who joyfully greeted our soldiers, and they are now being shot by the Banderites in those territories that were temporarily abandoned by the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation.
Having failed to completely change the consciousness of the Russian citizens of Ukraine, having only achieved the beginning of a fierce civil war in the Donbass, forced to launch a policy of open Bandera terror in order to maintain control over the rest of the Southeast, the United States faced the progressive disintegration of the Ukrainian state paralysed by internal conflict. Instead of, as planned, getting a long-term powerful anti-Russian bastion in Ukraine, the United States was forced to smash Ukraine against Russia while it was at least good for that task.
Actually, this result — the transition of the West to an open conflict — was already a victory for Russia. The Americans have moved to an open frontal military clash of their Ukrainian vassal with Russia, without establishing full control over the post-Soviet space. In Central Asia, they systematically lose their previously captured positions, in Transcaucasia, the situation is more difficult for Russia, but Turkey, which is not friendly to the United States, is more likely to be an active player there. The West, which has seized power in Armenia, is unable to ensure the survival of its potential ally without Russia. So, in principle, even in this region, Russian positions, although under pressure, are stronger than the positions of the United States.
It was also not possible to stir up the situation inside Russia. Since 2000, the centre has been strengthening its control over the regions, and in parallel, Russian society is consolidating around the Kremlin’s policy of strengthening of the Russian statehood.
The Americans are well aware that in these conditions their party in Ukraine is lost in advance. The United States and its allies simply do not have a powerful enough resource base to win a war of attrition against Russia, China and the allied Eurasia, Africa and a significant part of Latin America. And they cannot win a hot war because of the Russian and Chinese nuclear potential.
The United States began the war, which can only end with the destruction of the Ukrainian statehood (even now it can only exist at the expense of external financing), with the death of hundreds of thousands and the emigration of millions of Ukrainian citizens, as part of an operation to derusify the planet, which is as much an integral part of the plan as the destruction by the French of Saint-Genevieve-de-Bois.
Americans and their European accomplices are not children. They understand perfectly well that the entire population remaining on the territory of the former Ukraine, which will be annexed to Russia will over time (even if it takes 30-50 years) become Russian again, because those who decided that they are Ukrainian, killed a Russian within themselves and became a Ukrainian will simply run away, for them Russian government will be absolutely unacceptable.
Consequently, the Ukrainian citizens are kill Russians not only when they shoot at Russians, but also when they die themselves. When, at the instigation of the selfsame Americans, they destroy their own cities, destroy their own economy, they cause damage not to Ukraine, which mostly no longer exists, but to Russia, which is and will be a competitor of the United States.
The maximum weakening of Russia, while there is still such an opportunity, is the task of the Americans. And how can Russia be weakened more than by killing more Russians? Even if we speak of the potential Russians who consider themselves Ukrainians today. Lest their unborn children become Russians. But they would still become Russians and no one else.
The United States correctly calculated that an open hot conflict between Ukraine and Russia would strengthen Russophobic tendencies in the Ukrainian society and make it impossible for a part of it to coexist with Russia. But there are always relatively few passionaries who want to preserve their newly acquired identity at any cost. Most of any society consists of conformists, otherwise a society loses stability and civil war begins.
This means that if the result of military actions is the division of Russians into Russians and Ukrainians, and the latter cannot physically live next to the Russians, then those citizens of the former Ukraine who will remain in the territories that have already become Russian, and those who will still become such, will not have an alternative. They will have to recognize themselves as Russians, and thirty years of Ukraine’s existence as a historical mistake.
Hence, the more Ukrainian citizens die or flee to the West (where they will eventually become Poles, Germans, Italians), the fewer Russians will remain. We are really talking about genocide. Only as a result of the American policy of open confrontation conducted over the past ten years, the number of potential Russians has decreased by twenty million, and this is not the end.
The United States has not abandoned attempts to split the Russians inside Russia either. Because when a Ukrainian and a Belorussian argue with a Tatar and a Yakut, who is the greater Russian: the one who was born a Slav or the one who was born within the borders of the RSFSR, they all work to the prescription of the American manual. They are all Russians, but only as long as they recognize each other as Russians. For in modern Russians there is Slavic, Turkic, Ugro-Finnish, Mongolian, and Norman blood. Pushkin even had Ethiopian flow from in him, which did not prevent him from becoming the greatest Russian poet of all time.
The parochial nationalism is too narrow for the Russians. We cannot have a clean little Holland, sacredly preserving its difference from Germany, of which it was once a part. We have the Russian world. The whole world. Because Russianness is not forced and Russianness is not denied. It is attractive because it is open for everyone. In Russianness, as in Orthodoxy, “there is neither a Greek nor a Jew.” That is why our enemies are afraid of any manifestation of Russianness — even the cemeteries of the Russian emigrants who did not get along with Russia, but who introduced the world to Russia.