Russia: A History of Repression

Russia. What is that anyway? The term itself comes from the name that warring Ukrainian tribes called their Nordic rulers. That state never extended beyond the rolling hills of Dnepr. In the neighbouring watershed of Volga, the Slavic tribes there were busy conquering the Finnic-speaking tribes that inhabited both banks of the great Volga River north to the icy waters of the Arctic. This conquest succeeded in assimilating the vast majority of not of the original inhabitants. A few stragglers stubbornly resisted this assimilation but the consequence can be witnessed in the DNA of local people from this area.

Other ethnic groups resisted the rise of the Moscow-state that soon engulfed all Slavic-speakers inhabiting the Volga watershed as well as other unrelated peoples. From early on this state was based on the power of oppression. The local elites thrived by enslaving the populace. Such was also the case elsewhere in Europe but what makes the Moscow-state unique is the fact that this oppression continues to modern times. The rest of Europe moved on and developed democracy, human rights and the liberty to have a free will in this life. Such was sadly not the case with the Moscow-state. In time it stole the term Russia to refer to itself and pressed that identity to all the different peoples it mercilessly conquered and tried to assimilate in one brutal way or another.

To keep the populace in check, the new Russian state established a security force whose only purpose was to oppress, intimidate and control. This security apparatus was known by many names. During the imperial period from the gendarmie regiment, in the communist period as NKVD and KGB and in modern Putin times as FSB.

The goal of the FSB is to safeguard the control of the Moscow-elites and in Putin’s case, to safeguard his power base. In Soviet times three institutions controlled everything, the Communist party, the KGB and the military. If any one of those three became too powerful as to risque the status quo between the trio, the other two allied themselves to chip away from that newly gained power so equilibrium could be restored again.

After the fall of the Soviet Union, the communist party collapsed. In its place came the oligarchs except that they were no organized party but a group of self-serving people whose aim was to rob the state of anything of value. Soon a new force of nationalistic and religious extremists emerged to compete for power with the army and the FSB. The base of that new force is however nothing new, but instead based on age old ideologies which is just another type of fascism. The backbone is the dominance of the ruling Russians (Moscow-Russians that is) over all other ethnic groups by exterminating them, assimilate the rest and continue on until all the world has been conquered. This is a force of darkness, male-dominance and utter intolerance towards everything that does not fit into the Russian ideology.

This is what the Ukrainians are fighting so bravely. And they are not fighting only for themselves, but for all of us that value freedom and liberty from tyranny and enslavement.