Zero Point Ukraine. Olena Stiazhkina

“Poliaky prosiat v ukraintsiv vybachennia za istorychni kryvdy” [Poles again apologize to Ukrainians for historical wounds], Istorychna pravda, July 7, 2016, http://www.istpravda.com.ua/short/2016/07/4/149125 .

25 Prague Declaration on European Conscience and Communism. June 3, 2008, http://www.praguedeclaration.eu/.

26 Ibid.

27 See Yana Primachenko, “Sovetskoe vs natsionalisticheskoe: protivostoyanie diskursov i praktik v postsovetskoy Ukraine” [The Soviet vs the nationalistic: Confrontation of discourses and practices in post-Soviet Ukraine], Studia Universitatis Moldaviae, no. 10 (2017): 270.

28 This attempt was not the first one. For example, Hannah Arendt in her Origins of Totalitarianism, published in 1951, outrightly compared Stalin’s communism with Hitler’s Nazism as similar systems of people’s extermination.

29 For discussions on Timothy Snyder’s book see Daniel Lazare, “Timothy Snyder’s Lies,” Jacobin, September 9, 2014, www.jacobinmag.com/2014/09/timothy-snyders-lies/.

30 “Importance of European remembrance for the future of Europe,” European Commission, September 19, 2019, https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/TA-9-2019-0021_EN.pdf.

31 Arguments in favor of such stand mostly are similar to the following: “Stalin’s Soviet Union opportunistically seized former territories of the Tsarist Empire, and established the inhuman Gulag system. But it was not the aggressor against Nazi Germany and fascist Italy but the victim of aggression; and Soviet resistance was the major factor in the destruction of Nazism and restoration of democracy in Europe.” Robert William Davies, Soviet History in the Yeltsin Era (Houndmills, London: Macmillan Press, 1997), 56.

32 Peter Dickinson, “History as a Weapon in Russia’s War on Ukraine,” October 4, 2017, https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/history-as-a-weapon-in-russia-s-war-on-ukraine/.

33 Alexander Etkind, Krivoe gore: Pamyat o nepogrebennyih [Warped Mourning. Stories of the Undead in the Land of the Unburied], trans. Vladimir Makarov, 2nd ed. (Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2018), 49.

34 Oleg Bazhan and Vadym Zolotaryov, “‘Velykyi teror’ na Kharkivshchyni: masshtaby, vykonavtsi, zhertvy” [“Great Terror” in Kharkiv region: scale, executors, victims], Kraieznavstvo, no. 1 (2012): 85–101, http://history.org.ua/JournALL/kraj/kraj_2012_1/12.pdf; Halyna Denysenko, “Mistsia pamiati i pamiatnyky zhertvam ‘Velykoho teroru’” [Memory sites and monuments to the victims of the ‘Great Terror’], Kraieznavstvo, no. 1 (2012): 101–108; Valeriy Vasyliev and Roman Podkur, Radianski karateli. Spivrobitnyky NKVS—vykonavtsi “Velykoho teroru” na Podilli [The Soviet punishers. NKVS staff as the executors of ‘Great Terror’ in Podillia region] (Kyiv: Vydavets V. Zakharenko, 2017); Vidlunnia Velykoho teroru. Zbirnyk dokumentiv u trokh tomakh [Reverberations of a Great Terror. Collected documents in three volumes], vol. 3, Chekisty Stalina v leshchatakh “sotsialistychnoi zakonnosti.” Ego-dokumenty 1938–1941 pp. [Stalin’s Cheka agents in the grip of “socialist law.” Ego-documents from 1938–1941], comp. Andri Savin, Oleksii Tepliakov, Mark Yunhe (Kyiv: Vydavets V. Zakharenko, 2019), 936.

35 The war against Ukraine, the cruelty of the occupiers, expansionist rhetoric of the Kremlin, and brutality of the “special operations” are very similar to the legitimization of the Soviet Union’s aggression against Finland, the Baltic states, and Poland; and respectively Hitler’s—against Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Poland. It is yet another proof that “to be continued” turned into reality of practical actions.

36 George O. Liber, Total Wars and the Making of Modern Ukraine, 1914–1954 (Toronto, Buffalo, London: University of Toronto Press, 2016), 11.

37 Amir Wеinеr, “Naturе, Nurture, and Memory in a Socialist Utopia: Delinеating the Soviеt Soсio-Еthniс Body in the Agе of Soсialism,” Аmеrican Historical Review 104, no. 4 (October 1999): 1114–1155; Terry Мartin, “Modеrnization or Nеo-Traditionalism? Asсribеd Nationality and Soviеt Pгimordialism,” in Stаlinism: Nеw Directions, ed. Shеila Fitzpatгiсk (New York, 2000), 348–367; Terry Martin, “The Origins of Soviet Ethnic Cleansing,” Journal of Modern History 70, no. 4 (1998): 813–861.

38 Timothy Snyder, Krovavyie zemli: Evropa mezhdu Gitlerom i Stalinyim [Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin], trans. Lukiya Zurnadzhi (Kyiv: Duliby), 127.

39 Oleksandr Rublov, Volodymyr Repryntsev, “Represii proty poliakiv v Ukraini u 1930-ti roky” [Repressions against the Poles in Ukraine during the 1930s], Z arkhiviv VUChK–HPU–NKVD–KHB 1/2 (2/3) (1995): 116–156; Amir Weiner, Making Sense of War. The Second World War and the Fate of the Bolshevik Revolution (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001); Volodymyr Nikolskyi, Oleksandr But, Petro Dobrov, and Victor Shevchenko, Knyha pamiati hrekiv Ukrainy. Naukove vydannia [The book of memory of the Greeks of Ukraine] (Donetsk: Region, 2005); Ivan Dzhukha, Grecheskaya operatsiya. Istoriya repressiy protiv grekov v SSSR [The Greek Operation of the NKVD. The history of repressions against the Greeks in the USSR] (Saint Petersburg: Aleteyya, 2006); Oleksandr Rublov and Larysa Yakubova, “‘Natsionalni spravy’ ta yikhnii vplyv na zhyttia natsmenhromad Ukrainy” [“National cases” and their influence on the minorities’ life in Ukraine], in Orhany etnopolitychnoho rehuliuvannia v konteksti polityky korenizatsii: ukrainskyi dosvid (Kyiv: Instytut istorii Ukrainy NAN Ukrainy, 2014), 225–235.

40 Christopher R. Browning, The Path to Genocide: Essays on Launching the Final Solution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), іх.

41 Brian Glyn Williams, “Hidden Ethnocide in the Soviet Muslim Borderlands: The Ethnic Cleansing of the Crimean Tatars,” Journal of Genocide Research 4:3 (2002): 357–373; Stephen Blank, “A Double Dispossession: The Crimean Tatars After Russia’s Ukrainian War,” Genocide Studies and Prevention 9:1 (2015): 18–32. See also Lyman H. Legters, “Soviet Deportation of Whole Nations: A Genocidal Process” in Samuel Totten et al., Century of Genocide: Eyewitness Accounts and Critical Views (New York: Garland Publishing, 1997), 112–135.

42 Classification by Alette Smeulers. Quoted in Daria Mattingly, “Zhinky v kolhospakh—velyka syla”: khto vony—ukrainski pryzvidnytsi Holodomoru” [Women in kolkhozes—a great power: Who were they, Ukrainian perpetrators of Holodomor?], Ukraina moderna, September 20, 2018, http://uamoderna.com/md/mattingly-women-in-kolkhoz.

43 Christopher Browning coined the term “ordinary people” as a specific proper name for the Germans who participated