russia’s “victory day” is built on a war it didn’t win.

russia did not win the WWII. it stole the credit and built an imperial death cult out of it.

here is what’s in store for you this week:

(estimated reading time: 9 min)

• russia did not save Europe from Nazism. It started World War II as Hitler’s ally, used non-russian soldiers as cannon fodder, and reopened Nazi camps to keep killing under the label of “denazification.” The May 9th parade exists to bury all of that.

• This week, a republished, updated and sharpened version of one of my favourite 2022 essays on how the founding myth of russian military glory was built — and a story from my own family that shows what it was built to erase.

• Plus, a short reading list with the stories from the World War II history that russian imperial propaganda worked hardest to bury.

A unit of the Ukrainian Insurgency Army, early 1940s. First on the left is the Qazaq soldier Omar Allayot (nom de guerre “Kolya”), a UPA vistun (junior officer). The Ukrainian anti-colonial resistance of the 1940s, which was fighting both the Nazi and Soviet occupation, reportdely had over 15 battalions consisting of foreigners and ethnic minorities. Archives of the Center for the National Liberation Movement, the Allayot close-up picture is LLM enhanced.

My father’s father served in the Soviet Red Army’s tank troops. When the offensive came in 1943, he ended up at the front line with many other Ukrainians — used as cannon fodder while the Moscow military command hid behind their backs.

His tank gets hit. The rest of the unit thinks he is dead and leaves him behind. Out of nowhere, Ukrainian resistance fighters from the UPA appear. At that moment, UPA was fighting both russian and German occupation. They take him in, hide him in a resistance camp, and nurture him back to life. After several days, they let him go to rejoin his Red Army unit and continue toward Berlin.

A risky decision, considering he could expose the rebel camp to his command — the same command following Ukrainian soldiers and mass-murdering their fellow Ukrainians on the liberated lands the moment those people minded a new, russian occupation.

But my grandfather didn’t snitch. Shortly after, he was among the Soviet soldiers entering the German capital in early May.

Why would they save him? I have a theory.

Russian Colonialism 101 is the first newsletter to shed light on Russian colonialism and is part of the Volya Hub network. What is happening to Ukraine has happened many times before, and the rest of the world has been conditioned to overlook or misdiagnose it. This isn’t history. It’s how you stop being shocked by what was always predictable.

“Because I believe we need to clearly name and call out colonial power structures when we see them. As you mentioned, the right language matters because it shapes our understanding of the world. I want to dig deep into the history of russian colonialism.”

by Livia Huber, a paying supporter of Russian Colonialism 101.

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