Thread by @RWApodcast

Many of you are wondering what the Russian government actually means when they say “Denazification”. I don't speak for the Kremlin, but I'll try to explain what this term means for “normal people” in Donbass & South-East Ukraine.

Much has been said about the “Cult of Victory” in modern Russia — the celebration of the Soviet victory in WW2 & its role in public memory, and state ideology. We've said this before, but for normal people this is basically secular ancestor worship.

Untold millions of Russians died in WW2, or the “Great Patriotic War”, as we call it. Every family in Russia and Ukraine has someone who fought and died. There are memorial actions like the “Immortal Regiment”, where families honor their ancestors who went through the hell of WW2

The Ukrainian government has done a lot to fight this secularized ancestor worship since 2004, and these attempts have gotten only stronger since the Euromaidan Revolution. In 2015, the term “Great Patriotic War” was officially abolished in all official documents in Ukraine.

Additionally, the Ukrainian government introduced legislation that raised the Ukrainian Insurgent Army — a nationalist group from Western Ukraine that fought the Soviets, sometimes in collaboration with the Germans — to the status of “protagonists” of WW2.

A vast, vast majority of Ukrainians have no ancestors who fought in the Ukrainian Insurgent Army. Their great-grandfathers were all Soviet soldiers. The further East you go in Ukraine, the more people get offended at these attempts to denigrate their ancestors.

The St. George ribbon used to be a WW2 memorial thing (similar to the Remembrance Poppy); in 2014 it became a symbol of resistance to the Maidan government's plans to ban the Russian language & banish the Soviet army from public remembrance. Donbass soldiers started wearing it.

To put things into perspective, the Red Army lost 250,000 men during the liberation of Donbass in 1943. The land there is drenched in blood — the fighting was heavy, the anti-German guerrilla was strong & the German retaliation was horrifying.

For example, the “Young Guard” in Krasnodon (Lugansk oblast) is a large part of Soviet WW2 mythology. A guerrilla organizations made up of teenagers, the youngest 14 years old. 80 of them were tortured & killed by the Germans. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young_Gua…

The Donbass republics very much appealed to the WW2 era during the war in 2014-2015. The Ukrainian government was regarded as a force that wants to ban the public remembrance & replace it with revering Banderites — unequivocal enemies for Russian people with Red Army ancestors.

As every Soviet city lost people to the war, there are “Eternal Fires” in many, many Russian & Ukrainian cities. There are memorials for fallen Red Army soldiers. Ukrainian authorities started extinguishing them. Here's the Melitopol Eternal Fire being lit again, after ~7 years.

For average people in Russia, Donbass & Eastern Ukraine, “Denazification” doesn't imply that Zelensky is a literal Neo-Nazi or some kind of political program — it just means the freedom to commemorate their ancestors who spilled so much blood in defense of their motherland.

Here's locals placing flowers at the memorial to fallen Soviet soldiers in Kherson — all such acts of commemoration were severaly restricted during the last 8 years. This is what “Denazification” means to average people in practical terms.

The “Eternal Fire” in Markovka (Lugansk oblast) had also been extinguished by Ukrainian authorities; since the town has been captured by LPR forces, it has been lit again — for the first time in eight years.

Just google these names to understand what Russians would find distasteful about them.

https://twitter.com/ua_parliament/status/1507075073571762191