Belarus, Ukraine, Eastern Europe – a space stricken by genocide
Belarus, Ukraine, Eastern Europe – a space stricken by genocide

Author(s): Zianon Pazniak
Subject(s): Geography, Regional studies, Recent History (1900 till today), Criminology, History of Communism
Published by: Ústav pro studium totalitních režimů
Summary/Abstract: The totalitarian regimes which ruled in Russia and Germany in the 20th century left millions of civilian victims in their wake. In Germany people died in concentration camps and partly also at work camps. In the Soviet Union, they died in forests, in the cellars of the NKVD (People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs), or in specially adapted ancient Belarusian forts and chateaux. These mass murders were top secret and this genocide was unknown until 1988. Officially the Soviet authorities only spoke about the gulags, though the gulags existed as a system of work camps. The question arises – where did the millions of victims disappear to? Russian communism was based on the NKVD and on lies, though that chalice of lies overflowed in the 1980’s and communism collapsed. Nevertheless, to this day it has not been possible to establish the number murdered by the USSR – figures from five to 70 or more million have been put forward.

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