Russia coined the term ‘genocide of the Soviet people.’ Now it wants to jail deniers — a move unprecedented even in the USSR.
A new crime in Russia: denying the ‘genocide of the Soviet people’
Lawmakers in Russia’s State Duma have approved in the first reading a bill introducing amendments to the Criminal Code that would establish criminal liability for:
- destroying, damaging, or desecrating burial sites of victims of the “genocide of the Soviet people,” or memorials dedicated to them;
- publicly denying the fact of the “genocide of the Soviet people”;
- publicly insulting the memory of the victims of the “genocide of the Soviet people.”
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What is the ‘genocide of the Soviet people’?
Russian authorities define it as:
The actions of the Nazis and their accomplices during the Great Patriotic War of 1941–1945 aimed at the total or partial destruction of national, ethnic, and racial groups living on the territory of the USSR, through killing members of those groups, inflicting severe bodily harm, forcibly preventing childbirth, transferring children, forcibly relocating populations, or otherwise deliberately creating living conditions calculated to bring about their physical destruction.
This definition has been in force since January 1, when a federal law “On perpetuating the memory of the victims of the genocide of the Soviet people during the Great Patriotic War of 1941–1945,” adopted in the spring of 2025, came into effect.
In Russia, the term “Great Patriotic War” refers specifically to the Soviet Union’s fight against Nazi Germany on the Eastern Front of World War II.
Was this term used in the Soviet Union?
No. “The genocide of the Soviet people” is a term coined by the modern Russian state that has been actively introduced into public discourse over the past five to six years.
But didn’t the Nazis commit crimes in the Soviet Union?
They did. But specific wartime atrocities committed by Nazi Germany and its allies began to be recognized in Russian courts as genocide only starting in 2020, in a series of independent criminal proceedings initiated by the Investigative Committee under the leadership of Alexander Bastrykin.
The first genocide case was opened in May 2019. It concerned the killings of civilians in 1942–1943 near the village of Zhestyanaya Gorka in what was then part of the Leningrad region. In October 2020, the case was transferred to a district court in the Novgorod region, which soon issued a ruling “establishing a legally significant fact,” declaring the killings to be “war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide of the peoples of the Soviet Union.”
Were these crimes ignored in the Soviet era?
No. But at the time, the courts prosecuted specific war criminals.
For example, in December 1947, a military tribunal in the Leningrad region sentenced German general Kurt Herzog to 25 years in a labor camp. He was accused, among other things, of organizing executions near Zhestyanaya Gorka. Herzog denied all charges and died in May 1948 in the Vorkutlag labor camp.
Was he charged with genocide?
Formally, no. The term “genocide” does not appear even in the Nuremberg International Military Tribunal charter. Defendants there were charged, among other things, with crimes against humanity — defined as “murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation, and other inhumane acts committed against any civilian population, before or during the war, or persecutions on political, racial or religious grounds in execution of or in connection with any crime within the jurisdiction of the Tribunal.”
The legal definition of genocide was first codified in December 1948 in the U.N. Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. That definition later entered Russia’s Criminal Code almost verbatim — and from there into the law on commemorating the victims of the “genocide of the Soviet people.”
What’s the difference between crimes against humanity and genocide?
The key distinction lies in intent and targeting. Genocide requires the deliberate targeting of victims because of their membership in a particular national, ethnic, racial, or religious group — and the intent to destroy that group, in whole or in part. The most widely known example is Nazi Germany’s extermination of Jews in Europe.
If that specific intent cannot be established — or if victims were targeted for other reasons, such as their political affiliation — then the crimes do not meet the legal definition of genocide.
It is precisely because of these strict criteria that some researchers question the concept of a “genocide of the Soviet people.” It remains unclear whether such skepticism, expressed within academic debate, could be interpreted as “public denial” of that genocide and therefore treated as a criminal offense under the proposed law.
Is skepticism about the ‘genocide of the Soviet people’ just a fringe view?
Until the adoption of the new law, it didn’t seem that way.
Even on the official website of the national memory portal created under the new legislation, the first federal volume of archival documents on Nazi crimes includes the following passage:
Another well-known synonym — genocide — is also disputed by some researchers. They argue that genocide did not imply the total destruction of a subjugated nation, if only because conquered peoples were needed by the invaders as slave labor. In Nazi terminology, Slavic peoples were considered “Untermenschen,” subhumans — but that also distinguished them from Jews, who were not recognized as human at all. They were likened to viruses or parasites.
This is the only instance in the volume where the term genocide appears.
For comparison, in 2020 a district court in Russia’s Novgorod region ruled that:
The newly identified crimes […] were part of a plan by Nazi Germany to rid itself of the entire local population of the Soviet Union through expulsion and extermination in order to colonize the vacated territory with Germans.
Why do Russian authorities need criminal penalties tied to genocide denial?
It’s hard to say with certainty.
At first glance, the effort may look like an attempt to construct a Russian analogue to the Holocaust. But historian Konstantin Pakhalyuk, who has criticized the concept of a “genocide of the Soviet people,” argues that its primary purpose is different:
The concept […] was intended as a response to recurring accusations that the USSR bore responsibility for the outbreak of World War II and to serve as justification for the claim that the Soviet people were not only the main victors over Nazism but also its principal victims — and therefore cannot be held responsible for unleashing the war.
Support for that interpretation can be found in the documents from the very first genocide case. In its ruling, the court quoted a lawsuit filed by the prosecutor of the Novgorod region “in the interests of the Russian Federation and an unspecified circle of persons,” which stated:
Modern distortions of the history of World War II and the justification of German Nazism, comparisons with other regimes and ideologies, have a practical aim — to shift onto modern Russia responsibility both for the real and alleged mistakes of Soviet leadership and for the actions of other states and political figures in the prewar, wartime, and postwar periods; to pit the successor states of the heroic anti-Hitler coalition against one another in a historically meaningless and, from a moral standpoint, blasphemous dispute over the so-called national contribution to the common victory. All of this poses a direct threat not only to the national security of the Russian Federation but also to European cooperation and international stability.
Will there be a separate Criminal Code article devoted to the ‘genocide of the Soviet people’?
No. Instead, the bill would insert references to the “genocide of the Soviet people” into two existing articles:
- Article 243.4: Destruction, damage, or desecration of military graves, burial sites of victims of the genocide of the Soviet people, as well as monuments, steles, obelisks, and other memorial structures commemorating those who died defending the Fatherland or its interests, victims of the genocide of the Soviet people, or days of Russia’s military glory.
- Article 354.1: Rehabilitation of Nazism.
What penalties would apply?
Punishment could include substantial fines, forced labor, or prison time.
The maximum sentence — up to five years in prison — could be imposed for:
- damaging or desecrating burial sites or memorials “on the territory of the Russian Federation or beyond its borders”;
- publicly denying the fact of genocide online or in the media;
- publicly insulting the memory of genocide victims online or in the media.
Public denial or insult committed offline, without prior conspiracy, would carry a maximum sentence of three years.
Will this bill pass?
Almost certainly. The Russian government and the Supreme Court have both endorsed it. The State Duma’s Committee on State Building and Legislation has done the same, proposing only minor changes to its title.
Explainer by Denis Dmitriev