The Architecture of Genocide: Russia’s Strategic Imprint
Systematic Erasure: Russia’s Role in a Genocidal Blueprint / Part 4
Adel Bashqawi
October 10, 2025
This is the fourth of four parts in an article titled:
The Architecture of Genocide: Russia’s Strategic Imprint
Systematic Erasure: Russia’s Role in a Genocidal Blueprint
This image embodies the tension between resistance and imperial ambition, with symbolic references to the North Caucasus, historical betrayal, and the legacy of ongoing oppression / AI-generated via Microsoft Copilot
Part IV: Ingushetia and Chechnya — Recognition, Resistance, and Imperial Continuity
Within the framework of brutal and oppressive policies, a sudden and calculated conspiracy was executed during the Soviet era—targeting the Chechen and Ingush peoples with a smear and extermination campaign. In February and March of 1944, during World War II, the entire Vainakh nation (Chechens and Ingush) was forcibly deported to the Central Asian republics.
“The deportation of the Chechens and Ingush from their ancestral homelands on February 23, 1944, and the lies the Soviet government told about what it was doing are so horrific that it is easy to lose sight of something at least as significant: This act of genocide against these two peoples is tragically continuing… Genocide can take a variety of forms, all intended to destroy those against whom the powers that be deploy not only force but propaganda. And using this broader definition, it is obvious that the Putin regime is continuing the genocide that Stalin launched in 1944.” [1]
No goal is more noble or precious than the restoration of the native homeland. Yet this cannot be achieved without restoring lost legitimate rights. Recognition by friendly nations is a vital first step—paving the way for broader acknowledgment of the right to self-determination. Such recognition strengthens national identity and empowers oppressed peoples to pursue revitalization.
“In the Verkhovna Rada, 248 colleagues supported the resolution according to which Ukraine recognizes the right of the Ingush people to self-determination and the creation of a sovereign state … The USSR and Russia cynically exterminated the Ingush: repression, mass deportations in 1944, destruction of cemeteries and cultural heritage, and reduction of territory.” [2]
The Ukrainian Parliament has taken principled steps toward dozens of indigenous peoples who have long suffered under foreign aggression, war, apartheid, and colonialism. From a humanitarian and ethical standpoint, such recognition benefits all peoples subjected to occupation, genocide, ethnic cleansing, and forced displacement.
“The Ukrainian Parliament recognized the territory of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria (CRI) as temporarily occupied by Russia and condemned the genocide of the Chechen people… It acknowledged the 1990 declaration of sovereignty by the National Congress of the Chechen people and Ichkeria’s independence after the collapse of the USSR. The crimes committed by the Russian state fall under the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court.” [3]
Implications and Challenges
Some regional powers have remained silent—unable or unwilling to act. Their tongues did not speak. Certain parties behaved as if deaf, dumb, and blind, failing to grasp the gravity of the wars waged against the peoples of the Caucasus by the Russian Empire in the 19th century. These developments exposed the hidden lies and deceptions maliciously crafted behind the scenes. So-called allies were complicit, even conspiratorial, in sacrificing the Caucasian peoples—especially the Circassians—most notably in the context of the 1829 Treaty of Adrianople.
Fulfilling Imperialist Ambitions
Since the reign of Ivan the Terrible, Muscovy embarked on a wide range of expansionist invasions. All successive Russian regimes—regardless of name or ideology—have adopted colonialism as a default policy and the occupation of other peoples’ homelands as a way of life. This acquisitive and crude colonial policy continues to this day. Dozens of nations have been occupied, and countless atrocities, calamities, and injustices have been inflicted upon them.
To revisit Russia’s aggression against Ukraine: in February 2014, undercover and military forces infiltrated city centers and strategic areas in Crimea, occupying and separating it from Ukraine. The annexation was carried out under a cloud of lies and illusions. In February 2022, Russia escalated its attacks, storming Ukraine’s international borders on multiple fronts—seeking to occupy and annex independent, sovereign Ukraine, or parts of it, into the Russian colonial state, driven by longing for the Soviet era.
Epilogue: Memory as Resistance, Recognition as Rebirth
From Circassia to Ukraine, from the steppes of Chechnya to the shores of Crimea, the architecture of genocide has left its imprint—etched not only in blood and displacement, but in the deliberate erasure of memory, identity, and sovereignty. Russia’s strategic blueprint for domination has spanned centuries and regimes, adapting its methods but never abandoning its imperial ambition. Whether through famine, forced deportation, cultural annihilation, or military conquest, the goal has remained constant: to silence the voices of indigenous nations and redraw the map in its own image.
Yet silence is not surrender. The peoples of the North Caucasus, Ukraine, and beyond have refused to vanish. Their resilience is inscribed in the soil of their homelands, in the pages of history reclaimed, and in the declarations of recognition that now echo across parliaments and memorials. Each act of remembrance—each monument, resolution, and testimony—is a defiance of oblivion. It is a refusal to let the perpetrators write the final chapter.
Recognition is not merely symbolic. It is the first stone laid in the reconstruction of justice. It affirms the right to truth, to dignity, to self-determination. It challenges the machinery of denial and demands accountability. And it reminds the world that genocide is not only a crime of the past—it is a threat that persists wherever impunity reigns and memory is suppressed.
In the face of systematic erasure, memory becomes resistance. In the shadow of empire, solidarity becomes survival. And in the long arc of history, the truth—once buried—rises again.
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References:
[3] https://www.kyivpost.com/post/5063
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