USSR

Organization of enforced disappearances of key functionaries of the movement (the abduction of M. Boichyshyn), followed by cynical sabotage of the investigation by structures controlled by the authorities^[11].

Internal redrawing of administrative borders within the USSR: the formal transfer of Crimea from the RSFSR to the Ukrainian SSR in order to "relieve the RSFSR of the economic burden of rebuilding the peninsula" after World War II and the deportation of the Indigenous population^[2][1].

Official forcible annexation of the occupied lands of Western Ukraine (1939), and then of Northern Bukovyna and Bessarabia (1940), with their integration into the administrative structure of the Ukrainian SSR^[1].

Confiscation of absolutely all food, including the extraction of seed stocks, through the mechanism of crushing grain procurement quotas, which led to mass deadly famine^[5].

Mass confiscation and destruction of literature declared "nationalist," and rigid control over the printed word and the arts^[5].

Total ideological control over art and the press, banning of literary works, and vilification of writers for alleged "bourgeois nationalism"^[2].

Immediately after the start of the putsch, GKChP representatives announced the introduction of a state of emergency and the forced shutdown of most independent mass media^[3].

The secret protocols to the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact with Nazi Germany on the division of spheres of influence in Eastern Europe and the legalization of invasion^[2].

Coordination of actions with the pro-Soviet government of Poland to destroy the Ukrainian underground (Operation "Vistula" in 1947)^[1].

An ideological directive to erase nations: «the new party program on the 'merging of nations' into a single Soviet people»^[4].

Use of monumental propaganda and celebrations of the Pereiaslav Council to impose the concept of a "single people" and to deny an independent Ukrainian identity^[2].

Mass deportation of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian peasants ("kulaks") and their family members to Siberia and remote northern regions of the USSR^[5].

Mass forced deportation of the "unreliable" population and the families of the repressed (hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians and Poles) to remote areas (special settlements in Siberia and Kazakhstan)^[2].

Forced deportation of insurgents' families to Siberia, as well as of more than 140,000 Ukrainians of the Zakerzonnia region from their historical lands, in order to deprive the UPA of its social base^[1].

The union center enlisted US President George H. W. Bush, who during his visit to Kyiv publicly called for supporting M. Gorbachev and tried to dissuade Ukrainians from sovereignty, calling the aspiration to independence "suicidal nationalism"^[6].

Institutional destruction of national historical scholarship, closure of research schools, and removal of the works of Ukrainian historians from scholarly circulation^[5].

Introduction of the "blackboard" regime — a total economic blockade of settlements, with a ban on cooperative and collective-farm trade and the removal of all goods from stores^[2].

Forcible seizure of land, livestock, and agricultural implements from peasants as part of forced collectivization under slogans of socialist modernization^[5].

Mass dispossession and forced deportation of hundreds of thousands of resisting peasants (the so-called "kurkuls") to remote special settlements in Siberia and the North^[5].

Total removal of industrial equipment, food supplies, and agricultural machinery deep into the USSR during the retreat^[1].

Targeted physical annihilation (mass executions) of the national cultural elite — a tragedy that entered history as the «Executed Renaissance». «Stalin's telegram on ending Ukrainization and destroying the majority of Ukrainian writers» ^[4]. These repressions destroyed an entire generation of outstanding Ukrainian writers, poets, and intellectuals^[2].

Conducting the secret mass "national operations" of the NKVD (Polish, German, Greek, Bulgarian, and others) for the physical extermination of members of ethnic minorities^[10].

Mass forced conscription, by field military enlistment offices, of the population of just-liberated territories into the ranks of the Red Army^[2].

Creation of an artificial picture of radiological well-being and the criminal, forced marching of people into the May Day demonstrations in Kyiv under radioactive fallout to mask the catastrophe^[7].

Deliberate concealment by the union leadership in Moscow of the scale of the Chornobyl NPP disaster from its own population and international organizations, depriving Ukrainians of information about the level of the radiation threat^[7].

Use of dekulakized peasants, sent into the emerging GULAG system, as forced unpaid labor for heavy state projects^[5].

Lethally dangerous exploitation of the labor of Ukrainian peasants, convicted en masse under the "law of five ears of grain" and exiled to corrective labor camps during the Holodomor^[5].

Use of the GULAG camp system as an institution of state slavery for the forced and lethally dangerous exploitation of the labor of repressed Ukrainians^[2].

Use of captured resistance members as free labor in the concentration camp system (for example, dispatch to the Chernogorsk special camp in Krasnoyarsk Krai for hard labor)^[2].

The forced orthography reform of 1933, aimed at artificially bringing Ukrainian grammar and terminology closer to the Russian language^[5].

Destruction of civic and educational structures in areas of compact diaspora settlement: «The liquidation of the 'Prosvita' societies in the Kuban and in Zelenyi Klyn»^[4].

Forced closure of all national councils, pedagogical institutes, theaters, and cultural institutions of ethnic minorities in the Ukrainian SSR^[14].

Deliberately starving millions of Ukrainian peasants to death as a direct result of Moscow's state policy^[5].

NKVD reprisals against the inhabitants of villages suspected of supporting the UPA, resulting in the deaths of tens of thousands of civilians^[2].

Armed shooting of unarmed prisoners and mass killings during the forcible suppression of the Kengir, Norilsk, and Vorkuta uprisings^[15].

Direct armed invasion by the Red Army of the territory of Poland on September 17, 1939, for the military occupation of western Ukrainian lands^[2].

Mass arrests of peasants during the dekulakization campaign: according to the 1930 directives, in addition to deportations, tens of thousands of people were sent directly to concentration camps for isolation^[5].

Arrests of starving peasants who tried to escape from blockaded villages: in early 1933, of 219 thousand detainees, tens of thousands were convicted and sent to camps^[5].

Physical annihilation and isolation of the Ukrainian intelligentsia, writers, and scholars, as well as of the party opposition (national communists), in the course of targeted repressions. Fabrication of cases (including the "UNC" case) and driving representatives of the national elite to death, including the historian Mykhailo Hrushevsky, the writer Mykola Khvylovy, and People's Commissar Mykola Skrypnyk^[5].

Individual arrests and dispatch to prisons and corrective labor camps (GULAG) of more than 120,000 members of the local elite and politically active population, in order to isolate and physically destroy them^[2].

Mass arrests of UPA fighters, OUN members, and those suspected of aiding them, followed by dispatch to GULAG corrective labor camps for isolation (by 1951, Ukrainians made up more than 20% of all GULAG prisoners)^[2].

Fabricated repressions against figures of the Ukrainian and Jewish intelligentsia, culminating in the execution of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee and the "Doctors' Plot"^[2].

Targeted arrests of the new Ukrainian intelligentsia, dissidents, and protest participants (including after the premiere of "Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors") to suppress the nascent resistance^[13].

Mass arrests of members of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group and fabrication of criminal cases, leading to the prolonged isolation and deaths of prominent dissidents (including Vasyl Stus) in special-regime camps^[2].

Physical elimination of resistance leaders at the hands of the militia and law enforcement agencies: the murder of the head of the Volyn Rukh organization, the death of activist Melenkovskyi after a "conversation" at the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and extrajudicial killings^[11].

Regular military operations by the NKVD and MGB to sweep western Ukrainian villages with the aim of suppressing UPA resistance^[2].

Use of regular troops and tanks to suppress large-scale revolts of Ukrainian political prisoners in the concentration camp system (in particular, in Kengir)^[12].

Use of state healthcare institutions for the politically motivated diagnosing of dissenters (the diagnosis of "sluggish schizophrenia") and their indefinite confinement in psychiatric hospitals^[16].

Stripping the Ukrainian SSR of control over foreign policy, the army, foreign trade, transport, and communications through the 1924 Constitution of the USSR, transferring them to the jurisdiction of the all-union people's commissariats^[5].

Construction of a new Soviet-imperial historical canon to supplant the Ukrainian past and deny the independence of Ukraine's history^[2].

A large-scale state campaign to construct the historical myth of "reunification" (instead of annexation) in order to provide historical justification for Moscow's colonial domination over Kyiv^[2].

Mass closure and destruction of churches, as well as repressions against clergy, aimed at the complete destruction of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church (UAOC)^[5].

Organization of fake, no-alternative "People's Assemblies" under the control of occupation troops to give the seizure a legal form^[1].

Holding of the All-Union referendum with an artificially convoluted question on the preservation of a renewed USSR in order to legitimize imperial control and coerce the republics into signing a new union treaty^[9].

Use of the Treaty on the Creation of the USSR (December 1922) to formally declare a union of equal republics, masking the final centralization of power in Moscow^[8].

Armed seizure of power by the State Committee on the State of Emergency (GKChP) to derail the signing of the treaty on the Union of Sovereign States and preserve centralized control over the republics^[3].

Systematic psychological suppression through public show trials of "saboteurs" and the introduction of the punitive law on the protection of socialist property (the "law of five ears of grain")^[5].

Creation of an atmosphere of total paralyzing fear in society through the fabrication of cases (for example, the "Union for the Liberation of Ukraine") and the staging of public show trials^[5].

Creation of an atmosphere of total fear through public demonstrative executions of insurgents and bloody provocations by NKVD special groups disguised as the UPA^[2].

Organization of public political persecution (attacks on M. Rylsky, V. Sosiura, and Yu. Yanovsky; the campaign to "combat cosmopolitans"), instilling an atmosphere of paralyzing fear and suspicion in society^[2].

Use of political trials, interrogations, and administrative pressure by the KGB on the signatories of the "Letter of 139" to create an atmosphere of fear in cultural circles^[17].

Use of crude physical force by representatives of the party nomenklatura: secretaries of CPU district committees and collective farm chairmen personally took part in brutal beatings of Rukh activists and dissidents (in particular, V. Ovsiienko and O. Hudyma) to intimidate the population^[11].

Administration of destructive pharmaceutical drugs (neuroleptics) as a means of physical and psychological pressure on healthy human rights defenders in closed institutions^[16].

Application of "scorched earth" tactics during the retreat in 1941: the deliberate blowing up of the Dnipro Hydroelectric Station, and the destruction of factories, warehouses, and communications^[1].

Throwing thousands of untrained and unarmed Ukrainian peasants (the "chornosvytnyky," men in black homespun coats) into frontal attacks during the crossing of the Dnipro in order to exhaust the ammunition of the German troops^[2].