Authors

Brendan Humphreys¹;  ¹ University of Helsinki, Finland

Discussion

The brutal process of ‘filtration’ being carried out by Russian forces in occupied Ukraine is rightly notorious. In Soviet experience, filtration camps were part of the gulag system, but ceased to operate soon after the Second World War.

Yet filtration and its practices were then revived in post-Soviet Russia, precisely in the two Chechen Wars of 1994-96 and 1999-2009. However, the forms of incarceration and violence had a longer history in European experience. The paper will examine current Russian practices in Ukraine in the light of precedents from several episodes of central and southeastern European history.

Interning (even executing) men, the rape of women, confiscation of children, the re-writing of history, the imposition of a new ‘national’ identity, all these have been features of occupied Ukraine since 2014. Yet all of this took place during the forced Bulgarianisation campaign in occupied Serbia in a century earlier.

There would continue to be variations on these themes during the Second World War, the Cold War period, and the breakup of Yugoslavia that show depressingly familiar patterns to abuses now witnessed in occupied Ukraine. The historical continuities are striking; can they throw any light onto ongoing abuses?