This essay traces the ideological perversion that underlies this transformation and examines how the labor of Soviet citizens was ultimately turned against them—used to build the very weapons now destroying their cities and lives.
I. From Utopian Theory to Authoritarian Instrument
Marxist theory envisioned a classless, stateless society predicated on collective ownership and the abolition of exploitation. Yet the Soviet realization of communism, particularly under Stalin, rapidly veered into authoritarianism.
Marx and Engels’ early works, such as The Communist Manifesto, spoke of internationalism and proletarian solidarity. Lenin’s adaptation (State and Revolution, 1917) introduced the concept of a transitional dictatorship of the proletariat, which Stalin institutionalized into a totalitarian regime.
According to Martin Malia’s The Soviet Tragedy (1994), the USSR evolved into a system where the state claimed revolutionary legitimacy while exercising repressive control over its population. Leon Trotsky’s The Revolution Betrayed (1937) presciently identified the Soviet bureaucracy as a new class exploiting the proletariat.
The ideological shift from liberation to control laid the groundwork for a future where state rhetoric could be weaponized for any purpose, including war.
II. Labor and Militarization: The Conversion of Value into Violence
The Soviet economy, particularly from the 1930s onward, prioritized heavy industry and military production.
Cities such as Donetsk, Luhansk, and Kharkiv—many of which are Russian-speaking and located in modern eastern Ukraine—were key nodes in the USSR’s industrial-military complex.
As documented in CIA reports from the 1980s and declassified RAND Corporation studies, a disproportionate share of Soviet GDP was funneled into defense.
The paradox is haunting: retired workers in eastern Ukraine, who spent decades producing steel, machinery, and energy for the Soviet Union, are now among the most vulnerable.
Their apartments, pensions, and neighborhoods—meager legacies of a lifetime of labor—are being destroyed by the very systems they helped build.
As analyzed by Ukrainian economist Hennadiy Korzhov in a 2022 technical paper on the war’s economic impact, post-Soviet industrial output in these regions remained tied to military infrastructure, deepening their vulnerability in wartime.
III. The Betrayal of Russian-Speaking Ukrainians
Russia has justified its full-scale invasion of Ukraine since 2022 by claiming to protect Russian speakers in the Donbas. Yet Mariupol, Severodonetsk, Lysychansk, and other majority Russian-speaking cities have been relentlessly bombarded.
UN OHCHR reports (2023) and Human Rights Watch investigations confirm the disproportionate impact on civilian infrastructure, including hospitals, schools, and residential areas.
Many of the displaced are elderly pensioners—former miners, factory workers, and technicians who once believed in the promise of a united Soviet people.
Their forced exile is not merely a geopolitical casualty; it is the symbolic implosion of Soviet ideology. They are being targeted by the very state that claims to avenge them.
IV. Weaponizing “Moral Values”
The post-ideological Russian state, under Vladimir Putin, has increasingly adopted the rhetoric of “traditional values,” positioning itself as a bulwark against Western liberalism, LGBTQ+ rights, and secularism.
Yet the brutal bombing of civilians in Sumy during Palm Sunday exposes the moral bankruptcy of this stance.
This ideological fusion of militarism and Orthodoxy is perhaps most visibly symbolized by the Main Cathedral of the Russian Armed Forces, consecrated in 2020.
Located in the Patriot Park military theme park near Moscow, the cathedral is adorned with mosaics depicting Soviet victories and glorified Russian military campaigns.
Originally, it even included planned imagery of Stalin and Putin, later removed following public backlash.
The cathedral’s design and function signal an explicit merging of religious authority with the Russian military-industrial ethos.
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu described it as “a spiritual and moral anchor” for the armed forces, aimed at cementing “the unity between faith, statehood, and military duty.”
Critics, including Orthodox clergy and theologians, have denounced it as a form of political idolatry, warning that it weaponizes religion to sanctify war. The blending of sacred imagery with military power marks a shift from spiritual doctrine to state-sanctioned mythmaking.
As Timothy Snyder argues in The Road to Unfreedom (2018), this narrative shift is not rooted in belief but in strategic cynicism—a way to justify authoritarianism and international aggression.
Russian disinformation channels frame their war as a holy mission, despite the fact that their actions desecrate the very traditions they invoke.
V. Ideological Necromancy and the Rewriting of History
Contemporary Russian propaganda reanimates Soviet and Orthodox imagery to cloak its imperial ambitions.
The valorization of World War II, the myth of the “Great Patriotic War,” and selective historical memory are key tools in justifying aggression.
Anna Politkovskaya’s Putin’s Russia (2004) detailed how state media and education systems were already being reshaped to present the state as both heir and redeemer of Russian greatness.
The ideological shell remains; the content has been hollowed out. What is left is a zombified narrative that serves domination, not solidarity.
In 2021, Russia expanded its 'memory laws,' criminalizing public dissent against the official narrative of World War II—a legal move that solidifies the ideological necromancy underlying its current propaganda machine.
Conclusion
The tragedy is not merely that Russia bombs cities in Ukraine—it is that it bombs its own ideological reflection.
The Russian-speaking pensioners of eastern Ukraine were once the lifeblood of the Soviet dream. Their forced displacement and destruction at the hands of weapons built from their own labor is a betrayal of historic proportions.
In invoking Christian values while destroying congregations, and in citing Soviet legacy while erasing Soviet-built communities, the Russian state has become a machine of disinformation and moral inversion.
The labor that once aspired to build a utopia has been alchemized into tools of erasure.
The world must understand this not just as war, but as the systematic annihilation of meaning, memory, and moral order.
Works Cited
- Human Rights Watch Reports on Ukraine, 2022–2024.
- Korzhov, Hennadiy. "The Impact of Military Conflict on the Industrial Potential of Eastern Ukraine." Presented at the International Conference on Mathematics, Science and Technology Education (ICon-MaSTEd). https://elibrary.kdpu.edu.ua/jspui/bitstream/123456789/10212/1/JPCS-1840_compressed.pdf.
- Malia, Martin. The Soviet Tragedy. Free Press, 1994.
- Politkovskaya, Anna. Putin’s Russia. Metropolitan Books, 2004.
- Snyder, Timothy. The Road to Unfreedom. Tim Duggan Books, 2018.
- Trotsky, Leon. The Revolution Betrayed. Pathfinder Press, 1937.
- UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. “Civilians Under Fire: Eastern Ukraine Reports.” 2023.
- U.S. Central Intelligence Agency and RAND Corporation. “Soviet Military-Industrial Complex Analysis,” Declassified Archives, 1980s.
- Ukrainian and international media reports on the April 13, 2025 Sumy missile strike (BBC, Reuters, Kyiv Independent).
