The genocide of the Soviet people: from history to law, no statute of limitations

Abstract

Based on the analysis of a significant array of historical facts, normative legal acts and legal positions of domestic and foreign scientists, the article presents a legal assessment of the recognition of genocide as a crime committed against the peoples of the USSR during the Great Patriotic War of 1941 - 1945. The legal bases of countering attempts to re-evaluate events and revise the results of the Second World War are investigated. Special attention is paid to the importance of the Russian constitutional guarantees provided by the amendments to the Constitution of the Russian Federation in 2020 for the protection of historical truth. The confirmation by the Russian courts of the fact that the German-fascist invaders committed war crimes and crimes of genocide, the investigation by the Investigative Committee of Russia of criminal cases about these crimes, is considered in the context of the inevitability of responsibility as one of the central principles of law. The article substantiates Russia’s strict commitment to the results of the Nuremberg International Military Tribunal in the legal consolidation of the facts of genocide against Soviet citizens and notes the need to implement the constitutional obligation of the Russian state to honor the memory of the defenders of the Fatherland, to ensure the historical sovereignty of the country by legal means, not to allow the significance of the feat of the Soviet people in the defense of the Motherland to be diminished.