A concise reference for a blog. The tables present a selection of well-documented cases and are not an exhaustive chronology. Where possible, terms such as “aggression”, “genocide”, “war crime” and “crime against humanity” follow the wording of international institutions or the cited sources. Where a legal classification remains disputed or has not been finally adjudicated, this is indicated in the notes.
1. Wars and armed interventions in the internal affairs of other states
| Period | Country / region | Case | Summary | Source |
| 1918–1920 | Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania | Wars against the newly independent Baltic states | After the withdrawal of German forces, Soviet Russian Red Army units advanced into the Baltic states and supported local Bolshevik power structures. Estonia and Latvia preserved independence after armed resistance. | S1, S4 |
| 1919–1921 | Poland, Ukraine, Belarus | Polish-Soviet War | The war involved territorial and political ambitions on both sides; in 1920 the Soviet offensive advanced deep into Polish territory. | S3 |
| 1939 | Poland | Soviet invasion of eastern Poland | On 17 September 1939 the Red Army invaded Poland after Germany’s attack; occupied territories were incorporated into the USSR and followed by deportations and repression. | S5 |
| 1939–1940 | Finland | Winter War | The USSR attacked Finland on 30 November 1939. The war ended with the Moscow Peace Treaty and Finnish territorial concessions, while Finland retained its independence. | S1 |
| 1940 | Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania | Occupation and annexation of the Baltic states | The USSR imposed the stationing of troops and in 1940 carried out military occupation and annexation. | S4 |
| 1956 | Hungary | Suppression of the Hungarian uprising | Soviet forces intervened militarily, removed the reform government and crushed the uprising. | S1 |
| 1968 | Czechoslovakia | Suppression of the Prague Spring | Warsaw Pact forces led by the USSR invaded Czechoslovakia to halt political reforms. | S7 |
| 1979–1989 | Afghanistan | Soviet invasion and intervention | In December 1979 the USSR deployed a major force to Afghanistan and assumed military control of Kabul and large parts of the country. | S6 |
| 1991–1992 and after | Moldova / Transnistria | Intervention in the Transnistrian conflict | The ECtHR has recorded participation by units of the Russian 14th Army on the separatist side in the 1991–92 conflict and continuing Russian military, political and economic support for the de facto regime. | S8, S20 |
| 2014– | Ukraine | Annexation of Crimea and war in Donbas | Russia took control of and annexed Crimea in 2014; the UN General Assembly affirmed Ukraine’s territorial integrity and the invalidity of the referendum. Russia supported armed separatism in Donbas. | S9 |
| 2022– | Ukraine | Full-scale aggression | On 24 February 2022 Russia launched a large-scale invasion of Ukraine. UN General Assembly resolution ES-11/1 described it as aggression and demanded withdrawal of Russian forces. | S10 |
2. Mass repression and campaigns described as genocide
| Period | Case | Target / region | Characterisation | Source |
| 1918–1922 | Red Terror and Cheka repression | Political opponents, former elites, clergy and others | Bolshevik security organs used executions, hostage-taking, imprisonment and terror against actual and perceived enemies. | S1 |
| 1929–1933 | Forced collectivisation and “liquidation of the kulaks as a class” | Peasantry across the USSR | Confiscation, deportation, forced labour and violent coercion; these policies contributed to catastrophic famine. | S1 |
| 1932–1933 | Holodomor in Ukraine | Population of Ukraine | Mass famine connected to forced grain requisitions and restrictions on movement. The European Parliament and a number of states recognise the Holodomor as genocide; scholarly and legal debate is not entirely uniform. | S11 |
| 1936–1938 | Great Terror | Party members, military, intelligentsia, ethnic groups and ordinary citizens | Mass arrests, show trials, executions and Gulag sentences, peaking in 1937–38. | S1 |
| 1937–1938 | NKVD “national operations” | Poles, Germans, Latvians, Estonians and other ethnic groups | Mass arrests and executions tied to ethnicity or alleged foreign connections within the Great Terror. | S1 |
| 1939–1941 | Repression in occupied eastern Poland | Polish citizens | Mass deportations into the USSR, imprisonment and victims of the Katyn and related massacres. | S5 |
| 1941–1952 | Mass deportations from the Baltic states | Estonians, Latvians, Lithuanians | Tens of thousands were deported to Siberia and elsewhere in the USSR as part of Sovietisation and the suppression of resistance. | S2 |
| 1943–1944 | Deportation of entire peoples | Chechens, Ingush, Crimean Tatars, Kalmyks, Karachays, Balkars and others | Entire peoples were deported to Central Asia and Siberia under collective accusations; mortality was severe. Some scholarship and institutions classify particular deportations as genocidal. | S1 |
| 2022– | Occupied Ukraine: torture, unlawful detention and deportations | Ukrainian civilians, POWs and children | The UN Commission of Inquiry found widespread and systematic torture by Russian authorities and in 2024 concluded that torture amounted to a crime against humanity. Unlawful transfers and deportations of children have been documented as war crimes. | S12, S13 |
3. Examples of religious persecution
| Period | Religious group / phenomenon | Form of persecution | Note | Source |
| 1918–1920s | Russian Orthodox Church and other faiths | Confiscation of property, arrests and executions of clergy, restrictions on religious education | The Soviet state’s ideological objective included eliminating religion’s social influence. | S15 |
| 1920s–1930s | Orthodox, Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Muslims and others | Closure of places of worship, imprisonment of clergy, atheist propaganda | By 1939 only a small fraction of tens of thousands of Orthodox churches remained open. | S15 |
| 1937–1938 | Clergy and active believers | Mass arrests and executions during the Great Terror | Religious activity could increase exposure to repression alongside political and social accusations. | S1, S15 |
| 1941–1945 | Religion during wartime | Partial relaxation | Stalin permitted a limited revival of church structures during the war, also using them to mobilise patriotism. | S15 |
| 1959–1964 | Khrushchev anti-religious campaign | Closure of thousands of places of worship and restrictions on religious activity | The Library of Congress overview notes the closure of about 12,000 Orthodox churches. | S15 |
| 1951 | Jehovah’s Witnesses — “Operation North” | Mass deportation to Siberia | Thousands of Jehovah’s Witnesses and family members were deported from western parts of the USSR. | S1 |
| 2017– | Jehovah’s Witnesses in Russia | Ban as “extremist”, criminal prosecutions, imprisonment, confiscation of property | In 2022 the ECtHR found multiple violations, including of freedom of religion and expression. | S14 |
| 2010s– | Several “non-traditional” faith groups and missionary activity | Broad use of extremism and missionary rules; registration and assembly restrictions | The intensity varies by group and region; international human-rights bodies have criticised disproportionate application. | S14 |
4. Examples of pressure on linguistic and cultural rights of indigenous and other non-Russian peoples
| Period | Peoples / regions | Policy or practice | Impact | Source |
| From late 1930s | Non-Russian peoples of the USSR | Strengthening compulsory Russian-language instruction and Russification | Russian became central to education, administration and careers; many native languages retreated from schools. | S16 |
| 1930s–1950s | Deported peoples | Abolition of territorial autonomy, forced resettlement and disruption of cultural institutions | Deportations broke community continuity, linguistic environments and traditional cultural life. | S1, S16 |
| 1950s–1980s | Indigenous peoples of Siberia and the Far North | Boarding schools, centralised curricula and dominance of Russian | Separation of children from traditional life and reduced native-language transmission contributed to assimilation. | S16, S19 |
| 1960s–1980s | Peoples of union republics and autonomous units | Increasing all-Union priority of Russian in education, science and public life | Use of local languages in higher education and professional domains declined in many regions. | S16 |
| 1990s– | Numerically small indigenous peoples of Russia | Language endangerment and limited mother-tongue education | Many languages are endangered because of small speaker populations, migration, school structure and dominance of Russian. | S16, S19 |
| 2017–2018 | Tatarstan, Bashkortostan and other ethnic republics | Campaign against compulsory teaching of republican state languages; 2018 education-law amendment | Study of non-Russian languages became tied more explicitly to parental choice, reducing compulsory status and teaching hours in several regions. | S17, S18 |
| 2010s– | Indigenous organisations and cultural activists | Shrinking civic space and restrictions on organisations | Opportunities for independent organising, international cooperation and funding for language and culture advocacy have narrowed. | S16, S19 |
| General observation | Indigenous and minority peoples of the Russian Federation | Formal legal protection exists, but implementation is uneven | Russian law recognises national languages and mother-tongue study, while research also documents long-term Russification pressures and vulnerability of many languages. | S16–S19 |
Sources and links
S1. Library of Congress — Revelations from the Russian Archives: Internal Workings of the Soviet Union — https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/archives/intn.html
S2. Library of Congress — Soviet archival collection on mass deportations of Baltic peoples — https://www.loc.gov/item/2018684350/
S3. International Encyclopedia of the First World War — Polish-Soviet War 1920–1921 — https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/polish-soviet-war-1920-1921/
S4. Latvian Presidency — History of the Republic of Latvia (occupation in 1940) — https://www.president.lv/en/history
S5. USHMM Holocaust Encyclopedia — Polish refugees / Soviet occupation and deportations — https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/polish-refugees-in-iran-during-world-war-ii
S6. U.S. Department of State, Office of the Historian — Soviet invasion of Afghanistan — https://history.state.gov/milestones/1977-1980/soviet-invasion-afghanistan
S7. U.S. Department of State, Office of the Historian — Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, 1968 — https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1964-68v14/d303
S8. European Court of Human Rights — Ilaşcu and Others v. Moldova and Russia — https://hudoc.echr.coe.int/app/conversion/pdf/?filename=001-61886.pdf&id=001-61886&library=ECHR
S9. United Nations — A/RES/68/262, Territorial integrity of Ukraine (2014) — https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/767883
S10. United Nations — A/RES/ES-11/1, Aggression against Ukraine (2022) — https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/3965290
S11. European Parliament — Holodomor recognised as genocide (2022 resolution) — https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20221209IPR64427/holodomor-parliament-recognises-soviet-starvation-of-ukrainians-as-genocide
S12. UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine — torture as a crime against humanity (2024) — https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/documents/hrbodies/hrcouncil/coiukraine/20241031-COI-Ukraine-Statement-EN.pdf
S13. UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine — treatment of POWs, 2024 — https://ukraine.ohchr.org/en/Treatment-of-prisoners-of-war-and-Update-on-the-human-rights-situation-1-June-to-31-August-2024
S14. European Court of Human Rights — Taganrog LRO and Others v. Russia (Jehovah’s Witnesses), 2022 — https://hudoc.echr.coe.int/app/conversion/pdf/?filename=Judgment+Taganrog+LRO+and+Others+v.+Russia+-+Multiple+violations+in+case+brought+by+Jehovah%E2%80%99s+Witnesses+in+Russia.pdf&id=003-7352983-10042703&library=ECHR
S15. Library of Congress — Anti-religious campaigns in the Soviet Union — https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/archives/intn.html
S16. Minority Rights Group — Russian Federation: minorities, Russification and language policy — https://minorityrights.org/country/russian-federation/
S17. University of Helsinki — Minority language education in Russia and the 2018 reform — https://researchportal.helsinki.fi/en/publications/minority-language-education-in-russia-enforcing-the-voluntary-tea/
S18. Federal Law No. 317-FZ (3 August 2018) — amendments on language of education — https://cis-legislation.com/document.fwx?rgn=109574
S19. United Nations — Indigenous peoples and indigenous languages: human-rights framework — https://social.desa.un.org/issues/indigenous-peoples/undrip-in-languages
S20. European Court of Human Rights — Lypovchenko and Halabudenco v. Moldova and Russia (Transnistria), 2024 — https://hudoc.echr.coe.int/app/conversion/docx/html/body?id=001-231078&library=ECHR
Note: sources were selected primarily from international institutions, courts, state archival/history portals and established research organisations. The number and wording of cases have deliberately been kept concise for a blog reference.