Russification in the context of "Russian-occupied territories of Ukraine"

The civilizing mission (Spanish: misión civilizadora; Portuguese: Missão civilizadora; French: Mission civilisatrice) is a political rationale for military intervention and for colonization purporting to facilitate the cultural assimilation of indigenous peoples, especially in the period from the 15th to the 20th centuries. As a principle of Western culture, the term was most prominently used in justifying French colonialism in the late-15th to mid-20th centuries. The civilizing mission was the cultural justification for the colonization of French Algeria, French West Africa, French Indochina, Portuguese Angola and Portuguese Guinea, Portuguese Mozambique and Portuguese Timor, among other colonies. The civilizing mission also was a popular justification for the British and German colonialism. In the Russian Empire, it was also associated with the Russian conquest of Central Asia and the Russification of that region. The Western colonial powers claimed that, as Christian nations, they were duty bound to disseminate Western civilization to what they perceived as heathen, primitive cultures. It was also applied by the Empire of Japan, which colonized Korea.

The Circassian genocide, or Tsitsekun, was the systematic mass killing, ethnic cleansing, and forced displacement of between 95% and 97% of the Circassian people during the final stages of the Russian invasion of Circassia in the 19th century. It resulted in the deaths of between 1,000,000 and 1.5 million and the destruction of Circassia, which was then annexed by the Russian Empire. Those planned for extermination were mainly the Circassians, who are predominantly Muslims, but other ethnic groups in the Caucasus were also affected, as part of the Caucasian War. The Imperial Russian Army also impaled their victims and tore open the bellies of pregnant women to intimidate the Circassians and devastate their morale. Many Russian generals, such as Grigory Zass, described the Circassians as "subhuman filth" and a "lowly race" to justify and glorify their wholesale slaughter and their use as human test subjects in unethical scientific experiments. Russian soldiers were also permitted to rape Circassian women.

The native Circassian population was largely decimated or expelled to the Ottoman Empire. Only those who accepted Russification and made agreements with Russian troops, were spared. Starvation was used as a tool of war against Circassian villages, many of which were subsequently burned down. Russian writer Leo Tolstoy reported that Russian soldiers attacked village houses at night. British diplomat Gifford Palgrave, stated that "their only crime was not being Russian." Seeking military intervention against Russia, Circassian officials sent "A Petition from Circassian leaders to Her Majesty Queen Victoria" in 1864, but were unsuccessful in their attempt to solicit aid from the British Empire. That same year, the Imperial Russian Army launched a campaign of mass deportation of Circassia's surviving population. By 1867, a large portion of the Circassians were expelled. Many died from epidemics or starvation. Some were reportedly eaten by dogs after their death, while others died when their ships sank during storms.

The Russian Orthodox Cross (or just the Orthodox Cross by some Russian Orthodox traditions) is a variation of the Christian cross since the 16th century in Russia, although it bears some similarity to a cross with a bottom crossbeam slanted the other way (upwards) found since the 6th century in the Byzantine Empire. The Russian Orthodox cross has three horizontal crossbeams, with the lowest one slanted downwards. Today it is a symbol of the Russian Orthodox Church and a distinctive feature of the cultural landscape of Russia. Other names for the symbol include the Russian cross, and Slavonic or Suppedaneum cross.

The earliest cross with a slanted footstool (pointing upwards, unlike the Russian cross) was introduced in the 6th century before the break between Catholic and Orthodox churches, and was used in Byzantine frescoes, arts, and crafts. In 1551 during the canonical isolation of the Russian Orthodox Church, Ivan the Terrible, Grand Prince of Moscow, first used this cross, with the footstool tilted the other way, on the domes of churches. From this time, it started to be depicted on the Russian state coat of arms and military banners. In the second half of the 19th century, this cross was promoted by the Russian Empire in the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania as a symbol of its Russification policy.

This article details the geographical distribution of Russian speakers. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the status of the Russian language often became a matter of controversy. Some Post-Soviet states adopted policies of derussification aimed at reversing former trends of Russification, while Belarus under Alexander Lukashenko and the Russian Federation under Vladimir Putin reintroduced Russification policies in the 1990s and 2000s, respectively.

After the collapse of the Russian Empire in 1917, derussification occurred in the newly-independent Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and the Kars Oblast, the last of which became part of Turkey.

The German minority population in Russia, Ukraine, and the Soviet Union stemmed from several sources and arrived in several waves. Since the second half of the 19th century, as a consequence of the Russification policies and compulsory military service in the Russian Empire, large groups of Germans from Russia emigrated to the Americas (mainly Canada, the United States, Brazil and Argentina), where they founded many towns. During World War II, ethnic Germans in the Soviet Union were persecuted and many were forcibly resettled to other regions such as Central Asia. In 1989, the Soviet Union declared an ethnic German population of roughly two million. By 2002, following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, many ethnic Germans had emigrated (mainly to Germany) and the population fell by half to roughly one million. 597,212 Germans self-identified as such in the 2002 Russian census, making Germans the fifth-largest ethnic group in the Russian Federation. There were 353,441 Germans in Kazakhstan and 21,472 in Kyrgyzstan (1999); while 33,300 Germans lived in Ukraine (2001 census).

Emigrants from Germany first arrived in Kievan Rus during the reign of Olga of Kiev. The Germans of Russia did not necessarily speak Russian; many spoke German, while French was often used as the language of the high aristocracy. Depending on geography and other circumstances, many Russian Germans spoke Russian as their first or second language. The large numbers of farmers and village tradesmen who arrived following Catherine the Great's invitation were allowed to settle in German-only villages and to keep their German language, religion, and culture until the 1920s.