The tragedy in Kryvyi Rih prompted the editorial team of PostPravda.info to choose the term “necro-imperialism” as the subject of the next article in the Dictionary of War by Prof. Nikolai Karpitsky. On April 4, 2025, a missile strike on Kryvyi Rih took the lives of 18 people, half of whom were children. More than seventy people were injured. This attack on civilians had no military purpose. Russia continues, day after day, to kill people in Ukraine. However, when it does so in such a demonstrative and senseless way, an understanding emerges: the main motivation is necrophilia.
An ordinary person wants to live, and therefore seeks to see the world as a place where one can simply live. A Western citizen wants to believe that Russia’s war against Ukraine, though criminal, is still rationally explainable. That gives hope for a peaceful future. The concept of “necro-imperialism,” which reflects the essence of contemporary Russia, destroys that hope, and therefore cannot become popular. A Russian citizen also wants to live and thus seeks to adapt to power. However, their desire to live is in conflict with the necrophilia of that power. They are faced with a choice: to live among necrophiles, as if in hell, or to become one themselves.
Necro-imperialism
Necro-imperialism is a form of imperialism characteristic of contemporary Russia, which emerged as a result of a mutation of imperial consciousness. In the necro-imperial view, death is seen as a universal way of solving all problems, especially the problem of consolidating power. Protecting and ensuring a normal life for citizens is not treated as a task of state power at all, and all people who are not dependent on it are seen as a potential threat. Therefore, killing and destruction become sufficient goals for waging war.
At the root of necro-imperialism lies the fear of the complexity of the world and the belief that evil is embedded in the nature of modern Western civilization, based on freedom, law, and democracy. In relation to the enemy, all moral boundaries disappear—every crime is justified. Evil toward the enemy is treated as good, and good as evil. In mass consciousness, necro-imperialism gives rise to social necrophilia—a suppression of empathy, a denial of others’ right to exist, and a perception of death as a way to simplify the world.
Also see on PostPravda.Info the article by Nikolai Karpitsky: War Dictionary: Can the word “Russia” be used as the name of a country?
Social Necrophilia
Social necrophilia is the spread in society of an attitude that excludes empathy and compassion, where other people are seen either as objects or as hostile forces with no right to exist. The suppression of empathy on a social level takes place through seeing the surrounding world as alien and hostile. This perception can be spontaneous or result from systematic propaganda that claims all problems come from an external enemy, inherently evil in nature.
The spread of social necrophilia is encouraged by the fear of the world’s complexity, which intensifies along with the degradation of personality and a shift to a primitive perception of reality. When this process affects masses of people, leading to personal and social degradation, the term “lumpenization” can be used. This doesn’t refer only to the lumpenproletariat, but to lumpens in all social strata—lumpen-intellectuals, lumpen-Orthodox, etc. Lumpenization facilitated the rapid spread of necrophilic sentiment in Russian society and the mutation of imperial consciousness. The war hysteria that began with the invasion of Ukraine intensified the necrophilic mood but was not its original cause.
Also read on PostPravda.Info the article by Nikolai Karpitsky: Party of the Dead against Putin’s Russia
The First Mutation of Imperial Consciousness
Archaic Russian imperialism was not a unique phenomenon—other empires also existed. In the 16th century, it was ideologically shaped as the concept of “Moscow—the Third Rome,” according to which Russia’s mission was the “gathering of lands,” as if the independent existence of nations on those lands had no value outside of Russia. In the 20th century, archaic empires either collapsed or transformed.
In the 20th century, totalitarian ideologies appeared based on a Manichean understanding of evil, according to which evil is attributed to the very essence of the enemy or the enemy side of the world. Under their influence, imperial consciousness underwent a mutation, leading to the emergence of totalitarian imperialism in the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. The Bolsheviks believed that evil lies in the social nature of humans, which meant the world was doomed to class struggle. To cleanse the world of evil, a world revolution was needed. The Nazis, in turn, believed that evil lies in the biological nature of “imperfect” people and justified war for world domination with the need to eliminate them.
The perception of the surrounding world as evil transforms archaic imperialism into totalitarian imperialism, in which power no longer serves the welfare of the empire but rather the continued expansion and strengthening of itself, which, in light of totalitarian ideology, is justified by the need to cleanse the hostile world of evil.
The Second Mutation – The Birth of Necro-Imperialism
The second mutation of imperial consciousness transformed totalitarian imperialism into necrophilic imperialism, or necro-imperialism. Whereas communists set for themselves the illusory goal of fighting the surrounding world, for necro-imperialists the fight itself became the goal.
This mutation culminated with the rise to power of Putin and the security services, though its roots go back to the practices of the Cheka and NKVD, where the killing of innocents was treated as a way to “simplify” society.
In modern Russia, lumpenization is promoted—lumpens take the place of specialists, displacing professionals. A trend emerges of turning lumpens into a privileged social class. Lumpens fear the complexity of the world, so they readily accept the idea that the West is the embodiment of evil and that its destruction is good, because it simplifies the world. As a result, a necrophilic mood spreads in society, according to which destruction and death are seen as a desirable simplification of reality.
Also read: The decolonization of Ukraine is underway. If Kiev wins, it will write its own history
Russian necro-imperialists claim that the West imposed a false national identity on Ukraine, which allegedly led to Ukraine becoming part of global evil. In their logic, the destruction of Ukrainian identity is a fight against evil, and the atrocities committed by the Russian army in Ukraine are necessary and justified. The war on Ukrainian territory is understood as a war against the West, and after the destruction of Ukraine, NATO countries should be the next target.
Necro-imperialists are driven by irrational motivations that rationally thinking politicians in democratic countries do not understand. The mistaken conclusion that Russia would not go to war because it would not benefit from it led to European countries being unprepared for war. At the start of the full-scale invasion in 2022, both in Ukraine and in the West, the mistaken belief prevailed that losses in the Russian army would convince the Russian leadership of the futility of war as a way to achieve its goals. This mistake cost Ukraine heavy losses in 2024. The decision to continue a war of attrition that cannot be won stems precisely from necro-imperial, not archaic imperial logic.
