Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Western powers (under the leadership of the USA), demanded the abolition of the entire Soviet Legal Code, and the immediate instigation of capitalistic laws within ‘modern’ Russia. The Soviet Death Penalty was annulled in principle in 1993, but was not confirmed in fact until 2009. This is why the Ukrainian mass killer known as ‘Andrei Chikatilo’ was put to death with a single pistol shot to the back of head on February 14th, 1994. Andrei Chikatilo was a serial killer and paedophile who between 1978 and 1990 had committed 53 confirmed murders, but had actually confessed to 56 murders. The Soviet Authorities stated that over-all, there was evidence of at least 65 victims – but only 53 could be directly or forensically linked to Andrei Chikatilo. The confirmed tally consisted of 21 boys aged 7 to 16 years, 14 girls aged 9 to 17 years, and 18 adult women. The Western accounts of the details surrounding this case are driven by US Cold War hysteria, as can be seen by the rather inaccurate and often fictitious English language wikipedia page – which diverts dramatically from the Russian language wikipedia page, and virtually all other Russian language accounts. This article will highlight these fabrications and convey the true facts about Andrei Chikatilo.
The US documentary included below, makes a number of false statements about Andrei Chikatilo – one of which is that he was a ‘Member’ of the Communist Party – this is untrue. He was never associated with the Communist Party, but such skewed documentaries serve to associate the Soviet Union with false allegations of ‘backwardness’ and ‘corruption’, and also try to make the tenuous case that as in the capitalist West – where mass murderers are common-place – similar crimes were committed in the Soviet Union. Again, this is an unfounded allegation with no historical evidence supporting it. In fact, the case of Andrei Chikatilo proves that within the Soviet Union, deliberate serial killers were unknown outside of murders committed by people suffering with psychiatric issues (to whom the sentence was always ‘medical care’ and ‘confinement’ and never the Death Penalty). Karl Marx wrote that the material conditions of outer society conditions the inner reflection of that society within the mind. Conversely, the mind, once conditioned, also influences the environment via physical action (i.e. ‘labour’). The exploitative and highly oppressive socio-economic conditions associated with the capitalist system, exerts tremendous pressure and violence upon the minds and bodies of the workers, and it is understandable that on occasion, perverse and/or murderous behaviour can be the result. Generally speaking, there is a scale of working class violent behaviour that for most people stops short of actual murder, but for a few some manifests in the taking of life. Indeed, the American FBI once issued a statement confirming that at any one time in the US, there are probably at least 70 serial killers at large.
As the Soviet Union was a Workers’ State of non-inverted and progressive social and economic policies, how was someone like Andrei Chikatilo created? The US Cold War rhetoric suggests that the ideas of Karl Marx are wrong, and that the single case of Andrei Chikatilo proves this assumption. The English language wikipedia page falsely asserts that Andrei Chikatilo was born in the Ukraine during a mass famine caused by the ‘collectivisation’ policies initiated by Joseph Stalin – but this is false. The rich peasant class (the ‘kulaks’), of which Andrei Chikatilo’s family was a part of, were given financial aid and material aid by the Soviet State for decades prior to the re-form of farming. The kulaks were very rich and far from starvation, but it is true that a certain minority of kulaks (who did not mind accepting State help), also resented the idea that they must ‘earn’ this help by ‘sharing’ their produce. In protest, these kulaks killed their animals, smashed their tractors and sabotaged their crops. Those kulaks responsible were deported to Siberia – but the fact that Andrei Chikatilo’s family still lived in the Ukraine in 1936 proves that his family was loyal to the Soviet Union at that time. This is why the Russian language accounts dismiss the idea that Andrei Chikatilo and his family suffered any hardship in the Ukraine during the 1930’s, and that this idea cannot be used to justify his later criminal behaviour. Furthermore, Andrei Chikatilo’s father was conscripted into the Red Army in 1941, and is recorded in Russian language sources as ‘commanding’ a partisan detachment – a situation involving ‘trust’ on behalf of the Soviet Authorities. As his father was away during the Nazi German invasion of the Ukraine, it is thought that his mother was raped by German soldiers – eventually giving birth to his sister.
Russian language sources record that Andrei Chikatilo, as a young child, suffered terribly during the Nazi German occupation of the Ukraine (during the Great Patriotic War). Not only was there permanent starvation, but Andrei Chikatilo has to witness the continuous mass round-ups of Ukrainians by the Nazi Germans, and the torture and mass executions that followed. It is said that at one time Andrei Chikatilo was with a group of Ukrainian children machine-gunned by the Nazi Germans – after which he fell into a pit with other bodies. Although unhurt, the Nazi Germans thought he was dead because he was covered in the blood of others. Andrei Chikatilo had to lie still to preserve his own life whilst blood ran into his mouth and down his throat. After having witnessed his mother (and thousands of other Ukrainian women) raped, and experiencing the insane racialised violence of the Nazi German occupiers of the USSR, it is hardly surprising that a child of his young age could have had the inner processes of his mind ‘damaged’ in the manner they undoubtedly were. Of equal importance is the fact that some Ukrainians actively collaborated with the Nazi German occupiers – assisting in the rape and murder of Soviet-supporting Ukrainians. This collaboration with fascism would lead to the neo-Nazi insurgency that officially existed in Western Ukraine between 1945 and 1947. After ‘liberating’ the Ukraine in 1945, the Red Army moved on to Berlin, and the Ukrainian neo-Nazi insurgency was taken on and destroyed by the special troops of the NKVD. In the meantime, the neo-Nazi terrorism in the Ukraine prevented effective food distribution throughout the area, which directly led to a famine in 1946. (It is believed that the ‘Madan’ neo-Nazi Movement that seized control of Western Ukraine in 2014, is staffed by direct descendents of these Ukrainian criminals of WWII). Perhaps this military action that eventually destroyed neo-Nazism in the Ukraine inspired Andrei Chikatilo to eventually join the Border Troops of the KGB (formerly ‘NKVD’) of the USSR (in Central Asia), and then as a signalman in Berlin (within the Soviet Forces stationed in Germany) – serving from 1957-1960.
A point that must be addressed is the issue of Andrei Chikatilo’s mother – who claimed that during a supposed famine between 1932-1933 – local Ukrainians killed and ate her son apparently called ‘Stephen’. However, despite extensive academic research in Russia and the West (for purposes of criminology), no records can be found of a birth, life, or death of any child called ‘Stephen’, as confirmed by American forensic psychologist Catherine Ramsland. This demonstrates the fallacious nature of much US-inspired cold War lying. On this point, the Russian journalists and writers MA Gurevich OM Libkin stated:
‘The investigators, and then the journalists, after hearing the story of the supposedly eaten brother, followed all the avenues of investigation, but nothing was found. Neither in the surviving papers, nor in the memory of fellow villagers – with nobody remembering Stephen himself. To establish whether he existed at all, or whether it was true that he disappeared under suspicious circumstances, is now most likely impossible. It is quite possible to assume that Andrei Chikatilo is cunning only in part. His parents, who worked hard day after day, leaving their small children at home unattended, could threaten to punish them if they left the hut or the yard, incase someone else would catch and eat them. For the sake of persuasiveness, Andrei Chikatilo’s parents probably ‘invented’ the character of Stephen. From the point of view of pedagogy, the method is bad. But effective …’
It was probably Andrei Chikatilo’s direct exposure to the atrocities of German Nazism that led eventually to his criminal behaviour. This exposure at such a young age was stronger in effect, than the positive and self-empowering structures of Soviet Society. It was not Soviet Society, Joseph Stalin or imagined ‘famines’ that led to the criminal behaviour of Andrei Chikatilo, but the appalling and murderous behaviour of Adolf Hitler and his racially motivated soldiers in the Ukraine. Of course, it must be acknowledged that many millions of Soviet citizens suffered under Nazi German occupation, but no one else in the entire country, despite what must have been terrible experiences of the worst kind, responded in the manner associated with Andrei Chikatilo. It is also true that whereas the capitalist West continuously produce mass killers of various kinds, only one manifested in the USSR during its existence, and this one example can be decisively traced back to the innate corruption of the Nazi German regime, and its brutal occupation of the USSR.
Russian Language References:
https://sites.google.com/site/manakisssrisng/cikatilo-andrej-romanovic
https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Чикатило,_Андрей_Романович
English Language Reference:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrei_Chikatilo#Sexual_assaults
THE SANGHA KOMMUNE (SSR) 