Soviet power carried out policies of forced Russification in Ukraine, as well as a number of repressive and murderous measures targeting ethnic and national groups, in particular during the Great Terror of the 1930s. Ukraine’s minorities - Jews, Poles, Greeks, Germans and others - were subjected to varying degrees of oppression. In the parlance of the Soviet police, campaigns targeting specific nationalities were known as “national operations”. We have translated the text of a presentation by Ukrainian researcher Roman Podkur that he gave in December 2023 at a conference organized by Memorial France and titled “Imperial Violence”.