Stalin: A Brutal Legacy Uncovered

September 23, 2010

Stalin killed millions. A Stanford historian answers the question, was information technology genocide?

When it comes to utilise of the word "genocide," public opinion has been kinder to Stalin than Hitler. But one historian looks at Stalin's mass killings and urges that the definition of genocide be widened.

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Mass killing is even so the way a lot of governments do business.

The past few decades have seen terrifying examples in Rwanda, Kingdom of cambodia, Darfur, Bosnia.

Murder on a national scale, yes – but is it genocide? "The word carries a powerful punch," said Stanford history Professor Norman Naimark. "In international courts, it's considered the criminal offence of crimes."

Nations take tugs of war over the official definition of the word "genocide" itself – which mentions just national, ethnic, racial and religious groups. The definition can make up one's mind, after all, international relations, foreign assist and national morale. Look at the almanac international tussle over whether the 1915 Turkish massacre and deportation of the Armenians "counts" as genocide.

Naimark, author of the controversial new volume Stalin's Genocides, argues that we need a much broader definition of genocide, one that includes nations killing social classes and political groups. His case in point: Stalin.

The book's title is plural for a reason: He argues that the Soviet elimination of a social form, the kulaks (who were higher-income farmers), and the subsequent killer famine amidst all Ukrainian peasants – equally well as the notorious 1937 order No. 00447 that called for the mass execution and exile of "socially harmful elements" as "enemies of the people" – were, in fact, genocide.

Kulaks being dispossessed.

A dispossessed kulak and his family in front of their home in Udachne village in Donets'ka oblast', 1930s. (Image credit: Central State Archives of Photo, Audio, and Video Documents of Ukraine named after Yard. Southward. Pshenychnyi)

"I make the statement that these matters shouldn't be seen equally discrete episodes, simply seen together," said Naimark, the Robert and Florence McDonnell Professor of Eastern European Studies and a respected authorization on the Soviet regime. "It's a horrific case of genocide – the purposeful elimination of all or part of a social group, a political group."

Stalin had nearly a one thousand thousand of his own citizens executed, beginning in the 1930s. Millions more fell victim to forced labor, deportation, famine, massacres, and detention and interrogation by Stalin's henchmen.

"In some cases, a quota was established for the number to exist executed, the number to be arrested," said Naimark. "Some officials overfulfilled as a way of showing their exuberance."

The term "genocide" was defined by the 1948 Un Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. The convention's work was shaped by the Holocaust – "that was considered the genocide," said Naimark.

"A ending had just happened, and everyone was notwithstanding thinking about the war that had merely ended. This ever occurs with international law – they outlaw what happened in the firsthand past, non what's going to happen in the future."

In his book, he concludes that there was more similarity between Hitler and Stalin than usually acknowledged: "Both chewed up the lives of human beings in the name of a transformative vision of Utopia. Both destroyed their countries and societies, as well every bit vast numbers of people inside and outside their own states. Both, in the end, were genocidaires."

Shipment of grain from the Chervonyi Step collective farm to a procurement center, Kyivs'ka oblast', 1932. The sign reads 'Socialists' bread instead of kulak's bread.'

Shipment of grain from the Chervonyi Step collective subcontract to a procurement eye, Kyivs'ka oblast', 1932. The sign reads 'Socialists' bread instead of kulak's staff of life.' (Paradigm credit: Central Land Archives of Photo, Audio, and Video Documents of Ukraine named after Chiliad. Due south. Pshenychnyi)

All early drafts of the U.North. genocide convention included social and political groups in its definition. But i mitt that wasn't in the room guided the pen. The Soviet delegation vetoed any definition of genocide that might include the actions of its leader, Joseph Stalin. The Allies, wearied by state of war, were loyal to their Soviet allies – to the detriment of subsequent generations.

Naimark argues that that the narrow definition of genocide is the dictator's unacknowledged legacy to us today.

Accounts "gloss over the genocidal graphic symbol of the Soviet regime in the 1930s, which killed systematically rather than episodically," said Naimark. In the procedure of collectivization, for example, 30,000 kulaks were killed straight, mostly shot on the spot. Nearly two million were forcibly deported to the Far North and Siberia.

They were called "enemies of the people," as well as swine, dogs, cockroaches, scum, vermin, filth, garbage, half animals, apes. Activists promoted murderous slogans: "We volition exile the kulak by the one thousand when necessary – shoot the kulak brood." "Nosotros will make soap of kulaks." "Our course enemies must be wiped off the face of the earth."

One Soviet study noted that gangs "collection the dekulakized naked in the streets, beat them, organized drinking bouts in their houses, shot over their heads, forced them to dig their own graves, undressed women and searched them, stole valuables, coin, etc."

Historian Norman Naimark

Historian Norman Naimark (Image credit: L.A. Cicero)

The destruction of the kulak class triggered the Ukrainian famine, during which 3 million to 5 million peasants died of starvation.

"There is a great deal of evidence of government connivance in the circumstances that brought on the shortage of grain and bad harvests in the first place and made it impossible for Ukrainians to observe nutrient for their survival," Naimark writes.

Nosotros will never know how many millions Stalin killed. "And even so somehow Stalin gets a pass," Ian Frazier wrote in a recent New Yorker commodity nearly the gulags. "People know he was horrible, merely he has not yet been alleged horrible officially."

Time magazine put Stalin on its cover xi times. Russian public opinion polls still rank him near the pinnacle of the greatest leaders of Russian history, equally if he were just some other one of the powerful but bloodthirsty czars.

In that location's a reason for Russian obliviousness. Every family unit had non only victims but perpetrators. "A vast network of state organizations had to be mobilized to seize and kill that many people," Naimark wrote, estimating that tens of thousands were accomplices.

"How much can you lot move on? Can you lot put information technology in your by? How is a national identity formed when a central role of it is a crime?" Naimark asked. "The Germans have gone about it the right way," he said, pointing out that the Federal republic of germany has pioneered research about the Holocaust and the crimes of the Nazi government. "Through denial and obfuscation, the Turks take gone most it the wrong style."

Without a full examination of the past, Naimark observed, it'south as well easy for information technology to happen once more.

Toward the stop of his life, Stalin may take had some other genocide in his crosshairs. We'll never know whether the concocted conspiracy of Jewish Kremlin doctors in 1952 would have resulted in the internal exile of the entire Jewish population. Whatever plans existed ended abruptly with Stalin's death in March 1953, as rumors of Jewish deportations were swirling.

One of Stalin'southward colleagues recalled the dictator reviewing an abort list (actually, a death listing) and muttering to himself: "Who's going to remember all this riff-raff in ten or twenty years' time? No one. … Who remembers the names at present of the boyars Ivan the Terrible got rid of? No one. … The people had to know he was getting rid of all his enemies. In the end, they all got what they deserved."

Who remembers? If Naimark has his way, perhaps we all volition: "Every family unit had people who died. I'yard convinced that they demand to acquire near their own by. There'll never exist closure, merely there will be a reckoning with the past."