“Some officials overfulfilled as a way of showing their exuberance.” “In some cases, a quota was established for the number to be executed, the number to be arrested,” said Naimark. Millions more fell victim to forced labor, deportation, famine, massacres, and detention and interrogation by Stalin’s henchmen. Stalin had nearly a million of his own citizens executed, beginning in the 1930s. “It’s a horrific case of genocide – the purposeful elimination of all or part of a social group, a political group.” “I make the argument that these matters shouldn’t be seen as discrete episodes, but seen together,” said Naimark, the Robert and Florence McDonnell Professor of Eastern European Studies and a respected authority on the Soviet regime. (Image credit: Central State Archives of Photo, Audio, and Video Documents of Ukraine named after G. 00447 that called for the mass execution and exile of “socially harmful elements” as “enemies of the people” – were, in fact, genocide.Ī dispossessed kulak and his family in front of their home in Udachne village in Donets’ka oblast’, 1930s. The book’s title is plural for a reason: He argues that the Soviet elimination of a social class, the kulaks (who were higher-income farmers), and the subsequent killer famine among all Ukrainian peasants – as well as the notorious 1937 order No. Naimark, author of the controversial new book Stalin’s Genocides, argues that we need a much broader definition of genocide, one that includes nations killing social classes and political groups. Look at the annual international tussle over whether the 1915 Turkish massacre and deportation of the Armenians “counts” as genocide. The definition can determine, after all, international relations, foreign aid and national morale. Nations have tugs of war over the official definition of the word “genocide” itself – which mentions only national, ethnic, racial and religious groups. “In international courts, it’s considered the crime of crimes.” Murder on a national scale, yes – but is it genocide? “The word carries a powerful punch,” said Stanford history Professor Norman Naimark. The past few decades have seen terrifying examples in Rwanda, Cambodia, Darfur, Bosnia. Mass killing is still the way a lot of governments do business. In his new book, historian Norman Naimark argues that the definition of genocide should include nations killing social classes and political groups.
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