Stalinist terror and genocide

[Deborah Hoffman]

This argument has certainly been made with respect to the famine in Ukraine following collectivization, as well as some of the deported nationalities such as the Chechens.  It's important to remember, however, that genocide has a precise legal definition, and whether particular actions meet that definition doesn't render them any less horrifying.  Perhaps a starting place might be to decide what the definition of genocide should be.  The one contained in the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide (as implied by the etymology of the word genocide) would not include class.


---- Original message ----
>Date: Tue, 8 Nov 2005 10:35:46 +1100
>From: Subhash.Jaireth at GA.GOV.AU  
>Subject: [SEELANGS] Stalinist Terror and genocide  
>To: SEELANGS at LISTSERV.CUNY.EDU
>
>Hi All,
>
>Picking the thread of the interesting discussion of Stalinka,
I was wondering
>if Stalinist repression/terror has been theorised in terms of
genocide? That
>is has someone looked at drawing the parallels between the
Jewish Holocaust,
>Armenian massacre, Rwandan and Bosnian ethnic cleansing? I
dislike the word
>cleansing although those who performed such killings tried to
justify it in
>terms of cleansing the communal body of the nation. Can
Stalin-time killings
>be called genocide? Is the term genocide appropriate to
describe, theorise
>and understand those tragic events?
>
>Would be grateful for any comments?
>
>Thanks
>
>Subhash
>



Deborah Hoffman
Finance Chair, Graduate Student Senate
Modern and Classical Language Studies
Kent State University

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