The Two Stooges: Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong
Our inquiry into the meaning of “genocide” continues. Yesterday we looked at the most common template for genocide, in which a “suspect” minority is attacked in time of war. The Armenian massacre, the Jewish Holocaust and the Rwandan massacre all fit this pattern, and so do the the horrifying crimes Saddam Hussein committed against Kurds in northern Iraq during the final years of the Iran-Iraq War. Recent genocidal disasters in the former Yugoslavia (involving Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia, Croatia, Kosovo and Albania) fit this pattern as well, and so does the genocide currently raging in civil-war torn Darfur.
But it’s too early to conclude that war is the necessary and sufficient explanation for genocide, because (strangely enough) the two worst genocides of the last hundred years contradict this thesis completely. The two worst recorded genocides of all time took place during peacetime, and were targeted against utterly placid and defenseless people. I’m speaking of the two forced famines that decimated the peasantry of Russia in the 1930’s and the peasantry of China in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s, and of the two incredible monsters who committed these acts. Ladies and gentleman, meet the two champions in the all time pantheon of bureaucratic murder: Joseph Stalin (7 million deaths in 2 years) and Mao Zedong (20 to 30 million deaths in 3 years).
Unlike the Jews or Armenians of Europe or Tutsis of Rwanda, the victims of the vast Russian and Chinese genocides never had the catharsis of victory or judgement against their persecutors. Joseph Stalin decimated his nation’s population and went on to rule as the Great Father of Russia for 20 more years until his death in 1953. Chairman Mao decimated his nation’s population and went on to rule as the mystical oracle of China for 25 more years until his death in 1976. Neither nation has ever mourned for its sins. You think Turkey is in denial? Let’s talk about China if you want to talk about denial …
But let’s start with Russia and Joseph Stalin, because his holocaust came first. Stalin, newly powerful as the sole leader of the fledgling Communist nation, embarked in 1931 on an aggressive program of farm collectivization designed to “increase productivity” and erase bourgouis notions of private ownership across the Russian countryside. Collectivization was a Marxist ideal, but in Stalin’s perverse hands the idealistic project never had a chance, because the farmers were essentially transformed into slaves.
They could not keep up with required yields, and the result was a national starvation. It’s not clear to what extent the government leaders in Moscow cared that the great agricultural project had failed, and to what extent they were actively scheming to trim their population by forced famine.
Thirty years later this pattern repeated itself almost exactly in China, which also suffered from economic problems due to population excess. The similarities between Russia’s “Five Year Plan” and China’s “Great Leap Forward” are quite stunning, though Mao’s scale was significantly larger.
Fifteen years later, yet another Communist dictator, Pol Pot of Cambodia, carried out a program of genocide against his own population that also resembled the Russian and Chinese atrocities. Victims were estimated at 1.7 million.
The Stalin/Mao/Pol Pot template — genocide for population control — provides a strong contrast to the more common war-based genocide template we discussed yesterday.
Despite the strong contrast, though, one principle stands: genocide always serves a functional purpose. Whether the purpose is economic (Russia, China, Cambodia) or military/strategic (Turkey, Nazi Europe, Iraq, the Balkans, Rwanda, Darfur), genocides don’t happen by accident. Genocides happen because governments plan them.
Comments welcome again … and I’ll write another installment on this topic tomorrow.
January 18th, 2007 at 8:18 am
exactly. genocides don’t happen by accident. there is no such thing as spontaneous genocide - it does not happen out of nothing.
it doesn’t appear from nowhere, but has been ripening for quite a while already. a crime like this is the horrible climax of a long preparation process.
in time of crisis (military, economic, ideological, etc.), people get nervous and tend to blame their leaders. the leaders can neither prove the crisis is not their fault (cause most of the time it is), nor offer instant solutions (and most of the time, can’t offer any solutions at all), so the obvious way for them is to blame someone else.
it’s easy to create a scapegoat, because people want one. things are easier to bear of you can blame someone else. if your are not responsible. if someone else is.
whose fault? not mine, not ours. it’s all because of them! self-redemption through creation of a ‘feindbild’…of a threat… of an enemy.
an ideolgy is created to shape this image of an enemy. propaganda makes it part of the consensus of opinion.
and once the enemy is identified as such and agreed upon by common consent, once everyone is convinced he’s a threat to our existence, it is only a small step to war (if the enemy lives far away) or genocide (if he lives among us).
yes, genocide, like war, always serves a functional purpose. it is planned. it’s prepared. it’s tended like a plant from perfect soil (crisis) by gardeners ( leaders) that have a great interest in its growth and blossoming… and in its bearing fruit.
January 18th, 2007 at 2:17 pm
I have to put an addendum on my own article. I spent some more time reading about this today, and it’s becoming more clear that Russia’s ruinous collectivization program was aimed at eradicating a Ukrainian nationalist movement (Ukraine, Eastern Europe’s “breadbasket”, was the hardest hit during the forced famines of the 1930’s). Apparently many Ukranians now view Stalin’s actions as politically motivated. I’ve also learned that the Ukranians — who are now independent of Russia, but were then part of the Soviet Union — have coined the word Holodomor to describe this tragic period in their history.
January 18th, 2007 at 5:46 pm
I’m missing the point. I tend to think of genocide as ethnic cleansing, not a purge of the intelligentsia or potential dissidents. Perhaps I’m parsing words, but the importance of this (to me) is how it would apply in a world court.
If we were to judge Sadham Hussein’s crime (gassing 15, 000 Kurds) against the bombing of Dresden, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki; our conclusion would be that it’s okay for us to do that but wrong for him to do that. Same thing for the slaughter of an entire Kurdish village - we could pardon Lt. Calley for a similar act of mass murder.
From the Wikipedia definition of genocide, I don’t see that as applying to Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, or Sadham. One could argue that all of them were stupid and cruel; but I don’t think any of them meant to specifically destroy a national or ethnic group. Two examples - no one would suggest that Herbert Hoover envisioned the near-destruction of the American people because of his economic policies. And secondly, wars in Korea and Vietnam resulted in the death of 8-10 million soldiers and citizens from the various countries involved; but no one would suggest that this mass killing was genocidal.
One would like an apology from every German who supported the Nazi’s. But first we must acknowledge that their effort to destroy the Jewish race failed. Our effort to destroy the American Indian succeeded. I believe it is the largest-scale successful genocide in man’s history.
January 18th, 2007 at 6:23 pm
Well, I think I agree with you, Stokey. I don’t see why you say you don’t get the message — I think my message is roughly what you are saying. And what Anemone is saying. Simplistic “good vs. evil” interpretations of genocide don’t fly — not now, not ever. No human being on earth right now is more than six degrees removed from “evil”, and it’s about time some nations (including mine) began confronting some of their demons.
I’ll get to the native Americans soon, I promise. I’m just getting started here.
January 20th, 2007 at 6:43 pm
“I don’t think any of them meant to specifically destroy a national or ethnic group”
Wow … you’re kidding, right?
January 22nd, 2007 at 9:42 am
Me three… Seems strange that the Wikipedia has its definition of genocide interpreted in the way, you, Stokely did. I think that Hitler, Stalin, and Mao Zedong’s personification of the word genocide is a “slam dunk”. Those folks were the pits.
However, Stokely, your point about genocide with the Amerindians is well taken. Why didn’t you see the similarity in the other incidents? Just because H:itler, et al “weren’t successful” doesn’t mean that the definition wasn’t valid for them. There are still plenty of Amerindians in our country, even though they are only about 1-2% of the population of the United States. Lately, the birthrates have been making a comeback. However,there are some tribes of Amerindians who are totally extinct, like the MicMacs and the Caribs.