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Oddly enough, I do not equate what Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, and the Japanese militarists did; with what Hitler, Mussolini, and Franco did.

The difference is that of “the European way” vs. “the Asiatic way”. Two very different philosophies of life and even reality.

The European way emphasizes the importance of the individual, for in that philosophy, the individual retains all authority and responsibility. It is a hallmark of our civilization, and our society is imbued with the idea.

But it is not a universal idea. In Asia, the individual is less important than his family, and his family is less important than his extended family or clan, his village, his region, and his nation.

A rough way of describing this in practice would be that if a man were to offend the king or emperor in the West, he might be killed; but were he to do so in Asia, his entire village might be put to the sword.

Westerners tend to look at things with the perspective of individualism. As an American, if you look at the history of the US Civil War, what leaps out at you is that it is an event of individuals, hundreds of names that define the events.

But on the far side of the world, at about that same time, and much more horrific and destructive, was what was likely the *second* bloodiest conflict in human history after World War II. And most Americans haven’t even heard of it.

The Taiping Rebellion. 20-30 million killed, tremendously eclipsing the perhaps 700,000 dead of the American Civil War. Yet even in China, except by a few scholars perhaps, only a few individual names of top leaders are remembered, because it was not a “war of individuals”.

But back to more modern times. What so horrifies us all about Hitler’s genocide is, first of all, that it was an educated and “industrial genocide.” We are shocked that “civilized” people with university liberal arts educations, would turn into such barbaric and murderous, hate filled monsters.

And it is the individuals who were destroyed that also impact our imaginations. Real people with real names, many of whom were also highly educated and civilized.

Yet who did Stalin kill? Perhaps the only reason we are concerned is because Russia is half European and half Asiatic, which gives it a split personality. We care about those peoples West of the Urals, because they are more like us. We see in them some of the appreciation of individuality that we cherish.

But the nameless “mujiks?” The mostly uneducated Russian peasants who a mere generation before had been slaves to the great landholders? Their only hint of individuality was recognition from the Russian Orthodox church that they had souls. But little else.

Genocide is the destruction of a people, as a people. An effort to wipe out an entire breed or culture of people.

The European Jews were up to their eyebrows in culture and individuality. Thus the effort to exterminate them was openly and clearly one of genocide, that the Nazis had mulled over at length during the Wannsee conference and later.

Stalin’s orders, according to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, were vague and based on quotas. Directions to his secret police just to round up and kill a given number of a group of people, indifferent to any individual trait.

While utterly inhuman, this is an effort at control, not extermination. Humans exist only in the generic, in such schemes.

An odd example was Stalin’s obsession with building immense water dams. For this he ordered his secret police to just round up a given number of university students, not out of hatred or punishment, but just because they were a group. They were sent out to the hinterland to build dams, where countless numbers of them perished due to starvation, overwork, and disease.

Mass murderous in the extreme, but not genocidal.

Likewise, one of the most restive peoples during Stalin’s reign were the (surprise) Chechens. And though the Soviet army punished them hard and a lot, though they very well could have, there was never any intention to eradicate them as a people.