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

Stanford Report ^ | 9/23/10 | Stanford Report

[DallasBiff]

Historian Norman Naimark argues that today's narrow definition of genocide is Stalin's lasting legacy

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 crime of crimes.”

[daler]

Even my 14 year old grandson found it interesting that when considering these bloody statistics, Hitler is always the go-to guy when discussing genocide and pure evil, with hardly a reference to Stalin and Mao.

I enlightened him.

[katana]

Go back far enough and the actual champions are the Muslim invaders of India. Over a period of several hundred years a conservative estimate of the total number of Hindus and Buddhists killed by war, mass murder of civilians (pogroms), and enslavement (including castration), is 230 million.

Mao and Stalin worked far more efficiently, of course. The one "success" one can attribute to Communism.

[ckilmer]

“Mass murder” doesn’t seem up to describing what Stalin did. But “genocide” isn’t really appropriate, either.
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Since WWII it has been the nationalist side of the national socialist that has born the weight genocide. But that’s not true. It was the socialist side of the nationalist socialists that caused the mass murder. Why do we know that? Leftist ideologies Socialism/communism is what Germany Russia China and cambodia all have in common when they committed their atrocities.

[QBFimi]

.

[CatHerd]

It’s properly called “democide” or death by government. Atheist communist regimes are the clear “winners” in that department. See my post here:

https://freerepublic.com/focus/chat/4286465/posts?page=60#60

See also:

Democide vs genocide: which is what?

https://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/GENOCIDE.HTM

[ImJustAnotherOkie]

Nobody comes close to Mao.

[Organic Panic]

It isn’t genocide when Marxists do it.

[fortes fortuna juvat]

No. That’s how evil they are!
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Exactly, which is why I never tire of criticizing people who are in any way allied with the Marxist-Democrat Party. The politicians and those who support them are sick, twisted psychopaths and sociopaths, and as such they are at least as dangerous to America and its people as Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping.

[Zhang Fei]

[Even my 14 year old grandson found it interesting that when considering these bloody statistics, Hitler is always the go-to guy when discussing genocide and pure evil, with hardly a reference to Stalin and Mao.
I enlightened him.]

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The issue with Stalin’s and Mao’s numbers is that we don’t really know what they are. Lacking the authority of an occupying army to delve into their statistics, as occurred in Germany, all we can do is hazard a guess. Post-WW2, we got a pretty good look at European population statistics, down to to the ID level. That’s not true of China, which had iffy census stats anyway, and may have inflated its deaths to keep Allied lifelines going.

Hitler, however, was one of a kind. The term genocide was defined with the Holocaust in mind. But that would make for only a handful of recorded genocides, ever. What distinguished German massacres of Jews from other atrocities, WW2 or otherwise, was the lack of an escape hatch for the victims. In most other massacres, pledging fealty to new rulers or a recanting of past ideological or religious beliefs was a path to salvation. Whereas the only kind of conversion that concerned Hitler was the transformation of Jews into landfill.

[untenured]

“Mass murder” doesn’t seem up to describing what Stalin did. But “genocide” isn’t really appropriate, either.

I actually th8nk you’re right to make that distinction. Stalin may have committed genocide via famine in Ukraine; I don’t know the details.

The late historian Robert Rummel talked of “democide,” mass extermination by government,

He spent much of his career trying to document it, and wrote a number of books about it. Go to https://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/NOTE5.HTM if you’d like to learn more.

[Rummyfan]

Don’t forget Pol Pot. He murdered a couple million folks.

Pol Pot percentage-wise is right there. He was only limited buy the relatively small population of Cambodia.

[Twotone]

Democide...excellent word!