She reacted with incredulity. “How can anyone doubt there was a genocide,” she said, “I saw the starving and dying people myself!” I tried to explain to her the genocide-mass murder distinction embedded in current international law as neutrally as I could, noting some of the justifications offered for it. She, of course, was unmoved, and continued to see the distinction as a dubious contrivance. I have to agree.So went the conversation of Ilya Somin and his grandmother, both immigrants from Russia to America, about the starvation of millions by Josef Stalin in 1930s Ukraine. Ilya was attempting to explain to...