Mass Violence in 20 th century. Raphael Lemkin, 1900-1958 Axis Rule in Occupied Europe.
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Transcript of Mass Violence in 20 th century. Raphael Lemkin, 1900-1958 Axis Rule in Occupied Europe.
Mass Violence in 20th century
Raphael Lemkin, 1900-1958Axis Rule in Occupied Europe
Lemkin’s definition of genocide
Any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, such as:• (a) Killing members of the group;• (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the
group;• (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life
calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
• (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
• (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
Extremely violent societies (2010)
Christian Gerlach views mass violence as an expansive, multilayered phenomenon emerging in the midst of profound socioeconomic change and involving both state and civilian actors, past and present social relations, numerous victim groups, gradations of perpetrators and victims, and diverse methods of violence
• German South-West Africa (1904)• German East Africa and Maji-Maji revolt• Armenian genocide (1915)
Armenia, 1915
A century of silence, Raffi Khatchadourian, New Yorker, January 5, 2015 http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/01/05/century-silence
Zygmunt Bauman: “state as a gardener”
The Gulag archipelago
Gulag Historiography
• Gulag is actually an abbreviation, Glavnoe upravlenie ‘ispravidelno-trudovikh lagerei (Main administration of corrective labor camps) – Pre-1991 obsession with numbers– Based heavily on memoirs (Solzhenitsyn)
• Recent directions– Everyday life– Economics– Interaction between gulag and society
Origins and Formation of the Gulag
• Imperial Russia: Katorga (forced labor camps)• 1918: Cheka creates Solovki Special Purpose Camp (SLON)
– Prisoners mostly political– Corrective labor– Endorsed by Gorkii in 1929
• Mass expansion from early 1930s• Organized under OGPU in 1930• Included:
– Jails, special settlements, prisons, labor colonies• Our Gulag: Corrective labor camps
– 1940: 53 camps, 1.3 million people
Population by Offense
Counterrev
olutionary ac
ts
Dange
rous c
rimes/
banditr
y
Specu
lation an
d hooligan
ism
Economic c
rimes
Crimes
again
st pers
ons
Crimes
again
st pro
perty
Theft
of public
propert
y
"Socia
lly harm
ful and dan
gero
us elem
ents"
Violation of in
ternal
passport
law
Military
offenses
Other0
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
193419361940
Mortality Rate
Deaths in Camps
1934 1935 1936 1937 1938 19390
10000
20000
30000
40000
50000
60000
70000
80000
90000
100000
Deaths in Camps
Deaths in Camps
Nazi Germany
• Removal and reeducation of political opponents
• Building the folk community• Brutalization of warfare and decisiontaking for
the annihilation of the Jews• Murder of 2 mio Soviet POWs• Rational or ideological?
Indonesia
Murder of over half a million of Indonesian Communists (KPI) in 1965
Sukarto’s regime killed other groups beforeFamily descendants often disadvantaged until today
Conclusions
• The violent 20th century?• When and how does extreme violence
emerge?• Factors: ethnicity and class, but more
importantly: interplay factors and historical set-up
• Importance sexual violence• How to write about extreme violence?