WEEK 13 – WAR, VIOLENCE AND MODERNITY (2): CIVIL VIOLENCE

Lecture Two Terror, Genocide and Massacre in the Twentieth Century

Circles of Hell – but three different ones

Gulag – neglect, incompetence, imbalance of state which claims all rights

and individuals who have none. Final Solution – cold, clinical, ‘modern’, ‘efficient’, bureaucratic, logistical

death machine geared to extermination Massacre – blood lust; even depraved pleasure. Mainly racial/ethnic

Memorialisation – Remembering violence – can we remember war and atrocity in ways that

prevent it rather than encourage further war and atrocity

Great Terror – USSR 1936-8

c. 900,000 executions (1930-53 – includes wartime)

c.1.5m. camp deaths461 places of detainmentmaybe 15 m. imprisoned at some time in period

1930-53 (includes criminals)

Why? (Cold War influence on interpretations)

totalitarian thesis (communism nazism)deliberate, centrally-controlled;spread terror to cow and atomise the population revisionistsweak, ramshackle stateminimise extent and impactblame local officials for snowball effect post revisionistsdisorganized statecentre’s fear of enemies‘limity’ / quotas snowball

NKVD Order 00447 30 July 1937

Приказ НКВД от 30.07.1937 № 00447

Admin area Cat 1 Cat2 Total

33. Западная область 1000; 5000; 600034. Ивановская область 750; 2000; 275035. Калининская область 1000; 3000; 400036. Курская область 1000; 3000; 400037. Куйбышевская область 1000; 4000; 500038. Кировская область 500; 1500; 200039. Ленинградская область 4000; 10000;1400040. Московская область 5000; 30000; 3500

Before The ‘Final Solution’

Nazi antisemitism (initially to expel Jews e.g. to Mauritius; links to

forms of zionism; scapegoating; populist demagoguery) SS Einsatzgruppen (Special Squads) 1939-45 (liquidate Jews, Communists, Gypsies, Gays et al.)

The ‘Final Solution’strengthens as regime weakensWannsee Conference (20/1/42) massive effort to bring

together and exterminate Jews ‘modern’ slaughter (individual execution slow and emotionally

costly – for executioners, that is) ‘factories of death’ (Auschwitz-Birkenau et al.) process of

transports selectiongas chambers crematoria (5-6m. dead)

(also slave labour camps – c. 2m. Russian prisoners die)needs bureaucracy; communications; logistics. (As does Great Terror – Labour camps have their own economic

targets)

Massacres

Armenians 1915-1918 – 500,000-800,000 dead out of 1.5 – 1.7 million Nanking (China) ‘Kill All! Burn All! Loot All!’ December-January 1937-8 Indonesia (1965-6) perhaps 1 million dead Cambodia/Kampuchea Sabra and Chatila (Lebanon) 4000 dead September 1982

Srebrenica (Bosnia) July 1995 – 7000 dead) Rwanda 1994 (up to 800,000 dead)

Some Recent Debates 1

Goldhagen – Hitler’s Willing Executioners(cf Christopher Browning – Ordinary Men)Jan Gross – Neighbours: The Destruction of the Jewish

Community in Jedwabne, PolandTsvetan Todorov – Facing the Extreme: Moral Life in the

Concentration CampsMark Levene and Penny Roberts (eds) – The Massacre in

HistoryTimothy Snyder Bloodlands

Recent Debates 2Memorialisation

Peter Novick – The Holocaust in American LifeNorman Finkelstein – The Holocaust IndustryEva Hoffman ‘The Uses of Hell’ in New York

Review of Books March 9, 2000Istvan Deak ‘Heroes and victims’ in New York

Review of Books May 31 2001 (on Jedwabne and others)