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

[Doc7505]

Historian Norman Naimark argues that today's narrow definition of genocide is Stalin's lasting legacy.
Mass killing is still the way a lot of governments do business.​

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

When it comes to use of the word “genocide,” public opinion has been kinder to Stalin than Hitler. But one historian looks at Stalin’s mass killings and urges that the definition of genocide be widened.

news.stanford.edu

The past few decades have seen terrifying examples in Rwanda, Cambodia, Darfur, Bosnia.
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.”
Nations have tugs of war over the official definition of the word “genocide” itself – which mentions only national, ethnic, racial and religious groups. The definition can determine, after all, international relations, foreign aid and national morale. Look at the annual international tussle over whether the 1915 Turkish massacre and deportation of the Armenians “counts” as genocide.
Naimark, author of the controversial new book Stalin’s Genocides, argues that we need a much broader definition of genocide, one that includes nations killing social classes and political groups. His case in point: Stalin.
The book’s title is plural for a reason: He argues that the Soviet elimination of a social class, the kulaks (who were higher-income farmers), and the subsequent killer famine among all Ukrainian peasants – as well as the notorious 1937 order No. 00447 that called for the mass execution and exile of “socially harmful elements” as “enemies of the people” – were, in fact, genocide.
“I make the argument that these matters shouldn’t be seen as discrete episodes, but seen together,” said Naimark, the Robert and Florence McDonnell Professor of Eastern European Studies and a respected authority on the Soviet regime. “It’s a horrific case of genocide – the purposeful elimination of all or part of a social group, a political group.”
~Snip~
The destruction of the kulak class triggered the Ukrainian famine, during which 3 million to 5 million peasants died of starvation.
“There is a great deal of evidence of government connivance in the circumstances that brought on the shortage of grain and bad harvests in the first place and made it impossible for Ukrainians to find food for their survival,” Naimark writes.
We will never know how many millions Stalin killed. “And yet somehow Stalin gets a pass,” Ian Frazier wrote in a recent New Yorker article about the gulags. “People know he was horrible, but he has not yet been declared horrible officially.”
~Snip~
One of Stalin’s colleagues recalled the dictator reviewing an arrest list (really, a death list) and muttering to himself: “Who’s going to remember all this riff-raff in ten or twenty years’ time? No one. … Who remembers the names now of the boyars Ivan the Terrible got rid of? No one. … The people had to know he was getting rid of all his enemies. In the end, they all got what they deserved.”
Who remembers? If Naimark has his way, perhaps we all will: “Every family had people who died. I’m convinced that they need to learn about their own past. There’ll never be closure, but there will be a reckoning with the past.”

Commentary:
Indeed, we look at some former leaders such as Mao Zedong, Pol Pol, Stalin and Hitler as those that committed mass murder and Genocide.
Surely Mao is the leader in "Genocide"

The Legacy of Mao Zedong is Mass Murder

Can you name the greatest mass murderer of the 20th century? No, it wasn’t Hitler or Stalin. It was Mao Zedong. According to the authoritative “Black Book of Communism,” an estimated 65 million Chinese died as a result of Mao’s repeated, merciless attempts to create a new “socialist” China...

www.heritage.org

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Data on Mass Murder by Government in the 20th Century

This post presents the data for the mass murders by the Nazi regime and its allies, by Communist regimes and their allies, and by other governments. This

reason.com

Josef Stalin follows;

Joseph Stalin - Facts, Quotes & World War II

Joseph Stalin ruled the Soviet Union for more than two decades, instituting a reign of death and terror while modernizing Russia and helping to defeat Nazism.

www.biography.com

Adolph Hitler:

Infographic: 17 Million Fell Victim to the Nazi Regime

This chart shows victims of the Nazi regime killed between 1933 and 1945, by group.

www.statista.com

Meanwhile the United Nations has defined "Genocide" as the deliberate and systematic destruction of a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group(s). That’s not what Stalin did. He was simply murdering everyone & anyone that was a problem to him and his gov’t.
“Mass murder” doesn’t seem up to describing what Stalin did. But “genocide” isn’t really appropriate, either.
All in all, the definition does not encompass the horrific deaths caused by each of these tyrannic dictators.
Similarly Neo-Marxist Democrat will never give up Stalin as a hero.
Factually, you can’t buy a Confederate flag shirt on Amazon. But you can certainly buy a Stalin, Mao or Che shirt.
Unfortunately history is kind to the tyrants because of those who write it.
We fail to teach the truth.
We need to get their history straight Stalin killed more than Hitler and Chairman Mao killed more than both Stalin and Hitler combined.
Yet ideology overshadows what is taught in our schools today by Neo-Marxists that idealize Stalin and Mao.
History isn't always written or shaped by the victor.

 

[Ringo]

No anti-Communist will ever explain Stalin's motives.
A selfless man, a workaholic, respected by his enemies, a leader for half of humanity, who left behind the greatest country. But all they can come up with is a tyrant...
It's hard for them to imagine that someone could actually live for the people.