Is It Okay to Use the ‘G-Word’?

Hi,

So one of the things we try to do around here is provide more context. Now, context means different things to different people. The great thing about the G-File is I don’t have to care about what those other people mean by context (or, for that matter, what they mean by “chlorophyll” or “blurgh”). 

For my purposes, what I mean by context is, “stuff you might want to know if you were going to have a compelling conversation about stuff going on,” or, “stuff people leave out of the conversations I see on TV.” 

So let’s talk about genocide.  

Volodomyr Zelensky has accused the Russians of genocide in the wake of revelations of mass killings in Bucha, and there’s good reason to think that Bucha is just the first of many Buchas. The Ukrainians believe it is just “the tip of the iceberg” and I suspect they’re right, even if it’s in their interest to say so.

Still, I set out to write about how, despite the horror of the obvious war crimes Russia has committed, they don’t rise to the level of genocide. But then I read Eugene Finkel’s essay in the Washington Post, which makes a very strong case that we should call it genocide and led me to change my mind (a bit). I’ll return to that in a moment. But first let’s consider where we get the term and the problems with it.

Raphael Lemkin, a Polish Jew who lost 49 relatives in the Holocaust, coined the word “genocide” in response to a comment from Winston Churchill. Even before the extent of Nazi crimes was known, Churchill had said, “We are in the presence of a crime without a name.” Lemkin gave us the name. He combined the Greek word “genos”—which means “race, or people”—with the Latin suffix “cide,” which means kill or the act of killing (as with “suicide,” “patricide,” etc). Lemkin fought tirelessly to get the United Nations to recognize genocide as the ultimate crime against humanity, which it obviously is. He shepherded the effort to get the U.N. to pass its 1948 resolution on genocide, which defines genocide as “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.” 

The first problem with this definition is that it’s the result of a compromise. Lemkin believed that cultural genocide—the erasure of a nation or ethnic group—should be included in the U.N.’s definition, but the U.N. excluded it, instead focusing almost entirely on “biological” and “physical” definitions (i.e. killing or preventing births). This compromise was the direct result of placating the Soviets (though the U.S. had unfortunate misgivings as well).

The Soviets insisted that “political” groups should not be included. Stalin’s insistence is understandable because by any common sense understanding of the term “genocidal murderer,” Stalin was one. The Holodomor—the man-made famine that killed nearly 4 million Ukrainians—should earn him that label alone, never mind all the other victims of his population policies and the Great Purge.

Russia still rejects the charge of that genocide. In 2008, Russia’s Duma passed a resolution proclaiming that whatever happened in Ukraine in the 1930s, it wasn’t genocide. “There is no historical proof that the famine was organized along ethnic lines,” the resolution stated. In a triumph of privileging legalism over moral clarity, the resolution noted that victims included “different peoples and nationalities living largely in agricultural areas of the country.” As I wrote at the time: “Translation: We didn’t kill millions of farmers because they were Ukrainians; we killed millions of Ukrainians because they were farmers.”

In other words, under the narrow Soviet/Russian reading, a despot seeking to avoid the charge of genocide can’t deliberately liquidate Roma (aka “Gypsies”), but can liquidate “migratory groups with no permanent address,” even if the only people who fit that description in the country are Roma. I think that’s repugnant.

Now, there are other elements of genocide that matter. Mass killing of civilians is a war crime, but it may not rise to the level of genocide if the goal isn’t eradication of a group, but “merely” an effort to terrorize an enemy or dispense with witnesses. Some people recoil at making such distinctions. We live in an age where everything bad has to be “literally the worst thing ever.” It’s the same mindset that leads people to get angry when you say someone they justifiably despise isn’t as bad as Hitler. It’s not enough to say that when Putin goes to Hell, he’ll get a cage on the same floor as Hitler’s. 

But Finkel makes a good case that Putin does indeed have genocidal intent—and that intent matters. Putin rejects the idea that Ukrainian ethnicity and nationhood are fiction. Dimitri Medvedev has signaled that “denazification” is really just code for “de-Ukrainization.” Finkel writes:

Though evidence of this shift is abundant, one of the most explicit examples is an article, titled “What should Russia do with Ukraine,” published on April 3 by the Russian state-owned media outlet RIA Novosti. Echoing the arguments made earlier by Putin and other Russian leaders, the article outlines a clear plan to destroy Ukrainians and Ukraine itself. After a Russian victory, it argues, Ukraine “is impossible as a nation state,” and its very name “likely cannot be retained.” The Ukrainian nationalist elite “need to be liquidated, its reeducation is impossible.” But a “substantial part of the populace” is “also guilty” and would require “reeducation” and “ideological repressions” lasting “at least a generation” and would “inevitably mean de-Ukrainization.”

It is hard to imagine a more actionable template to destroy a national group. The text’s publication on a major state media platform would have been impossible without explicit approval from above.

In short, Russia wants to eliminate the nation of Ukraine, and it’s willing to indiscriminately slaughter Ukrainians—including Russian-speaking Ukrainians—to achieve this end. It’s worth noting that this intent exposes the ridiculousness of the anti-anti-Putin crowd, which insists that this is all about NATO’s “provocation” of Russia. It’s also worth noting that the self-declared “nationalists” who traffic in these objectively pro-Putin talking points don’t actually care about nationalism or national self-determination as an ideal separate from their narrower agendas. There is no rational or moral standard that says Putin’s nationalism deserves more deference and respect than Ukraine’s. 

There’s still the problem of legal technicalities. But I think for conversation purposes, it’s perfectly defensible and largely accurate to say that Putin is determined to commit cultural genocide and to use conventionally genocidal tactics to get what he wants. And if you find yourself arguing with someone who denies Putin’s genocidal aims and invokes the U.N. as the final authority on this, you might want to ask them if there are any other circumstances in which they’d defer to the U.N.’s judgment. Because most of the self-proclaimed nationalists I know explicitly reject the U.N.’s authority, moral or otherwise (as I pretty much do as well). When they retreat behind the U.N.’s skirt to defend Putin, you can safely assume it’s not because they admire the U.N., it’s because they admire Putin.