PERSPECTIVES: Genocide is genocide is genocide (07/25/04)

PERSPECTIVES

by Andrew Fedynsky

Genocide is genocide is genocide

Ever since the early days of the Bush administration, a former U.S. attorney and U.N. War Crimes prosecutor has been working out of a suite of offices down the hall from Secretary of State Colin Powell preparing a case against Saddam Hussein. Now with the Iraqi dictator firmly in U.S. custody, scores of investigators and attorneys are in Iraq preparing a "command responsibility case" involving war crimes and crimes against humanity, including genocide.

That shouldn't be that hard to do. Saddam's rule was murderous and brutal. According to Human Rights Watch, more than 100,000 Kurds were killed in a 1987-1988 rebellion, including some 5,000 gassed in the city of Halabja. The government also poisoned wells and blew up homes, schools and mosques. Later in 1991 after the first Gulf war, Shiites and Kurds rose up against Saddam, only to be put down with blood-curdling ruthlessness; as many as 100,000 were killed. Add, countless victims of arrests, assassinations and executions during Hussein's 30 years in power and there's no doubt that this is a first-class criminal. No wonder many compare him to Joseph Stalin, a byword for Ukrainians and many others for terror and mass murder.

Like today's Kurds, Ukrainians in the 1920s asserted their cultural identity and aspired to economic and political autonomy within the context of a larger state. After 10 years of so-called "Ukrainianization," Joseph Stalin was alarmed: "It seems that in some regions of Ukraine, Soviet power has ceased to exist," he wrote. Resolving to assert Moscow's rule, Stalin mandated the collectivization of agriculture, ordering people to turn over their land and livestock to the state and join giant collective farms where they would work like laborers in a factory.

Collectivization had economic and ideological objectives to be sure, but there was also an imperialist one. For Stalin, free farmers owning their own land formed the social base for Ukrainian nationalism: "The nationality problem is in its very essence, a problem of the peasantry." They were to be destroyed - "liquidated as a class."

Not surprisingly, most refused to give up their land. Many resisted, arming themselves with pitchforks, axes, shotguns and hunting rifles. Some conducted large-scale rebellions not unlike the great peasant revolts during tsarist rule. With vastly superior resources, Stalin lashed out with troops and militias who conducted mass arrests, deportations and executions. It all culminated in 1932-1933 with the state-imposed Great Famine.

Ukraine's cultural, spiritual and political leaders were also victims. According to cultural historian Yurii Lavrynenko, 80 percent of Ukraine's creative sector - poets, teachers, journalists, scientists, clergy, etc. - were killed in the 1930s. Even the language was put on the chopping block. Stalin's favorite linguist, Nikolai Marr, projected that all languages, with the exception of Russian, would eventually disappear. Coercion was applied to make that happen - hence the mass murder of Ukraine's intelligentsia and political leadership. The loss of life was unfathomable.

Winston Churchill, who met with Stalin during and after World War II, quoted him as saying that the war over collectivization was harder even than the effort against Hitler: "[It was] a terrible struggle in which [we] had to destroy 10 million. It was fearful. Four years it lasted." Privately, Stalin apologist Walter Duranty cited the same number of victims; so does historian Robert Conquest.

So there it is: two genocidal dictators, Joseph Stalin and Saddam Hussein. Only not everyone agrees. As The Ukrainian Weekly and others have pointed out, the Bush administration is blocking S. Res. 202 "expressing the sense of the Senate regarding the genocidal Ukraine Famine of 1932-1933" because of objections to the term "genocide" in describing Stalin's policies in Ukraine. Apparently, it's doing so in deference to Russia and Turkey.

So in a bizarre twist, the same administration that's building a case for genocide against Saddam is sheltering Stalin from the same charge. To put this in perspective, imagine a president blocking a congressional Holocaust resolution because Germany or Pakistan didn't approve of the word "genocide"? He would look worse than absurd, and the political damage would be devastating.

Looking at Stalin's rule in Ukraine without a political filter, it's hard to argue it wasn't genocide, particularly compared to Saddam's record in Iraq. Just consider: 5,000 Kurds were killed in Halabja. On average, that many Ukrainians and more died every day during Stalin's collectivization campaign. And that went on for four years.

After decades of cover-up and denial, the Senate resolution on the Famine is not exactly a fringe issue. Thirty-two of 100 senators are co-sponsors, including 10 of the 11 Jewish senators. Yet the Bush administration still insists on blocking it. Why? No doubt, the president has been advised to defer to Russia because of its nuclear status, its veto in the U.N. Security Council, and of course the insights the country has on Iraq after a long and close relationship with Saddam. Turkey, a NATO ally, has its own objections related to the Armenian Genocide. It might be distasteful, but blocking S. Res. 202 is politically necessary. Domestic political repercussions will likely be minimal: states like Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Illinois and Florida could be well decided by a handful of votes, but Ukrainian Americans are likely to be accommodating, so not to worry.

Is that the thinking? I don't know. The Bush administration hasn't explained. But from where I sit, the president is ill-served by those advising him on this issue. Pursuing a genocide case against Saddam, while bowing to other countries' flawed thinking on Stalin's far more egregious crimes, turns the Baghdad trial into something politically expedient, rather than one with a moral basis. Ultimately, it undermines the case against Saddam. Just as ominously, absolving Stalin of genocide because that's what the Kremlin wants, emboldens hard-liners steering Russia back to the days of the commissars.

When President Bill Clinton was in Kyiv, he didn't need Russia's permission to place a wreath at the Famine Memorial; nor did President George H. W. Bush ask Germany if it was okay to place one at Babyn Yar. George W. Bush should not be looking to Moscow or Ankara for permission to state the obvious: Stalin's Famine policy in Ukraine was genocide. End of discussion. Now what about Saddam Hussein? Why he's a regular Joseph Stalin.

Andrew Fedynsky's e-mail address is: fedynsky@stratos.net.

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