Today, our curious compatriot, observing international relations and wrangling of multidirectional political groups within the country, quite often comes across the concept of “genocide”. However, such discussions from a constructive exchange of opinions in the press and on television regularly turn into a stream of mutual accusations and in the desire to portray themselves as a victim of the opposite side, thereby creating a villainous image for her. And sometimes it’s quite difficult to figure out for yourself the fact, and what is genocide? In order to understand this issue, we first need to familiarize yourself with the relevant UN document, and secondly, plunge into the history of international relations and consider similar cases on which this label is hung.
Genocide. Definition
For the first time, the thesis of the existence of such a phenomenon was raised during the Second World War as a reaction to the need to give an adequate assessment of German war crimes against civilians. The question of what genocide was was initiated by the Polish Jew Rafael Lemkin in connection with the large-scale actions of the fascist command to systematically destroy six million people of the Jewish population. The main thing here is the very fact of the extermination of the Jewish population on the simple basis that they are Jews. Thus, we can draw the first conclusion about what
genocide is: it is the destruction of a certain people on the basis of ethnic hostility. So, the head of
the Auschwitz concentration camp, Rudolf Goess, was very proud of his innovation, which allowed the more rapid and large-scale destruction of Jews in gas chambers. He came up with the idea of using crystals of pesticide and
cyclone B for this
, which very quickly caused choking.
Officially, the term "genocide" as a
crime against humanity was fixed by the UN on December 9, 1948. The Convention, in connection with the question of what genocide is, characterized it as an action aimed at the destruction of a certain religious, ethnic, national group in order to destroy it in whole or in part. In addition to direct murder, the convention equated to the genocide the deliberate creation for such a group of adverse living conditions that would lead to its destruction, bodily harm to certain representatives of an ethnic or religious group, actions aimed at suppressing childbearing, and forcibly selecting children from the group.
Genocide. Story
In his logic, Rafael Lemkin, in addition to the Jewish question, appealed to the existing Armenian question. It is about the genocide of the Armenian population in the Ottoman Empire of 1915-1923. However, there is a problem that does not
it’s so easy to prove the fact of intentional genocide. What for the Armenian side looks like a deliberate large-scale destruction of their nation, for the Turks - a fair suppression of anti-state rebellions with the associated destruction of criminal elements. Of course, the numbers of the victims are also disputed. The genocide of the Ukrainian people during the Stalinist collectivization of 1932-33 stands apart. For some, this is the deliberate destruction of seven million Ukrainians as a peasant nation of owners. For others, these are incidental costs of the punitive apparatus, carried away by restoring order.
Output
One way or another, the concept of genocide in our time is becoming extremely popular because of its attractiveness for cementing folk historical memory. Already often one can come across a statement that the genocide of the Russian people is being carried out. After all, if such statements gain a critical mass of support, they will become a unifying idea for the people, and its distributor will be in a very favorable position.