Reigns of Terror

321 Pages·2003·15.781 MB·English

by  Patricia Marchak

REIGNS OF TERROR
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Reigns f Terror
Patricia Marchak
McGill-Queen's University Press
Montreal & Kingston • London • Ithaca
© McGill-Queen's University Press 2003
ISBN 0-7735-2641-2 (cloth)
ISBN 0-7735-2642-0 (paper)
Legal deposit fourth quarter 2003
Bibliotheque nationale du Quebec
Printed in Canada on acid-free paper that is 100% ancient forest free
(100% post-consumer recycled), processed chlorine free.
This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Humanities
and Social Sciences Federation of Canada, using funds provided by the
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
McGill-Queen's University Press acknowledges the financial support of the
Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry
Development Program (BPIDP) for its activities. It also acknowledges the
support of the Canada Council for the Arts for its publishing program.
National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Marchak, M. Patricia, 1936-
Reigns of terror / Patricia Marchak.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-7735-2641-2 (bnd)
ISBN 0-7735-2642-0 (pkb)
i. Crimes against humanity. 2. Genocide - Sociological aspects.
3. Genocide - History - 2oth century. 4. Political atrocities - History -
2Oth century. I. Title.
JC57I.M335 2003 3O4-6'63 €2003-903363-5
This book was typeset by Dynagram Inc. in 10/13 Sabon.
Contents
Preface vii
Acknowledgments xiii
PART ONE AN ARGUMENT ABOUT
CONDITIONS LEADING TO CRIMES
AGAINST HUMANITY
1 States, Armed Force, and Unequal Citizens 3
2 Racism and Identity 3 5
3 Class and Territory 59
4 Culture and Ideology 86
5 Who Are the Ordinary Men? 108
6 The Janus State and the Problem of Intervention 130
PAR TWO CASE STUDIES
7 The Ottoman Empire, 1915-16 159
8 The USSR, 1932-33 171
9 Nazi Germany, 1933-45 185
TO Burundi and Rwanda, 1972-95 199
11 Chile, 1973-88 212
12 Cambodia, 1975-79 227
vi Contents
13 Argentina, 1976-83 2.38
14 Yugoslavia, 1990-94 2.53
Epilogue 2,67
References 277
Index 2.97
Preface
Reigns of Terror was well under way before the infamous terrorist at-
tacks on the Pentagon in Washington and the World Trade Center in
New York on September n, 2001. The term "terrorist" has been so
frequently invoked to describe the hijackers who perpetrated the at-
tacks that we are in danger of overlooking a much more lethal and
widespread form of terror: terror that is sponsored by states. Both to-
day and historically, the vast majority of crimes against humanity, and
by far the largest number of deaths and disappearances, have been
caused not by small groups of revolutionaries, but by organized states
against their own citizens and the citizens of other countries. This book
is an inquiry into the conditions that lead to states committing gross
human rights crimes against their own citizens.
A new governing elite in the Ottoman Empire ordered the deporta-
tion and certain death of up to 800,000 Armenians in 1915-16. Stalin
instigated a deliberate policy of mass starvation against peasants in the
Eastern Ukraine when they resisted collectivization: from 5 to 8 million
people starved to death in an eighteen-month period beginning in
1932. The Nazi Holocaust claimed about 6 million victims. Guate-
mala's army staged a thirty-six-year war against the country's Mayan
population that took the lives of between 200,000 and 300,000. In
Rwanda up to one million were killed in a few months in 1994. The
Khmer Rouge in Cambodia killed or forced into starvation up to
2 million people in a forty-four-month period of the late-19705. Au-
gusto Pinochet's army and his secret intelligence service killed or
caused the disappearances of an estimated 3,000 Chileans in the 19705,
while the military junta in neighbouring Argentina tortured and "dis-
appeared" up to 30,000. Thousands of Bosnian Muslims were killed
viii Preface
by Serb forces during the final stages of the breakup of the former Yu-
goslavia. And on it goes, one country after another, different cultures,
different histories, different ways the crimes against civilians occurred,
but always the same themes, the same arguments that blame the vic-
tims and excuse the perpetrators. The question we ask in this book is
why do states turn on their own citizens? Why do states inflict geno-
cide and other crimes against humanity on their own people?
Current theories about state crimes against their own citizens revolve
in large part around the concept of racism. This concept has variations
ranging from xenophobia to tribalism, but the basic theme is that peo-
ple, defining themselves and others by their ethnic roots, turn on mi-
norities when they feel threatened in one way or another. The UN
Genocide Convention (1951) defines genocide as an attempt to eradi-
cate a people identified in terms of race or religion. But many state
crimes are aimed at populations that are no different in ethnic terms
from the majority. The victims are chosen on the basis of their territo-
rial locations, their occupations, their lifestyles, their class situation,
their political beliefs, or even their age. For such crimes the word
"politicide" has been coined, and it is helpful in expanding under-
standing, but terminology does not in itself provide an explanation.
Most genocidal episodes are attempts to eradicate a people alto-
gether. Some politicides are identical; they, too, are designed to com-
pletely obliterate people defined in terms other than race and religion.
Other politicides are designed to remove power from a class of people
or prevent them from acting in certain ways, and some politicides are
aimed at killing ideas by killing the ideological leaders and as many
followers as can be found, and destroying books linked to social
movements. There are differences between politicides and genocide as
defined in the United Nations Convention, but, in all instances where
states turn on their own people, similar destructive actions are para-
mount and the victims are invariably described, often in heavy propa-
ganda, in extreme terms as evil-doers who threaten the security and
well-being of other citizens.
I will argue, contrary to much of the current literature on genocide,
that these crimes against citizens are always instrumental, the ultimate
objectives being the retention or creation of unequal citizens and the
appropriation of territory, other property, or services belonging to the
victims. The ethnic dimension provides the excuse and the ideological
rationale for the action; it is important, especially where there has been
a long history of ethnic conflict or discrimination, but it is not the ex-
Preface ix
planation for the events. The attempt to eliminate ideas is, likewise,
aimed at preventing social change that involves upsets in the rankings
of citizens. This argument runs contrary to a substantial literature link-
ing genocide directly to anti-Semitism in Europe and to ethnic cleansing
there and elsewhere. I will argue that the definition of genocide, emerg-
ing in the aftermath of the Second World War, has become an obstacle
to our understanding of state crimes unless we recognize genocide as a
subset of crimes against humanity. Genocide, together with politicide in
all its dimensions, needs to be located within its political contexts,
rather than in simple terms of the ethnic origins of either victims or
perpetrators.
Reigns of Terror has two parts and an epilogue. The first part consists
of arguments about the causes and nature of state crimes. The second
part is a series of concise histories of nine societies where, over the past
century, agents of the state have abducted, raped, tortured, starved, de-
ported, and killed citizens. Readers are provided with information on the
preceding events and context, a brief description of the crimes, and iden-
tification of the perpetrators and the victims. Where available, witness
and participant statements are quoted. Debates and disagreements in the
literature are noted, and references are copiously provided for readers
who wish to delve more deeply into these events. Sources of information
for Armenia, the Eastern Ukraine, Nazi Germany, Cambodia, Burundi
and Rwanda, and the former Yugoslavia are historians, diplomats, social
scientists, and journalists who have specialized in studies of these areas
or who were witnesses at the time. A column in a recent edition of the
Turkish Daily News is quoted at length with the writer's permission: it
was published while I was in Turkey. Sources for Chile and Argentina in-
clude the same range of informants as for other studies, together with the
author's research fieldnotes and excerpts from recent interviews I con-
ducted with William Marchak in those countries.
The historical studies are placed in Part Two, rather than preceding
the analysis and argument, because readers will have different levels of
familiarity with the instances of these state crimes. Readers who are
unfamiliar with these histories may prefer to read this part first, before
reading the more analytical material in Part One. Other readers may
want to refresh their memories about particular instances and selec-
tively read the histories of countries with which they are least familiar.
The analytical chapters refer to the studies, so readers who need more
information about a particular case can turn to that country's history
to brief themselves.