Yale’s Timothy Snyder recently gave a lecture at Boston University arguing that Vladmir Putin and the Russian Federation are committing genocide in Ukraine. The lecture troubled me, not least because Snyder’s use of the word genocide, while deriving from excellent intentions, reminded me uncomfortably of the way the word has crept into discussions of the French Revolution over the past few decades.
Jul 20, 2023·edited Jul 20, 2023Liked by David A. Bell
Your points here and elsewhere about the spuriousness of the "genoicidation" (to coin an awkward term) of the Vendee atrocities/war crimes have totally persuaded me. Sounds like a French species of the right-wing, "oh us poor persecuted Catholics" kind of rhetorical maneuver of the sort Samuel Alito keeps putting out there....
At least in Putin's rhetoric, however, he really seems intent in wiping out any idea of an Ukrainian identity or people distinct from Russia.
Indeed, he denies that the national category "Ukrainian" even exists. I'm not quite sure what sort of rubric a program of erasing a national group out of existence belongs under. Genocide-adjacent?
And on what basis can you be sure that "Russians today know perfectly well that they do not have the capacity to exterminate the Ukrainian people." I wouldn't be so sure or categorical in making that statement. It seems quite possible to me that some number of brainwashed Putinistas in the armed forces DO believe just that!
Perhaps John Mearsheimer gets it right when he says that the goal of Russia is to “wreck” Ukraine.
Your points here and elsewhere about the spuriousness of the "genoicidation" (to coin an awkward term) of the Vendee atrocities/war crimes have totally persuaded me. Sounds like a French species of the right-wing, "oh us poor persecuted Catholics" kind of rhetorical maneuver of the sort Samuel Alito keeps putting out there....
At least in Putin's rhetoric, however, he really seems intent in wiping out any idea of an Ukrainian identity or people distinct from Russia.
Indeed, he denies that the national category "Ukrainian" even exists. I'm not quite sure what sort of rubric a program of erasing a national group out of existence belongs under. Genocide-adjacent?
And on what basis can you be sure that "Russians today know perfectly well that they do not have the capacity to exterminate the Ukrainian people." I wouldn't be so sure or categorical in making that statement. It seems quite possible to me that some number of brainwashed Putinistas in the armed forces DO believe just that!