STUDIES IN COMPARATIVE Also by Levon Chorbajian

ARMENIA IN CRISIS: The 1988 Earthquake, by Pierre Verluise (translator)

THE CAUCASIAN KNOT: The History and Geopolitics of Nagomo-Karabagh (with Patrick Donabedian and Claude Mutafian)

THE HAND IN YOUR POCKET MAY NOT BE YOUR OWN (editor)

READINGS IN CRITICAL SOCIOLOGY (editor)

Also by George Shirinian

PROBLEMS OF GENOCIDE (editor) Studies in Comparative Genocide

Edited by

Levan Chorbajian Professor of Sociology University of Massachusetts Lowell Massachusetts USA and

George Shirinian Acting CEO Toronto Public Library, York Office Canada First published in Great Britain 1999 by MACMILLAN PRESS LTD Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and London Companies and representatives throughout the world

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 978-1-349-27350-8 ISBN 978-1-349-27348-5 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-27348-5

First published in the United States of America 1999 by ST. MARTIN'S PRESS, INC., Scholarly and Reference Division, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 ISBN 978-0-312-21933-8 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Studies in comparative genocide I edited by Levon Chorbajian and George Shirinian. p. em. Originally presented at a conference held in Yerevan, Republic of Armenia, 1995. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-312-21933-8 (cloth) I. Genocide. I. Chorbajian, Levon. II. Shirinian, George, 1949-

HV6322.7.S78 1998 304.6'63--dcZJ 98-38455 CIP Selection and editorial matter© Levon Chorbajian and George Shirinian 1999 Text© Zoryan Institute 1999, excluding Chapter I© Greenwood Publishing Company 1987, 1999 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1999

All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission.

No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1P 9HE.

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This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 00 99 To all victims and survivors of genocide Contents

Preface ix Notes on the Contributors xi Introduction xv Levon Chorbajian

PART I APPROACHES TO GENOCIDE 1 State Power and Genocidal Intent: On the Uses of Genocide in the 1\ventieth Century 3 Roger W. Smith 2 Science, Modernity and Authorized Thrror: Reconsidering the Genocidal State 15 Irving L. Horowitz 3 Comparison of 31 Yehuda Bauer

PART II THE 4 A Conceptual Method for Examining the Consequences of the Armenian Genocide 47 Rouben P. Adalian 5 Philosophy of State-Subject Relations, Ottoman Concepts of '!Yranny, and the Demonization of Subjects: Conservative Ottomanism as a Source of Genocidal Behaviour, 1821-1918 60 James J. Reid 6 The Convergent Roles of the State and a Governmental Party in the Armenian Genocide 92 Vahakn N. Dadrian 7 The Genocide of the and the Silence of the Thrks 125 TanerAk~am

vii Vlll Contents

8 : a Cultural Genocide 147 Anush Hovanissian

PART III COMPARATIVE GENOCIDE, AND GENOCIDE PREVENTION 9 Testing Theories Brutally: Armenia (1915), Bosnia (1992) and Rwanda (1994) 157 Helen Fein 10 Pol Pot and Enver Pasha: a Comparison of the Cambodian and Armenian Genocides 165 Ben Kiernan 11 The Ukrainian Famine of 1932-3: the Role of the Ukrainian Diaspora in Research and Public Discussion 182 Frank Sysyn 12 The Psychology and Politics of Genocide Denial: a Comparison of Four Case Studies 216 Henry R. Huttenbach 13 Breaking the Succession of Evil 230 Franklin H. Littell 14 Preventing Genocide: Activating Bystanders, Helping Victims Heal, Helping Groups Overcome Hostility 251 Ervin Staub Index 261 Preface

The essays in this volume were originally presented as part of a larger conference on comparative genocide held in Yerevan, Republic of Armenia in April 1995. The conference was jointly sponsored by the government of the Republic of Armenia through the National Com• mission of Armenia on the 80th Anniversary Commemoration of the Armenian Genocide and the Zoryan Institute for Contemporary Armenian Research and Documentation in Cambridge, Massachusetts and Toronto, Ontario. The conference was part of the first scholarly commemoration of the 1915 Armenian Genocide in an independent Armenian state. For most of the Soviet period, the Genocide was deemed too nationalistic a topic for open discussion, and the need of Armenians for recognition and commemoration was subordinated to larger Soviet concerns. Only a series of spontaneous demonstrations in 1965, on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the officially neglected Genocide, forced the Soviet Armenian government to acknowledge popular feeling and to construct the Dzidzernagapert genocide monument. The impressive memorial is located close to the centre of Yerevan, on a hill over• looking the capital. The Genocide Museum in Yerevan was only recently constructed as an outgrowth of the 1995 conference itself. To host international scholars in Armenia to discuss the Armenian Genocide and other genocides was, therefore, a truly historic event. The conception of the conference, from the beginning, was a com• parative one, and this is one of its strengths. The government of Armenia and the Zoryan Institute were committed to framing the Armenian Genocide both in terms of its uniqueness - and all geno• cides are unique in their particulars - and in presenting it as an important part of the continual unfolding of genocides during the twentieth century, and tragically, it can be predicted, into the twenty• first century so long as perpetrators go unpunished, denial is unchal• lenged and mechanisms for effective intervention fail to be created. The comparative component is built into the chapters by Henry Huttenbach, Helen Fein, Yehuda Bauer and Ben Kiernan. It is also reflected in the total scope of the chapters that consider, in varying degrees, the Armenian, Jewish, Ukrainian, Cambodian, East African, Yugoslav and Roma experiences. The juxtaposing of histories

ix x Preface contributes to breaking down insular, national perspectives and chau• vinistic attitudes by calling attention to genocide as a universal social process. This analytical and comparative framework assists in promot• ing empathy and building bridges of responsibility essential to the effective publicizing and combating of genocide. The editors thank the many people who provided a forum for these papers by making the conference possible. In particular, we thank Levon Ter-Petrossian, first President of the Republic of Armenia, who established the National Commission on the 80th Anniversary Commemoration of the Armenian Genocide and the heads of the Commission, Mr Gagik Haroutunian, then Vice-President of the Republic, and Dr Jirair Libaridian, Senior Adviser to the President, for their invaluable logistical support in Armenia. We note the key role played by the Sarkissian brothers - Souren, Hrair and Kourken. With• out their generous financial support, the conference would not have been possible. We also thank Zoryan Institute Conference Committee members Mr Kourken Sarkissian, Dr Levon Charkoudian and Dr Kbachig T6161yan, the last of Wesleyan University, for their dedicated efforts. Ms Laura Yardumian of Zoryan, Cambridge and Ms Carole DeGrace of Zoryan, Toronto deserve special recognition for their tireless efforts on behalf of this project. The success of the conference depended on their careful, often daily, attention to conference details over the course of many months. Dr Anny Bakalian of the College of Notre Dame of Maryland and Dr Markar Melkonian of Van Nuys, California, dear friends of longstanding, provided wise and timely editorial advice. Ms Annabelle Buckley, our editor at Macmillan, has been outstanding in providing the encouragement, patience and expertise without which this volume would not have been possible. The views expressed in this volume are those of their respective authors and not necessarily those of the editors, the Zoryan Institute or the government of the Republic of Armenia.

Levon Chorbajian Billerica, Massachusetts Notes on the Contributors

Rouben P. Adalian is Project Director of the Armenian National Institute in Washington, D.C., and Adjunct Professor at George Washington and Georgetown Universities. His research interests and publications cover topics in Armenian intellectual and political history, and the Armenian Diaspora. Among others, he is the author of From Humanism to Rationalism: Armenian Scholarship in the Nineteenth Century and The Armenian Genocide in the U.S. Archives, 1915-1918.

Taner Ak~am is Research Fellow at the Hamburg Institute for the Social Sciences. His research has focused on social-psychological pro• blems in modern Turkish society. His books, including Turkish National Identity and the Armenian Question, have been published in Thrkey and Germany.

Yehuda Bauer is Permanent Academic Chairman of the Institute of Contemporary Jewry and Professor at the Hebrew University in Jeru• salem. He is the author of numerous articles and books on the Jewish Holocaust, including The History of , and is the editor of the Journal of Holocaust and Genocide Studies.

Levon Chorbajian is Professor of Sociology at the University of Mas• sachusetts, Lowell. His interests are in political sociology, genocide studies, and racial and ethnic minority relations. He is the co-author of The Caucasian Knot: the History and Geopolitics of Nagorno-Karabagh and the translator of Pierre Verluise's Armenia in Crisis: the 1988 Earthquake. In 1986 and 1996 he was a Fulbright Senior Lecturer in Armenia.

Vahakn N. Dadrian was Professor of Sociology at the State University of New York, Geneseo, and is currently Director of a large genocide study project supported by the H. F. Guggenheim Foundation. He is the author of numerous articles and two monographs on the Armenian Genocide. His comprehensive study The History of the Armenian Geno• cide: Ethnic Conflict from the Balkans to Anatolia to the was published in 1995.

xi xii Notes on the Contributors

Helen Fein is Executive Director of the Institute for the Study of Genocide and an Associate of the Fran~ois-Xavier Bagnoud Institute for Health and Human Rights at the School of Public Health. She has written several books on genocide, including Accounting for Genocide: National Responses and Jewish Victimization During the Holocaust and Genocide: a Sociological Perspective.

Irving L. Horowitz is Hannah Arendt Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Political Science at Rutgers University and President of the Transaction Society. Among his works are Israeli Ecstasies/Jewish Agonies; Taking Lives: Genocide and State Power; Foundations of Polit• ical Sociology; Winners and Losers; and Daydreams and Nightmares: Memories of a Harlem Childhood.

Anush Hovanissian is Researcher at the Institute for Near Eastern Studies of the National Academy of Sciences of Armenia, where she specializes in Turkish history.

Henry R. Huttenbach is Professor of Russian and East European History at The City College of New York, where he is Director of Russian and East European Studies. He is also Editor-in-Chief of Nationalities Papers. An Associate ofthe Harriman Institute, Columbia University, he has authored several articles on Armenia and the Cau• casus region.

Ben Kiernan is Associate Professor of History and Director of the Cambodian Genocide Program at Yale University. He is the author of How Pol Pot Came to Power and other volumes on modem Asia. His most recent work, The Pol Pot Regime: Race, Power and Genocide in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, 1975-1979, was published in 1995.

Franklin H. Littell is Emeritus Professor of Religion at Temple Uni• versity and Adjunct Professor at the Institute of Contemporary Jewry ofthe Hebrew University of . He is Chairman of the Board of the William O. Douglas Institute in Seattle, an institute for the study of contemporary social issues, and President of the Philadelphia Center on the Holocaust, Genocide, and Human Rights.

James J. Reid is Senior Research Fellow at the Speros Basil Vryonis Center for the Study of Hellenism in Rancho Cordova, California, and specializes in Ottoman, Safavid and Balkan history. He is the author of Notes on the Contributors xiii many studies, including Tribalism and Society in Islamic Iran. He is currently working on The Collapse of the Ottoman Empire, 1821-1925.

George Shirinian is a specialist in computer applications in libraries and is currently Acting Chief Executive Officer for the Toronto Public Library, York Office. He is also a student of genocide and serves on the Corporate Board of Directors of the Zoryan Institute for Contempor• ary Armenian Research and Documentation, Cambridge, Massachu• setts and Toronto, Ontario.

Roger W. Smith is Professor of Government at the College of William and Mary in Virginia, where he teaches political theory and the com• parative study of genocide. He has written extensively on the nature, language, denial and history of genocide, and women and genocide. He is editor and co-author of Guilt: Man and Society.

Ervin Staub is Professor of Psychology at the University of Massachu• setts, Amherst. His research has focused on a theory about personal and social determinants of helping and altruism, and about passivity in the face of others' need. Recently he has studied the origins of human destructiveness. His book on the subject, The Roots of Evil: the Origins of Genocide and Other Group Violence, was published in 1989.

Frank E. Sysyn is Director of the Peter Jacyk Centre for Ukrainian Historical Research, Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies at the University of Alberta, and specializes in the history of modern Eastern Europe and Ukraine. He has published numerous articles and volumes, including Early Modem Ukraine (with Dushan Bednarsky and Zenon E. Kohut). Introduction Levan Charbajian

ISSUES IN THE DEFINITION OF GENOCIDE

Many controversies surround the issue of genocide. What is genocide? How should it be defined? Is it necessary that genocide be carried out by the state? Is it necessary that genocide be intentional? How large or complete must mass killings be to qualify as a genocide? Is it possible to employ the history of past genocides to create a model of the genocidal process? If so, is it possible to employ such a model to predict, intervene and prevent future genocides from taking place? And how might that best be done given that nation states control international agencies and are able to employ those agencies to pro• mote narrowly defined, short-term national interests to foil timely interventions? One of the most controversial issues concerning genocide is its very definition because the role of the state, intentionality and other issues noted above inevitably are implicated. Legitimate scholarly disagree• ments on these and other issues abound. Nevertheless, there is now, in addition to countless historical studies and eyewitness accounts of specific genocides, a growing body of solid analytical work on genocide which includes attempts at definition and analysis.

SOME ATIEMPTS TO DEFINE GENOCIDE

The act of genocide is very old, but it is only in the twentieth century that it has widely come to be viewed as a crime against humanity and given a name. The term genocide was coined by Raphael Lemkin, a Polish-Jewish emigre jurist who served on the US staff at the Nurem• berg trials and later joined the Yale Law School. In his 1944 bookAxis Rule in Occupied Europe, Lemkin introduced the term genocide which he defined as the 'destruction of a nation or an ethnic group.'! Lemkin worked tirelessly and was eventually successful in getting the United Nations to adopt a genocide treaty. The United Nations Genocide

xv xvi Levon Chorbajian

Convention, ratified on 9 December 1948, defined the crime of geno• cide as the intent to destroy in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group by (a) killing members of the group, (b) causing serious bodily harm to members of the group, (c) deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part, (d) imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group, and (e) forcibly transfer• ring children of the group to other groups. This broad, inclusive definition and its application have come under a number of criticisms. The most common objection is that it excludes political groups. Lemkin attempted to include groups singled out for extermination because of their political beliefs and/or practices, but the Soviet Union objected, and the reference was removed in order to salvage the rest of the treaty. Another problem is enforceability. Only governments can take cases to court, and the UN, as an organization of states, has compiled a record of evasion, postponement and refusal to act on matters of genocide. Standards which have virtues in other contexts - the territorial integrity of states, sovereignty and non• intervention in the internal affairs of states - when applied to cases of genocide result in deadly vacillation and inaction. Scholars are also confronted with ambiguity on the matter of intent because it is difficult to prove, but as Helen Fein points out, while perpetrators of genocide are unlikely to proclaim intent, it can be inferred 'by showing a pattern of purposeful action'.z For many authors genocide is a state crime, and they emphasize the central role of the state as the organizer and perpetrator of genocide. Pierre van den Berghe, for example, writes that the state has been the primary killer of human beings since its inception 7,000 years ago, and he notes that from 1945 to 1980, 75 per cent of the violence committed by states has been directed against peoples within their own borders? Irving Louis Horowitz not only insists that genocide is a state crime, but in his view, genocide is a crime of the authoritarian state. This fits the cases of the Armenian Genocide, the Holocaust, the Ukrainian famine and others, but van den Berghe, whose interest is in state violence, a category including genocide, but broader, disagrees. He argues that state violence, in all its forms, is not limited to any parti• cular locale or political economic system. Van den Berghe says it can occur in democracies, especially he"envolk democracies, and he names , South Mrica, and the United States as examples.4 The late Leo Kuper introduced another dimension to the study of genocide by considering actions not treated at all by most genocide Introduction xvii

scholars. Kuper sometimes employed the word genocide and at other times preferred the somewhat more attenuated adjectival form geno• cidal. He refers, for example, to US military actions in Vietnam as 'suggestive of genocide,.5 Kuper's work expanded the discussion of genocide to include the Dresden fire bombings during World War II, the detonation of nuclear weapons at Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the US, and US military actions in Vietnam.6 Most genocide scholars object to Kuper's extension of the scope of genocide, not so much from skittishness at implicating the US in genocide, but in the insistence that these actions result from the targeting of populations during wartime. The critics note that Kuper does not include a planned extermination of a people in his definition. The litmus test for Kuper's critics is whether Hiroshima, for example, would have been bombed had Japan surrendered beforehand. The conventional answer is no, yet a study by historian Ronald Thkaki indicates that the matter is more clouded than previously believed. Takaki argues that during the war not only were Japanese- interned in concentration camps, but Japan and the Japanese people were subjected to high levels of racist dehumanization. This denial of humanness to the enemy - an oft-noted accompaniment to war - coupled with US ambitions for post-war political, economic, and military hegemony raises the serious question of whether Japan would have been allowed to surrender before nuclear weapons were exploded.7 Other writers have called attention to considerations which broaden even further the traditional understanding of genocide and the geno• cidal process. Some have gone beyond considering the kinds of state actions that qualify as genocide to question whether intentionality and state action are necessary for genocide to occur. Isidor Wallimann and Michael Dobkowski argue that in a world of impersonal market forces and distant decision-making by government and corporate bureau• cracies 'the emphasis on intentionality almost appears anachronistic,.8 In their view, a single minded focus on intentionality leads to the neglect of those processes of destruction which, although massive, are so systematic and systemic, and that therefore appear so 'normal' that most individuals involved at some level of the process of destruction may never see the need to make an ethical decision or even reflect upon the consequences of their action.9 This perspective has opened the way to interpreting some of the more traditional genocides in radically different ways and to xviii Levon Chorbajian considering horrific but radically different kinds of events as geno• cides. The experience of Native Americans is a case in point. Many genocide specialists consider the case of indigenous peoples of North America to be a less than clear-cut case of genocide because (1) the major cause of death is disease, (2) much of the actual killing is done by non-governmental agents, and (3) intent is difficult to demonstrate. Russell Lawrence Barsh dissents by arguing that the emphasis on disease obscures the interrelationship of factors. Disease, Barsh argues, must be considered in the context of military actions and other abuses along with the breakdown of subsistence systems result• ing in hunger, starvation, increased susceptibility to disease and loss of the will to live. 10 The question of the role of the state comes up repeatedly in the case of indigenous peoples because a good deal of killing is done by soldiers of fortune, miners, settlers, etc. Once again we encounter the tradi• tional response that these are not state agents, and this, therefore raises questions about whether such killings are genocide. And once again, the response is over-simplified. There may be collusion between non-governmental agents and the state or, at least, a common under• standing that indigenous peoples stand in the way of 'progress', profit and eventual geographical state expansion and revenue. There are also cases of the prior dehumanization of indigenous peoples which reduces them to a status not worthy of government protection. In such cases there is the need to consider acts of omission contributing to the genocide of indigenous populations.ll The historian Tony Barta, who is concerned with the impact of colonial settlement on the indigenous people of Australia, dispenses with the state and intentionality altogether. For him, a genocidal society is one in which the whole bureaucratic apparatus might officially be directed to protect innocent people but in which a whole race is nevertheless subject to remorseless pressures of destruction inher• ent in the very nature of society.12 Of all the major comparative genocide specialists, Israel Charny is the broadest and most inclusive in his conception of genocide and responsibility for it.13 On responsibility, he notes that genocide, as currently conceived, carries with it no concept comparable to the accomplice in criminal law. Charny insists that just such a concept is necessary for the full understanding and prosecution of genocide. He defines accomplices as those who 'assist, prepare, or furnish the mass Introduction xix

murderers of the world with the means to exterminate huge numbers of people', and he refuses to view implicated scientists, engineers, businessmen, and government officials as people who are merely doing their jobs. For Charny, scientists who research and design mega-weapons, engineers who oversee their production, businessmen who market them, the 'barons of finance' who profit from the sales, the government bureaucrats who legally or illegally license the sales of these weapons systems or the materials to produce them and other complicitous parties are accomplices in genocide.14 Charny also cites the work of George Kent, who wishes to consider whether the fate of millions of children who perish each year from malnutrition and disease ought to be considered a genocide. Children are a racially, ethnically, religiously and linguistically unconnected aggregate of people from all parts of the globe. They are linked only by the fact of being children. Charny notes the opposition of those for whom genocide can only be the result of 'intentional state policy aimed at specific target people'. 'Yet', writes Charny, it is my conviction that any and all neglectful, exploitative, or abusive bureaucratic procedures, including unintentional failures of will and organization on the part of governments and international systems which result in major patterns of death of masses of human beings, in this case children, are to be considered murders of our species, along with actual intentional mass murder ... 15 Charny is concerned that with the 'regrettable' exception of war, 'we do not exclude in arbitrary, cynical, or intellectual [sic] elitist ways the deaths of any group of our fellow human beings from our defini• tion of genocide.'1 At the same time Charny is mindful of the need to distinguish between types of genocide, and he proposes what he calls a 'Definitional Matrix for Crimes of Genocide'. In this matrix, he establ• ishes the categories of , intentional genocide, geno• cide in the course of colonialism or consolidation of power, genocide in the course of aggressive war, war crimes against humanity, genocide as a result of ecological destruction and abuse, and cultural genocide consisting of ethnicide and linguicide. For each, he proposes to establ• ish degrees of severity comparable to legal categories of first, second and third degree [manslaughter] murder. The criteria for degrees of severity are premeditation, totality or single-mindedness of purpose, resoluteness to execute policy, efforts to overcome resistance, devotion to bar escape of victims, and crueltyP Charny classifies the Armenian Genocide, the Holocaust of the Jews, Roma and homosexuals, the xx Levon Chorbajian slaughter of Indonesian communists, the gassing of Kurds in Iraq and 'many other events' as intentional genocides. IS Charny is undoubtedly on moral high ground. His writing makes it clear that he has a deep concern for humanity - all of it - and he has little patience for those who wish to exclude cases of mass killing on the basis of what he calls 'definitionalism'. He defines this as a damaging style of intellectual inquiry based on a perverse, fetishis• tic involvement with definitions to the point .... that the real enormity of the subject no longer guides or impacts on the delibera• tions.19 What Charny calls definitionalism deservedly commands attention, but Charny's solution is not altogether satisfactory. Charny, along with Kuper, Wallimann and Dobkowski, Barta and Kent, have raised ser• ious issues and expanded the genocide analysis to new levels, but at a cost of theoretical rigour. Helen Fein makes a strong case for rigour. She is concerned that the term genocide has come to be used carelessly by many people 'both to vent outrage and to describe situations in which they perceive them• selves as threatened'. She is concerned that the term has become so debased by 'semantic stretch' that 'Virtually everything but genocide ... is called genocide'?O In challenging Charny and Kuper along with journalists and political activists, Fein is not engaging in apologetics. In her view, the US detonation of nuclear weapons at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was a war crime.21 But her argument is rather different, and in my view, sound. Fein, like Charny, is interested in the prevention of genocide and other forms of mass death. Fein argues that without rigourous concepts allowing one to distinguish genocide from acts of what she calls life integrity threats - for example, political terror, torture, rape, slavery and forced labour, judicial improprieties, forced resettlement, etc. - the very precision needed to understand clearly, predict and work towards effective intervention is denied. Charny does attempt to create a degree of rigour with his defini• tional matrix, but the conflation of rather different kinds of events under the generic heading of genocide and the obvious overlaps of categories when applied to specific cases reduces the usefulness of the matrix. This is not so much a shortcoming of Charny's, I would suggest, as a consequence of two other factors. First, it is important to recog• nize our current state of theorizing about genocide as the product of a recent, incomplete and evolving process as well as a contested one. A good deal has been accomplished when viewed against the backdrop of Introduction xxi

a systematic study of genocide that is only 25 years old. At this juncture, disagreement is perhaps better understood as a sign of vigour rather than confusion or gridlock, and we should not be too hasty to draw negative conclusions. Second, rather than assume that genocide can have a fixed, definitive though elusive, meaning, it may be more productive to consider genocide as a core concept with widely accepted and uncontroversial meanings only at its centre. The further we move from that centre into the wider historical and semantic field, the greater the ambiguity and controversy we engender, and the less satisfactory efforts to apply hard and fast, necessary and sufficient characteristics of agents, victims, and historical contexts are likely to be. The pressing issues of current genocides and those on the horizon create a sense of urgency among those who wish to combat the scourge of genocide, and Helen Fein is correct in her stress on the centrality of theoretical rigour. At the same time, we need to recognize the exist• ence of events and phenomena that will defy clear classification as genocide or not. The Holocaust and the Armenian Genocide are not among them, but as the above discussion makes clear, such events and phenomena do exist and are likely to continue to do so. For the purposes of this volume, the task of definition is simplified by the fact that all the genocides considered fall under the category of what I call classic genocides - genocides initiated by authoritarian states, premeditated, involving great cruelty, and bringing about large numbers of deaths in absolute terms and deaths as a percentage of target populations. For such an analysis, it is appropriate to rely on a more traditional approach to genocide as articulated by Helen Fein based on the United Nations Convention Genocide is the sustained purposeful action by a perpetrator to physically destroy a collectivity directly or through interdiction of the biological and social reproduction of group members.22 Fein lists the following as necessary preconditions:

1. There was a sustained attack or continuity of attacks by the perpetrator physically to destroy group members. 2. The perpetrator was a collective or organized actor (usually the state) or commander of organized actors. 3. The victims were selected because they were members of the collectivity. 4. The victims were defenceless or were killed regardless of whether they surrendered or resisted. xxii Levon Chorbajian

5. The destruction of group members was undertaken with intent to kill, and murder was sanctioned by the perpetrator.23

Roger W. Smith argues that the Armenian Genocide has served as a kind of perverse model for genocide because later heads of state have understood from the Armenian case that genocide can be committed, punishment evaded and the events later concealed by denial. He also writes that 'by ignoring the Armenian genocide, knowledge important to the prevention of genocides was, for too long, 10st'.14 We tum now to an examination of the Armenian Genocide which has served as a twentieth-century model of commission and advanced denial.

THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE

The facts of the Armenian Genocide are well documented but not necessarily well known outside specialist circles.25 A brief background and history of the Genocide is therefore in order. The Armenians are an ancient people indigenous to the southwestern Transcaucasus and northeastern Asia Minor. They were converted to Christianity in the fourth century and their alphabet was developed a century later. After the establishment of the Ottoman Empire in the late thirteenth cen• tury, the Armenians lived as an Ottoman minority under the millet system whereby non-Muslim minorities (Armenians, Greeks and Jews) were subordinated to the rule of the Sultans but granted official recognition and a measure of autonomy in communal affairs. Under this system, the Ottoman millets endured periods of persecution and the constant threat thereof as well as second-class citizenship status. It was in the late nineteenth century, however, that the millet system broke down as a result of Ottoman imperial decline in combination with the growing economic success of non-Muslims, notably among a portion of the Armenian community. These changes were accompanied by a literary and cultural renais• sance among Armenians. These developments were, in tum, stimu• lated by the Ottoman Tanzimat movement highlighted by the 1839 and 1856 Reform Acts. The relative abortiveness of these reform move• ments and the associated twin Crimean (1853-6) and Russo-Turkish (1877-8) Wars exacerbated the mounting crises afflicting the Ottoman Empire and its multi-ethnic state system. With the signing of the Berlin Peace Treaty in July 1878, the nationality crisis found expression in specific treaty clauses: Article 23 (for Macedonia in the Balkans) and Introduction xxiii

Article 61 (for Armenia in eastern Turkey). The evolving Turkish• Armenian conflict was thus internationalized as Turkey became accountable, by treaty, to the six Great Powers of Europe for reforms in the six northeastern provinces of Asia Minor heavily populated by Armenians. But it was not to be. The Ottoman state was able adroitly to exploit the mutual suspicions and rivalries of the Powers and resort to new provocations, thereby intensifying conflicts, especially in the six provinces. The rise of disjointed and fragmented Armenian revolutionary movements, in response to intensified Ottoman oppression, prompted Ottoman Turkish rulers to escalate the level of oppression. From that point on, the Armenian millet was treated as an alien, suspect minority targeted for violence. The 1915 Genocide was the culmination of decades of scapegoating, harassment, exploitation, per• secution and terror. Organized massacres from 1894 to 1896 claimed 150,000-200,000 Armenian victims and further killings in 1909 left an additional 25,000 Armenian dead. The 1915 Genocide was a deliberate attempt by the Ottoman Turk• ish government to annihilate the Armenian people. It began in the capital city of with the rapid arrest and execution of hundreds of Armenian religious and community leaders and quickly spread to all sectors of Asia Minor. The pattern of genocide was planned and standardized. Armenian males aged 18-45 were con• scripted in the Ottoman army only to be disarmed, segregated from other groups and then either shot, axed or bludgeoned to death. The remaining Armenian community, now consisting largely of women, children and older men, were rounded up and expelled by means of forced marches. Some of these deportees were massacred en route; others found themselves in death marches from which few emerged alive. These were not deportations in the conventional sense but marches designed to kill everyone in the convoys. Officially sanctioned bands of criminals purposefully released from prisons were sent to pillage, rape and kill the marchers, and those Turks along the way who might have been inclined to assist the Armenians were threatened with death. In other words, the marches were death marches. Both they and their way stations served as the functional equivalents of death camps.z6 By 1923, a pre-war Armenian population in Asia Minor estimated to have been over 2 million was reduced to 100,000. After the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in World War I, the genocide continued at the hands of Kemal Atatiirk, who ordered the xxiv Levon Chorbajian

invasion and destruction of 1tanscaucasian Armenia?7 Thus the gov• ernments of Sultan Abdul Hamid, the Young Turks and the Kemalists all treated the Armenians with lethal hostility during the period 1894 to 1923. The consistency of this policy over the course of four decades is significant for it demonstrates that the Armenian Genocide resulted from official Turkish policy and was not, as some have claimed, an aberration of war or the result of war in which Armenians and Turks suffered equally.28 These equivocations contrast with the actions of post-World War II Germany which has officially admitted to its war crimes, apologized for them and paid reparations. Such actions are small when compared with the enormity and irreversibility of the crimes themselves, but they do represent an important step towards closure for the survivors of genocides and their offspring and for the citizens of perpetrator states. The public, official acknowledgements, the ceremonial rituals accom• panying them and their world-wide dissemination through the media may playa significant role in mobilizing public awareness of genocide. The denial of genocide erases these possibilities and builds momentum for future crimes against humanity. The Armenian Genocide is im• portant in this regard because it is the subject of the most intense and well-financed of all programmes of genocide denial.

THE DENIAL OF GENOCIDES

Politically motivated agendas greatly complicate the matter of defining and analysing genocide. Genocide represents, more often than not, orchestrated mega-death. Nations which have committed genocides during war may have to answer for them, if defeated. There may be a search for planners and perpetrators, attempts to punish responsible parties and perhaps reparations to pay. The possibility of punishments along with issues of the international image of such nations and national self-image are incentives for perpetrator states to rewrite history in a variety of ways, ranging from shading interpretations of past events in the most favourable way possible to outright denial. Such agendas are rarely, if ever, acknowledged as such. Indeed, these agendas often masquerade as legitimate scholarly disagreements since it is more efficacious and seemly and because, unfortunately, apologists who specialize in the concealment of developing or on• going genocides and the denial of past ones are not unknown in academia. Introduction xxv

Israel Charny lists four frequent types of political pressure brought to bear on definitions of genocide. The first is to exclude certain types of events to reduce the legal responsibility of a perpetrator nation and its top leadership. Second, we have the effort to exclude certain events that would weaken the ability to have diplomatic or economic ties with a nation when, in realpolitik terms, such alliances would be desirable. Third, there is the pressure to define a given event of mass murder as more significant than others and to crown it, ultimately, as the geno• cide of first importance. Lastly, Charny speaks of 'blatant denials and revisionism of known historical events of mass murder,.29 With the lone exception of the last Ottoman government before the creation of the Thrkish Republic, no successive Turkish government has acknowledged the crimes against the Armenian people. In fact, it has been the policy of all Turkish governments to deny that a genocide was ever committed against the Armenian people. The Armenian Genocide has fallen particular victim to realpolitik and 'blatant denials and revisionism of known historical events of mass murder'. Although active efforts to deny the facts of the Armenian Genocide date from the period soon after World War I, denial accelerated after 1945.30 With the advent of the Cold War, Turkey's participation in the Korean War and membership in the NATO alliance, the US-Turkish alliance was greatly strengthened along with Turkey's ability to influ• ence US policy. Prominent US academics lent their cooperation early on. In a book from this period, two scholars who say they wish to correct misconceptions about Turkey write; This approach is certainly 'pro-Turkish', if by this one implies rational readiness to stop belabouring the Turks for the sins, real or fancied, of their fathers and to judge them for what they are, and for what they have to offer the United States today?1 Beginning in the 1970s, denial efforts have accelerated, becoming more frequent, better financed and more systematic. In 1978, Turkey was able to get a reference to the Armenian Genocide removed from a preliminary report of the United Nations Subcommission on Human Rights. The State Department denied the Genocide in 1981 by resort• ing to calculated ambiguity. In 1982 Israel, under pressure from Turkey accompanied by threats to Turkish Jews, withdrew its official sponsor• ship from a conference on genocide which included discussion of the Armenian Genocide?2 There have been efforts to court US journal• ists, teachers, academics and politicians for the purposes of genocide denial. Public relations firms have been hired to cleanse Thrkey's xxvi Levon Chorbajian image. Conforming to Turkey's wishes, all congressional resolutions to recognize the Armenian Genocide have been opposed by the Reagan, Bush and Clinton administrations, and all such resolutions have thus far been defeated. The denial of the Armenian Genocide is part of a body of broader issues including the responsibility of intellectuals to seek and promote truth, matters of civil and human rights, and the demonization and infliction of further pain on survivors.33 When genocides remain unacknowledged, unpunished and denied, future leaders see genocide as a viable solution to seemingly intractable political problems. Hitler's reference to the Armenian Genocide is famous in this regard: I have placed my death-head formations in readiness - for the present only in the East - with orders to them to send to death mercilessly and without compassion men, women, and children of Polish derivation and language. Only thus shall we gain the living space which we need. Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?34 The meaning of Hitler's comments resonate all too loudly from places like Rwanda and Bosnia. When we think of how to respond, it is obvious that much more than conferences are needed to stop geno• cides, but conferences are steps in communicating, building bridges, and creating meaningful consensus and, ultimately, the necessary polit• ical power to move baulky, resistant governments and international agencies. The Yerevan genocide conference was designed to commem• orate the Armenian Genocide and to highlight all genocides and their tragic consequences, including denial and the failure to punish those responsible. We offer readers this volume of selected essays with these dual objectives in mind: to link the diverse experiences of peoples to combat genocide more effectively, and to commemorate and acknowl• edge the Armenian Genocide, whose memory has been and remains today a powerful weapon in the struggle against genocide.

THE ESSAYS

The first section, ~pproaches to Genocide', contains essays by Roger W. Smith, Irving Louis Horowitz and Yehuda Bauer. In 'State Power and Genocidal Intent: On the Uses of Genocide in the 1Wentieth Century', Smith contrasts the appalling frequency and scale of twen• tieth-century genocides to genocides in earlier times. 1b assist us in Introduction xxvii

understanding our genocidal age he creates a typology of genocides according to the particular grammar of motives which define them. The ideal types are retributive, institutional, utilitarian, monopolistic and ideological. Smith attributes the scale and ferocity of twentieth century genocides partly to developments in bureaucracy, transporta• tion and communications and the invention of concentration camps. Smith examines as well the role of modem technology in genocide and concludes that technology does not cause genocide but facilitates it by distancing genocide perpetrators from their acts, thus enabling perpet• rator participation and reducing perpetrator guilt. Irving Louis Horowitz follows with 'Science, Modernity, and Authorized Thrror: Reconsidering the Genocidal State'. Horowitz seeks to situate genocide in the context of twentieth-century history by separating it from other forms of life-taking. His method is to employ five sets of paired dichotomies as a method of inquiry. They are natural catastrophe vs. socially sanctioned murder, systematic slaughter vs. accidental or random killing, genocide distinguished from warfare, state-sanctioned murder vs. extra-legal terror, and deaths vs. symbolic or cultural assaults. Horowitz promotes his view that genocide is a product of authoritarian states and also that the Holocaust is unique and should be carefully distinguished from other genocides.35 Yehuda Bauer, in 'Comparison of Genocides', argues that if we are committed to addressing genocide through intervention, we need to be able to make historically based and analytically sound distinctions. He critiques the restricted vision of genocide promoted by Steven T. Katz in The Holocaust in History, where the only genocide is the Holocaust, and he considers the cases of the Poles, Armenians, Roma, Cambo• dians and indigenous peoples of the Western Hemisphere to argue in favour of a more inclusive vision. Part II, 'The Armenian Genocide', contains five essays. In 'A Con• ceptual Method for Examining the Consequences of the Armenian Genocide', Rouben Paul Adalian considers genocide as a unique horror and uses the Armenians as an example of a people which 'experiences its own death and survives to contemplate its demise'. The concept of the topical shift captures the stark, irreversible before and after of the genocide experience. Adalian examines this shift in its immediate, short and long-term consequences, closing with the ex• amination of what he calls the culture of mourning. In 'Philosophy of State-Subject Relations, Ottoman Concepts of '!Yranny, and the Demonization of Subjects: Conservative Ottomanism xxviii Levon Chorbajian

as a Source of Genocidal Behaviour, 1821-1918', the historian James J. Reid turns his attention to Ottoman race theory and to the peculiar view that minorities were propagators of satanically inspired tyranny. This belief system allowed Ottoman rulers consistently to discount the objective basis of minority protest and resistance and to attribute that resistance to mystical conceptions of tyranny. Resistance from within the empire was seen as a challenge to divinely mandated rule by the Sultan over a rigid hierarchical social order. Reid applies his analysis to Ottoman responses to the Greek and Armenian communities during the nineteenth century and to the psychological make-up of Ottoman military figures Siileyman Pasha and Enver Pasha. Vahakn N. Dadrian examines the Ittihad ve Terakki party in 'The Convergent Roles of the State and a Governmental Party in the Armenian Genocide'. Dadrian argues that genocide should not be viewed simply as a state crime because conventional states 'do not lend themselves to the large scale and relentless implementation of an act of genocide'. A state apparatus is necessary for genocide to occur, but that state apparatus must fall into the hands of a fanatical political party which employs it to achieve its own ends. In his detailed analysis Dadrian traces the origins of the Ittihad ve Terakki, its ideology, its secret organizational structure and its eventual takeover of the Otto• man state. He examines the 1909 Adana massacres as a prelude to the 1915 genocide, traces the impact of the Balkan War defeats on the hardening of Ittihadist ideology, and the creation of the Special Organ• ization forces as the organizational instrument for the conduct of the genocide. One of the most significant chapters in this collection, because it represents a beginning of dialogue, is Turkish historian Taner Ak~am's 'The Genocide of the Armenians and the Silence of the Turks'. Ak~am distinguishes the special features of Turkish nationalism and employs the work of Theodore Adorno and Norbert Elias to explain the motivations behind the suppression of the truth of the origins of the Republic of Turkey. Ak~am argues that the facts of the Armenian Genocide are an unwelcome threat to an elaborate Thrkish national origin myth revolving around conceptions of self-reliance and anti• imperialist struggle. In her article 'Turkey: a Cultural Genocide', Anush Hovanissian documents the handmaiden of genocide denial: the obliteration of the historical presence of a people. This process includes the destruc• tion of manuscripts and churches, the intentional destruction of archi• tectural monuments, the attribution of Armenian cultural production Introduction xxix

to Turks, the purging of references to Armenia and Armenians from maps and encyclopaedias, the replacement of Armenian place names with Turkish ones, and the persecution of the small Armenian com• munities remaining in Turkey?6 This is an ongoing process continuing to this day, and its final objective is to obliterate all traces of an Armenian presence in Asia Minor. If successful, even the past exist• ence of Armenians in Asia Minor will become a matter that Armenians will have to struggle to prove. Helen Fein opens Part III, 'Comparative Genocide, Genocide Denial, and Genocide Prevention', with 'Testing Theories Brutally: Armenia (1915), Bosnia (1992) and Rwanda (1994),. She sees the East African and Yugoslav genocides of the 1990s as test cases to answer the questions: Do our theories fit the cases? and, What can they teach us that is new? Bosnia and Rwanda confirm the role of exclusion and discrimination against a minority as a prelude to geno• cide. Fein notes the consistent role played by authoritarian states, bystander states and war. In several dimensions she finds parallels between the Bosnian, Rwandan and Armenian cases. She closes by emphasizing the need for early intervention. Ben Kiernan's article, 'Pol Pot and Enver Pasha: a Comparison of the Cambodian and Armenian Genocides', compares two of the major figures in the Cambodian and Armenian Genocides. Kiernan finds that both were men in search of personal glory through the restoration of tainted national glory. For decades the Ukrainian famine had no recognition in the aca• demic community. Worse yet, it was thought to be the rallying cry of anti-communists tainted by fascism and anti-Semitism. In 'The Ukrain• ian Famine of 1932-3: the Role of the Ukrainian Diaspora in Research and Public Discussion', Frank Sysyn examines the detailed process by which the famine came to acquire status as a genocide against the opposition of the Soviet Union, portions of the Ukrainian diaspora, virtually all Sovietologists, and mainstream political institutions and politicians in the US and Canada. In 'The Psychology and Politics of Genocide Denial: a Comparison of Four Case Studies', Henry Huttenbach considers genocide denial in the cases of the Armenians, Jews, Roma, and Croatian Serbs during World War II. Huttenbach clearly states the importance of this issue when he writes, 'Denial has become an integral part of genocide; not to take this aspect into consideration is to fail to comprehend a major component of the dynamics of extermination.' In each case, Hutten• bach examines and analyses the different sources of genocide denial, xxx Levon Chorbajian the strategies employed in denial, the extent of success in the academy, and strategies and prospects for combating the denial phenomenon. In a wide-ranging piece, 'Breaking the Succession of Evil', Franklin Littell is concerned with challenging and breaking the cycle of geno• cide which grips our time. He argues that it is essential for individuals and governments to act in opposing the denial of genocides, develop• ing genocides and genocides in progress. Otherwise, the succession of evil will remain intact, and rulers will continue to read the lesson of history, as Hitler did: that genocide does work to 'solve' intractable political problems. The last essay is Ervin Staub's 'Preventing Genocide: Activating Bystanders, Helping Victims, and the Creation of Caring'. Staub is the only psychologist represented in this volume, and he makes an important contribution through his emphasis on creating social struc• tures in which genocide is unthinkable. He considers the role of bystanders and ways of activating bystanders under genocidal condi• tions. He also has important insights on the healing process for adults and children and the necessity of promoting positive relations between majority and minority groups to serve as a barrier to developing genocidal processes. Finally, Staub stresses the importance of child• rearing practices which define and include other human beings as valuable members of the human community.

NOTES

1. New York: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. 2. Helen Fein, 'Genocide, Terror, Life Integrity, and War Crimes: the Case for Discrimination', in George J. Andreopoulos, ed., Genocide: Concep• tual and Historical Dimensions (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994), p. 97. 3. State Violence and Ethnicity (Niwot, Colorado: University Press of Color• ado, 1990), pp. 1-4. 4. van den Berghe, p. 10. 5. Genocide: Its Political Use in the Twentieth Century (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981), p. 35. 6. Kuper, pp. 17, 34-35, 46, 102; and Leo Kuper, The Prevention of Geno• cide (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985), pp. 13-14, 157. 7. Ronald Takaki, Hiroshima: Why America Dropped the Atomic Bomb (Boston: Little, Brown & Company, 1995); and Kuper (1985), pp. 229-30. 8. Genocide and the Modem Age (New York: Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc., 1987), p. xvi. Introduction xxxi

9. Wallimann, p. 17. 10. 'Ecocide, Nutrition, and the "Vanishing Indian"', in van den Berghe, pp.221-39. 11. Frank Chalk, 'Redefining Genocide', in Andreopoulos, p. 59. 12. Quoted in Chalk, ibid., p. 55. 13. Interestingly, one of the largest carnages in recorded history eludes systematic treatment in Charny and in the work of other genocide specialists. I refer to Japanese actions in China from the early 19308 through to 1945. Known euphemistically as the Japanese atrocities, these actions included torture, rape, vivisection, live mass burial, prolonged medical experimentation, slave labour, and biological and chemical war• fare. In addition to its occurrence, this case is relevant because it has been subject to denial and cover-up in the years since 1945. See Peter Williams and David Wallace, Unit 731: Japan's Secret Biological Waifare in World War II (New York: The Free Press, 1989); Sheldon H. Harris, Factories ofDeath: Japanese Biological Waifare, 1932-1945, and the Amer• ican Cover-Up (New York: Routledge, 1995); James Yin and Shi Young, The Rape of Nanking: an Undeniable History in Photographs (Chicago: Innovative Publishing Group, Inc., 1996); and Iris Chang, The Rape of Nanking (New York: Basic Books, 1997). 14. Israel W. Charny, 'Thward a Generic Definition of Genocide', in Andreo• poulos, p. 65. 15. Israel Charny, ed., The Widening Circle of Genocide: a Critical Biblio- graphic Review (New Brunswick: 1tansaction Publishers, 1994), p. xxiv. 16. Charny, in Andreopoulos, p. 75. 17. Ibid., pp. 75-90. 18. /bid., pp. 78-9. 19. /bid., p. 91. 20. Fein, in Andreopoulos, p. 95. 21. /bid., p. 105. 22. /bid., p. 97. 23. Ibid., p. 97. 24. Roger W. Smith, 'The Armenian Genocide: Meaning, Politics, and the Future', in Richard Hovannisian, ed., The Armenian Genocide: History, Politics, Ethics (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1992), p. 13. 25. A partial listing of sources documenting the Armenian Genocide is found in Richard Hovannisian's older but still useful bibliography, The Armenian Holocaust: a Bibliography Relating to the Deportations, Mas• sacres, and Dispersion of the Armenian People, 1915-1923 (Cambridge, MA: Armenian Heritage Press, 1978) and the bibliography to Vahakn N. Dadrian's magisterial study, The History of the Armenian Genocide (Pro• vidence, RI and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 1995), pp. 42~6. Thirty• seven thousand pages of documents from the US Archives have been compiled by Rouben Paul Adalian, ed., The Armenian Genocide in the US Archives, 1915-1918 (Alexandria, Virginia: Chadwyck-Healey, 1994). For additional archival material, see Vahakn N. Dadrian, 'Documentation of the Armenian Genocide in Thrkish Sources', in Israel Charny, ed., Genocide: a Critical Bibliographic Review (London and New York: Facts on File, 1991), pp. 86-138; and 'Documentation of the Armenian Geno- xxxii Levon Chorbajian

cide in German and Austrian Sources', in Israel Charny, ed., The Widen• ing Circle of Genocide, pp. 77-125. See also Permanent People's TI'ibunal, A Crime of Silence: the Armenian Genocide (London: Zed Books, 1985); Vahakn N. Dadrian, 'The Nairn-Andonian Documents on the World War I Destruction of Ottoman Armenians: the Anatomy of a Genocide', International Journal of Middle East Studies, 18 (1986): 311-360; Vahakn N. Dadrian, 'Genocide as a Problem of National and International Law: the World War I Armenian Case and Its Contemporary Legal Ramifica• tions', Yale Journal of International Law 14 (1989): 221-334; Leslie A. Davis, The Slaughterhouse Province: an American Diplomat's Report on the Armenian Genocide, 1915-1917 (New Rochelle, NY: Aristide D. Caratzas, 1989); Donald E. Miller and Lorna Thuryan Miller, Survivors: an Oral History of the Armenian Genocide (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1993); and Raymond H. Kevorkian and Paul B. Paboudjian, Les Armeniens dans ['Empire ottoman Ii la veille du genocide (Paris: Editions d'Art et d'Histoire, 1992). 26. This point is missed by Irving Louis Horowitz in his contribution to this collection. 27. Vahakn N. Dadrian, 'The Comparative Aspects of the Armenian and Jewish Cases of Genocide: a Sociohistorical Perspective', in Alan S. Rosenbaum, ed., Is the Holocaust Unique? Perspectives on Comparative Genocide (Boulder: Westview Press, 1996), pp. 127-9. 28. These are two of the standard arguments employed by deniers of the Armenian Genocide. 29. Charny in Andreopoulos, pp. 66-74 for a full discussion of these issues. 30. In an instance from the 1930s, Thrkey successfully pressured the US State Department to intervene with MGM to prevent the filming of Franz Werfel's best selling novel The Forty Days of Musa Dagh which recounted one of only two successful cases of Armenian armed resist• ance to the genocide. See Edward Minasian, 'The Forty Years of Musa Dagh: the Film that Was Denied', Journal of 2, no. 2 (1985-6): 63-73; and 'United States Documentary Literature: III. Cor• respondence (1935) between Office of the Government of the United States and the Government of Turkey re the Production of a Film Version of Franz Werfel's The Forty Days of Musa Dagh', The Armenian Review 30, no. 4-120 (Winter 1977-8): 423-5. There is a substantial and growing literature on denial. See Rouben Adalian, 'The Armenian Genocide: Revisionism and Denial', in Michael Dobkowski and Isidor Wallimann, eds., Genocide in Our Time (Ann Arbor: Pieri an Press, 1992), pp. 85-105; Israel Charny, 'A Contribution to the Psychology of Denial of Genocide', Journal ofArmenian Studies 4 (1992): 289-306; Israel W Charny, 'The Psychology of Denial of Known Genocides', in Israel W Charny, ed., Genocide: a Critical Bibliographic Review, vol. 2 (New York: Facts on File, 1991), pp. 3-37; Vahakn Dadrian, 'Ottoman Archives and Denial of the Armenian Genocide', in Richard Hovannisian, ed., The Armenian Genocide, pp. 280-310; Clive Foss, 'The Turkish View of Armenian History: a Vanishing Nation', in ibid., pp. 250-79; Clive Foss, 'Armenian History as Seen by 1Wentieth Century Turkish Historians', Armenian Review 45, no. 177-8 (1992): 1- Introduction xxxiii

52; Christopher Gandy, 'Clio with One Eye: a New Book on the Arme• nians in Ottoman Turkey', Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (1988): 370-7; Gregory Goekjian, 'Genocide and Historical Desire', Semiotica 83, nos 3-4 (1991): 211-25; Herbert Hirsch, 'Trivializing Human Experi• ence: Social Science Methods and Genocide Scholarship', Armenian Review 42, no. 4-168 (1989): 71-81; Gerard Libaridian, 'Objectivity and the Historiography of the Armenian Genocide', Armenian Review 31, nos 1-121 (1978): 79-87; Richard Hovannisian, 'Forum: The Armenian Genocide. The Critic's View: Beyond Revisionism', International Journal ofMiddle East Studies 9 (1978): 379-88; Richard Hovannisian, 'Genocide and Denial: the Armenian Case', in Israel W Charny, ed., Toward the Understanding and Prevention of Genocide (Boulder: Westview Press, 1984), pp. 84-99; Richard Hovannisian, 'The Armenian Genocide and Patterns of Denial', in Richard Hovannisian, ed., The Armenian Geno• cide in Perspective (New Brunswick: ltansaction, 1986), pp. 111-33; James Reid, 'Armenian Massacres in Ottoman and Turkish Historiography', Armenian Review 37, nos 1-145 (Spring 1984): 22-40; and Roger W Smith, 'Denial of the Armenian Genocide', in Israel W Charny, Genocide, pp. 63-85. 31. Lewis Thomas and Richard Frye, The United States and Turkey and Iran (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1951), p. 8. 32. Permanent People's ltibunal, p. 5. 33. Central players in the denial process have been the Institute of Turkish Studies, founded by the Thrkish government in 1982 and based in Washington, D.C., and Heath Lowry, the Institute's director from 1982 to 1994. Since 1994, Lowry has occupied the Atatiirk Chair of Turkish Studies at Princeton University. The Chair was established by a $1.5 million grant from the government of Turkey to Princeton. A dramatic revelation of revisionism came about as a result of a secre• tarial error at the Turkish Embassy in Washington. On 16 October, 1990, Robert Jay Lifton, the internationally acclaimed specialist on the trauma of war, received a letter from the Turkish ambassador to the US com• plaining that Lifton, in his The Nazi Doctors (1986), made several refer• ences to what the ambassador referred to as 'the so-called ''Armenian genocide" allegedly perpetrated by the Ottoman Turks ... '. Such a com• munication is not unusual because academics, journalists and writers who write about the Armenian Genocide frequently receive this kind of mail from the Thrkish Embassy. What is noteworthy is that the envelope containing the letter to Lifton also contained an accidently placed copy of an internal memorandum from Heath Lowry to the Thrkish ambassador. In the memorandum, Lowry assessed the Armenian references in The Nazi Doctors and advised the ambassador that a more aggressive policy of response was needed to the work of Helen Fein, Leo Kuper, Vahakn Dadrian and Richard Hovannisian, on whom Lifton had relied as sources. This memorandum makes it clear that Lowry, now deriving legitimacy from an appointment to one of the nation's most respected and prestigious universities, has been a paid apologist in the service of the Institute of Turkish Studies and its sponsor, the govern• ment of Turkey. This entire incident is presented and perceptively xxxiv Levon Chorbajian

analysed in Roger W. Smith, Eric Marlrusen and Robert Jay Lifton, 'Professional Ethics and the Denial of the Armenian Genocide', Holo• caust and Genocide Studies 9, no. 1 (1995): 1-22. In his opening remarks to the Yerevan Conference, Dr Richard Hovannisian of UCLA addressed the consequences of Armenian Geno• cide denial for perpetrators, victims and their survivors. Because his statement was presented in the form of introductory remarks to open the conference, and not as a formal paper, they are not reproduced in their entirety in this volume. A portion of his commentary appears below. The entire statement appears in 'Eighty Years: Memory against Forgetting', in Problems of Genocide (Cambridge, MA and Toronto: Zoryan Institute, 1997), pp. 13-20. Hovannisian's last point is a reference to the Turkish military's current killings of Kurds . . . . it has been the perpetrators and those who have followed them - the governments and individuals who continue to deny or rationalize the enormity of the crime - who have defined the arena for the encounter between memory and forgetting. They have repeatedly placed the Armenians in a defensive position that has consumed Armenian energies in the urgency to prove that the calamity actually occurred and to win international recognition of what the entire world acknowledged and knew to be the truth during and in the immediate aftermath of the genocide. Hence, the Armenians have been forced to play by the rules laid down by the side of the perpetrators rather than finding and employing their own creative strategies to memorialize, to comprehend, to instruct, to gain recompense, to heal, and to surmount the psychological obstacles to progressing toward a state of normalcy. The suppression of truth has lasting effects and underscores the error of those who assert that the present generation is not responsible for past crimes. Governments, institutions, scholars, and individuals who engage in denial and rationalization prevent the healing of wounds and the unfolding of the full creative energies of the victimized group. They are, in fact, willful accomplices in the continued victimization of the Armenian people. . . . It becomes essential ... for victims to understand that the horri• ble events are not normal but rather are aberrations of a generally good world order. Continued denial makes this impossible and rein• forces the sense of insecurity, abandonment, and betrayal. Th over• come these feelings, the victims need to share their sentiments of pain and sorrow, to voice their outrage, to have the world recognize their suffering, and especially to receive expressions of regret and apology from the perpetrator side. Only then can a sense of justice and right• ness be restored. Until such time, the pain and rage continue and the healing process is blocked. For the descendants of the perpetrators, it is of utmost importance to engage in introspection, to face and learn from their history, to question how such violations could have occurred, to examine what there was and may still be in their national character or in their society that led them down the road to genocide, and to find some redemp- Introduction xxxv

tion through appropriate acts of contrition - beginning, but not end• ing, with a knowledge and acceptance of the truth. If they are unable or unwilling to deal with the truth and instead try to maintain a righteous self-image, then they may again be placed on a path toward the victimization of other groups. What is now occurring in the former Armenian provinces in Turkey may be taken as a case in point. 34. Kevork Bardakjian, Hitler and the Armenian Genocide (Cambridge, MA: The Zoryan Institute, 1985), p. 43. 35. For a dissenting view on the uniqueness of the Holocaust, see Vahakn N. Dadrian in Rosenbaum, pp. 101-35. 36. More on this topic may be found in Dickran Kouymjian, 'The Destruc• tion of Armenian Historical Monuments as a Continuation of the Turkish Policy of Genocide', in Permanent People's Tribunal, pp. 168-72.