Revolution and genocide : on the origins of the Armenian Genocide and the Holocaust

BCH091

Revolution and genocide : on the origins of the Armenian Genocide and the Holocaust

eng

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xxi, 363 pages

Chicago, IL, University of Chicago Press, 1992

Bibliographic record from: Holocaust and genocide bibliographic database. -- Jerusalem : Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide, 1994 (ver 2.2)

Bibliography: pp. 335-350.

Melson, Robert

The Armenian Genocide and the Holocaust followed on the collapse of the Ottoman and German Empires respectively and on the rise of radical revolutionary movements in the successor states. This study s uggests that such movements need to find new bases of legitimacy on which to rest their regimes and they do so by redefining the national or racial community so as to exclude what they call "the enemi es of the revolution." The previously delegitimized and excluded communities are in danger of genocide especially as revolutionary states in which they are trapped go to war. The Stalinist destruction of the Kulaks and the Cambodian "autogenocide" are used as confirming examples. The study does not claim that every revolution leads to genocide, nor that every genocide is the product of revolution. Neither does it suggest that the Holocaust lacks features that make it unique and distinct from other instances of genocide. (Robert Melson).

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