Timothy Snyder: The war in Ukraine and the question of genocide

2022 Elie Wiesel Memorial Lecture with Timothy Snyder

26/11/2022 | Na stronie od 02/12/2022

Source: Youtube

Transcription

0:03
good evening everyone can you all hear me even in the back
0:09
great welcome everyone thank you so much for being here I'm Professor Nancy herowitz
0:14
I'm the director of the Ellie weasel Center for Jewish studies we're most pleased to welcome Professor Timothy
0:20
Snyder to campus this is the launch event for our new major in Holocaust genocide and human rights studies but
0:26
first let me welcome Gene Morrison our the Provost of the University who's been extremely supportive of our new program
0:33
so thank you Jane the lecture tonight is also the first in
0:39
this year's series of the Elie Wiesel Memorial lectures our theme this year is
0:44
co-witnessing and social justice our responses to human humanitarian crises
0:49
the second lecture will be November 9th Irene kakandez will be joining us from Dartmouth College to talk about social
0:56
justice and co-witnessing a big thanks to those who made this program possible in particular Teresa
1:03
Cooney who is the administrator of the Ellie Wiesel Center and Jeremy Solomon's our communications director they're
1:08
probably not even in the room because they're out there still working but anyway foreign [Applause]
1:16
I'm going to describe our new major for just a minute or two and then my colleague Professor Tim Longman will
1:22
introduce Professor Snyder and our moderator for the evening we are very excited about offering this
1:28
new major in Holocaust gen genocide and human rights studies at Boston University for quite a few reasons
1:34
the subject of genocide is an uncomfortable one and yet we need to
1:40
confront it trying to understand how atrocities of this magnitude can happen
1:46
as well as genocide prevention are crucially important studies for all those who care about a just Society
1:54
our program is founded on the belief that the comparative study of past and
2:00
current acts of genocide and the Quest for human rights Belong Together
2:06
and should be studied together in order to provide students with a constructive perspective on fundamental human
2:13
concerns we added human rights to our Holocaust and genocide studies program because
2:19
human rights violations dehumanization for example lie at the
2:24
core of what makes atrocities possible and the study of human rights
2:29
underscores so many other fields and endeavors students who take courses in Holocaust
2:35
genocide human rights studies comment that the classes they take deepen their understanding of their own chosen field
2:42
whether that be law Health Human Rights and many others
2:48
this new program is truly interdisciplinary our faculty come from all over the
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university history political science film literature international relations
3:00
anthropology sociology law and religion and my apologies have I forgotten any of
3:05
the fields that our faculty come from Boston University is uniquely positioned
3:11
to offer this program because of the tremendous social justice legacies of
3:16
Elie Wiesel Martin Luther King Jr and Howard Thurman we are a university whose very
3:23
Foundation rests on these great and enduring humanitarian philosophies
3:28
please contact us at the aloiselle center if you are interested in learning more about the major or the minor in the
3:35
program please now welcome Professor Timothy Longman associate Dean for academic
3:40
Affairs at the party school for Global Studies and the associate director of our new program who will introduce Professor Snyder and our moderator
3:47
Alexis Perry [Applause]
4:02
good evening uh Timothy Snyder is one of those rare authors who has managed to be both
4:08
widely respected by Scholars and actually sell books uh
4:13
he earned his PhD at Oxford and he's published quite a number of books that focus on nationalism in Central and
4:20
Eastern Europe uh opposition the Soviet Union the Holocaust among other topics but having very much earned his
4:28
credentials as a legitimate traditional scholar he's also managed to write some
4:33
books that have become best sellers in particular bloodlands Europe between Hitler and Stalin in 2010 was widely
4:40
praised by Scholars while also managing to attract a wider audience looking at brutality within modern European history
4:49
uh more recently in 2017 in response to things that were happening in the United States and other parts of the world he
4:55
wrote on tyranny which attracted an entirely new audience to him in which he reflected on the research that he had
5:01
done in Central and Eastern Europe on the Holocaust and other topics on Stalin
5:07
in order to think about issues of tyranny and authoritarianism and
5:13
their spread and to provide 20 lessons for our society I think many of you may
5:18
have read that book I know certainly I have and my parents have and just about everybody else I know who reads has read
5:24
it is quite influential um tonight he's going to talk about something that's very much related to
5:30
this and as you'll see this is someone who is uh talking about a wide variety of topics that are all deeply grounded
5:37
in understanding of history and yet also continue to resonate in the Modern Age and and things that are happening right
5:43
now um the format will be uh Professor Snyder will speak and then afterwards we
5:50
have one of our professors in history Alexis Perry who will serve as a moderator she will ask some questions
5:55
and we will also solicit questions from the audience so you should have been given an index card where you can write
6:01
down the questions and if you have a question please after the talk sort of raise up your card and someone will come
6:07
by and we'll we'll grab that card from you and uh we'll um sort of go through them and read them uh Alexis Perry got
6:15
her PhD at Berkeley she focuses on the history of modern Russia and Eastern Europe especially the Soviet period uh
6:21
her book The War within Diaries from the siege of Leningrad in 2017 won multiple prizes uh and uh also within Russian
6:30
studies was somewhat controversial which is I always think a good thing you must be doing something right if some people get angry at what you write she's also
6:37
an excellent teacher and that's one the Gerald and Dean Deanne gitner family prize for undergraduate teaching in 2019
6:44
so I'm going to turn it over first to Timothy and then Alexis will come at the end and join him on stage Professor
6:49
Snyder [Applause]
7:09
we will kill one million we will kill 5 million
7:16
we will obliterate them all we will drive the children into the
7:22
Raging River we will throw the children into burning huts
7:29
they should not exist at all we should execute them by firing squad
7:36
it's an honor to be here at Boston University today to take part in the
7:41
inauguration of this new major and Holocaust genocide and human rights
7:48
I come to this program this University and this topic the topic being the war
7:55
in Ukraine and the question of genocide as a historian genocide is a legal term
8:03
I'm going to be speaking to you about that legal term but I'd also like to remind you and ask you to keep in mind
8:08
that genocide is also a human test that the Legal character of the word genocide
8:15
can also provide us ways of escaping what might seem to be the human obligations
8:23
before I make this argument I want to acknowledge that I would not be speaking to you here today about this topic were
8:30
not for the basic fact that ukrainians have chosen to resist a genocidal War
8:36
this this discussion and all other discussions about genocide human rights
8:41
and for that matter democracy and its future have been radically changed and indeed enabled by the fact that Ukraine
8:48
is now resisting Russia and the arguments that I will make depend to a
8:53
very large degree on the work of Ukrainian journalists who are working in conditions of great risk as well as the
8:59
work of Ukrainian and other historians so history is many things it's the
9:05
search for patterns it's the search for the telling detail it's the search for
9:10
the patterns and the details that allow us to shake ourselves out of the everyday it's the search for the
9:16
patterns and the details that allow us to see something maybe something very important that otherwise we might not
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see and seeing is important because if we do see for example a genocide that
9:29
makes it impossible for us to be a bystander once you see a genocide you
9:36
can no longer stand by either you were on the side of the perpetrators or you're on the side of the victims once
9:42
you see it and therefore much of our mental energy goes into not seeing
9:48
genocides my thesis in this lecture about the war
9:54
in Ukraine and the question of genocide is that this war has been a genocidal war from the beginning that was
10:01
announced as a genocidal war that has been prosecuted by as a genocidal war
10:07
and indeed today as I speak to you right now it is being prosecuted as a genocidal War
10:14
I'm going to structure this talk around the objections to this thesis because as
10:19
I've just said the easier thing to do is not to see so what I'd like to do is
10:25
address five of the ways that we tend to avoid seeing and as I do that make the
10:31
case that what is happening is genocide and along the way I'll be speaking to that somehow very simple but
10:38
nevertheless evasive question what is the word genocide actually mean
10:44
so the first objection to saying that what is happening in Ukraine is genocide is to say
10:51
but there are other crimes as well and that is of course true I agree
10:57
um the great Philippe Sands speaks of the quartet of War of aggression war
11:03
crimes crimes against humanity and genocide all of which are legally distinct Concepts
11:09
I agree that it is possible to characterize the events in Ukraine in other ways I agree with Philippe Sands
11:16
that war of aggression is probably the easiest to prosecute but the fact that
11:22
something is the easiest to prosecute doesn't exclude the reality of other kinds of violations there is also
11:29
genocide going on which leads me to the second objection which one very often hears to the thesis
11:36
that what is happening in Ukraine now is genocide the second objection is that we
11:41
can't prosecute um the there no one has jurisdiction there's no venue we'll never capture the
11:48
perpetrators we can't prosecute it strikes me though that that's a that's an evasion that's a way of not
11:54
seeing what is happening obviously you would care very much to know that there
12:00
is a murderer loose in your neighborhood and that would be different than there is a manslaughter in the second degree
12:06
loose in your so what might seem to be a simple legal distinction uh actually
12:12
captures a very important difference whether we describe this as genocide now is a description of what is happening
12:19
it's not just the the it's not just laying the foundations for some kind of future prosecution
12:27
it also has to do with how we will remember this later because it's the sad truth as those of you who studied in
12:33
this field know that most genocides are forgotten and the reason why they were forgotten is that they were never noted
12:38
in the first place so if you don't note that a genocide is happening in the first place you're asking a lot of
12:44
future generations to remember it to record it to evaluate it later on
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the third objection and again I'm hoping to crowd out all possible questions so that there will
12:56
simply be silence at the end of this lecture the third possible objection is
13:02
that this doesn't feel like genocide that when I say genocide there's a kind
13:07
of Elemental objection that this doesn't this doesn't feel like a genocide
13:13
um and it rarely does from the outside it rarely does I think
13:19
almost never does it feel like genocide from the outside uh when when I was in
13:26
Ukraine a month ago I was in a a school building an elementary school building in a
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little village called yahidne in Cherno blast north of Kiev where the Russians
13:39
had occupied for about a month before being driven out in March and in this
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school building on the ground floor which the Russian soldiers had used as their local base there was their
13:50
graffiti left behind and their graffiti said among other things ukrainians it was a slang term for
13:56
ukrainians but ukrainians are devils ukrainians are Satan that's the ground
14:02
floor in the basement of this school or I should say former school because after what happened there will never be used
14:09
as a school again in the basement of of this former School of this school building all of the inhabitants of the
14:16
village every man woman and child was held for a month without regular access to food or water or hygiene or toilets
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and those conditions many people died and during that time a number of people
14:30
were executed so when I was in that building looking at the drawings of the
14:36
children's left on children left on the wall looking at the notations that the adults made of the people who had been
14:42
shot and the people who had died from exhaustion from that perspective it did feel more like genocide and I'm gonna
14:50
I'm gonna submit that if we're talking about feelings we might want to privilege that perspective over over the
14:56
one that we have from the outside more broadly if you're Ukrainian you're being
15:02
told daily that you do not exist as a people that you have no right to exist as a people
15:08
ukrainians have been deported in on the scale of the millions four mil according
15:13
to the Russian's own boasts 4 million ukrainians have been deported from the territory of Ukraine they've been killed
15:20
on the scale of hundreds of thousands their children have been kidnapped on the scale of at least the tens of
15:25
thousands their water and their energy supplies are deliberately being destroyed but that's there
15:31
that's not that's not here and what I'm trying to say in response to this objection is that it's that
15:37
varied sense of distance that very lack of solidarity which is an
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integral element of genocide itself that feeling that somehow this isn't genocide
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can actually be part of the genocide it's a way in which it's impossible to
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be a bystander right if you choose not to see something that's happening you are taking part you are you are taking
16:00
part but that feeling I know it's a pervasive feeling it takes many forms the feeling that
16:06
we're not sure maybe it's complicated maybe the perpetrator is actually the
16:13
victim who knows time will tell maybe our own consciences aren't perfectly
16:18
clean maybe it can't be happening while we ignore it because we're not the sort of
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people who would ignore it while it's happening that kind of circular reasoning is very
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powerful we couldn't possibly be bystanders and therefore it's not a genocide is the way
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that we very often think it can't be a genocide because it
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doesn't feel to us like a genocide and we're not the kind of people who would be bystanders but we are of course
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we are of course we are the kind of people who would be bystanders and it's by this very logic
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that we become the bystanders so genocide's a test it's a legal term but it's also a human
17:03
test my part here is to make the case as the historian who's honored to help open
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this major to make the legal case that this term genocide is actually describes
17:14
the crime that's being committed my task is to show that a genocidal War has been underway for eight months that the
17:21
experiences of ukrainians plus the intentions of Russians equal a genocide
17:27
and then we can ask about ourselves the fourth objection would be to say
17:33
would be to ask but are the Deeds genocidal are the Deeds genocidal are
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what Russians are doing in Ukraine does that actually amount to a genocide and
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here we run up against a dilemma which those of you who work in this field will be very familiar with namely the
17:55
difference between vernacular understandings of genocide and legal understandings of genocide
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in the vernacular the word genocide is often used to mean they killed every
18:06
single person but that's not what the word genocide means legally
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um and if by the way if genocide means they killed every single person uh that word wouldn't have much application I
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mean even the Holocaust doesn't come close to they killed every single person so if if um if the the definition of
18:29
genocide and now I'm going to do the boring thing which is indispensable of reading to you
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a couple of paragraphs of law out loud um they're short genocide means
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according to the 1948 convention which codified Rafael limpkin's word in international law it means the following
18:45
actions number one killing members of the group
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by the way genocide is met if any of the following crimes have been committed okay so the first one is killing members
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of the group this has obviously happened the war itself the bombing from the sky the missiles
19:06
and the drones directed at civilians in mariupole alone it looks like more than 100 000 civilians were killed in
19:14
one city alone the executions everywhere that Russia occupied territory the death pits which
19:20
are found again and again in small and medium-sized places that the Russians occupied
19:26
the targeted killings of people regarded as being active in Ukrainian Civil Society
19:32
the filtration camps in which people regarded as politically active or simply men of a certain age are taken out and
19:39
killed all of these things amount to killing members of a group
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second genocidal crime in the law I'm quoting again causing serious bodily or mental harm to
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members of the group here one could mention systematic torture
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everywhere that the Russians occupy and is deoccupied the ukrainians find
20:02
torture chambers torture is an absolutely ordinary wet part of the Russian regime in Russia and used far
20:10
more frequently in the occupied territories of Ukraine this has been true by the way since 2014 in the
20:16
occupied territories of Ukraine it's just now that territories that are being de-occupied and the actual physical
20:22
evidence can be can be recovered the bombings of Hospitals and Clinics and schools also cause serious bodily or
20:30
mental harm to members of the group I would also say that deportation or to
20:36
use a term we sometimes use ethnic cleansing is a form of bodily or mental harm and I'd like to emphasize the scale
20:42
of these deportations according to claims that the Russians themselves make regularly about 4 million people have
20:51
been deported four million Ukrainian citizens have been deported from Ukraine that is about 10 percent of the total
20:58
population of the country if you'd like to imagine the scale of that imagine that all of New England
21:05
all of New York State all of Pennsylvania have been entirely
21:11
physically depopulated stripped clean of every single person
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then you have a sense of the scale the deportations in Ukraine that's the percentage ten percent
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so I think that's obviously met the third Criterion of genocide is a crime
21:30
is deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical
21:36
destruction in whole or in part again this is obviously the case the
21:43
deliberate destruction of whole cities The Campaign which is unfolding right
21:48
now to deny ukrainians access to water and electricity over the winter those
21:54
are the conditions of life and again Russian propagandists Russian
22:00
politicians make no secret about this they boast that this is what they are
22:05
doing they say it openly the fourth Criterion the fourth example of a genocidal crime imposing measures
22:12
intended to prevent births within the group the genocide conviction Convention of
22:19
1948 does not explicitly mention rape but I would maintain that rape is an
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example of bodily or mental harm as above in the campaign of systematic rape
22:31
inside Ukraine carried out by Russian soldiers in the voices of those Russian
22:36
soldiers we often find a specific political overtone or specific genocidal
22:42
purpose that after the trauma of rape Ukrainian women would not wish to raise
22:48
Ukrainian children would never wish to Bear children imposing measures intended to prevent
22:54
births within the group also applies to the filtration camps and the deportation in the filtration camps and the
23:01
deportation that follows the Russians are screening for fertile women and children
23:06
they are sending the fertile women and children preponderantly to Russia scattering them deep into Russia with
23:14
the idea that this will prevent the birth of Ukrainian children but it will allow the birth of Russian children
23:22
that is quite literally genocide according to this Criterion the fifth is
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and I quote again forcibly transferring Children of the group to another group
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hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian children have been deported to the Russian Federation during this war for
23:41
adoption by individual Russian families spread across the vast territory of the Russian Federation so that they can
23:47
never form a Ukrainian Community again the New York Times referred to Children recently as the booty of War which I
23:54
believe is correct Russia has been boasting about kidnapping Ukrainian children and
24:00
assimilating them from the beginning of the war this has been an openly declared goal of the war
24:06
as I am speaking to you children are being deported from Herson oblast as as
24:11
Russia withdraws from her song thousands of children children are being deported right now
24:18
objection so I hope I've made a case that all of the crimes of genocide the sub
24:24
crimes of genocide are taking place and to remind you only one of them need to be taking place for this to be genocide
24:30
but all of them are taking place the fifth objection would be what about
24:35
intention genocide is about intention and that's true
24:41
the language of the convention again to quote is the act must be committed with
24:46
intent to destroy in whole or in part in National ethnical racial or religious group as such
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here we find an opportunity to look away because we
25:00
can say how do we know about intention
25:06
we can never get inside someone else's mind so how can we be a hundred percent
25:11
sure about intention that's what we say when we're pushed when the when the evidence of the
25:18
crimes is indisputable we move to saying but how can we be sure about intention
25:24
and this is where a lot of the conversation about genocide is right now how can we know about intention
25:32
but of course if we took this view of intention that intention requires my looking inside your mind
25:38
no law no law involving for example murder or a number of other crimes that
25:44
we prosecute every day would be possible we make we make all the time in everyday
25:50
jurisprudence and everyday trials we make judgments about intention and we do it without telepathy all the time I
25:58
think there's a reason why we applied the telepathy standard to genocide and not to other crimes which is that we
26:04
would prefer to think that it's not genocide we would prefer to think that a genocide is not happening as we look
26:11
away if the telepathy standard were the right standard then the 1948 genocide
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convention would of course be meaningless there would be no sense in having a law forbidding genocide if
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intention really meant that you have to make mental contact with someone else
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I'll talk more and this will be the rest of the talk in fact I'll talk more about how as a historian we do establish
26:35
intention around Mass crimes around mass murders but here I want to make I want
26:41
to I want to note another way that people deal with intention or try to resist intention people will say
26:47
there is no piece of paper where the leader of the country specifically confesses to the detailed intention to
26:55
carry out exactly the crime that has taken place right there's no there's no piece of paper which proves it and
27:01
that's true there's not there never is
27:06
there isn't one for the Holocaust there's no order from Hitler where he says this is such and such exactly
27:12
should happen from the Jews but there are all kinds of other pieces of evidence
27:17
which using basic historical or legal judgment we can I think quite reasonably
27:23
establish that Hitler had this sort of intention that many other people did too
27:29
the case I want to make in the rest of this talk is the pro is that the problem is not that we lack
27:36
evidence of intention I think if anything the problem is that
27:41
we are overwhelmed by the evidence of intention and that what happens is that
27:48
as we hear more and more evidence of intention some of which I've already supplied you with as we hear more and
27:55
more of it what we do is we ratchet up the standard for what would actually qualify as intention right that's the
28:02
Temptation the more the more we hear about Russian intentions the more we say
28:08
well I just got used to that and so now I want something even more shocking right
28:14
to prove that it was genocidal
28:21
they should not exist at all we should execute them by firing squad
28:28
we will kill one million we will kill 5 million we will obliterate them all
28:35
we will drown the children in the Raging River we will throw the children into burning wooden huts
28:42
you might have thought these quotations were from some distant historical case
28:49
they're all from Russian State television in the last few days Russian
28:55
State television is controlled directly by the president of the Russian
29:00
Federation there are thousands of similar statements made to tens of
29:07
millions of Russians on a regular basis on media that they and we know is
29:13
controlled personally by the president of the Russian Federation as I say the
29:19
problem is not the lack of intent it's the super abundance of evidence of genocidal intent which makes us raise
29:26
the standard and that becomes another way of looking away
29:34
what I want to do rather than bombard you with more quotations of this kind of
29:39
which there is in fact a kind of unending Supply is to take a different
29:45
tack I want to give you nine examples of how a historian would evaluate intention
29:53
I could just for the rest of my time read a list of statements that are similar to the one that I just read but
29:58
rather than doing that I want to respond to the challenge that I've set which is how do you actually evaluate intent how
30:04
could you become comfortable with saying that someone intended to do something different sorts of people judges
30:11
psychologists and so on would do this in different ways I'm going to do it as a historian who has written about Mass
30:17
killing so the nine classifications that I would choose
30:23
the nine ways of thinking about the language that's been used and seeing it
30:28
and understanding this genocidal that I propose are going to be number one
30:34
um and it's going to be an Earnest undergraduate indeed who writes these all down and no doubt you will get extra
30:39
credit if you do number one I can promise that because I don't teach here
30:47
um number one Colonial number two apologist number three
30:54
dehumanizing number four narcissistic number five escalatory
31:01
number six metaphysical number seven fascist number eight replacement and number nine
31:09
exceptionalist let me try to make sense of this Colonial language
31:16
much of historical genocide is associated with the phenomenon of European and other colonialism
31:23
the language that Putin has used since 2011 about Ukraine has specifically
31:28
invoked the category of civilization the central category of colonialism
31:35
in for the last 10 years but with greater intensity in the last two or so Putin has has made the claim that Russia
31:43
of course exists as a state and Nation but Ukraine of course does not exist as
31:48
a state of State a nation that is the absolutely predictable normal way that
31:54
European Colonial Powers referred to the political and social groups that they encounter
32:00
the power of the Imperial stance allows you to say who exists and who
32:06
doesn't exist it also allows you to declare always and never so the Russian language which far too
32:13
many people take on and still use to the effect that Crimea was always Russia
32:20
or that Ukraine and Russia were always together is an example of this sort of
32:26
Imperial usage with these these always is imply Nevers
32:34
if Ukraine was always together with Russia then we can dismiss not only the ukrainians and their their
32:39
self-conscious political history which actually goes back hundreds of years but we can dismiss anything that that
32:45
doesn't that seems to challenge a Russian narrative if Crimea were always Russia then we can forget about the 600
32:52
years in which there was a different state in Crimea which by the way is longer than the United States has lasted
32:57
or any Russian entity has lasted we can dismiss that we can forget entirely about the indigenous people of the
33:03
Crimean Peninsula the Crimean tatars who were dispersed in the late 18th century when Russia absorbed For the First Time
33:09
The Peninsula and who were forcibly ethnically cleansed every single one of them in the spring of 1944 under Stalin
33:16
if Crimea and Russia were always together then we can just forget about those people upon whom what we would Now
33:22
call genocide was very often perpetrated which leads me to the second point or
33:27
the second kind of classification which is apology or apology apologism where
33:34
your attitude towards a specific event in the past reveals your specific intent
33:40
to change the future what do I mean the example of neo-nazis will be familiar I'm sure to many people what do
33:45
neo-nazis often say about the Holocaust they often say about the Holocaust that it didn't happen what do they mean when
33:53
they say the Holocaust didn't happen they mean they would like for it to happen again that is the meaning of that
34:00
when you deny a specific crime that people with whom you identify carried out in the past you are affirming that
34:06
crime and the victims always understand that the victims never get that one wrong right or the intended victims so
34:14
in in this war Russia Begins the war by reaffirming a memory law which makes
34:21
a crime in Russia to recall that the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany were allies in 1939.
34:27
um thereby exporting any possible naziness to other people during the course of the war
34:34
um Russia has destroyed monuments to the halodomor which is the mass political
34:40
famine in Ukraine of 1932 and 1933. the way that the Russians discussed that
34:47
political famine while taking down the monuments is very interesting because what they say is there was no intention there
34:53
it was just nature there was a famine maybe there were some administrative mistakes
34:59
and during the very days that they take down the monuments they are also deliberately trying to destroy Ukrainian
35:06
water supply and Ukrainian power supply and of course once you do that anything that happens afterwards it's just nature
35:13
it's just nature there was no intention there it was just nature taking its course just like it did in 1932 and 1933
35:20
when four million ukrainians starved to death right so the way that you talk
35:25
about specific mass killings in the past is also a revelatory of specific
35:32
intentions in the present the third kind of language that helps us
35:37
to identify intent could be called dehumanizing language and there's a very specific way in which
35:44
Putin claims that ukrainians don't exist so the colonial bit is they're not there they're not a state they're not a nation
35:50
but there's a very specific way and it's going to be familiar I think to Scholars of the Holocaust that Putin talks about
35:56
ukrainians not existing they don't exist because the people who claim to be
36:02
ukrainians are not really from here they're not really attached to the land
36:09
they are alienated from the soil the people who call themselves ukrainians
36:14
who mistakenly believe themselves to be ukrainians and it's a mistake because there's no such thing as Ukraine or
36:19
ukrainians these people have been seduced by habsburgs or Germans or poles
36:28
or the European Union or the Americans or the Jews they've been seduced by some
36:35
Outsider and that is where the sense of ukrainian-ness comes from they misunderstand themselves they have false
36:41
consciousness they don't know who they are they have ideas which come from the
36:48
outside and that makes them very dangerous no there is a there is an echo here of
36:56
Hitler's version of the Jews which is that they don't they're not attached to the land they come from outside they
37:03
don't have a real Homeland they don't belong here and as with the logic of the
37:08
Jews so with the logic of the ukrainians as Putin sees them where do they belong then
37:14
where do they belong they belong nowhere they belong nowhere
37:20
and this kind of logic where you say that the people I'm talking about only
37:25
exist because of an alien threat that is the source of their existence the source
37:31
of their existence is the Habsburg polish German EU American Jewish whatever it might be foreign threat the
37:37
only there they are only instantiate themselves as as a foreign threat
37:43
um that means that we have to destroy the top level of society and that was in
37:49
fact the Russian war plan the Russian war plan in the very beginning was genocidal specifically in
37:55
the intent to of killing and rounding up the elite ukrainians the people who were
38:01
thought to be the ones who made who who ran everything and the idea of course was that there were not that many of
38:06
these people and it would be relatively easy to do right this is what Putin meant when he talked about
38:12
de-ukreanization that we can just wipe clear the top of society and then the rest of the happy masses
38:19
who do know who they are and who are attached to the land and so on they will remember that their Russians and
38:24
everything will spring back into a natural reality this is what Russian
38:29
propaganda said at the time STI which is a very popular official tabloid published accidentally
38:37
um not long after the war started a long essay about about the Russian Victory
38:42
it was a tech texts which had been prepared on the assumption that Russia would win the war in three days an
38:47
assumption which was widely shared not just in Moscow
38:52
um and what what this text which was accidentally published said is that we have destroyed the top level the aliens
38:58
the elites and the happy Ukrainian masses who were attached to the land or joyfully joining this larger Russian
39:04
state right the genocidal logic was spelled out absolutely absolutely clearly
39:10
the fourth Criterion the fourth way to interpret some of this language is what I would call the the narcissistic
39:19
um I would call it the gerardian but that's really obscure um the what I mean by the narcissistic
39:25
is you don't know who you are until you look at someone else so it's
39:33
all genocide is all about you and it's all about your need for self definition
39:38
and this may seem rather harsh but it is quite possible to Define yourself in
39:44
opposition to others and perpetrating a genocide is a way of defining yourself
39:51
when when Putin says that he's carrying out de-ukreanization or denotification or
39:58
desatonization which I'll I'll return to that later it's a fruitful term
40:04
um what he is saying is that we Russians exist insofar as we're carrying out this
40:11
project of correcting some other people or destroying some other people in none
40:16
of these terms and indeed in none of this war can one find the language about what Russia
40:23
is there's been a lot of head waving and like hand wranging about what is Ukraine
40:29
I think there are some pretty easy answers to that but what's really in doubt during this
40:35
war on the basis of official Russian statements is what is Russia
40:41
what's the Russian future what are Russian purposes during this war the definition of Russia has been narrowed
40:48
by the Russian leadership itself to the project of destroying Ukraine
40:54
so this is what I mean by the narcissism that we need the genocide is necessary because it teaches us who we are and you
41:02
can't take it away from us for that reason this is of course also what Scholars of
41:07
fascism would call A A politics of us and them and I'm going to return to that theme we know who we are when we destroy
41:14
someone else when we name the enemy as Carl Schmidt put it politics beat Carl
41:19
Schmidt the most famous and the most talented Nazi legal theorist politics begins when we name the enemy we can
41:27
name him Satan we can name him Nazi it doesn't really matter we name the other in some firm way and then we aim to
41:34
destroy the other and that's how politics begins if you're the leading Nazi legal theorist that's how politics begins and
41:41
that's not an idle reference because the the 1948 genocide convention was designed to
41:49
Anchor and restrengthen another kind of legal tradition right the Nazi legal
41:55
tradition was very real and very powerful and very persuasive in its context and in its time and the
42:00
convention that we're talking about from 1948 just a few years after the war was meant to do something entirely different
42:07
the fifth kind of of contextual argument of contextualization is what I would
42:13
call the the the escalatory and again this will be familiar to
42:18
Scholars of the Holocaust and to others the when when Hitler in late 1941 and
42:24
early 1942 made a whole cluster of statements about the necessity of Exterminating all of the Jews of
42:31
resolving the Jewish question once and for all the overall context was the defeat the the coming defeat of the
42:37
Vermont and in particular the alliance between the British the Americans and the Soviets which Hitler argued could
42:45
only be the work of the Jews it's so improbable how could the capitalists the Communists Wall Street Fleet Street the Kremlin how
42:52
could they all be together it's because of the Jews says Hitler there is there is something slightly
42:58
similar going on in the way that Russian officials describe Ukraine
43:05
we we weren't able to defeat them right away and what does that mean it confirms what
43:11
we said before it just proves that these ukrainians are agents of international Powers because look the international
43:18
Powers have hastened to help them and that only proves that they're not really ukrainians but agents of international
43:25
powers and therefore we are all the more correct in seeking to destroy them
43:32
there's another escalatory logic which goes like this we thought in the beginning we could win this war by killing the top level of
43:39
Ukrainian Society it turns out that there are more of these self-conscious ukrainians than we
43:44
thought that does not lead us to question our initial assumption
43:50
instead it simply means that we have to kill more ukrainians and that by the way is what Pavel gubarov the soldier that I
43:57
quoted earlier specifically meant when he said we'll kill one million we'll kill 5 million
44:04
we'll obliterate them all what he meant was the more people there are who continue to say they're
44:10
ukrainians the more of them we will have to kill so there are more than you think but you
44:16
don't adjust your assumptions you just continue to kill or you kill more people
44:22
these assumptions and here I'm going to get into some of the deeper parts of the argument the assumptions are and this is
44:27
my sixth way of interpreting the assumptions are metaphysical that reality is not really what it seems
44:36
to be um I mean we've already gone pretty far with this with the idea that Ukraine isn't a state and Ukraine is not a
44:42
nation but there is a kind of alternative reality which not everyone can see and again here you find some interesting
44:48
Nazi themes like the idea that Jews spread mental illness all right the Jews
44:55
are the cause of mental of mental illness a frequent argument in Russian propaganda is that the ukrainians are
45:01
Russians who are mentally ill um and can only be cured of this mental
45:07
illness by the application of of violence um they do not know who they are which
45:13
of course is an imperial claim if I say you do not know who you are right I'm asserting my my power to Define Who You
45:20
Are but alongside the mental illness idea there's there's a related idea which has
45:26
a quasi-religious source and that is the idea that the ukrainians are possessed
45:32
by Sate now I say that and some of you chuckle um but this is actually a fairly
45:39
mainstream argument um gubarov who I quoted before who was
45:45
who appeared by the way in front of millions and millions of people saying this when he said we'll kill one million
45:50
five million obliterate them all the justification that he gave was that the
45:55
ukrainians are possessed by Satan and that is the reason why they don't
46:00
know their Russians and so we can try to exercise Satan but if we fail we then
46:07
have no choice but to kill them that's what that's what he said you
46:12
might think this is some kind of outlier as an argument but it's not it's actually rather mainstream
46:19
I admit it didn't fit into all those arguments about how Putin is really a rational technocrat that we heard for a
46:24
long time but in Putin's own discussions about Ukraine for 10 years
46:30
there has been this idea that Russia and Ukraine were United by God
46:37
and therefore anyone who challenges this connection must be on the other side
46:44
Putin said when he visited Kyo for the last time in 2013 that Ukraine and Russia were connected as a matter of
46:51
God's will in his historical discussions of Ukraine I hesitate to use the word historical
46:57
but in his discussions of the Ukrainian past he repeatedly makes the argument
47:02
that Russia and Ukraine must be together forever because of a baptism which took
47:07
place in the year 988. now as a historian this pains me and it forces me
47:13
into long explanations about how in the year 988 there weren't really modern Nations and the person who was baptized
47:20
maybe the person who was baptized was a Scandinavian warlord who was from a clan
47:26
that was fresh off a career in slave trading and so on and so forth but I don't want to be forced into that now
47:31
the point that I want to make about this is slightly different which is that this the appeal to baptism as a ritual of
47:39
cleansing which determines who is always right forever is what is what matters
47:46
here the idea is that it's not that Russians go to church which by the way statistically speaking they don't
47:52
whereas statistically speaking ukrainians do which is like the 75th irony in all of this
47:58
um the the the the point is that when you make this kind of Claim about Russia
48:03
and Associate it with eternal Purity what you're saying is that the other side is Satanist and when I say what
48:10
you're saying I'm not I'm not I'm not extracting this logic myself this is deep in the thinking of the most
48:17
important Russian Christian fascist thinker a man called divanilin who Putin has been citing regularly for more than
48:24
a decade who he cited most recently on September 30th during his speech about
48:30
annexation it is deep in Russian media culture um solovil who's perhaps the most
48:36
important television propagandist a couple of weeks ago at the end of his program said what are we fighting against we're fighting against Satanism
48:45
um a member of the security Council of Russia which is the highest organ of the Russian State reported on in toss of all
48:53
places and those of you who are old Soviet hands and remember what toss used to be you know this will be all the more
48:58
extraordinary but toss reported um yesterday I think it was that a member of the security Council of Russia
49:05
has has assigned um has defined the task of the Russian army in Ukraine as
49:10
desatonization desatonization
49:15
um the same or the same description of the war was echoed by ramzan kadirov who is the the leader of chechnya in Russia
49:22
and one of the most important political figures in Russia who also said that the problem in Ukraine is Satanism
49:29
um and followed that up with the claim that all of the Ukrainian cities have to be destroyed
49:35
so that's the metaphysic and the metaphysic there's a word for this metaphysic which is a familiar word
49:41
that is a that is a fascist metaphysic so one doesn't have to have fascism to
49:46
have genocide there can be genocide without fascism but part of the interpretive context
49:52
here is I'm afraid fascism um those of you who work on Russia or on
49:58
fascism or on the Holocaust or on the Jews will of course know perfectly well what the reference to Satan is all about
50:05
and who is meant in that reference to Satan um specifically in the tradition of
50:11
Russian anti-Semitism but also in in in um in in deschtoma and in all visual
50:19
Nazi propaganda the association of Satan with the Jew is front and center
50:25
um to say that our our mission is desatonization in describing a country whose president is Jewish is a resonance
50:33
which no one at least in that part of the world is going to miss
50:38
um but this this metaphysic is also fascist in a deeper way which speaks to
50:45
a tradition of Christian fascism which is um interesting intellectually it
50:50
appears in Romania it also appears in in in Russia and in this in this tradition which as
50:56
I've already said Putin reads and and cites the idea is that the world has
51:02
been fragmented the world is spoiled right
51:07
and there's only one way to heal this and what does spoiled mean spoiled means there are facts
51:14
and there are values and you can't bring everything together into one beautiful whole right
51:20
Russia's mission as the only unspoiled country is to bring the world back to a kind of
51:27
totality this is what this fascist tradition says and what this means in practice and
51:33
you'll see immediately the relevance for Russian practice and especially propaganda in this what this means in practice is that no matter what Russia
51:39
seems to be doing it's good or at least forgivable because it's part of this mission to restore the
51:46
entire world right another thing that which is which Miss which this which this means is that since there's no such
51:52
thing as true it's fine to lie right and so this this post this thing about
51:57
Russia Today which we describe I think perfectly correctly as post-modern um this idea the weaponization of the
52:04
idea that there is no truth actually has another origin which is not post-modern at all
52:09
um which is which is this fascist view that that there is there is no truth to begin with and therefore if you're lying
52:15
in the service of Russia what you're doing is actually good and I'll repeat something I said earlier because I think it's important in this
52:22
kind of argument Russia is always innocent right it's not just that Russia is Forgiven Russia is always innocent
52:28
because Russia is the only hope for the restoration of the world and once you believe that then a whole lot of other
52:34
things start to fall into place number eight is replacement Theory
52:41
so replacement theory is I mentioned this because it's a present day Theory um which is very well known in the in
52:48
the far right in this country and elsewhere President Putin is a replacement theorist he worries aloud and often that
52:55
his race is going to be overwhelmed by the numbers of non-russians and non-orthodox and so on
53:00
um in the in the telegram channels of the mercenary group Wagner Wagner is
53:06
named Wagner by the way because the person who named it thinks that thought that Hitler's favorite composer was Wagner but at this point the talk you
53:12
will not be surprised by that um the um the in the telegram channels of the Wagner mercenaries replacement
53:19
Theory talk is ubiquitous in the practice of this war there is in
53:25
fact an attempt to undo what fascists call replacement
53:30
it is not just as I said before that a Russian war aim is the kidnapping amas
53:36
of fertile Ukrainian women and Ukrainian children who can be assimilated into Russia
53:42
right that is of course to undo the notion that there aren't enough Russians
53:47
by taking white people who you can call Russian it is also the case simultaneously that
53:54
Russia in hugely disproportionate numbers sends the young men of its own indigenous groups from the Caucasus and
54:01
from Asia to die in Ukraine so the attempt to undo what they see as replacement goes in both directions and
54:09
you could also point out that the genocidal intent here is not directed only at ukrainians if the young men from
54:15
these what are already often very small groups are being sent to die in disproportionate numbers this will
54:21
affect the future of those groups specifically I mean all these cases are sad but one that I find specifically sad
54:27
is the case of the Crimean tatars who were targeted for complete ethnic cleansing under Stalin
54:33
after 1991 many of them made their way back or rather the children the grandchildren made their way back to
54:39
what was then Ukrainian Crimea Crimea was then invaded by Russia in 2014 and the Crimean tatars lost all of
54:47
the rights they enjoyed in the Ukrainian State and were suffered to and were subject to specific forms of Oppression
54:52
which now after this invasion in 2022 include being mobilized to go and die in
54:57
Ukraine right so the the specific attack on the indigenous males of the
55:03
non-russian nationalities I think is also an example of the of the operationalism of operationalization of
55:09
replacement Theory number nine and here I'm I'm coming to enclose is the idea of
55:17
exceptionalism that the rules don't apply to us
55:22
so uh that you might say that this is a genocide but who made the rules anyway
55:31
that's a quotation from Mr Putin's speech of September 30th
55:36
who made the rules anyway who made those rules the rules do not
55:42
apply to Russia because Russia is a millennial civilization that is also a
55:47
quotation from that speech now this kind of talk is consistent with
55:55
the Nazi legal Theory which I referred to earlier which says that law is not
56:00
about Universal rules um law oh this is a different point same theorist Carl Schmidt
56:07
Carl Schmidt says power begins from the ability to make an exception right he who can make an
56:15
exception is he who rules says Carl Schmidt so what is Putin doing when he stands up in September 30th and says
56:21
what are these rules anyway and who made them and they don't apply to us because that we're a millennial civilization
56:28
he's trying to make an exception and that kind of exceptionalism opens the
56:33
way for the perpetration of genocide it's also Imperial it's also fascistic fascistic it's also narcissistic but
56:40
it's but it's it's exceptionalism because the genocide convention is of course a rule
56:46
so in conclusion what I want to say I mean first of all I hope that I've made the case that both parts of the genocide
56:53
convention are should be seen as applying here that the we can see the intention not because we can see into
57:00
somebody's mind because we can't not because there's a confessional letter from the ruler which there isn't and
57:05
there never has been never will be but because with the help of historical and other forms of interpretation we can
57:11
make reasonable arguments about what is actually intended I hope also that I've made the case that
57:16
the facts on the ground in Ukraine correspond to all of the forums of genocidal crimes as defined in the
57:23
convention if we are resisting all of this um I I suspect that it's because there's
57:30
just too much evidence and that we have become jaded or one
57:36
final thought if we are resisting this it might be because we're saying to ourselves at some level well
57:43
it's not the Holocaust isn't it it's not it's not the Holocaust and of course it isn't but I think it's
57:51
very important as we speak about in sequence the Holocaust genocide and human rights
57:58
to think of the Holocaust not as a tool of forgetting but as a tool of remembrance not as a
58:05
way of dismissing other events but as a way of helping to see other events as they take place
58:11
if we place the Holocaust outside of History by saying that it's Unique or
58:17
special then what we're doing is we're trying to demonstrate our own virtue
58:24
we're virtuous because we we say that the Holocaust is outside of History but that's the opposite of virtuous
58:30
because once we say the Holocaust is outside of History what we're really doing is we're saying nothing's like it
58:37
there's no genocide going on right now and therefore I'm not responsible and in that way in a few quick
58:45
psychologically appealing bits of reasoning um we we find ourselves ignoring the
58:51
genocides that happen before our eyes history is meant I think to help us with this to resist these kinds of
58:56
Temptations history is the search for patterns it's a search for the telling detail the search for self-awareness
59:04
it's the knowledge that allows us to see or not see and then once we see then we know that we're doing
59:11
one way or another on one side or another we're doing like the Holocaust the category of
59:17
genocide can offer us ways out we can say
59:23
surely not now surely not here surely not on my watch
59:29
surely the intention is not clear surely the actions are insufficient
59:34
but in this case everything is absolutely clear and sufficient and has been from the
59:40
beginning All That Remains Is Us and what we do next
59:50
they should not exist at all we should execute them by firing squad
59:55
we will drive the children into the Raging River we will throw the children into burning wooden huts
1:00:01
we will kill one million we will kill 5 million we will obliterate them all
1:00:07
thank you [Applause]
1:00:42
thank you I'm sure there are a lot of questions after such a stimulating talk so again
1:00:48
if you have a question you're more than welcome to ask it there are pieces of paper index cards going around that will
1:00:55
help us to collect the questions and then I'm happy to Repose them for you to
1:01:01
Professor Snyder so um if you have anything you'd like to share please take a moment there's a
1:01:06
couple of ushers and so forth going around to see some questions up in the air here be happy to collect them and
1:01:13
then and then pose them for you and maybe in the interim I'll ask a
1:01:19
question or two uh just to get us started uh had a lot of thoughts and really felt very stimulated by what you
1:01:25
presented here um I have I have to confess some historians questions which maybe might
1:01:32
take you into that down that pathway that you didn't the weeds you were trying to avoid but
1:01:38
we do have a number of students here who are students of History both in Imperial
1:01:44
Russia and also in the history of the Soviet Union and one thing that I that
1:01:49
almost anyone paying attention noticed of course is the way that history is being leveraged and weaponized
1:01:57
in order to justify this war of course as you said you hesitate to use the word
1:02:03
history because it is very selective it's relying on historical Amnesia in
1:02:09
order to Rally support for this war but I wonder just to get us started if you might talk a little bit about two of the
1:02:17
larger narratives that are being leveraged one is the sort of Russian World uruzuki Mir concept and then as
1:02:25
the second is the mythology of the Great Patriotic War and maybe more specifically to some of the themes you
1:02:31
were raising here uh one of I think you said 77 ironies or 76 this might be the
1:02:37
78th the relationship between desatanization and denotsification in
1:02:43
the in the discourse that's being leveraged as a justification for the war maybe I'll just start with that and
1:02:49
we'll we'll take some of your questions um foreign
1:02:57
thank you for that and I'm I'm really happy to talk about the history um the the or the the relationship
1:03:03
between the history and the political use of the past my my own feeling about
1:03:09
this is that we have to make sure we say something about the history before we say what other people are doing with it
1:03:15
because if we don't then we run the risk that every all everyone remembers is what other people are doing with it it
1:03:21
actually takes a lot of work like I had these conversations with a colleague that I really admired called Tony jutt
1:03:27
and we did a book together um which was a talking book and one of the chapters was about history and memory and Tony referred to history as
1:03:35
the weak sister and there's something in that that you know history generally gets defeated by memory and we're we
1:03:42
takes a lot of work like the kind of work that I was trying to do today to get to to get out from under the kinds
1:03:48
of psychological appeals and simplifications that political memory memory makes so without with that long
1:03:54
prologue um let me I'll start with the second world War so the the the myth the the
1:04:02
the the the the the story of the second World War in Russia Today
1:04:08
is largely a result of a cult of the great Fatherland War as it's called
1:04:14
which was created in began in late 60s but really in the 1970s under Leonid
1:04:20
Brezhnev which is an important move in the history of the Soviet Union because it shifted the promise of the Soviet
1:04:27
Union from the future to the Past the the communism was a promise of a
1:04:32
transformation in the future but as after the staliness transformation was complete and
1:04:38
socialism didn't arrive and you know Harmony was not achieved and an economic growth slowed down and social
1:04:44
mobilization slowed down as my teacher Tom Simons once taught me in that situation bresnov I think very
1:04:52
intelligently pivoted to the past and the second world war and at a time when
1:04:57
of course the event itself was already a quarter Century or more in the past a quote was created in which
1:05:05
the Soviets or the Russians were innocent and Victorious which is a
1:05:12
wonderful combination right innocent and Victorious and maybe Victorious because
1:05:17
innocent or maybe innocent because Victorious but innocent and Victorious
1:05:22
and this was very this worked in the Soviet Union under communism because it
1:05:28
allowed it allowed Soviet leaders to blur Nazi Germany into the larger concept of fascism and fascism into the
1:05:34
larger concept of the West and therefore NATO and the Americans and so on could be the same kind of Western enemy that
1:05:40
the Germans were in 1941. but it also began this pattern and I'm glad you
1:05:46
asked this question because it's a very important it's very important to what's happening now it began this pattern of saying that everything that Russians did
1:05:52
during the second world war was fine hence the memory law today which
1:05:58
criminalizes talking about the molotov rib and Trope act because of course the second world war as it actually began in
1:06:04
Europe in 1939 began with a Soviet German Alliance and it's not really very
1:06:10
clear how it could have begun without that Soviet German Alliance but the
1:06:15
problem with the Soviet German Alliance of course is that it really calls into question the idea that Russians or Soviets were always innocent the entire
1:06:22
time and that innocence and the righteousness of struggle is so very important now that innocence and
1:06:27
righteousness has to be taken as an absolute Axiom because then it allows you to invade
1:06:35
Ukraine and say that all you're doing is replaying the second world war right which is one of the things that they're
1:06:41
saying they're saying that you so when they say I'm getting into the denotification but when they say we're invading Ukraine and denotifying what
1:06:49
they're doing is they're saying we're replaying the second world war and because we're always the good guys
1:06:55
the other side must be the bad guys and therefore they must be the Nazis and
1:07:01
no this is not an empirical claim it's not really about how many you know it's
1:07:07
like people in the west work really hard to say okay look there were in fact you know the Ukrainian far right got 1.5
1:07:13
percent of the elections and that must be the people the Russians are talking about they must be really concerned about the Russians must really be
1:07:19
concerned about azov they have this deep concern about fascism no it's not an empirical claim at all it's an us them
1:07:26
claim we are always innocent therefore they are the Nazis and this is important that's actually really important because
1:07:32
people get all caught up on the idea that actually Russia might be concerned about there being Nazis no they're not
1:07:38
concerned about there be Nazis in the world if they were there wouldn't be so many Nazis in Russia what they're concerned about is a politics of us and
1:07:45
them right and that's a serious point they're an awful lot of Nazis fighting on the Russian side right now they're
1:07:52
concerned about a politics of us and them in which they are permanently innocent the other side is permanently guilty and the politics of Us and Them
1:07:58
is itself fascist but when they when they say when they make the them the
1:08:04
Nazis we get confused for days months weeks years right like that move of
1:08:11
saying the them is the Nazis because we try to act in good faith and let's listen to both sides and maybe they
1:08:17
really are concerned about the Nazis and like let's think about this for a long time right that that confuses the whole
1:08:22
issue of what they're really doing which is they're taking from this traditional idea of innocence and the politics of us and them I'm going to stop there because
1:08:28
I talk for too long and I know there are a lot of questions there are indeed a lot of questions so thank you for that I appreciate it um very much
1:08:36
um especially the the distinction you started off with um there are quite a few questions I'm just sorting through some of them so
1:08:41
that I sort of remove a couple of the duplicates but maybe I'll just start uh with this one which
1:08:48
um you already touched on a bit but would be is a request for elaboration and that is sort of what is at stake
1:08:54
historically culturally and legally enabling in labeling Russian action as
1:08:59
genocide in other words what will the label allow and what is not already allowed
1:09:05
so I have to admit that my like my aims here are really simple
1:09:11
I don't I don't like people saying that it's not genocide because we can't prosecute it that doesn't make any sense
1:09:17
to me it seems to me to be a Dodge I mean a crime can be committed and the fact that you can't prosecute it doesn't
1:09:23
mean that it's not a crime and if it's a crime I mean if the crime is like shoplifting some apricots okay but if
1:09:30
the crime is genocide then the fact that we can't prosecute it doesn't mean that we shouldn't be
1:09:35
interested in it so I really I don't I don't like where we are in this discussion because where we are in the
1:09:41
discussion is basically yeah it looks like genocide but we can't prosecute it
1:09:47
because we're you know we're not going to occupy Moscow um you know there isn't jurisdiction so
1:09:52
therefore let's not talk about genocide I don't like that I think that Muddy's the issue of what's actually happening
1:09:58
in the world and the the second so so my my purpose is just to take genocide here
1:10:03
as a descriptive concept and argue that it is genocide um what is at stake I'm I all I want is
1:10:10
a is a richer understanding of the situation because I think genocide is a is a word that functions in society and
1:10:16
in politics and when we deny that it's genocide because we can't prosecute it or slightly more sophisticatedly we
1:10:23
denies genocide because we say we can't be sure about the intent I think that that denial or that hedging is moving us
1:10:30
away from seeing what's actually happening so for for me the stakes are let's see what's actually happening as I
1:10:36
said in the talk I also think it's very important to to name things by name while they're happening because you can't remember what you never saw in the
1:10:44
first place and whether or not this can be prosecuted or not later on I think this kind of discussion will help get
1:10:50
people to think about how we should be reacting in other ways because after all prosecution you know that's not how that
1:10:56
that's prosecution is not the only way to stop a genocide right one another way is to help the victim
1:11:03
help the victim give weapons
1:11:09
sorry there's some of the first two we already didn't hear me so no it's a serious point though
1:11:14
another way to react to an ongoing genocide if you can is to help the victim and one of the things which is
1:11:20
unusual about the present situation is that helping the victim is actually possible that isn't always possible but
1:11:26
it is possible in this case yes and we had a number of questions uh
1:11:32
from from folks in the room about what what personally can be done to help both
1:11:38
what can be done by American citizens and then an additional question asking you if you could give a critique a
1:11:45
critique rather of the present American response oh I mean as far as Citizens go
1:11:56
it's we're we're in this I think weirdly luxurious position
1:12:01
if we recognize what's going on we can spend 15 seconds
1:12:06
on the internet and do something about it um that in that sense we're in a very
1:12:12
privileged position helping other victims of other ongoing genocides past and present was not this easy but right
1:12:19
now there are a lot of ukrainians who are going to have trouble with heating over the winter soldiers and civilians
1:12:24
we can go on the internet we can go to to razom r-a-z-o-n or one of any other many ngos
1:12:31
and we can give a hundred dollars and we can give tents or sweaters or gloves
1:12:37
that's meaningful um it's we're actually in a very privileged situation where we can all do
1:12:43
something which is to give some a little tiny bit of our wealth to what is in fact an incredibly poor country that's
1:12:50
by the way a point which is very often forgotten a lot of folks look at Ukraine and they say well that's Europe and
1:12:55
they're white people and therefore this must be a rich country but it's not it's actually I mean respectfully to the
1:13:01
ukrainians here it's not a rich country it's a country it's it's a very small economy the GDP per capita is about the
1:13:08
same as Algeria um and so in giving what might seem to you to be a small amount of help you can actually make a considerable difference
1:13:15
so give money um there are all kinds of organized ways to to do this you can do it through
1:13:20
razon um if you look on my sub stack page there are like there are a number of times I'll write another one because of
1:13:27
this question where I list ways you can give money on my Twitter feed I announced like some of the ways that you can give money and as Citizens we can
1:13:34
talk about the moral Stakes of this which is part of why I'm giving this kind of talk we can talk about the moral
1:13:39
Stakes of this instead of all pretending to be geopoliticians um and all caring about Putin's like
1:13:45
what's inside Putin's mind which I find to be a strange honestly a strange object of interest but it's kind of the
1:13:51
American way like maybe his feelings are hurt um we could we could uh
1:13:56
their feelings are always hurt that's what it means to be a tyrant you're very sensitive
1:14:03
no it's true like everyone always asks like how can we make how can we make men emotionally sensitive and the answer is
1:14:08
you just give them all the power and suddenly they become incredibly sensitive to pretty much everything
1:14:14
um and so and then we get caught up in this fascination with the Tyrant like oh wow how is he feeling today and like oh
1:14:20
maybe we should do something to make him feel better and how about an off ramp or you know maybe some flowers
1:14:26
um or maybe let's agree a little bit that ukrainians don't exist right it's all dangerous that way of
1:14:32
thinking um so so so so we can talk about the moral Stakes of this we can and we can
1:14:38
we can give money and we can tell our elected representatives that we think the
1:14:43
Ukrainian Army should be helped so that this is working in quickly because that's that's the way that that is the
1:14:48
op I mean sometimes there are a lot of folks especially on the left who don't you know don't like to see that it might
1:14:54
be as simple as winning a war but where ukrainians deoccupy territory the torture stops and the deportation stops
1:15:01
in the execution stop where they deoccupy territory and our country is in a position to help them deoccupy
1:15:07
territory and if I can just add two for those of you who are interested in helping we do
1:15:13
have a number of initiatives here at bu which are organized currently through the center on this for the study of
1:15:19
Europe so if you go to that webpage as well you can see a variety of ways to
1:15:24
donate to help out we've as a community here organized to send tourniquets to
1:15:30
send other supplies to send money to provide housing to connect with Scholars and students who are refugees there's a
1:15:37
number of resources there so I just wanted to put in a plug for some local efforts very apropos of what you were
1:15:43
just saying Professor Snyder in terms of sort of the American approach we have a related sort of follow-up question
1:15:50
um which is as follows as Americans how do we recognize Putin's evil without falling into very comfortable and
1:15:57
familiar Cold War binaryism do you see a Way Beyond yeah I mean I think genocide's always
1:16:05
bad and I think invading countries without provocation is always bad
1:16:11
so I think it was wrong for America to invade Iraq
1:16:18
I don't see the logical issue here I mean I think if we take a standard principle and then we just apply it
1:16:25
consistently we don't actually have problems so I don't I really
1:16:31
I I mean I take the point because I you know I spoke about exceptionalism at the end and like we are the capital of
1:16:37
exceptionalism like we have so much exceptionalism we try to export it to everybody else um and we have our own Imperial Wars and
1:16:44
our own Imperial traditions and we have our own under investigated history of genocidal Wars in Latin America I think
1:16:50
the answer is that like if you care about these things in principle like if you care about imperialism in principle and you care about genocide in principle
1:16:56
then you always care about them and you don't say well because America did it therefore it's okay I'm not saying that
1:17:02
that's the questioner's view I'm just saying that's the way that that's the argument often goes that that like
1:17:08
Russia you know sure Russia might be bombing an orphanage but look at you know look at Vietnam yeah you know one
1:17:14
should look at Vietnam and one should say well that was bad and this is also bad and we can say so because we have
1:17:20
principles and that's why I kind of like that's why I keep returning to the word ethics and that's why you know I'm
1:17:25
attracted to the genocide convention because it's not about The Who and the whom it's it's about it's about laying out principles which then we can apply
1:17:31
to specific situations so I actually think I mean this is I'm going to be hopeful now I actually think this this
1:17:37
Russian war is an opportunity for us to get away from um the to get away from the American Us
1:17:44
and Them because the look it's not us it's the ukrainians
1:17:49
right we're just helping a little bit and it's us with the Europeans and others the Australians the Japanese it's
1:17:57
us with many others helping the ukrainians and to be clear we didn't
1:18:02
think that the ukrainians were on our side until eight months ago because none of us had ever heard of them I mean except for like the Specialists and so
1:18:09
on but if you'd ask Americans and you know a year ago whether Ukraine was going to be at the center of our
1:18:15
attention or like we were no I mean the Ukraine Ukraine has been discovered by the United States here this is my
1:18:22
hopeful side it's been discovered by the United States because of basic issues of decency it's not because Americans had
1:18:29
some kind of long-standing you know attachment to Ukraine or even like thought that Ukraine was some kind of
1:18:35
strategic marker I mean sure there are some Americans who think that but when I you know when when I go to my
1:18:40
neighborhood in New Haven and I see the Republicans who have the Ukrainian flags and the Democrats who have the Ukrainian
1:18:46
Flags it's it's not because they knew anything about Ukraine a year ago they didn't
1:18:53
it's because in both cases they think something has happened which is indecent right and and that's that's kind of what
1:19:00
you build on right you build on the sense that this was indecent like that this this is something that is some root level you wouldn't want to have happen
1:19:07
and then sure you can apply that that sense of decency to things in America too you can apply it to American mass
1:19:13
incarceration you can apply it to a lot of things but it's the sense that something has gone very wrong which
1:19:18
motivates I think American Assistance or the American attitude towards towards you crying so that's that's how I see
1:19:24
that question yes and answering that you preempted a couple of questions we got about
1:19:29
um about Iraq and Afghanistan um which are important questions but I will I will skip asking them since you
1:19:36
already addressed them there are a few questions I have to deal with um post-soviet space and looking at a
1:19:43
pattern asking you to talk about a pattern of Putin's aggressive policies
1:19:48
in the in the former Soviet space with regard to former Soviet republics so one
1:19:54
of the questions apropos of your opening about history is a practice of seeing
1:19:59
patterns and Discerning patterns the question is can you parse a little bit the relationship between some of Putin's
1:20:06
earlier acts of aggression and Invasion vis-a-vis former Soviet republics on the border so whether Georgia or Kyrgyzstan
1:20:13
other places chechnya and and Ukraine and what you see is really the key
1:20:18
similarities and key differences and then the second question related to that is to what extent do the effects of
1:20:26
um sorry let me see if I got this question right
1:20:32
to what extent is the effect of this what effect does this war have rather on
1:20:37
other post-soviet nations that are also run through autocratic style States
1:20:44
um so Belarus is a particular example that's given here Etc all right I'm just going to kind of
1:20:49
skate across the question I'm sorry I'm having a little trouble with the handwriting even though I'm a historian I should be able to tackle it but anyway
1:20:55
please so on the first question let me just make two points I think that there is a
1:21:02
trajectory here which includes places that are not in the post-soviet world I think Syria is very important I don't
1:21:08
think you can really understand Ukraine without Syria without what the what it's not just that the Russians are doing
1:21:13
many of the same things in Ukraine that they did in Syria and by the way it was very often syrians who in February and
1:21:19
March were some of the early pattern recognizers of what was going on um it's it's also that the the impunity
1:21:27
of the Russian actions in Syria I think were one of the one of the things that made them think that Ukraine was going
1:21:33
to be possible and that was a misjudgment in many ways but I think Syria is an important like maybe the most important or the second most
1:21:40
important where the most important would be the first Ukraine invasion of 2014.
1:21:45
so we don't have to look elsewhere in the Soviet space if I think that if if if you know Western if if we had been
1:21:52
less confused in 2014 and it's a whole other lecture about why we were confused in 2014 but if we were less confused in
1:21:59
2014 and had reacted somewhat like we're reacting now then there wouldn't have been a
1:22:05
2022 so so the fact that Putin got away with invading Ukraine D and he did I
1:22:10
mean there were some sanctions and so on but he got he got away with violating you know annexing territory invading the
1:22:16
neighboring country and Annex the most fundamentally International Norms were violated and he has basically got away with it I think that's that in Syria are
1:22:24
the two most important examples there is an escalating trajectory which includes also um hybrid war against or cyber war
1:22:31
against Estonia and the intervention in Georgia but those would be the two points that I would I would emphasize also the impunity of the cyber attacks
1:22:38
against the United States in 2016. I think that probably also plays a certain role here I think January 6 plays a
1:22:44
certain role um that is to say after that I think he was pretty confident that one more crisis in the U.S will
1:22:51
have had it or the Biden Administration will crack you know just a little just knock the bideness ration a little bit and it will and it will crack so I think
1:22:57
there's a there's a trajectory but it also involves things beyond the Soviet space and the second question was oh let
1:23:03
me just talk about Belarus Belarus is really interesting and I think Ukrainian leaders are are making a mistake in the
1:23:09
way that they talk about Belarus if it were not for the fact that that there that there had been Mass opposition to
1:23:16
lukashenko two years ago it would be much more likely that the BL Russian army would be intervening in Ukraine now
1:23:22
and I think Ukrainian leaders are not taking this officially into account and are not distinguishing clearly enough
1:23:28
between the yellow Russian leadership and the blo Russian people um I think that I I think that if this
1:23:34
war goes the way I think it's going to go which is that Russia is going to lose that may that may present an opportunity
1:23:41
for political change in Belarus as well I think that I think that these events
1:23:46
of the last few years Belarus Ukraine Russia are all tied together and the way that it ends up I mean I think chain you
1:23:52
know key of Minsk in Moscow are very close right now in the Senate causally close that the outcome of this war will
1:23:59
affect Moscow and Minsk and not just the territory of of Ukraine
1:24:04
thank you and then we we got a couple of questions um asking um is war essentially genocide and maybe
1:24:11
I'll read the wording of one of these questions um as an introduction if genocide is
1:24:16
committed when any member of a particular group is killed or even harmed with the intent to destroy even a
1:24:22
part of that group wouldn't that mean that nearly every act of violence should be considered genocidal with respect for
1:24:28
this to the scale of the Ukrainian case specifically would this quote water down the term why are we applying the term
1:24:35
genocide to Ukraine and not to all other acts what is accomplished by colonists a genocide
1:24:41
yeah I mean I think I think that the point is well taken that genocide applies to more things than we think it
1:24:47
does um but you know that there are clear and less clear cases recently clear cases
1:24:53
would involve the rohingya the yazidi you know it happened very recently perhaps not noted Perhaps Perhaps
1:24:58
already forgotten um I I I agree with that I agree and you know to some extent at least with the
1:25:04
drift of the question that there are more cases of genocide going around than than in general we would like to think
1:25:09
and that there's a certain problem with you know as I say this as a historian
1:25:14
the Holocaust there's a certain problem with with the Holocaust and genocide as a pairing because then we ask is it not
1:25:21
it's not it's not the Holocaust therefore maybe it's not genocide and then we can then rush to the Other Extreme and say well okay well then
1:25:27
maybe Everything is Everything is genocide um if if we if we if we go from this if we drop this standard that that doesn't
1:25:34
have to be like the Holocaust well then maybe it's anything I think the intention to destroy a group in whole or
1:25:40
in part is a is a is a grander sort of standard than just than violence
1:25:45
happening to people because there has to be the intention so a war can certainly be fought without the intention of
1:25:52
destroying a civilian population in whole or in part that's why I spent a lot of time on intentionality here
1:25:57
because again with intentionality you can go two ways you can say as the questioner does you can say well what about any violence maybe that's bad you
1:26:04
can also say what about we need to have telepathy and the truth that like the standard has to be somewhere in the
1:26:10
middle and I was trying to generate that these kind of the standard that could be somewhere where in the middle between any violence right maybe any violence
1:26:16
would be genocide but there are Wars that are prosecuted without the intention of destroying another group that does that does in fact happen
1:26:23
routinely so um I'm against War too and War like War
1:26:29
itself almost always does more harm to civilians than is anticipated or than is than is remembered I take that point but
1:26:35
not every war involves an intention so I did a lot of work trying to show the intention and I think it actually does I
1:26:40
think it does require a lot of work like I wouldn't want to go all the way to the other side and say that every you know every invasion is is definitionally
1:26:47
genocidal terrific um we have so many questions but I'm being told just time for one
1:26:53
more so I'm going to actually let you choose I'll post two questions that are both quick and you can put you on the
1:26:58
spot and deciding which one you'd like to answer um so one of the questions is about the role that the Orthodox Church is playing
1:27:05
you spoke to about religion um to a degree during your talk but specific question about the role of the Orthodox
1:27:10
church and the leveraging of the church's institutional history Office of the patriarch in particular
1:27:16
um and then this the second question is in your opinion is there a specific event in the past that triggers Putin
1:27:23
and those before him to eliminate Ukraine uh
1:27:30
so I'm gonna I'm gonna answer both of course um that's what I was secretly hoping put
1:27:36
the pressure on yeah so on the on the so the triggering thing
1:27:42
gets kind for me gets a little gets uncomfortably close to the let's talk about Putin psychology and I I hesitate
1:27:49
to do that because I think we in this country are massively over invested in
1:27:54
Psychology I say this is someone coming from University where the president is is a psychologist so you know hi Peter
1:28:00
um the uh but I think we're massively over investigated over invested in psychology as an explanation and I think
1:28:06
if you follow the coverage of this war I'm gonna now say something very conservative if all the coverage of this
1:28:11
war it's striking how much of it is about what is Putin feeling and what's he going to do on the assumption that
1:28:16
what he's going to do is related to what he's feeling so like both we think we know what he's feeling and we associate action with
1:28:23
with the feeling and that has tended to block out a number of things but one of them is
1:28:29
Battlefield reality so in the commentators on this has got the conservative part in the comment in the
1:28:34
commenting on this war we have really really missed the military historians there are just not enough military historians out there writing in the
1:28:41
world and the ones that have done so in a prominent way like Lawrence Friedman for example who's outstanding they have
1:28:48
tended to say from the beginning I think Lawrence Freeman wrote this wrote a column three or four days in to the war
1:28:53
where he said Ukraine is winning Ukraine is going to win the military historians who don't know anything I mean okay Lori
1:29:00
Friedman knows something about Russia but it's like it doesn't actually require expertise about Russia or
1:29:05
Ukraine or Putin even to look at the battlefield situation and say look we know something about regularities on the
1:29:11
battlefield and this war for these reasons is probably going to go this this way so I've I realize I'm answering
1:29:19
the question but I'm going to just make a pitch for like old-fashioned military history and why we need more of it
1:29:25
because there are still Wars and we need the military historians to talk about the wars they're they're
1:29:32
indispensable okay end of conservative pitch but I'm sure there are like provosts out there who are listening to
1:29:38
this um the um so so so I I think with with
1:29:43
Stalin and Ukraine there was life experience and the life
1:29:48
experience was the failure of the Red Army to defeat Poland in the Polish
1:29:54
Bolshevik war and in particular um some mistakes that Stalin made on the
1:30:00
Ukrainian front of that war and I think in general he lived through the late 19
1:30:05
teens and early 1920s with the realization that Ukraine is real um that's something that a lot of the
1:30:11
Bolsheviks discovered during the so the period of what we think of as the Russian Civil War but which is actually a multi-sided confrontation which was
1:30:18
actually centered in Ukraine they the Bolsheviks understood as a result of that that Ukraine was real and they
1:30:24
responded to that in different ways so I do think in Stalin's life there was a moment of actual encounter with Ukraine
1:30:30
and Putin's life I don't think so in Putin's life I think it's I think it's highly theoretical and um so I depart
1:30:37
from some of my colleagues in that I believe that Putin actually reads books and um I think that you know I think
1:30:43
that's I think he reads archival documents too I think that's highly selected and so on I think he reads I
1:30:48
think he I in fact I'm quite sure that he reads Yvonne Elin and other right-wing Russians and his ideas come
1:30:55
from somewhere right but they don't come from personal experience so I think for him if we have to be psychological it's
1:31:03
more like the non-existence of Ukraine is something he's personally invested in
1:31:08
um and he at this late stage in his tyrannical life you know he doesn't want to be challenged on the things that he's sure are actually true okay on the
1:31:16
Orthodox church it's really really interesting and and this could be a whole lecture like there's a really
1:31:22
interesting history of the Eastern Church and its foundation in key of you
1:31:27
know in the centuries when it was centered in Kiev and then early 18th century it gets it the it's it's for
1:31:34
reasons of power moved to Moscow there's a very interesting sociological story to be told here which I hinted at which is
1:31:40
about Ukrainian Church going so ukrainians actually do go to church um you know
1:31:46
as opposed to other people who like talk about Christianity Ukrainian just as a
1:31:52
matter of like sociological record do go to church and Russians don't which is interesting right um but the in Russian Orthodoxy unlike
1:32:00
Ukrainian or so the church in Ukraine is as many of you will know is plural there are multiple versions of Orthodoxy in
1:32:07
Ukraine plus the Greek Catholics plus some Roman Catholics um plus you know a fair number of
1:32:12
Muslims and Jews but the church in Ukraine is plural and it's not it's not at all closely connected to the state
1:32:18
which means that it's often very hard to understand what's going on um but it's different than in Russia
1:32:23
where the church is not only connected to the state but the church is essentially an arm of the state so
1:32:28
actual Church going versus non-actual Church going pluralism and confusion versus a close connection to to the
1:32:36
state and in in in the rhetoric of all the stuff about Satan I guess I should
1:32:41
mention the as many of you will know what ramzan karyov is obviously a Muslim so this notion that Ukraine is Satan is
1:32:47
coming from both a Christian and a Muslim Direction at the same time I don't mean Christians generally in Muslims generally I just mean that in
1:32:54
the Russian public rhetoric The prominent people talking about this are not all Christians at least one of them is is a Muslim
1:33:00
um but the the Orthodox argument about you know the argument about Satanism
1:33:06
um is is I believe an example of self-worship um this is why I was talking about
1:33:12
Christian fascism because when you when you talk about the other as Satan and yourself that means you are The Exorcist
1:33:19
you are the one who actually has the divine power to carry out through this cleansing act of violence you know the purge that must take place so that the
1:33:26
alien Spirits are dispelled and I know this sounds like exaggerated rhetoric but today I think it was there was
1:33:33
actually an exorcism carried out in the city of the occupied city of mariupole the principle of which was that the The
1:33:39
Satanist spirits of the ukrainians who used to live there have to be purged from the city right so when we ask about
1:33:46
Orthodoxy I mean I'm not going to claim to be enough of a student of this to know where this comes from exactly but a
1:33:52
lot of what is passing for religious practice looks to me to be like a kind of political self-worship where you're
1:33:58
claiming for yourself the position of the internal innocent as a nation and you're claiming for yourself the power
1:34:03
to cleanse to cleanse others and the Orthodox Church takes part in this um I mean they they they they they they
1:34:10
bless the soldiers they bless these missions you know they they talk about Satanism
1:34:16
um so that's about as far as I can go with that they ask God to punish the resistors yes that's true um please join
1:34:22
me in welcome and thanking I'm Professor Snyder for his talk and thank you to all of you for your questions
1:34:28
thank you everyone for coming this has been a wonderful presentation so thank you very much let's have another round
1:34:34
of applause shall we [Applause]