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Amy E. Randall, Anton Weiss-Wendt. The Soviet Union and the Gutting of the UN Genocide Convention., The American Historical Review, Volume 124, Issue 2, April 2019, Pages 632–634, https://doi.org/10.1093/ahr/rhz092
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In his impressively researched book The Soviet Union and the Gutting of the UN Genocide Convention, Anton Weiss-Wendt offers an in-depth account of the drafting of the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, documenting the UN General Assembly’s adoption of it in 1948, its entry into force in 1951, and UN members’ arguments for and against ratification. Although the book focuses on Soviet views regarding the definition of genocide and specific provisions of the draft convention, it provides an important window into how other UN members responded to the Genocide Convention, particularly the United States.
Weiss-Wendt faults the Soviet Union for undermining the scope and efficacy of the international treaty. It opposed the inclusion of political groups alongside national, ethnic, racial or religious groups as targets of genocide—an omission that is widely considered one of the convention’s major limitations. Although Soviet delegates argued that a “scientific definition of genocide” precluded the protection of political groups, who did not have immutable characteristics and were ephemeral, the history of Stalinist mass repression in the 1930s and the postwar Communist takeover of Eastern Europe informed this position (86, 282). Soviet resistance to characterizing property confiscation and forced labor as genocidal acts was also a product of the regime’s deployment of these practices as it forcibly collectivized agriculture, exiled “kulak” peasants to work in “special settlements,” and established the Gulag, an elaborate system of forced labor camps.
Realizing the power of the Genocide Convention in the context of the growing Cold War, Weiss-Wendt argues, Soviet leaders shifted from a defensive to an offensive position, promoting amendments that could lead to genocide charges against colonial powers and the U.S. because of their historical and contemporary practices of racial discrimination and violence. Thus, for example, the USSR’s Ukrainian delegate proposed extending the application of the convention to “non-self-governing” and dependent territories. The Soviet Union also capitalized on the U.S.’s Civil Rights Congress’s publication We Charge Genocide: The Historic Petition to the United Nations for Relief from a Crime of the United States Government against the Negro People (1951), which argued that the “institutionalized oppression and slaughter” of African Americans met the UN definition of genocide, to demonstrate the superiority of communism and the connections between American racism and Nazi antisemitism (235). The unexpected Soviet ratification of the Genocide Convention in 1954 was also a Cold War maneuver. Both superpowers had been vacillating on accession, but when the UN investigation of Soviet forced labor ended with “only a slap on the wrist,” the Soviet Union quickly ratified the treaty in a move of political and moral one-upmanship calculated to embarrass the U.S. and undermine its international legitimacy (274). Communists insisted the U.S. was unwilling to ratify the treaty because of its own genocidal racial violence. And despite there being diverse internal objections in the U.S. to the convention, which Weiss-Wendt examines, he essentially agrees with the Communists’ premise for the U.S.’s unwillingness, stating that “racism was the single most important factor that prevented” American ratification (9).
Notwithstanding the book’s title, Weiss-Wendt discusses how the USSR alone did not gut the Genocide Convention. Instead, he views it as a “casualty” of the Cold War, politicized by both sides (280). Weiss-Wendt explores this in an extremely interesting chapter on the Korean War, and in other sections about how anti-Communist Eastern European émigré organizations and Jewish groups in the U.S. used the convention to denounce Communist, Soviet genocide and to push for American ratification (163). Weiss-Wendt criticizes Raphael Lemkin—who coined the term “genocide” and diligently sought to establish an international treaty against it—for his role in these efforts, characterizing him as opportunistic and misguided in utilizing anti-Communism. Ultimately, Weiss-Wendt argues, both superpowers utilized the convention and genocide discourses in their Cold War rivalry, and they hindered the treaty’s potential as an instrument of international criminal law.
Although Weiss-Wendt’s argument about the role of the two superpowers and the Cold War in “gutting” the Genocide Convention is compelling, his own research suggests that even without this geopolitical reality, UN members would have produced a limited treaty. British and several Latin American delegates, for example, agreed with Soviet delegates that the convention should not extend protection to political groups. Venezuelan delegate Pérez Perozo argued that if included, “defensive action against domestic disorders,” such as crackdowns on political rebellions and insurgent groups, could be classified as genocidal and result in international intervention in domestic affairs (quoted on 98). The omission of the concept of cultural genocide in the convention resulted from colonial powers and some Latin American countries not wanting their own would-be assimilationist practices to be deemed genocidal (86–90). The convention’s failure to include forced deportation as an act of genocide was a product not only of Soviet objections but also of the international community’s ongoing history of condoning this practice. Weiss-Wendt points to the Allied powers’ decision to require the compulsory expulsion of millions of Germans from Eastern Europe at the end of World War II (and could have pointed as well to the internationally approved post–World War I forced population exchanges between Greece and Turkey). The bottom line, as Weiss-Wendt effectively demonstrates, is that UN member states strove to create a legal document that would condemn the crime of genocide but do so in such a way that their historical actions and contemporary behavior could not be deemed genocidal. Concerns about state sovereignty also undermined the convention’s enforcement mechanisms and the establishment of an international court to punish genocide perpetrators.
Scholars of the Soviet Union, the Cold War, and genocide will find The Soviet Union and the Gutting of the UN Genocide Convention quite valuable. It is also an important resource to contemporary activists and policymakers working to prevent genocides and hold perpetrators accountable. Weiss-Wendt’s examination of how geopolitical conflicts and domestic self-interests have limited the efficacy of the Genocide Convention, after all, remains salient today. Even after the end of the Cold War, UN members often resist taking action against genocide for these same reasons. To be sure, there have been some positive developments. After initially failing to recognize the genocides in Bosnia and Rwanda in the 1990s, the UN established the International Criminal Tribunals for the Former Yugoslavia and Rwanda—a major advancement in genocide jurisprudence. Moreover, the ICTR rectified another major omission from the Genocide Convention by acknowledging that rape can be used as an act of genocide. Still, the international community and individual nations have been reluctant to use the label of genocide and take steps to stop it, as the ongoing genocide against the Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar has shown. Significantly, a recent UN report now acknowledges it.
