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Issue 4 (57)

“STALINIST GENOCIDE” (?): 1930–1940s ETHNIC DEPORTATIONS IN THE USSR IN THE MODERN FOREIGN HISTORIOGRAPHY
Year	2017	Number	4 (57)
Pages	54-62	Type	scientific article
UDC	94(470) “1930/1949”:930	BBK	63.3(2)614-361+63.1
Authors	Mikhalev Nikolay A.	Topic	RUSSIA IN 20–21ST CENTURIES: SOCIO-DEMOGRAPHIC PROCESSES
Summary	The article studies the modern foreign historiographers’ approaches towards the history of ethnic deportations in the USSR on the eve and during World War II. The subject of the analysis is an attempt to interpret these events as falling under the international law category of “genocide”. It is demonstrated that given the inapplicability of the official definition of the concept of genocide as defined in the 1948 “Convention for the Prevention and Repression of the Crime of Genocide” the Western historians either use it with reservation, or base their opinions on its various ad hoc modifications outside of the text of the Convention. The author also reviewed the critical opinions of the authors focusing on specific historical research of the Stalinist war time deportations. All of them provided sound arguments against labeling these deportations as genocide, and emphasized that any discussions on the subject would inevitably be both ideologically charged and fruitless from the point of view of research. Special attention is given to the opinions of the modern foreign historians on the issue of the applicability of the “genocide” category in retrospective historical research in principle. Even those of the authors who believed its use was “inevitable” for the description and interpretation of the historical events stressed the need of using this concept “wisely and with great care” emphasizing that the term genocide as a formally defined and codified legal category could hardly lend itself to an extensive interpretation. Others noted that establishing whether a particular episode of history met a legal definition should be only a “side effect” of an historian’s study, and not its final goal or basis.
Keywords	USSR, ethnic deportations, World War II, foreign historiography, genocide
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