“Genocide is Fascism in Action”: Aron Trainin and Soviet Portrayals of Genocide

ABSTRACT

This article examines the Soviet legal scholar Aron Trainin’s evolving writings on international law. Initially, Trainin formulated aspects of his concept of “crimes against peace” as a sort of Soviet alternative to Raphael Lemkin’s crimes of barbarity and vandalism. Crimes against peace both converged with the larger international movement to outlaw aggressive war, provided a Soviet alternative to proposed international crimes that they believed would threaten Soviet sovereignty, and provided a Soviet response to Lemkin’s proposals to outlaw mass killings. During World War II, Trainin articulated the Nazi extermination of the Jews as “crimes against peaceful civilians,” linking the Nazi atrocities to his concept of crimes against peace. Trainin’s concept of “crimes against peaceful civilians” encompassed the atrocities of the Holocaust while also asserting that the Soviet experience of the war – most notably Soviet sacrifice and suffering – meant that the Soviets should determine how international criminal law punished the war’s perpetrators. After World War II, when it became clear that genocide, rather than “crimes against peace” or “crimes against peaceful civilians,” was becoming the primary concept in international law to understand mass killings, Trainin portrayed the concept of genocide according to the perspective of Soviet propaganda, opposing an international criminal court for genocide, supporting the concept of cultural genocide, and portraying genocide as an inevitable outcome of capitalism. At the same time, Trainin and the Soviets never abandoned his concept of “crimes against peace,” portraying capitalism as inherently bound up with war and genocide. Trainin was the most significant genocide scholar in the Soviet Union, and his work exemplifies both the ways in which Soviet approaches to international law converged with other approaches, and the ways in which the Soviet Union diverged from non-Soviet international law.     

War Dead and the Restoration of Military Cemeteries in Eastern Europe

This article examines the rebuilding of World War II cemeteries and mass graves. It compares the cult of the war dead in Germany, Romania and Russia and analyses examples of restorations of war cemeteries by these countries in Moldova. This reveals how the former war allies and adversaries now collaborate, as well as their attempts to overcome the political and ideological divides of recent decades through the reburial and remembrance of the war dead. The search for the war dead occurred at a time when each of these countries was “coming to terms” with its recent totalitarian past and, at the same time, was looking for recognition in a new international context. The convergence of the private and the political in the remembrance of the dead led at times to reconciliatory discourses and at others to a restatement of the “sacredness” of the past or of exclusivist national ideals.     

Historical Memory in Post-Cold War Europe

This article examines European memory and memory politics. Taking as my starting point the deepening divisions between the “old” and “new” members of the European Union since the 2004 and 2007 enlargements, I investigate whether differences in official memory concerning World War II on the one hand and communism on the other should be regarded as permanent. Using examples from the development of West-European postwar memory-regimes and comparing them to the current state in postcommunist Europe I suggest that with respect to historical memory the two parts of Europe underwent similar developments, crises and debates, thus making eventual convergence and consensus possible. However, there are various factors that complicate progress in this area: postcommunist countries have to contend not only with their wartime history but also with the experience of communism, which latter colours the assessment of the former.     

From Revolution to Dissolution: The Quai d'Orsay,the Banque Russo-Asiatique,and the Chinese Eastern Railway, 1917–1926

This article explores the use made of Christianity during the Second World War and the dilemmas created for the Allies by Stalin's religious record. It is particularly concerned with the way in which Christianity appeared for a while to become a bridge between East and West, with the explicit promise of continued post-war co-operation. However, in the immediate aftermath of the war, Anglo-American policies in particular switched from using Christianity to rehabilitate the adverse image of the Soviet regime to what had been the inter-war policy of using religion to demonise it. Inter-war demonisation held up the Soviet Union as a model not to be emulated. Post-war demonisation pointed to the Soviet Union as an expansionist threat bent on world domination. The article examines Stalin's responses, and Allied perceptions of those responses, to the changes in Western religious policy and propaganda from the Second World War to the emergence of the cold war. The article seeks to show how both sides used religion for political purposes, but that in the final analysis Western reluctance to relinquish what was perhaps its most emotive means of indicting and containing Communism meant that Christianity, instead of becoming a bridge, became a divisive factor that contributed to both the onset of the cold war and public acceptance of it.     

Representations of the Outbreak of World War II in Polish Film, 1945–67: From Partial Recognition to a Component of National Memory

In September 1939, Poland was invaded by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, starting World War II. The war’s end in 1945 marked not the true liberation of the country, but the beginning of a period of Soviet domination that ended only in 1989. As a result, for forty-five years of Polish history, the alliance made by the Hitler with Stalin in 1939 and its tragic consequences for Poland were taboo across society. Polish filmmakers presenting the beginning of World War II were constrained by realities of the Communist state and its own historical narratives. These films reflect what happened to their country in 1939 and highlight the political changes that occurred within Poland under Communist rule, as well as the impact of shifts in the regime itself. The most significant period in this regard was 1945–67, when the outbreak of war was first presented following the end of Stalinism, emerging as a component of national memory both generally and for the Communist authorities.     

Intelligence in the Cold War

This paper asserts that Cold War intelligence was essentially military intelligence. It provides a personal perspective on the UK Defence Intelligence Staff (DIS) and how Cold War intelligence was influenced by the experiences of individuals in the Second World War. It reviews little-studied aspects of the US–UK intelligence relationship, the NATO intelligence dimension, and the British Commanders'-in-Chief Mission to the Soviet Forces in (East) Germany (BRIXMIS), effectively legitimate spies in uniform. It concludes with some reflections on the changes the end of the Cold War brought to the work of the DIS.     

The Archbishop of York and Anglo–American RelationsDuring the Second World War and Early Cold War, 1942–1955

This article addresses the relationship which developed during the Second World War and first decade of Cold War between the Foreign Office and one of Britain's leading Anglican clerics, Cyril Forster Garbett, archbishop of York 1942–55, widely respected as a liberal and the "conscience of the nation." It offers a model case study of relations between church and state by drawing upon state papers as well as upon ecclesiastical ones. It illustrates how religion was a crucial propaganda tool, advocating the defence of Western civilization and Christianity against first the paganism of Nazi Germany and then the atheism of Soviet Russia. Garbett's evolution from a domestic cleric concerned with social deprivation to an ecclesiastic statesman and Cold Warrior, reveals the significance of the religious component in Anglo–American relations. The presentation of the alliance as a crusade bonded together the two nations despite the differing political outlooks of their respective peoples.     

From Partisan Warfare to Memory Battlefields: Two Women's Stories about the Second World War and Its Aftermath in Lithuania

This article explores how women fighters tell their stories in relation to the dominant state narratives about a partisan war. In addition to engaging their individual stories, it explores how they speak, write and act as memory entrepreneurs, creating collective memory about a past that they have experienced instead of allowing others to select actors and events for historical narratives. It argues that memory regimes and gender cultures are intertwined, and that gender cultures are essential in understanding the cultural choices made by memory entrepreneurs in memory making. The article analyses the oral testimonies and written memoirs of two women, Rakhel’ Margolis and Aldona Vilutien? (neé Sabaityt?), who were partisans in Lithuania during the Second World War (Margolis) and its aftermath (Vilutien?) and created the first museums dealing with the Second World War and its legacy in post‐Soviet Lithuania. Read as stories about what it was like to be a woman during a partisan war, the narratives include some common themes: widespread betrayal, the difficult physical conditions that they had to endure as women and the vulnerability that came with these experiences. Read as stories told by memory entrepreneurs, the narratives reveal that the two women acted as mnemonic warriors fighting for competing memory regimes built on opposing gender ideologies.     

Forbidden and sublime forest landscapes: narrated experiences of Latvian national partisan women after World War II

At the beginning of the Cold War, tens of thousands of Baltic people headed for the forests. It was the largest and longest such experience of human and forest interaction in the history of the three Baltic countries. The forest was turned into a political concept and had abruptly become a doubly sensitive zone: to the authorities it was a space of revolt subject to their control; to the locals, the forests were transformed into sites of both resistance and shelter when life was endangered. Based on recorded life story interviews, this article examines how women experienced the changes in their native landscapes after World War II in the occupied Baltic states, and what it meant for them to be labelled “forest outlaws”.     

冷战期间美国文化外交的演变

冷战开始后随着美苏两大阵营的对峙加剧,美国政府通过采取创建新闻署、组建和平队、成立国际交流署等手段,逐步将文化外交融入对外宣传范畴,演变为一种冷战工具,其间政治文化和领袖的国家使命感起到关键作用。这种文化外交在为美国赢得冷战的胜利发挥重要作用的同时,也使其国际信任度和软权力下降。     

德国与中日甲午战争

1894—1895年中日甲午战争的爆发,给正处于外交转型中的德国提出了挑战也带来了机遇,德国一改过去只关注经济利益而避免卷入政治纷争的传统立场,开始介入远东的权力角逐,这也成为德国远东政策的一个重要分水岭。战争初期,德国表面采取超脱的中立姿态,多次拒绝清政府与英、俄等国的调停提议,实质是鼓励或偏袒日本的战争行为。由于担心战争可能对远东利益格局乃至欧洲地缘政治产生不利于德国的变化,且出于帝国主义追求海外殖民地的贪婪和防范东方文明崛起的"欧洲中心主义",在战争后期、中日谈判及"三国干涉还辽"期间,德国大幅度调整政策,积极推动并参与"三国干涉还辽"。尽管很难明确判定哪项动机发挥了决定性作用,但这不影响我们得出"德国是三国干涉还辽的积极推动者与重要参与者"的结论。研究这一案例,有助于认识此时期德国在远东的外交以及在战争中所扮演的角色。     

How Soviet Cold Warriors viewed World War II: the inside story of the 1957 edition of the Big Three correspondence

This article discusses the origins of the 1957 Soviet edition of the correspondence between Stalin, Roosevelt, and Churchill during the Second World War. Using newly available documents from Russian archives it analyses various factors that led to this publication, traces its production process, and highlights the way the Soviet establishment tried to spin the World War II narrative in order to win the Cold War battle to establish the dominant historical narrative. Notwithstanding its Cold War origins, the publication retains its historical value but needs to be reassessed in the light of new sources and historiography.     

Black Stars,Red Stars: anti-colonial constellations in Ryszard Kapuściński’s Cold War reportage

In 1963 the Polish journalist Ryszard Kapu?ciński published Black Stars (Czarne gwiazdy), a collection of reportage essays about the decolonization of Ghana and the Belgian Congo. Far from a neutral observer, Kapu?ciński, like other Socialist Bloc correspondents writing about the national independence movements jolting the continent, sought to build anti-imperialist consensus in his home country. Black Stars is thus foremost a literary document of Cold War Soviet foreign policy. But what one also finds in these works of reportage, I contend, are traces of the desire on the part of certain satellite states to secure for themselves the national autonomy supported by the Soviet Union in the decolonizing world. In this article I show how Black Stars chronicles the formation of unorthodox socialist currents within the politics of Second World-Third World solidarity while otherwise in the service of the official Soviet agenda. In doing so I argue that Kapu?ciński's anti-colonial reportage sheds light not only on the relationship of Postcolonial Studies to the Eastern European experience, but on the relationship of Marxist thought to Postcolonial Theory more broadly.     

From Ostpolitik to ‘frostpolitik’? Merkel,Putin and German foreign policy towards Russia

Germany's relationship with Russia has historically been one of the most crucial in shaping Europe's fate. Despite radical transformation in the nature of European Great Power politics, it continues to be pertinent from the perspective of today's world. Germany's willingness to establish good relations with the Soviet Union in the late 1960s—its emphasis on economic relations and cooperation instead of political disagreements—prepared the ground for the end of the Cold War and German unification twenty years later. Germany's basic policy towards Russia remained broadly unchanged despite German unification and changes in the domestic political coalitions and leadership, sometimes against political expectations. In the European context, Germany's attitude towards Russia created the backbone of EU–Russia relations. During 2012–13, however, the continuity in Germany's policy towards Russia was seen as having come to an end. Political twists came to the fore and the atmosphere was loaded with tensions, made worse by the Ukrainian crisis. This article reviews the recent, alleged changes in Germany's policy towards Russia during the Merkel era. It asks two basic questions: first, whether Germany's policy really has changed and if it has, what are the theoretical tools that give us the best potential understanding of these changes? The article argues that the policy has changed, but not as dramatically as made out by some headlines. Moreover, the article suggests that a key element in analysing the degree of change in Germany's policy towards Russia is neither the external power relations nor domestic politics and related changes in the prevailing interpretation of national interest, though these are important too, but the interaction between the leaders and foreign policy elites.     

Britain,Empire and the Origins of the Cold War Youth Race

The Soviet politicization of international youth during the inter-war and wartime years was identified by British policy-makers as a most serious threat to British imperial power. Asserting the significance of and interplay between colonial youth and imperial ideology in the politics of the cultural Cold War, this article thus examines how the British conceptualized and sought to compete in the Cold War ‘youth race’ between 1945 and 1949. While funding was the most obvious disadvantage, this article argues that Britain’s fatal weakness was its inability to escape the consequences of colonialism, including the tendency to rely on repressive legislation.     

Book reviews

International Relations theory Book reviewed in this articles: The realist tradition and the limits of International Relations. By Michael C. Williams. Ordering international politics: identity, crisis, and representational force. By Janice Bially Mattern. The nature of political theory. By Andrew Vincent. International ethics For all peoples and all nations: Christian churches and human rights. By John Nurser. International law and organization Lawless world: America and the making and breaking of global rules. By Philippe Sands. War law: international law and armed conflict. By Michael Byers. International crimes and the ad hoc tribunals. By Guénaël Mettraux. Foreign relations Russia and the European Union: prospects for a new relationship. By Oksana Antonenko and Kathryn Pinnick. Conflict, security and armed forces The future of war: the re‐enchantment of war in the twenty‐first century. By Christopher Coker. The turbulent decade: confronting the refugee crises of the 1990s. By Sadako Ogata. The UN's role in nation‐building: from the Congo to Iraq. Edited by James Dobbins, Keith Crane, Seth G. Jones, Andrew Rathmell, Brett Steele and Richard Teltschik. The politics of peacekeeping in the post‐Cold War era. Edited by David S. Sorenson and Pia Christina Wood. Energy and environment A world environment organization: solution or threat for effective international environmental governance? Edited by Frank Biermann and Steffen Bauer. History The United States and Germany in the era of the Cold War, 1945‐1968: a handbook, volume I. Edited by Detlef Junker. The United States and Germany in the era of the Cold War, 1968‐1990: a handbook, volume II. Edited by Detlef Junker. The Eden‐Eisenhower correspondence, 1955‐1957. Edited by Peter G. Boyle. Europe Why Europe will run the 21st century. By Mark Leonard. The EU and Turkey: a glittering prize or a millstone? Edited by Michael Lake. The European Union in the wake of eastern enlargement: institutional and policymaking challenges. Edited by Amy C. Verdun and Osvaldo Croci. Republik ohne Kompass: Anmerkungen zur deutschen Aussenpolitik. By Hans‐Peter Schwarz. Germany and the use of force: the evolution of German security policy 1990‐2003. By Kerry Longhurst. Russia and Eurasia Tribal nation: the making of Soviet Turkmenistan. By Adrienne Lynn Edgar. Middle East and North Africa Israel and the Palestinians: Israeli policy options. Edited by Mark A. Heller and Rosemary Hollis. Water, power and politics in the Middle East: the other Israeli‐Palestinian conflict. By Jan Selby. Inheriting Syria: Bashar's trial by fire. By Flynt Leverett. Sub‐Saharan Africa The African state and the AIDS crisis. Edited by Amy S. Patterson. Asia and Pacific Confronting environmental change in East and Southeast Asia: eco‐politics, foreign policy, and sustainable development. Edited by Paul G. Harris. North America What's the matter with Kansas? How conservatives won the heart of America. By Thomas Frank. Latin America and Caribbean And the money kept rolling in (and out): Wall Street, the IMF and the bankrupting of Argentina. By Paul Blustein. Decolonising the Caribbean: Dutch policies in a comparative perspective. By Gert Oostindie and Inge Klinkers.     

‘New Cold War’ or twenty years’ crisis? Russia and international politics

President Vladimir Putin's foreign policy can be characterized as a ‘new realism’, repudiating some of the exaggerated ambitions of Yevgeny Primakov's tenure as foreign minister in the late 1990s while asserting Russia's distinctive identity in world politics. Rather than acting as a classic ‘balancing’ power prescribed by classic realist theory as the response to the hegemonic power of a single state, Russia under Putin tended to ‘bandwagon’ and the country has been a vigorous ‘joiner’. Putin insisted that Russia retains its ‘autonomy’ in international politics while moving away from earlier ideas that Russia could constitute the kernel of an alternative power bloc. However, the opportunity to integrate Russia into the hegemonic international order may have been missed because of what is seen in Moscow as the resolute hostility of groups in the West who continue to pursue Cold War aims of isolating and containing Russia. The Cold War was transcended in an asymmetrical manner, and this has given rise to four major failures: political, strategic, intellectual and cultural. The world faces the danger of the onset of a new era of great power bloc politics, thus restoring a Cold War structure to the international system. With none of the major strategic issues facing the international community at the end of the Cold War yet resolved, we may be facing a new twenty years’ crisis.     

“The Gospel Has Always Been Disturbing”: The Centrality of “God's Will” to the Cold War Political Activism of the Reverends Frank Hartley and Alfred Dickie

Religious faith was pivotal to the personal ideologies and radical political activism of the Reverends Alf Dickie and Frank Hartley, both of whom were prominent in the Australian peace movement from 1949 until the early seventies. This article examines Dickie's and Hartley's self‐identification as prophets in the context of the optimism of the post‐war era and its subsequent retreat as the Cold War altered the political climate. It examines how their post‐war political activism was framed by a devout faith in the existence of an objective “truth” with regard to the Cold War, a “truth” based on a self‐styled notion of the “Will of God”. Further, it argues that suffering was understood by these self‐declared prophets to be inherent to their mission and was thus embraced, when ostensibly visited upon them, as an affirmation of the righteousness of their cause. For Dickie and Hartley, an active association with the radical Left was a natural expression of God's Will.     

The Cold War as history

Jonathan Haslam's Russia's Cold War is the latest effort by a western scholar to synthesize new research and findings on the Soviet role in the Cold War. Citing an array of published Russian archival material, Haslam seeks to resuscitate the traditional western Cold War view that the conflict was the inevitable result of communist expansionism. However, the material cited by Haslam does not support such a conclusion and he ignores conflicting evidence and views. The Cold War was a war of choice not necessity, the result of distorted perceptions and calculations by both sides, aided and abetted by generations of ideologically aligned historians.     

战后国际关系与我国建国初"一边倒"方针的形成

"一边倒"是新中国成立初期独立自主和平外交政策框架中最核心的方针.它的形成与第二次世界大战结束前后的国际关系密切相关.当时的国际关系有两条线索:一是雅尔塔体系的建立;二是冷战的开始与两大阵营的形成.这使中国不能置身局外,中间道路难以行得通,"一边倒"就是在这样一个复杂的国际背景下酝酿形成的.与此同时,国际形势的变化包括两大阵营的出现,也使斯大林不得不重新考虑苏联的远东战略,包括对中共和国民党的态度,这使"一边倒"的出现最终成为可能.