“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.     

Rhetoric versus reality in the rise of policing in UN peace operations: ‘More blue,less green’?

ABSTRACT

United Nations police (UNPOL) have become increasingly important to operational effectiveness of peace operations. For some time, their contribution to re-establishing the rule of law in conflict-affected states has been seen as a cornerstone for building sustainable peace and enabling mission exit strategies. In a departure from traditional peacekeeping and post-conflict assistance, recent years have seen UN peace operations directed to stabilise countries and protect civilians in the context of on-going violent conflict. As a result, UNPOL have had to undertake a range of expanded tasks, exacerbating long-standing challenges and producing new impediments to their operational effectiveness. At the same time, a ‘pragmatic turn’ is generating increased interest in more police-centric concepts of peacekeeping as a possible alternative to today’s expensive and military-focused peace operations. Drawing on extensive fieldwork in multiple peace operations and at UN headquarters, this article examines the changing roles of UNPOL in a new breed of UN peace operations, identifies the major associated challenges and proposes a series of recommendations for overcoming them. It argues that if police are to respond to unfolding challenges while becoming more central to peacekeeping outcomes, then significant reforms and further research into their impacts will be required.     

‘Memory is the strength of our resistance’: an ‘other politics’ through embodied and material commemoration in the San José Peace Community,Colombia

Scholars have shown how memory is an embodied and spatial practice that potentially generates more just possible futures, and that peace is a politicized and contextually specific process, but how does place-based memory performance actually contribute to social movements’ construction of peace? This article explores massacre commemoration pilgrimages and stones painted with victims’ names in the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó, a group of small-scale farmers living in the war-torn region of Urabá, Colombia. Based on 15 months of ethnographic research in Colombia from 2011 to 2014, including participant observation and 49 interviews, I explore the relationship between these spatially embodied practices and the community’s resistance to forced displacement and peace-building project. I argue that these forms of memorialization cultivate key elements for an autonomist ‘other politics’, including solidarity with allies; mobilizing bodies across space to defend life and land; and ongoing reflection, education and strategic planning that strengthen community cohesion and organization. Integrating scholarship on memory performance, peace geographies, and social movements, I illustrate how the San José de Apartadó Peace Community’s massacre commemorations and stones reject vindictive violence and instead build an alternative, transformative and emancipatory politics through internal and external solidarity.     

The Newcastle Upon Tyne Peace Society (1817–50)

The 1816 foundation of the Society for the Promotion of Permanent and Universal Peace in London was followed by the creation of a number of Auxiliary societies throughout the country. This paper analyses the history of the Newcastle Auxiliary, covering its establishment in 1817, its disaffiliation from the London Society in 1840, and its subsequent re-affiliation in 1850. After an initial period of quietism after their formation, the paper demonstrates how the radical pacifism of the society developed in the 1830s and 1840s, placing their activities in relation to the specificities of Newcastle’s political history, wider transformations in the British peace movement, and the influence of transatlantic networks of American peace advocacy and anti-slavery activism. The local Richardson family of Quakers personified these transformations, even as anarchists such as Joseph Barker represented a militant outer fringe of the society. Ultimately, however, the society struggled to garner wider support in Newcastle, clashing with local Chartists and with the town’s militarist merchants and businessmen in 1848. The paper therefore demonstrates how the Auxiliary societies need to be thought of active, agential organisations which negotiated the contradictions between their pacifist ideologies and the local and regional milieus within which they were enmeshed.     

和战之间--战后中共建国方针之演变(1945年8月-1946年11月)

抗日战争胜利后中共的建国方针实际上经历了以战建国,到和平建国,再到打谈图和,终到弃和就战的过程.从以战建国到和平建国的转变中,美国、苏联的作用不可低估.和平建国方针确立后,中共为之实现付出了真诚而艰辛的努力.     

和平队的历史文化渊源

和平队创建于20世纪60年代肯尼迪政府时期,它是作为一个对外志愿援助机构的面目出现的.之所以在美国出现这样一个援外志愿者组织,除了肯尼迪政府对美国对外政策的调整的现实考虑,更主要是美国具有和平队所提倡的历史文化传统,如美国社会广泛存在的志愿者精神、美国历史上形成的边疆传统和拓荒者精神以及往届政府的政策实践等.     

汪精卫对日求和的政治环境及其思想脉络

汪精卫对于抗战从悲观失望发展为公开主和,有其思想演变的脉络,也有促成其思想演变的国际、国内环境。汪精卫反对国民党采取"远交近攻"的外交战略,不信任英美对中国抗战的援助,并在日本与苏联之间,选择了亲日、反苏。汪不相信国民党能在既反日、又不依附苏联、也得不到英美支持的情况下,建立起一个独立自主的国家。并坚信他的求和主张能在政军两界激起普遍"回响"。这是他不惜离渝而对日求和的根本原因。     

The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Building the Future Palestine

A Palestinian geographer and urban planner discusses one of the territorial challenges that will likely emerge in the process of building a future Palestinian state. More specifically, he outlines how looming population pressures (high density in tandem with rapid natural increase and return of displaced refugees) will require that investments to support economic growth and new construction be organized within a national settlement system based on the existing urban hierarchy. In addition to describing the elements of such a system ("developed urban axis of Palestine"), the paper also covers the effects of public opinion and shifting political alignments within the territories on shaping the conceptualization of a future Palestinian state.