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Amoral Realism or Immoral Obfuscation?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Carol S. Lilly
Carol S. Lilly*
Affiliation:
Department of History, University of Nebraska, Kearney
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Extract

In his article, "Schindler's Fate: Genocide, Ethnic Cleansing, and Population Transfers," Robert Hayden combines comparative history, political commentary, and amoral realism. In the process, he presents a number of arguments with which it is difficult to disagree, but also many that are provocative and, indeed, offensive. Because Hayden makes so many arguments in this piece (both primary, secondary, and parenthetical; explicit and implicit; open and disguised) my critique will not follow the organization of his paper. Rather, it will challenge Hayden's article on three counts: 1) its factual accuracy; 2) its lack of reference to existing literature on the topic; and 3) the logic, validity, and moral consequences of its arguments.

Type
Discussion
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 55 , Issue 4 , Winter 1996 , pp. 749 - 754
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1996

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References

Thanks are due to Pradeep Barua, Melissa Bokovoy, Tom Clark, James German, Charles Hanson, Jill Irvine, and Nick Miller for their comments on earlier versions of this paper.

1. Leo, Kuper, Genocide: Its Political Use in the Twentieth Century (New Haven, 1981)Google Scholar; Robert, Melson, Revolution and Genocide: On the Origins of the Armenian Genocide and the Holocaust (Chicago, 1992)Google Scholar.

2. Kuper, Genocide; Melson, Revolution and Genocide; Helen, Fein, Accounting for Genocide (New York, 1979)Google Scholar; Barbara, Harff, Genocide and Human Rights: International Legal and Political Issues, Monograph Series in World Affairs, vol. 20, bk. 3 (Denver, 1984)Google Scholar; Richard, Arens, ed., Genocide in Paraguay (Philadelphia, 1976)Google Scholar; Donald, Horowitz, Ethnic Groups in Conflict (Berkeley, 1985)Google Scholar; Alfred-Maurice de Zayas, A Terrible Revenge: The Ethnic Cleansing of the East European Germans, 1944–1950 (New York, 1986).Google Scholar

3. There is, of course, a third possibility—although it does not apply to this case— when a government deliberately exaggerates the degree of a crime for its own purposes. However unsavory, such a manipulation of language is still less reprehensible than its opposite.

4. For the most recent and thorough explication of these problems, see Susan Woodward, Balkan Tragedy: Chaos and Dissolution after the Cold War (Washington, D.C., 1995), 199–222. Again, however, Hayden ignores an enormous body of literature differentiating the various types of nations and citizenship, not all of which are equally conducive to ethnic conflict. And again, one wonders whether the lapse is the result of sloppy scholarship or deliberate deception.

5. Hayden's assertion that ethnic cleansing in Bosnia-Herzegovina was no different from the expulsion of Punjabi Hindus from Pakistan in 1947, and by implication that Radovan KaradΖ˘ić is no different than Muhammad Ali Jinnah, is ludicrous, however. Although Jinnah did argue for a separate state for the Muslims in India, he never called for ethnic cleansing, much less carried it out. Indeed, the partitioned Pakistani and Indian armies cooperated closely to try to put a damper on the largely spontaneous massacres. See, for example, Wallbank, T. Walter, ed., The Partition of India: Causes and Responsibilities (Boston, 1966)Google Scholar; Singh, Anita Inder, The Origins of the Partition of India, 1936–47 (Oxford, 1987)Google Scholar; Sherwani, Latif Ahmed, The Partition of India and Mountbatten (Karachi, 1986)Google Scholar; Mushirul, Hasan, ed., India's Partition: Processes, Strategy and Mobilization (Delhi, 1993).Google Scholar

6. Harff, Genocide and Hunan Rights, 7–12.