Today, our inquisitive compatriot, watching international relations and wrangling differently directed political groups within the country, quite often encounters the concept of "genocide". However, such discussions from a constructive exchange of views in the press and on television are regularly turned into a stream of mutual accusations and in an effort to portray the victim of the opposite side of themselves, thereby creating a villainous image for her. And sometimes it is difficult enough to sort out for yourself in fact, but what is genocide? In order to understand this issue, we first need to familiarize ourselves with the relevant UN document, and secondly, to plunge into the history of international relations and consider similar cases that this label hangs on.
Genocide. Definition
For the first time the thesis about the existence of such a phenomenon was raised during the Second World War, as a reaction to the need to give an adequate assessment of German war crimes against civilians. The question of what genocide was, was initiated by the Polish Jew Rafael Lemkin in connection with the large-scale actions of the fascist command for the systematic destruction of six million people of the Jewish population. The main thing here is the very fact of the destruction of the Jewish population on the simple grounds that they are Jews. Thus, we can draw the first conclusion about what genocide is: the destruction of a certain people on the basis of ethnic hostility. Thus, the head of the concentration camp of Auschwitz, Rudolf Goess, was very proud of his innovation, which allowed the Jews to be killed in gas chambers more quickly and in large scale. He came up with the use of pesticide crystals and cyclone B, which caused asthma very quickly.
Officially, the term "genocide" as a crime against humanity was fixed by the UN on December 9, 1948. The Convention, in connection with the question of what genocide is, characterized it as an act aimed at destroying a particular religious, ethnic, national group with the aim of destroying it in whole or in part. In addition to direct murder, the convention equated with genocide the deliberate creation for such a group of unfavorable living conditions that would lead to its destruction, infliction of bodily injuries to certain representatives of an ethnic or religious group, actions aimed at suppressing procreation, and forcibly selecting children from the group.
Genocide. History
In his logic Rafael Lemkin, in addition to the Jewish question, appealed to the existing Armenian issue. It is about the genocide of the Armenian population in the Ottoman Empire of 1915-1923. However, there is a problem, because of which So it's easy to prove the fact of deliberate genocide. What for the Armenian side looks like a deliberate, large-scale destruction of their nation, for the Turks - a just suppression of anti-state riots with the passing destruction of criminal elements. Of course, the figures of the victims are also disputed. The genocide of the Ukrainian people stands apart during the Stalinist collectivization of 1932-33. For some, this is the deliberate destruction of seven million Ukrainians as a peasant nation of proprietors. For others, these are the incidental costs of the punitive apparatus, carried away by the establishment of order.
Conclusion
One way or another, the concept of genocide in our time is becoming extremely popular due to its attractiveness for cementing people's historical memory. It is often possible to meet a statement that the genocide of the Russian people is being carried out. After all, if such statements gain a critical mass of support, they will become a unifying idea for the people, and its distributor will be in a very favorable position.