he systematically murdered over 20,000,000 innocent people during his 30 year reign.
The definition of genocide is a big massacre that a group of people planned out.
Genocide is by far one of the worst moral crimes. Therefore, it is a disgrace that someone would actually start a genocide. Genocide is sometimes known as a subject of social science. It is the intention to murder people, there’s no way around it. Genocide is all about planning out mass murders and knowing that you are doing it. To conclude, genocides need to be stopped and people should try to get along more rather than trying to be better than the other person.
The term genocide can mean many different things, it just depends on how people view it. When Raphael Lemkin first started his international law, he wasn’t broad enough. Raphael needed to be more broad about the eight stages of genocide so he decided to fix it. Geneva conventions made it an international crime for the murder of POWs. Lemkin decided on -genos because it means race or tribe. Then Lemkin decided to add -cide because it means “killer” or act of “killing”. Therefore, the word genocide was born. In the end, Raphael Lemkin knew what he was doing during the making of the word …show more content…
genocide.
There are eight stages of genocide that this paper will talk about in this paragraph. Genocide classifies people by what they look like and how they act. All cultures have a different way of classifying people. For example, every country tries to promote a common language. Symbolizing means people are getting put into specific groups. Group marking might be outlawed if it’s not supported by many people. Dehumanization is where people can look as taking the spirit out of the other group. Genocides have always been organized and planned out as to what they want to do. Leaders of these plans should always be the first ones killed. Mass murders like genocides should somehow be outlawed. Hate groups are big when it comes to genocides. They are usually put into concentration camps and starved. For example, only certain plans can stop the spread of genocide. The response to denial leads to punishment. They like to blame other people for the things they did. After all, they finally have down the exact meanings of the eight stages of genocide.
To start off, Stalin killed many Ukrainians. Kulaks were the main target group, they were rich farmers who had private land in Ukraine. Kulaks were all about farming and providing everyone with food. Stalin didn’t like that they produced so much food for the people. The Kulaks didn’t have anywhere else to go after Stalin deported them. All of their farmland was in Ukraine, therefore they couldn’t do anything. In the end, many of the Kulak families couldn’t believe what Stalin was doing to their families, and why it was happening to them.
In the beginning, Joseph Stalin had almost a million of his own people executed. Stalin would purge any group or person he thought was a threat. This included fellow party members, rival factions, military leaders, immigrants, and ordinary people. His first targets were fellow communist party members. He liked to go after anyone who was better than him, and anyone who disagreed with his policies. Stalin liked to go after writers, because the writers could use their critical thinking to make people go against him. Tens of millions perished under Stalin. In addition, Stalin didn’t like to have anyone do good things for other people.
For instance, Stalin wanted to kill everyone who was seeking independence from his rule. Stalin came to believe that future insurrection would be led by the Kulaks. There wasn’t any reason for Stalin to hate the Kulaks, he just didn’t like that the Kulaks had their own land. Anyone who wouldn’t follow Stalin’s commands would get deported. Everyone who didn’t participate in the collectivization system got called a kulak. Furthermore, Stalin basically hated anyone who tried to step over him and that was a better person.
In the beginning, Stalin didn’t like that Ukraine’s religion and culture over powered their loyalty to the USSR. Kulaks got classified as rich farmers that own a lot of land, and produce a surplus of food. Kulaks were also classified as a big threat to Stalin because Kulaks help people. Stalin doesn’t like helping people, he wants to kill. Not to mention, Stalin finds a lot of people as a threat to him and his reputation.
For example, Kulaks were farmers that refused to listen. Joseph Stalin never actually symbolized his target groups like Hitler did. He stayed away from symbolizing his to be different. He didn’t believe in marking his people because he knew that everyone else knew who he was targeting. Stalin would only give the people he hated names instead of symbols. As what was talked about before, Stalin named his target group as the kulaks. He hated them and hated that their group produced something better than him. Indeed, it is obvious that Stalin wanted to be different but also get his point across to the people.
Notably, Vladimir Lenin called kulaks many different names that wasn’t called for. Stalin would beat his kids severely. Some nights he would make his son Iasha spend the night on the stairway landing. Joseph Stalin would get beat by his father and then he also beat his kids. He enjoyed seeing them in pain like he was, therefore he didn’t treat them as humans. Once Stalin knew that his father beat him and got away with it, Stalin knew he could do the same. Like kids would say, monkey see monkey do. Stalin dehumanized everyone he didn’t like and thought was a threat. As a result, this might be the reason Stalin got it in his mind to start a genocide in the first place.
All in all, Stalin made sure he didn’t make enough food for people to eat, especially farmers. During Stalin’s reign, terror in Estonia reached a point where there wasn’t any family untouched. Estonia has memory sites for the terror inflicted by the Soviets and Nazis. Stalin demanded quotas of foodstuffs to be shipped to Soviet Union. He did this until there was no more food to feed the Ukrainians. To support Stalin’s five year plan, the Ukrainians had to sell all of the country's wheat. He had to pay for his military buildup, therefore he got all the money from the wheat. Joseph Stalin believed that if he didn’t feed the people, they would just start going on his side so that he would feed them.
Furthermore, the farmers who were higher up and richer were called class enemies. A propaganda campaign was started for the people’s support for Soviet regime. Despite the propaganda, everyone continues to resist with threats, sabotage, and rebellion. Nobody is kept happy because everyone wants all of this to end. People are tired of trying to protect their kids from the disasters that are happening around them. People started to burn their own homes, took back everything they owned, and assassinated Soviet authorities. After all of that, it put them in conflict with the power of Stalin. As everyone can see, the people tried to stop what was happening around them but that just got them more in trouble.
After all, Stalin had some families deported to other countries. It says that Stalin was the soaring of their youth. Therefore, Stalin was trying to teach kids at a young age and get them on his side. Joseph Stalin’s father was brutal and would beat him, this is where he might have gotten his ideas of starting mass riots from. Some people believed that Joseph Stalin was trying to get the youth to step forward and become more like him when they get older.
Overall, Stalin banned trade supplies to many villages so that they would get starved. Vladimir Lenin told his troops to hang one hundred kulaks, the rich, and the bloodsuckers. Joseph would have some of the kulaks’ names released. He would also take away all their crops, and execute the hostages. Generally speaking, Joseph Stalin did not like the Kulaks at all and he would order brutal things to be done to them.
For instance, people cannot speak of the famine and people can get punished with forced labor. Most people who are in a state of anger, are more apt to blame others for mishaps. Even though they know that they are the ones that did it, they automatically come off by blaming someone else. When some people get angry, they tend to seek revenge. Stalin can deny that this wasn’t his plan all along, but everyone knows it was him. Joseph and his father didn’t get along. Not only was that a cause for this genocide, he also got blamed for the failure of the Russian campaign in Poland. He likes to seek revenge, but he also likes to deny anything anyone says. To sum up, Joseph always wanted revenge on everyone who did him bad but he would also deny the fact that he did that.
In the end, Stalin died and couldn’t force any more people to die. After Joseph Stalin died, there wasn’t anyone left that wanted to stand up in his position. Everyone went back to live their own life. At the end of Stalin’s life, his speeches started to get very weak. He started to show some signs of confusion and depression. He would also talk muffled and breathe heavily. The Politburo members went to simply talk to Stalin about the situation. Since Stalin was so frightened about what he did, he thought they were going to arrest him. For example, that right there shows that Joseph Stalin knew exactly what he did and he was scared that he would get arrested for the person he was being.
To begin, Stalin had a plan to kill anyone who wouldn’t listen to him. By the ending of 1933, twenty-five percent of the Ukraine people died. This also sadly included three million kids. In the end, the Kulaks were destroyed as a class. That means an entire village of farmers died due to Joseph Stalin. After Stalin achieved what he wanted to, he decided to let the food supply resume. The Ukrainian people were back to normal once he got what he wanted. Even though Joseph Stalin tried to ruin all of their lives, they still found a way to bounce back after he died.
As a matter of fact, Stalin killed about 56-62 million people. By 1933, an estimated twenty-five thousand people in the Ukraine died everyday. They were dying from lack of food and malnutrition. Most of the troops Stalin had trained to kill everyone, just stopped after Stalin died. Some of his troops also ended up dying, so therefore they didn’t continue killing. Also, Stalin’s troops only became his troops so that they wouldn’t get killed. Therefore, they were going to stop once Stalin died anyways. It’s crazy to think that people were so scared that they just decided to be Stalin’s troops so that they wouldn’t end up getting killed.
The U.S.
tried to warn people that Stalin was starving people and sending them to other countries. The government of the U.S. never acknowledged to the public that they knew anything. The U.S. didn’t even respond in any meaningful way. The U.S. saw it as if we aren’t involved, then we don’t need to get involved and lose troops. The American press denied in front of everyone, that they didn’t get told anything from the Ukrainians. The U.S. didn’t want to have any involvement and if people knew that the U.S. knew, then they would expect the U.S. to do something. All in all, the U.S. didn’t want to get in the middle of a giant genocide that was
happening.
Right when a person is out of their mind and tries to get people on their side, people should know not to trust them. The best way to go is to create societies where the reason it lead to violence is minimized. People could start helping people with their psychological needs. If the mind gets treated then it won’t do anything bad. If people start to develop positive attitudes about life and their surroundings, then none of this would happen. It is all in the mind, the mind gets fixed and there won’t be a problem. Given these points, it’s an easy fix by just getting people the mental help they need.
To conclude, anyone who creates a genocide is not right in their head. Some people thought Stalin was being nice when he didn’t symbolize his enemies. Just because he didn’t mark their skin, doesn’t mean he’s a better person. He still called them kulaks and made them suffer. Each genocide has to go through the eight stages of genocide, otherwise it is not called a genocide. Joseph Stalin had many people he went after. Most people think he just went after the kulaks, but he went after anyone who came off as a threat to him. Once Joseph Stalin died, the genocide died. Nobody stepped forward to take his place once he died. Usually when the person who created the genocide dies, the genocide dies with them. Last but not least, just keep in mind that everyone needs to help stop genocides from happening.