Fires of Hatred: Ethnic Cleansing in Twentieth-Century Europe by Norman M. s> Naimark (review)

Abstract

750 SEER, 8o, 4, 2002 setsout the RussianTable of Ranksand the thirdsurveysthe historyof AngloRussianrivalryin Persia.There is also an extensive and usefulbibliography. Department ofRussian andSlavonic Studies MALCOLMV.JONES University ofNottingham Naimark,Norman M. FiresofHatred. EthnicCleansing inTwentieth-Century Europe. HarvardUniversity Press,Cambridge, MA, and London, 2001. 248 pp. Notes. Index. Li6.95. AT the beginning of Nato's air campaign in Kosovo in March I999, a White House spokesmanwas askedin one of the innumerablebriefingsgiven during the war if atrocitiesagainst Kosovar Albanians had intensifiedsince the start of the bombing campaign. Could he confirm the reports of summary executions, the separation of men and women, the driving out of civilians from their homes? 'If you look at what is going on', the spokesmanadmitted to assembledjournalists,'you have what appearsto be a textbookdefinitionof ethnic cleansing.' A text book definition?Journalistspresent would have been hard-pressed to find one, even though they had been creditedwith coining the term. None existed. But they all knew what was implied: the mass killings, deportation, rape, internment and intimidation that characterized supposedly 'new-old' ethnic conflicts in the former Yugoslaviaand world-wide in the I99Os. Used extensively,even by historiansinitiallysuspiciousof itsjournalisticorigins,the term was also applied inconsistentlyand arbitrarily often as a euphemism forgenocide, sometimes to describethe mildestformsof persecution. In thisambitious,comparativestudyof ethniccleansing,Norman M. Naimark , Professorof History at StanfordUniversity, seeks to give the term some much needed precision and legitimize its use as a tool for understandingthe extreme forms that state-buildinghas taken in Europe over the last hundred years. Contrary to the 'ancient hatreds' thesis popularized by Robert D. Kaplan and others,Naimarkseesethnic cleansingas a 'profoundlymodern experience' (p. 6) differentiated from religious and ethnic persecutions of previouscenturiesby the existence of a modern(izing)statewith an exclusivist brandof nationalismand an 'impetusto homogenize' (p. 8), an elite willingto carry this out and an infrastructureto back it up. He studies fives cases: the Armenians and Greeks of Anatolia; the Nazi persecution of the Jews; the Soviet deportation of the Chechens-Ingush and the Crimean Tartars; the expulsion of Germans from Poland and Czechoslovakia; and the wars of Yugoslavsuccession. His comparative approach has a three-fold purpose:to establish a typology of ethnic cleansing;to arrive empiricallyat a definition; and 'to underline the fact that ethnic cleansing has a terrifyingpotential for genocide'(p. 15). Naimarkisolatessixkeycharacteristicsof ethniccleansingwhich, to varying degrees, are common to all his case studies. First and foremost, ethnic cleansing involves violence, since people rarelyleave their homes voluntarily and have to be coerced to do so. Secondly, the cover for ethnic cleansing is invariablywar or its aftermath.Warleads to a habituation of killingand also provides the strategic rationale for uprooting populations. Thirdly, ethnic REVIEWS 75I cleansing has a 'totalistic quality' (p. I90), the aim being to remove all members of an alien groupwith few or no exceptions. Fourthly,and linkedto totality,ethnic cleansinginvolvesnot only the physicalremovalof populations but also the eradication of all traces of theirpresence: streetand town names are changed; books and archives burned; churches and monuments demolished . Fifthly, ethnic cleansing involves the widespread expropriation and theft of property of those who have supposedly grown wealthy off the exploitation of the majority.Finally, ethnic cleansing is 'inherentlymisogynistic ' (p. 195).Women are its primarytargetsnot only because they form the overwhelming majority of the civilian population in times of war but also because they are the 'biological core of nationality' (p. I95), which ethnic cleansing, particularlythroughsystematicrape, aimsto strikeat. Naimark arguesthat there is a crucial distinctionbetween ethnic cleansing and genocide, that is, between the intent to remove a population froma given territory and the intent to exterminate it. Yet he acknowledges that the distinction is often blurred when ethnic cleansing is genocidal in its results even if it not in its intent. That is why, Naimark argues, the cases of the Armeniansand theJews are so instructive.They show how easilywhat began as ethnic cleansingcan 'mutate'into genocide which itselfcan be 'asmuch the completion of a contingentprocessas a blueprintforaction' (p. 82). By making it clear from the outset that a distinction between ethnic cleansing and genocide can and should be drawn, Naimark is able to successfully place the destruction of the Jews in a comparative framework without a hint of relativization. Nevertheless, calling the...