Professor Khatchatur Pilikian and the Minimization of Communist Genocide
Reading the Socialist History Society's newsletter for June 2014: I was struck by a short article in it by Professor Khatchatur Pilikian entitled 'Problem with the terms: From Holocaust to Genocide'. In it Pilikian claims that:
'Denying the historical truth of genocide or complaisantly accepting it diminishes our humanity.' (1)
I cannot think of a more idiotic statement by a professional historian for the simple reason that it is a key part in the training of any academic historian to understand that history is not an objective discipline and that every argument we make or event we credit is potentially wrong or simply didn't happen. This is the process of historical revisionism: over time as we know more or new intellectual fashions come in we change our minds about what 'official history' should say.
Claiming that historical genocides are some exempt from this process of historical revisionism is frankly absurd for the simple reason that every event, no matter how cherished or strongly believed it maybe at the present time, could in fact not have happened or be interpreted in such a way that it completely at odds with the evidence.
Lets be frank: we know of numerous 'genocides' that were credited as happening and are known doubted to have ever happened. A great example are the brutal witch-hunts of Nicholas Remy where he credits himself with having killed 900 men, women and children in Alcase: however, as Norman Cohn has shown, this simply doesn't stack up against the surviving records and it seems likely that Remy largely made up his genocide of alleged witches.
Is not Cohn guilty of 'denying the historical truth of genocide' according to Pilikian then?
Clearly he should be, but yet revising opinions in the light of more historical research, which can then in turn expose formerly 'proven genocides' to be hoaxes, is part of parcel of the process of interpreting and writing history.
The problem with arguing as Pilikian does is that it raises alleged genocides to a historically untouchable state, which in turn means that academic freedom to investigate the events as impartially as possible is necessarily curtailed and violated. As Pilikian is an expert of the Armenian genocide: it is perhaps surprising to note that he doesn't seem to 'get' the fact that if Turkish historians disagree with him then he needs to grow up and accept the difference of opinion as opposed to demand their opinions be made illegal.
After all if someone says a million Peruvians were mass-murdered by Argentina contras or something and manages to convince some historians of this: does this therefore mean the claim must be admitted as being 'the truth' regardless of the conclusions of other historians (be they academic or lay)?
That's the problem you see: as soon as something is admitted to the 'unquestionable' canon then it becomes a dogma that acts as a lodestone around the neck of historians.
After all when you cannot question the existence of a genocide then how much of it can you actually question? The number of victims? The killing methods? Who was responsible for it?
That's the problem you see: how much questioning is too much before you send in the NKVD to drag the questioner to the gulag?
It doesn't 'diminish our humanity' either to question the factual nature of allegations of genocide (and remember genocides are necessary allegations before they become 'established' as facts) for the simple reason that if we are animals like any other, which I am sure Pilikian as a Marxist believes, then how on earth can we have 'humanity' in the first place? What is it made up of and from whence does it spring?
It doesn't come from anywhere: it is a nonsensical concept, but if we are to accept its existence for a moment then one wonders where Pilikian's mention in his article is of the various genocides committed by communists against ethnic groups (for example Stalin's attempts to wipe out the Cossacks and Volga Germans) or against their enemies (Mao's 'Cultural Revolution' and Pol Pot's 'Killing Fields' for example). He is voluminous about the genocides allegedly committed by right-wingers and nationalists (such as the Armenian genocide and the 'Holocaust'), but yet we hear not a squeak about the far, far worse genocides committed by the left in the cause of building the 'socialist utopia'.
Doesn't that mean that Pilikian is guilty of 'denying the historical truth of genocide' and 'diminishing his humanity' by failing to even mention these genocides and thus engaging in 'genocide minimization'?
Yes: I rather think it does.
References
(1) Socialist History Society Newsletter, June 2014, p. 12