On Final Solutions

This is an interesting book. In short, Valentino makes three inter-related arguments:

1. First, small groups often play an important role in instigating and carrying out this kind of violence.

2. Second, because small groups can play such a central role in causing mass killing, characteristics of society at large, such as preexisting cleavages, hatred and discrimination between groups, and nondemocratic forms of government, are of limited utility in distinguishing societies at high risk for mass killing.

3. Third, mass killing usually is driven by instrumental, strategic calculations.

In making these arguments, he categorizes eight mass killings into three categories:

1. Communist violence - The Soviet Union, the People’s Republic of China, Cambodia

2. Ethnic violence - Turkish Armenia, Nazi Germany, Rwanda

3. Anti-Guerilla violence - Soviet Afghanistan and Guatemala

I’m not quite sure how tenable his conclusions are. While the third is undeniably true, his first and second arguments seem to stand on shakier ground. For example, the killers in the PRC and Rwanda were, by no means, “small.” We can say these are exceptions to the rule, or we can take these seriously. Second, every state mentioned here, with the exception of Rwanda, was authoritarian at the time mass violence broke out.

I think there is another way to categorize these. State-based and public-based. While most discussed in Valentino’s are based around the state, with the exception of the People’s Republic of China during the Cultural Revolution, and the Rwandan Genocide. Admittedly, both were catalyzed by the state, but both outbreaks of mass-violence were actually performed largely by average citizens on the ground. To these, we can add wide-ranging other examples, including the violence that broke out between various ethnic groups in the former Ottoman Empire, the Partition of India, countless pogroms in Eastern Europe, the Rohingya Genocide, and even—perhaps—the Yazidi Genocide in Iraq and Syria. While many were catalyzed by the state, these actions were widely accepted by inhabitants, who committed mass killings themselves. To me, there seem to be just as many popular mass killings as those led by a small elite.

Nevertheless, Valentino does a decent job of marshaling his evidence and showing us his angle.