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Full-Text Articles in Law
“Genocide Of The Soviet People”: Putin’S Russia Waging Lawfare By Means Of History, 2018–2023, Anton Weiss-Wendt
“Genocide Of The Soviet People”: Putin’S Russia Waging Lawfare By Means Of History, 2018–2023, Anton Weiss-Wendt
Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal
This article exposes the political underpinnings of the term “genocide of the Soviet people,” introduced and actively promoted in Russia since 2019. By reclassifying mass crimes committed by the Nazis and their accomplices against the civilian population—specifically Slavic—as genocide, Russian courts effectively engage in adjudication of the history of the Second World War. In the process, genocide trials, ongoing in twenty-five Russian provinces and five occupied Ukrainian territories, present no new evidence or issue new indictments, thus fulfilling none of the objectives of a standard criminal investigation. The wording of the verdicts, and a comprehensive political project put in place …
Judicializing History: Mass Crimes Trials And The Historian As Expert Witness In West Germany, Cambodia, And Bangladesh, Rebecca Gidley, Mathew Turner
Judicializing History: Mass Crimes Trials And The Historian As Expert Witness In West Germany, Cambodia, And Bangladesh, Rebecca Gidley, Mathew Turner
Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal
Henry Rousso warned that the engagement of historians as expert witnesses in trials, particularly highly politicized proceedings of mass crimes, risks a judicialization of history. This article tests Rousso’s argument through analysis of three quite different case studies: the Frankfurt Auschwitz trial; the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia; and the International Crimes Tribunal in Bangladesh. It argues that Rousso’s objections misrepresent the Frankfurt Auschwitz trial, while failing to account for the engagement of historical expertise in mass atrocity trials beyond Europe. Paradoxically, Rousso’s criticisms are less suited to the European context that represents his purview, and apply more …