Norman Naimark

Career Naimark received all of his degrees at Stanford. He taught at Boston University, and was a fellow at Harvard University's Russian Research Center before returning to Stanford as a member of the faculty in the 1980s. Naimark is of Jewish heritage; his parents were born in Galicia.

He is a member of the editorial boards of a number of professional journals, including The American Historical Review and The Journal of Contemporary History.

He was awarded the Officer's Cross of the Order of Merit by Germany. He wrote in a 2017 essay that genocide is often tied to war, dehumanization, and/or economic resentment. He writes, "if there weren’t other very good reasons to prevent war, the correlation between war and genocide is a good one".

Views on the definition of genocide

Throughout his more recent works, Naimark argues that the "world needs a much broader definition of genocide" than set by the 1948 Genocide Convention to also include "nations killing social classes and political groups." In his 2010 work Stalin’s Genocides, Naimark makes a case that the government of the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin "killed systematically rather than episodically" and that Dekulakization, Holodomor and Great Purge "shouldn’t be seen as discrete episodes, but seen together", calling it "a horrific case of genocide – the purposeful elimination of all or part of a social group, a political group."

Naimark argues that they constitute genocide due to, among other factors, the intent of extermination that underpinned them: the quotas that sometimes were set on the number of people that needed to be executed or arrested, the dehumanizing language directed at kulaks, slogans promoted by activists openly calling for their extermination, and a "great deal of evidence of government connivance" regarding Holodomor. Naimark writes that early drafts of the UN Genocide Convention had included the killing of social and political groups in the initial definitions of genocide, but were dropped after the Soviet delegation threatened to veto the convention.

In his critique, Joshua Rubenstein agrees with Naimark's characterization that both Hitler and Stalin deserve to be known as "genocidaires" from a contemporary standpoint. However, he also disagrees with Naimark's apparent equating of Hitler and Stalin because the Soviet Union prevented Nazi Germany's attempt to conquer and subjugate all of Europe, suggesting the Soviet system was therefore a lesser evil when seen in a historical context. He also states that, while Stalin imposed his will in some countries like Poland and East Germany, he surprisingly favored restraint and accommodation in others like Denmark, Finland, and Austria. Stalin's ultimate goal remained a Europe susceptible to Soviet influence, showcasing a leader navigating a delicate balance between dominance and diplomacy.

Published works

Books