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4 Holocaust & Genocide Stud. 161 (1989)
Revolutionary Genocide: On the Causes of the Armenian Genocide of 1915 and the Holocaust

handle is hein.journals/hologen4 and id is 177 raw text is: Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Vol. 4, No. 2, pp. 161-174,1989 8756-6583/89 $3.00 + 0.00 Printed in Great Britain Pergamon Press plc 'Genocide in the 20th Century' REVOLUTIONARY GENOCIDE: ON THE CAUSES OF THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE OF 1915 AND THE HOLOCAUST* ROBERT MELSON Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN Abstract - The aim of this essay is to advance the development of a conceptual framework for the study of genocide, by comparing and generalizing from the Holocaust and the Armenian genocide of 1915. Some current explanations of the Holocaust and the Armenian genocide emphasize the ideologies of the perpe- trators, the functional exigencies of the organizations of destruction, and the provocative behaviours of the victims. Without denying the importance of such factors, this essay focuses on the revolutionary crises of the state and on the successful modernization and mobilization of traditionally despised minorities as crucial antecedent variables to genocide. THE PROBLEM In taking an overview of the scholarship on the Holocaust, on the one hand, and the Armenian genocide of 1915, on the other, one is struck by how often three kinds of explanations are proffered. Two of these apply especially to the Holocaust and one to the Armenian genocide. When explaining the Holocaust, some writers suggest that this genocide was due primarily to Nazi ideology which itself had 'roots' in racism and earlier forms of antisemitism.1 Meanwhile, other writers, examining the same phenomena, claim that although Hitler's ideology may have been important for legitimizing decisions, the main sources of the Final Solution derived from the exigencies of the machinery whose task was to solve the 'Jewish Question'. Neither the 'intentionalists', nor the 'functionalists', as the first and second sets of writers have come to be known, would argue that it was the victims themselves who provoked the Holocaust.2 Surprisingly, however, that is precisely what some respected scholars imply in their analysis of the Armenian genocide of 1915. Influential scholars of Ottoman and Turkish history suggest that the Armenian genocide had little to do with the ideology of the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) or with the exigencies of the bureaucracies that were saddled with the tasks of the deportations. Instead, they suggest that its origins lay in the provocative behaviour of the victims themselves.3 Thus, the ideology of the perpetrators, the functional needs of the machinery of destruction and the provocative behaviour of the victims are often cited as principal factors in explanations of genocide. Given the complexity of the problem before us, credible and valid explanations of genocide simply may not exist, and given the space of a brief essay only the sketchiest of *An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 'Remembering for the Future' Conference, Oxford, 10-13 July 1988. I wish to acknowledge the support of the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture; The Truman Institute, Hebrew University; and the Center for Humanistic Studies, Purdue University.

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