WAS KATYŃ GENOCIDE? Polish officers were killed

National group doesn't mean class at all. You can be part of the same national group but come from a different class. That should be obvious!

But surely if they include ethnic before national than why bother with national. after all isn't nationality indicative of ethnicity, or does nationality include groups within a nation like different classes.

No, you can have a country...say....Bosnia, with different ethnic groups. Class transcends ethnic groups, nationality, religions.

I get you, but that is already covered by ethnicity, so why bother repeating it.

Bosnian is not an ethnic group. Bosnia has multiple ethnic groups, multiple religious groups, and different races.

And the Soviets did not indiscriminately murder Poles, they murdered Poles of a certain class.

indeed it is not, but surely ethnicity includes everyone regardless of nationality. So why bother including national groups, unless they mean something different.

To get closer to the answer, read up on politicide and democide. Some insightful authors have shed some light as to how genocide varies from them. Those concepts will show contrasts with genocide. I recommend Rummel.

Mass murder is what is my conclusion, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_murder

National groups would mean Soviets kill all Poles

Ethnic groups would mean Soviets kill all Slavs

Religious groups would mean Soviets kill all Roman Catholics

The Soviets didn't do any of those.

Ethnic groups would mean Soviets kill all Slavs

Religious groups would mean Soviets kill all Roman Catholics

The Soviets didn't do any of those.[/quote]

I'am still not sure if that is right. according to this how would you describe somebody of Polish ethnicity living in Russia, if you include Russians and Poles in the same ethnic group. Since you don't have to be a Polish national necessarily.

A Pole living in Russia is still ethnically a slav, if they decide to take Russian citizenship, they become part of the Russian national group.

If the Soviets killed all slavs, it would be genocide.

If the Soviets killed all Poles, it would be genocide.

If the Soviets killed an entire social class, it would not be genocide.

Katyn was a horrible, horrible mass murder.

sorry but this argument still does not make sense to me. According to you there is no way of distinguishing a pole living in Russia from a Russian, if he happens not to have a Polish nationality. And gain this isn't exactly about numbers it is about intent.

Poles are Slavs. The only way of distinguishing a Pole from a Czech is nationality. That's why we're different.

The intent was to murder an entire social class. That's what they did. Even if we say that Poles are an ethnic group, they did not murder all Poles, only a certain class of Poles.

Right, so we go back to the original question why the distinction between ethnicity and national group.

The original question is "Was Katyn Genocide?"

The answer is no, it was mass murder. Genocide would mean that the Soviets set out to exterminate an entire nationality, or race, or religious group, not just subgroups.

By that you mean a national group, which seems distinct from an ethnic group and is classified as genocide if targeted for extermination. like the Cambodian case for instance, were a whole group was targeted, and to my knowledge is classified as genocide.

Right, but Poles were not targeted by the Soviets for extermination, just a particular class of Poles. Parts of what the Khmer Rouge did in Cambodia was genocide (extermination of Cambodias muslims for instance), the majority was crimes against humanity. Which in my non legal opinion, is what Katyn was, a crime against humanity.

From my understanding the people that were targeted were a social class like those who were non-workers. And the whole thing was a genocide.

The Khmer Rouge killed a social class as well as ethnic and religious groups.

During the trials of Khmer Rouge leaders, the two main charges were "crimes against humanity" for trying to eliminate an entire social class, and "genocide" for trying to exterminate a number of religious and ethnic groups (Muslims, Vietnamese, Thais).

Edit:

For instance;

Cambodians who were lawyers were targeted

Cambodians who were farmers weren't targeted

Muslims who were lawyers were targeted

Muslims who were farmers were targeted

That's the difference between genocide and crimes against humanity. It doesn't change the fact that both are horrible.

Convex, it's actually quite easy to distinguish Poles from Russians and most other Slavs. The Slavs are a very general and broad group.

It would be like saying that Arabs and Jews are the same ethnicity just because they both happen to be Semites. While you could technically argue that they are, it would still be for the sake of a very general group that many different people could fall under.

EDIT: I'm quite sure Poles tend to have at least a little bit of Germanic ancestry which might be a factor to why they look different from other Slavs.

Are Slavs an ethnic group, or are Poles and ethnic group?

Nonetheless, the Soviets targeted a specific group of Poles, not all Poles. That makes it a crime against humanity, not genocide.

The word ethnicity is not as specific as you think. Both groups can be considered ethnic groups. Poles would be a more specific ethnicity while you could also argue that Slavs are a broad lingo-ethnic group.

The fact remains that many Poles are mixed in which they are mostly Slavic but also have Germanic and/or Baltic ancestry. As I said earlier, this could be one factor to why Poles don't look like most other Slavs.

You're absolutely right.

Getting back on topic. Did the Soviets try to murder an entire ethnic group, or a class within the ethnic group?

Bed time....

According to several sources, one of the effects of this conference was the German ''Ausserordentliche Befriedungsaktion (see: German AB Action operation in Poland) and the Soviet Katyn massacre (a number of historians, including Norman Davies, claim that these two events were carried out cooperatively). AB-Aktion or Außerordentliche Befriedungsaktion ( German for Special Pacificational Action or Operation) was a German campaign during Ivor Norman Richard Davies Fellow of the British Academy (born 8 June 1939 to Richard and Elizabeth Davies Also, both sides agreed in the final protocol that the Polish nation should be completely moved out by the year 1975, either by mass murders or by deportations to remote areas of Siberia (by that year, 95% of the Poles still alive were going to be deported to the shores of the Jana river, located in northern Siberia, about two thousand miles north of Vladivostok).

source
citizendia.org/Gestapo-NKVD_Conferences

Katyn was a part of the full extermination of the Polish nation.

It was handicapping the Polish nation, Dariusz, not exterminating them directly. Take out the inteligentsia and you make your objectives so much easier to attain. Check politicide and mass murder and you will see your answer there. I recommended an author called Rummel who has deeply researched this. Taking out a class doesn't count.

Are you refering to this:


If so, you might want to check your sources. It seems that the site you linked to lifted the wikipedia article and added sentences like that. None of the sources in the article make any references to the above sentence.

The Soviets set out to rid Poland, and the rest of the empire, of a certain class of people.

I've given Dariusz the relevant links, they are all here should he care to look at them.

I think, with all respect to you both, that you have in a sense misconceived Dariusz's point by forgetting the dynamic of the era to which Dariusz speaks of.

Link/source anomaly aside, Dariusz points to the epoch when the Jerries and Soviets were allied, and whose raison d'etre, amongst other things, was the destruction of Poland and its people, and had the alliance survived and manifested its full potential there is grave doubt in my mind that Polish people (inclusive) would have survived past their use as perhaps slave labour and for maybe a few decades.

Obviously, it would be near impossible to objectively prove that the 'extermination' would have taken place, because it didn't, in fact, happen, and one cannot prove a negative, though many try and fail. However, having regard to past similar fact evidence of Soviet (and Nazi) conduct during the period of alliance (and, arguably, post same), lines of enquiry indubitably lead to the point whereby the statement "Poland was not the target of extermination" ought to be replaced with the query "How did Poland survive extermination".

Where there's smoke, there's fire - just because the fire created during the alliance was reduced to smouldering smoke by the Russians post Barbarossa doesn't mean that the embers ever died. The new dynamic of the Big Three alliance also thwarted Stalin in carrying out his agenda re Poland and its people.

A parable would perhaps best illustrate my point:

A tomato was eaten when ripe. Of course I now can't absolutely prove that that tomato would have rotted, because it was eaten prematurely and never had a chance to rot. But, left on the bench, untouched, given time it would have rotted, having regard to what tomatoes do if left to their own devices. Sure, it can be argued that it may have only partially rotted, or it may not have rotted at all, but similar fact evidence regarding other tomatoes rotting would compel even the most ardent sceptic to accpet that tomatoes do, in fact, rot.


I agree. It was a link in a chain that was severed after the SU and Germany turned on each other.

No, it doesn't change the fact that a certain class was targetted and done away with. What you must understand is that there must be an actus reus, coupled with the mens rea to constitute genocide. Yes, in all likelihood they wanted to destroy the Polish nation but the natural defence to that is war crimes determine that. Katyń was outside of the war at that time and thus merits special treatment. I take your point about the prevailing political climate but it doesn't change the fact that the actus reus was only carried out on a specific class. Seriously, please read up on mass murder and refute the contention that Katyń was exactly that. See if you can come up with sth good.

It was a mass murder: You want to call it a 'war crime', OK, it was...You want to call it genocide because it involved one specific ethnic group, OK, too...But why split hairs over a point like this?...Why you 'strain at a gnat' when the truth is now well known?...Do we have budding lawyers here who are practicing 'argument and discourse'?...Or maybe you are preparing a case that will go to 'Hague Tribunal' and just getting legal terms straight!

Perhaps I will not use Biblical analogies because you are all 'above that'.

Read earlier, Joe. That's exactly my conclusion too.