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Final Solutions Book Review

When the average person is asked to name the conventional reasons for genocide and mass killing he is certain to indicate ethnic enmity or accuse the contradictory society. In "Final Solutions: Mass Killing and Genocide in the 20th Century" (Cornell University Press), author Benjamin A. Valentino claims that ethnic harassment and the dysfunction of out society are unequal clarification. Though Valentino considers these elements as factors, he notices that pervasive intentional cruelty is typically stimulated by small minorities of military or political leaders, their intentions and plans are realized without the approval of the community.

The main problem raised by the author is mass killing and genocide. Valentino emphasizes that human race has run into one of the greatest problems in the world. The most important point of the theme is that mass killing is realized by government, leaders or small groups mainly towards its own people. Valentino devotes his book to six kinds of mass killing and genocide. Communist, ethnic, and anti-guerrilla murdering are considered to be the most important and numerous. These three types of mass killing imply extermination not only of soldiers but civil people. Valentino’s research has an underlying theme. Nazi regime, elimination of Jews and other ethnic groups will not make the complete list of harassments. Society cannot define its attitude towards homosexuals, mentally ill, physically disabled, and dissidents. Still, Valentino's classification and detailed consideration of each type catches the reader’s attention. Sometimes the author depicts events too minutely that I consider being excessively. Valentino exemplifies that leaders realize mass killing when they feel their policy, ideas or power are threatened. Fair, strikes, disbelieved, economic decline, may provoke leaders’ minds to mass killing or genocide. And on the contrary, a healthy runaway economy peace time may calm even the cruelest leader. The most vital idea of the book is that genocide and mass killing are usually brought about by one dictator or a small group of leaders. These conclusions Valentino revealed in the book title. “Final solutions" means the above mentioned statement. I should point out that Valentino’s ideas are not spread and generally accepted by community. The author exemplifies situation of China and the USSR; but he also demonstrates the case of Germany, where hatred of Jews had been brought through centuries. As regards that Valentino describes the United States' elimination of many of its Native American peoples. In this case it was the population aspiration for killing residential population in order to get hold of areas. In the US, as in Brazil, Germany or USSR a great number of people during the last several centuries mass killing policy. The one vital disadvantage of Valentino’s book is his conclusion of final solutions. For the reason of mass groups leaders bring about mass killing and destructions he suggests removing of the leaders. But how can people live without being governed, without a leader. I think that every leader strives for his or her goal. The thing is that these goals differ to great degree. We have the example of Iraq, where people prefer the cruel dictator. I completely agree with Valentino that we should make our best and use any opportunity to stop genocide and mass murder. The problem is that it is very easy in theory, but hardly possible in real life. The world could easily have prevented the mass murder in Rwanda and Burundi, and in Guatemala, but it decided not to interfere. I believe Valentino’s book can be recommended to those who are in charge of the country foreign policy.

The book devotes much place to information on communism mass killing. Communist government wanted to reorganize community by eliminating or changing life of definite groups. People consider Hitler's policy as the greatest evil on Earth, because they were headed at certain ethnic groups. But in terms of the general figures, more people were massacred in China and the Soviet Union – maybe two times more—than Hitler did, even if we take into account his non-ethnic victims. The cause why these regimes have been so cruel is that they desired to manage people’s lives and to introduce their views into everyone’s mind. In all three examples - China, the Soviet Union and Cambodia—village people arranged approximately 80 to 90 percent of the population. Actually, the murder took place because all these peasants – numerous people, hundreds of millions in China and the Soviet Union - were ordered to bring extreme changes in their way of live, refuse the method they were cultivating plants, and apply dubious technologies. That resulted in countless deaths for two reasons. When the communist party appeared and explained these village people what was required from them - they were asked to leave the farm they had lived on during their lives and go to a collective farm, and cultivate plants in methods they thought was imprudent - some of them opposed, both strongly and non-strongly. The answer to that by those parties was to murder people. The second cause - and the cause that in fact takes more lives away as in China and in the Soviet Union than the killing itself - is that these new techniques of cultivating crops were so badly considered that in both situations they resulted in the downfall of the food manufacture system. The peasants suffered the burden of that and so violent periods of starvation took place in both countries. Historians say that the famine in China during the Great Leap Forward murdered about 30 million people—the most sorrowful famine in history. One of the main ideas of the “Final Solutions” is to understand why leaders regard killing like this. What the trespassers actually desired was not the murder of these people. Without doubt didn't worry about those people and didn't feel keenly that millions of them were murdered. In the example of collectivization, leaders had to kill in order to bring about the new way of economic structure. If they could have realized that without murdering so many victims I belief they would have. In the situation with the well-known ethnic killing, we can often notice genocide appears when attempts to withdraw ethnic groups from society fail. Murdering is a method to remove people from society, even if in many situations it seems the trespassers would have been agreed to allow them to move to another state where they would no longer be thought of like a threat. If we believe it's "killing for killing's sake" (Valentino) then there's not much the society as a whole can do to defend the innocent people.

We must remember that Valentino is only one of many scientists that studies genocide. Valentino through his extensive studies refutes some of the earlier ideas to why genocide happens. He does not agree with such explanations as social segmentation and raw governmental power. For example in opposing the plural society theory that is a theory that is widely used to explain genocide Valentino refers back to Cambodia and tells us that both the perpetrators and victims mainly came from the same ethnic and cultural backgrounds. (Valentino). Then Valentino in order to refute the notion that genocide is dependent on government he describes such examples as the French in Algeria. The notion of scapegoating is one that Valentino also has trouble agreeing with as a main reason for genocide, quoting Michael Mann’s recent research of Holocaust offenders as evidence that personal problems were not necessary to change behavior. Considering these researches, Valentino says they have "strong intuitive appeal ... they are simply too common to serve as accurate indicators of this relatively rare kind of violence" (Valentino). The next presumption Valentino opposes as the reason of genocide is that it is sought after and supported by the major part of the society. In the chapter "The Perpetrators and the Public," (Valentino) which views such classic works in this area as Christopher Browning’s “Ordinary Men” the experiments of psychologists Stanley Milgram and Philip Zimbardo; and explores of what makes soldiers risk their lives for reasons that don’t influence them. Valentino assumes that the course of mass killing lies in situational elements and the plans of relatively small but forceful groups, but not in wide public backing and ideological hatred. This is proven though the evidence Valentino uses.

Valentino’s research is not limited by the seven motives definition, it goes deeper. It does, nevertheless, point out that profound and deep reasons such as vengeance or simply terror, can also stir up cases of genocide/mass killing, especially when a current government is absent or does not have the real power. I have mentioned this because Valentino’s proofs can sometimes seem abundantly positive in effort to describe policies that forecast and avert genocide/mass killing. I understand that author tries to consider genocide not as something scheduled, but rather as the thoroughly chosen tools to reach goals that are desired for the state or certain group. Surely Valentino’s work is based on the investigation of others. Though his sources belong to scientific ones and his work is fully footnoted, his conclusions are based on impressive mixture of investigations that were carried out during the past half century, but not on any original reviews, original works, or other investigation programs. For instance in chapter three he considers some rather intuitional causes that make genocide/mass killing more likely, including: "the higher the priority that communist leaders assign to the radical transformation of society"; "the more rapidly ethnic cleansing is carried out"; and "the greater the physical capabilities for mass killing possessed by the perpetrators" (Valentino). Similar example can be referred to the author’s believe "the Holocaust was unique because each of the millions of lives it extinguished was unique, never to lived again “(Valentino). I cannot agree with this statement because every person in our world is unique. And one will not become unique only for the reason of being killed during the Holocaust. According to Nazi world view the Jews belonged to the lowest group of the human rung hierarchy. Actually the Hitler’s ideology regarding conceived of Jewish people was carried through the ages. Fascists were afraid of their Aryan blood being contaminated.

Valentino’s book has prospered in providing readers not only with a reasonable interpretation for genocide/mass killing, but also with many valuable proposals for what we should do to prevent it. Benjamin A. Valentino thinks that ethnic enmity or harassment, anti-democratic policy of government in community do not influence mass killing and genocide that is generally accepted. He affirms that the stimulus for mass killing usually initiates from a relatively little groupings of forceful leaders and is often realized without any approval of society. Mass killing, to the author’s mind, is a savage political or martial plan worked out to achieve leaders' most significant goals. Leaders use this technique to overcome menace to their power, and resolve their most complicated problems. Valentino does not confine his research to mass killing aimed against ethnic groups. He characterizes mass killing as the intentional killing of 50,000 or more innocent people during five years. The book concentrates on three kinds of mass killing: communist mass killings like the ones carried out in the Soviet Union, China, and Cambodia; ethnic genocides as in Armenia, Nazi Germany, and Rwanda; and "counter-guerrilla" campaigns including the brutal civil war in Guatemala and the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. Valentino finishes the book by disputing that attempts to prevent mass killing should be aimed on disarmament and shifting from governing the leaders and small groups in charge of initiating and arranging the killing. As for me the main conclusion of this book has been the clear gospel truth in all times. The problem that I consider the main – is contradiction of society. There will always be those leaders, and small groups that are aimed to reach their personal goals. But these leaders are the children of society. But on the other hand people need somebody to manage them, that is why they agree to all leaders requirements. All in all, Valentino has raised a very important problem that alarms people all over the world. The author sets very vivid and arresting examples that simply catch your attention. But one thing I can say with certain that this book was not written for the average reader. To develop one’s reasonable mind on this book one should be good at history, sociology and psychology. The vital thing people have to understand about this kind of cruelty is it's not like battle. The trespassers don't have to defend themselves because the enemies are innocent people. That means that the quantity of killing they do is proportional to their number, how fast they kill, and how long they have to do their work (Valentino).

Bibliography

Valentino, Benjamin. Final Solutions: Mass Killing and Genocide in the 20-th Century. Cornwell University Press, 2004.

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