A re-calibration of its language, in the full spirit of Raphael Lemkin, can meet recent developments in the heinous practice of genocides.
by Marco Respinti
Article 4 of 4. Read article 1, article 2, and article 3.


A “cultural genocide” is only a physical genocide delayed in time. A possible variation of this definition could encompass the aggression to Ukraine perpetrated by the Russian Federation that culminated in the military invasion launched on February 24, 2022, and the subsequent ongoing war. In fact, Russia denies the very existence of a distinctive cultural and national Ukrainian identity, even by fabricating false historical reconstructions of the past of the two countries and operating a massive as well as a violent Russification of portions of Ukrainian lands and of part of the Ukrainian people.
It is a variation because it is an evident case of cultural genocide, performed with the usual tools of a physical genocide: military aggression, systematic destruction of people and things, mass extermination, dehumanization, rapes, tortures, distortion of reality and internal as well as external propaganda, resulting in a large number of visible victims within a brief time. This is finely discussed in a May 2022 report by the New Lines Institute for Strategy and Policy, based in Washington, D.C., and the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights, based in Montreal, Canada.
Table of Contents
Solely cultural bases
The case of Cambodia (mentioned in article 3 of this series) may serve as a precedent to further investigate this possible variation. In fact, as the Gariwo Foundation, acronym of “Gardens of the Righteous Worldwide,” established in Milan, Italy, in 1999 to study and expose genocides, aptly observes, “[t] he special feature of the genocide carried out in Cambodia, […] consists in the fact that it had no ethnic bases but solely cultural bases in a broad sense of the term.”
This important evaluation seems to use the same logic adopted in one of the most powerful scholarly reconstruction and denunciation of the populicide in Northwestern France that was first described by French revolutionary journalist François-Noël Babeuf (1760–1797), known as “Gracchus” Babeuf (also mentioned in article 3 of this series), during the French Revolution (1789–1799).
I refer to French historian Reynald Secher’s “Le génocide franco-français. La Vendée-Vengé,” originally published in 1988. Since its staggering, explicit title, the book underlines that there was no ethnic difference between the French perpetrators and the equally French victims. This is mirrored also in its 2013 English translation, “A French Genocide: The Vendée.” In fact, the book insists on the cultural and religious conflict that caused two groups of French citizens to clash, making them into two distinct human populations. That conflicting religious and cultural distinction ignited and nurtured the intention of one of them, the revolutionary government, to perform the complete physical annihilation of the other group, the Catholic insurgents united by a common culture and a common credo that fed also a common socio-political vision.


Vandalism and culture
The corporative essence of genocide is highlighted by Lemkin in his seminal 1944 book, “Axis Rule in Occupied Europe: Laws of Occupation, Analysis of Government, Proposals for Redress.” In Chapter IX, entitled “Genocide,” Lemkins notes: “Genocide is directed against the national group as an entity, and the actions involved are directed against individuals, not in their individual capacity, but as members of the national group.”
This contributes to explaining why culture is an important marker for identifying human groups targeted for genocide. In that same chapter, Lemkin roundly writes: “Generally speaking, genocide does not necessarily mean the immediate destruction of a nation, except when accomplished by mass killings of all members of a nation. It is intended rather to signify a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves.”
Consequently, a few pages later within that chapter, Lemkin focuses on the “Techniques of Genocide in Various Fields,” listing political, social, economic, biologic, physical, and cultural methods and approaches.
Indeed, Lemkin already had addressed this topic before publishing his “Axis Rule in Occupied Europe.” He did it in an article, originally published in French, “Les actes constituant un danger général (interétatique) considérés comme délits du droit des gens.” It was a paper presented at the 5th Conference for the Unification of Crime Law, held in Madrid in 1933, released later that same year as an 8-page booklet by Pedone publisher in Paris. It was then translated into English as “Acts Constituting a General (Transnational) Danger Considered as Offences Against the Law of Nations.” There, Lemkin proclaimed to “have the honor of proposing to this distinguished conference to place among the offences of law of nations” a few of them, among which he lists “Acts of Vandalism” as the “[d]estruction of the culture and works of art” identifying a human group.
Lemkin even repeated this later, after publishing his “Axis Rule in Occupied Europe.” He did it in 1947 at the “Convention on the Crime of Genocide” during the discussions for its drafting. In the published notes of the discussion, his views are reported as follows: “Professor Lemkin distinguishes between ‘physical’ genocide (destruction of individuals), ‘biological’ genocide (prevention of births), and ‘cultural’ genocide (brutal destruction of the specific characteristic of a group).” But his proposal was not accepted.


Yet, that proposal of Lemkin’s would have lucidly empowered scholars, judges, and observers to understand the articulation and machinery of genocides. It in fact indicts cultural genocides only as a technical variant of physical genocides and denounces how the two-step goal of a genocide is achieved also through the use of biological genocide.
The physical and genetical interference on human groups, through tools as sterilization or forced abortions, is documented in many cases of genocide both cultural and physical. For example, a scholarly 2020 report by The Asia Pacific Centre‒Responsibility to Protect of the University of Queensland in Brisbane focused keenly on this topic in the case of Uyghurs in the People’s Republic of China (PRC).
The forgotten crime
Scholarly literature seems to agree that the concept of “cultural genocide” is coherent with the concept of “genocide.” The concept of “cultural genocide” is addressed by “The Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute Foundation” in Yerevan, Armenia, and focused upon by former UN Secretary General’s Special Adviser on the Responsibility to Protect, Edward C. Luck (1948‒2021). Other scholars discuss its relevance and meaning. Among them, there are Lawrence Davidson (retired professor of Middle East History at West Chester University in Pennsylvania), Elisa Novic (Senior Research Fellow at the Max Planck Foundation for International Peace and the Rule of Law in Heidelberg, Germany), Payam Akhavan (Associate Professor at McGill University’s Faculty of Law in Montreal, Canada, and former Legal Advisor to the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia at The Hague, The Netherlands), David Nersessian (Professor of Law at Babson College, in Babson Park, Maryland), and Leora Bilsky and Rachel Klagsbrun (respectively Professor at the Tel Aviv University Faculty of Law in Israel and Executive Director of its Minerva Center for Human Rights.)
It seems then that it is time to put forth the question raised in the 2022 comprehensive book by a specialized scholar, Jasmina Zagorac, “Le génocide culturel. Un crime oublié du droit international?” “Cultural Genocide: A Forgotten Crime in International Law?” Interestingly, Zagorac starts her book—which derives from her magna cum laude PhD thesis discussed at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland—by reflecting on the fate of Uyghurs and Tibetans in today’s PRC, and in its pages she also briefly discusses the Vendée and Babeuf.
A grand proposal
Ukrainian historian Roman Serbyn is an expert of the genocide perpetrated by the Soviet Union in Ukraine in 1932–1933, known as Holodomor, and of Lemkin’s works. He helps explaining the refusal to accept Lemkin’s proposal on “cultural genocide” saying that the final adopted text of the UN “Convention on Genocide” was the result of an ideological compromise. In fact, writing “Axis Rule in Occupied Europe,” while using the genocide of the Armenians, perpetrated by the Turks in 1915–1916 as a case study and precedent, Lemkin could not cite the second example he had in mind, the Holodomor, because of the influence that the Soviet Union exerted at that time and ultimately its veto power. Since the Holodomor was a physical genocide perpetrated through the cultural and class identification of at least a part of the Ukrainians that were exterminated, his use by Lemkin could have made the difference. But the Soviets managed to censor him and plotted to abuse, exploit, and weaponize the new established crime of “genocide” to their advantage. So, only in 1953 Lemkin was finally free to include the Holodomor as a paramount example of the genocidal logic and practice.


But time passed, and genocides multiplied in numbers. “Bitter Winter” has reported on the scholarly debate on “cultural genocide,” and tried to contribute to it, since its inception. Of course, our aim was not to tread upon the UN “Convention on Genocide” by considering it, in an access of hybris, obsolete, but to propose a re-calibration that, in the spirit of Lemkin and respecting even the letter of his writings, can meet recent developments in the heinous practice of genocide and totalitarian rule.
Not a humble, but a grand proposal would now be to petition the United Nations and call for a revision of the language of its “Convention on Genocide” to also include culture, as Lemkin does, in the list of the markers that identify targeted portions of humanity. And maybe also “class” or “political group,” reviving the same Lemkinian spirit. It is in fact irrelevant whether the identified classes or political groups really exist. If they exist in the perverse mind of those who organize the genocides, victims are killed en masse—which is a genocide.