Why Genocide? The Armenian and Jewish Experiences in Perspective (review)

150 SHOFAR Summer 1993 Vol. 11, No.4 Holocaust, 1941-1945) indicates the no-holds-barred approach which Niewyk facilitates through his choices and the way he introduces and arranges the material. In short, I highly recommend this book based on its balanced objective treatment of the issues, its organization into manageable and easily assimilable units, and the way that it captures, in such a brief space, both the depth and breadth of this vitally important event. Julius J. Simon Department of Religion Temple University Why Genocide? The Armenian andJewish Experiences in Perspective, by Florence Mazian. Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1990. 291 pp. $29.95. Books on the Armenian Genocide of 1915-23 are rare, books comparing the Armenian Genocide to the Holocaust are rarer still; thus Mazian's comparative study is a welcome addition. The author, a professor of Sociology at the University ofMichigan-Dearborn, adapts Neil Smelser's theory of collective behavior to her two cases. Why Genocide? identifies six factors that lead to genOcide. These are: 1) "the creation of outsiders," 2) "internal strife," 3) "powerful leadership with territorial ambitions forming a monolithic and exclusionary party," 4) "destructive use of communication ," 5) "organization ofdestruction," and 6) "failure ofmultidimensional levels of social control." The work is divided into thirteen chapters. The first six, organized according to the six factors listed above, deal with the Armenian half of her comparison. The last six chapters are devoted to the Holocaust, Chapter thirteen forms the book's conclusion. An underlying assumption of Smelser's work on collective behavior and of this study suggests that events like genocide follow a sequence of events that make the outcome cumulatively more likely (value added approach). Indeed, this explains the organization of this book which sees genocide as an outcome of processes that start with "the creation of outsiders" and end with mass murder. Applying this insight to the histories of the Armenian Genocide and the Holocaust, however, raises some questions. For example, this study suggests that there was a progression from the massacres of 1894-96, through the Adana massacres of 1909, that resulted Book Reviews 151 in the genocide of 1915. However, what is one to do with the fact that the Young Turks who were responsible for the events of 1915 were not responsible for those of 1909? Indeed, when the Young Turks came to power in 1908 they were supported by Armenian revolutionary parties, and it was said that Turks and Armenians embraced in the streets. How then did the propensity to violence cumulate and make genocide more likely by 1915? There must have been intervening events that radically redefined the Turkish and Armenian situations. But such events and their effects are not given their due in this work. Similarly Why Genocide? follows a standard interpretation that views the rise of antisemitic movements in Imperial Germany as precursors to the Nazis. In that sense the events of 1933-1945 could be seen as the end process of a cumulative or value added process. But here again there are some problems. The fact is that by 1912 the antisemitic parties ofImperial Germany were a failure, and no one could at this point have predicted that a genocide of the European Jews would be initiated a few years later in Germany. Thus there are problems with an approach that sees genocide as an outcome of contin'uous processes in history that cumulate and culminate in massive violence. This study would have been stronger had it been more critical ofits own (and Smelser's) assumptions, and if it had considered the contrary view that genocide is the product of discontinuous and not necessarily cumulative factors. Robert Melson Depanment of Political Science Purdue University Spain and the Jews: The Sephardi Experience 1492 and After, edited by Elie Kedourie. London: Thames and Hudson, 1992. 248 pp. $40.00. The editor of this volume was Professor of Politics in the University of London for twenty-five years until his retirement in 1990. Unfortunately he died just as it appeared, but, being a valuable contribution, it serves as an appropriate memorial to him. It is one of the plethora of books appearing in this quincentenary of the...