"Naimark's short book is a polemical contribution to this debate. Though he acknowledges the dubious political history of the UN convention, he goes on to argue that even under the current definition, Stalin's attack on the kulaks and on the Ukrainian peasants should count as genocide... Perhaps we need a new word, one that is broader than the current definition ... Read moreof genocide and means, simply, 'mass murder carried out for political reasons.'"
Anne Applebaum, New York Review of Books "Stalin's Genocides is compellingly written, nuanced and powerfully argued."
Times Literary Supplement "This is a small book that places a large exclamation point on the most incriminatingly tragic dimension of Soviet history."
Robert Levgold, Foreign Affairs "Norman Naimark's extended essay Stalin's Genocides is both controversial and provocative... Naimark's daring effort to redefine several of the crimes committed by Stalin's regime in the 1930s and 1940s as acts of genocide is admirable. His study is also particularly timely."
Zbysek Brezina, History Today "Norman Naimark gives us here in a very condensed form a fine piece of scholarship... After closing the cover of this well-written and powerfully-argued monograph, more than one reader will be left wondering how Stalin was able to achieve such ghastly results."
J. Guy Lalande, Canadian Journal of History "Written elegantly and researched impeccably, this volume will be of interest to academic and non-academic audiences alike. It will hopefully prompt other authors to re-evaluate Stalin's mass terror and name it for what it was."
Lavinia Stan, European Legacy "Naimark deserves great credit not only for having written a crisp, concise book but also for sparking a discussion that historians far too often are reluctant to have."
Mark Kramer, Journal of Cold War Studies Show Less