Based on his recent book, Stalin’s Genocides, Naimark will discuss the history of the concept of genocide and how it should be applied to the Ukrainian killer famine in 1932-33. He also places the Holodomor within the overall context of Stalin’s crimes.

Norman Naimark holds the Robert and Florence McDonnell Chair in East European History at Stanford University. Naimark’s writings have focused on the problems of radical politics in the Russian Empire and Eastern Europe. He is the author of two books on the Russian and Polish revolutionary movements of the late nineteenth century. He has also edited or co-edited books and document collections on the nationality problems of the Soviet Union, on the outbreak of World War II on the eastern front, on politics and history in the Soviet Union, on relations between Moscow and the Soviet Military Administration in Germany, on the establishment of communist power in Eastern Europe, on the Soviet occupation of Austria, and on the war in former Yugoslavia. Since publishing a major study of the Soviet occupation of Germany, The Russians in Germany (Harvard 1995) and a comparative study of ethnic cleansing and genocide in 20th Century Europe, Fires of Hatred (Harvard 2001), he has been working on two projects: a Mellon Foundation sponsored seminar series on “Mass Killing in the 20th Century” and his most recent book, Stalin’s Genocides (Princeton, 2010).