I tend to write here a lot, don’t I? Anyway I’m going to try to not post as frequently so I don’t clog up the timeline.
So a bit of context: I am taking a genocide history course and I will have to write a research paper for it. The paper is the biggest part of the grade and we can choose any topic as long as the professor approves of it. We have to book a “consultation” with him where we present our research topic and question, if he thinks it’s good enough we can go ahead and begin research and writing. The topic I want to write about is what was/is happening in the Donbas. I know many of us have referred to it as a genocide and I figured it’d be a good topic to write about since no one really talks about it. I could choose other issues but I’m almost certain other students will write about them, the Donbas situation is just never brought up enough for my liking.
My real question is: how do I present this to my professor?
I know I want to look into the how and why it happened, and how it’s being talked about now. If that’s makes sense. Yes it’s messy and not elegant enough, I’ll work on it, but I feel very passionate about this, especially with an event that is being hosted at my school today, it’s lit a fire in me. One that’s been there for a while but it’s just gotten hotter, it that makes sense.
I don’t want my professor to think my paper is going to be a weird defence of Putin or whatever, he seems quite set in stone on his position of the war so I’m trying to tread lightly without sacrificing my principles. All I’m asking is help in my wording as I don’t know how to say this without potentially screwing myself over. I think I low-key have to convince him that it was/is a genocide.
Has someone or is someone already tackling the genocide of Gaza/Palestine? Because if not i would strongly suggest that you pick it instead, as it’s the more urgently pressing issue at the moment and it is also much more straightforward and obviously a genocide. With Donbass you will have a more difficult time getting through the anti-Russia narrative that has been manufactured since 2014.
It’s also easier to dismiss the label of genocide in the Donbass case where the number of victims is relatively small than it is for the case of Palestine. There has never been a better time to write a paper on the Palestinian genocide as the South African proceedings against the Zionist entity at the ICJ have done a very good job of laying out the factual evidence, statements of intent, etc… they’ve basically done half your work for you.
That being said if you still want to go with Donbass instead i would include things like Poroshenko’s comments about Donbass children living in cellars. Also the various dehumanizing comments made in the Ukrainian media about the Donbass separatists and their oftentimes explicit calls for the entire population of the Donbass republics (who are viewed by Ukrainian nationalists as at best traitors and terrorists if not outright subhuman) to be either killed or induced to flee to Russia.
I would cite the many, many instances of Ukraine terror bombing civilians in Donetsk since 2015. I would point to laws passed by the Kiev regime that essentially aim at eradicating the Russian language from Ukraine, and i’d also mention the persecution of the Orthodox Church and its replacement with a political creation of the Maidan regime.
This is where it becomes clear that just speaking of a genocide in Donbass doesn’t present the whole picture. The project of ethnic cleansing by the post-Maidan regime in Kiev is not just aimed at the Donbass but at the entire ethnic Russian population of Ukraine.
While I don’t know for sure, I am almost certain someone will be writing about Palestine. It’s brought up in class quite a bit by both the professor and students. Next time I see him for office hours I’ll ask if someone is going to write about it.
When it comes to the death count I did actually ask him about this previously just in case and he said that it doesn’t matter. A genocide can have zero casualties and still be categorized as one. It seems to me more about intent and actions taken rather than results, if that makes sense.
In any case, thank you for all the advice, it’s very helpful!