Double genocide theory

The **double genocide theory** () says that two equally serious genocides happened in World War II. The first was the Holocaust committed by Nazi Germany against Jews. The other was a genocide committed by the Soviet Union against Eastern Europeans (including the Poles, Ukrainians, and Baltic states' population), according to this theory.

## Overview
Historians think that the double genocide theory appeared in Lithuania after the Soviet Union ended in December 1991. On the mural, Nazi German Führer Adolf Hitler, Soviet tyrant Joseph Stalin and current Russian dictator Vladimir Putin are placed beside each other, superimposed by the slogan "NO MORE TIME", to imply that their respective ideologies pose similar danger to Eastern Europeans.]] equals 21st century Rashism (Rashizm) event by The State Archive of the Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance.]]

Supporters of the double genocide theory base their views on a series of events that happened in Soviet-occupied countries. The theory is controversial among scholars worldwide.]]

## Soviet persecution of Poles
Josef Stalin's Soviet forces killed at least 150,000 Poles on Polish soil in wartime.

### Soviet-occupied Poland 
In 1939, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union invaded Poland and divided it in two. The Soviet Union occupied eastern Poland. Stalin claimed he did this because pre-war Poland was a "crime against revolution [... with] counter-revolutionary activity". Meanwhile, Nazi Germany occupied western Poland. 

Soviet-occupied Poland included 52.1% of pre-war Poland (c. 200,000 km2) and over 13,700,000 citizens. Among its citizens who were not Poles, 37% were Ukrainians, 14.5% Belarusians, 8.4% Jews, 0.9% Russians, and 0.6% Germans. 

### Katyn massacre 
In a memo on March 5, 1940, Lavrentiy Beria asked Stalin to order the execution of 25,700 Polish "nationalists and counterrevolutionaries" in the Soviet-occupied zone. Six members of the Soviet Politburo – Stalin, Vyacheslav Molotov, Lazar Kaganovich, Kliment Voroshilov, Anastas Mikoyan, and Mikhail Kalinin – signed an order authorizing this mass execution. Most victims were captured Polish soldiers, Polish police, or members of the intelligentsia. The deportation happened while Polish and Jewish property across the occupied zone were taken away by the Soviets. Polish Jews made up 30% of the Poles deported to Siberia, making them statistically the most targeted group among the deportees. Weinberg also wrote: (also called anti-Polonism or Polonophobia). This racism was not new; it existed even before the Soviet Union did. 

In their zone, the Soviets forced Russian culture onto the Poles. They made Polish universities focus on Russian studies, suppress Polish studies, and teach according to Soviet rules (called the Statute Books for Soviet Higher Schools).

### NKVD prisoner massacres 
Before June 1941 (when Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union), the Soviets were holding hundreds of thousands of political prisoners in NKVD prisons across its occupied Eastern European territories. Right after the invasion began, the NKVD was ordered to kill or evacuate 140,000 prisoners from Soviet-occupied eastern Poland. They were targeted for mass murder over their Polish or Ukrainian identity. Around 25,000 Polish Home Army soldiers were deported to Gulags in mainland Russia.

The Soviet Union ruled Poland with communist totalitarianism until 1989, and Soviet troops did not leave Poland until 1993.

### Polish resistance 
Some anti-communist Poles fought against the Soviets. However, the armed resistance failed because it had no support from foreign countries. Pieczorłag, or Uchtiżemłag, located in the Komi Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic in northwestern Russia.
* Protests in March 1968 
* Strike actions in 1971 and June 1976 in Łódź
* Strikes in 1980 in Lublin 
* A warning strike and hunger demonstrations in 1981
* Demonstrations in 1982
* Strikes in 1988

## Soviet persecution of Baltic states' population 
The Baltic states also suffered under both the Nazis and the Soviets. Under Nazi occupation, Estonia lost 25% of its pre-war Jewish population, Latvia lost 75%, and Lithuania lost over 95%.

### 1940–41
The Soviets first occupied the Baltic states between June 1940 and June 1941. During that time, they deported around 124,467 people to mainland Russia. Baltic states' soldiers who refused to join the Red Army were shot. More were arrested and deported by the NKVD. Meanwhile, Estonians and Latvians viewed this deadly year as the "year of horror". In Nazi-occupied Lithuania, they conscripted at least 20,000 people. 

Though the Nazis had forced these people to fight, they claimed the conscripts were volunteers.

### 1944–91 
After World War II ended, the Soviets re-took control of the Baltic states. Between 1944 and 1956, many Baltic people resisted Soviet ethnic cleansing and totalitarianism. In response, the Soviets deported at least 505,000 people from the Baltic states to Gulags in mainland Russia (including 124,000 Estonians, 136,000 Latvians, and 245,000 Lithuanians). On October 15, 1956, Adolfas Ramanauskas ("Vanagas"), chief commander of the Union of Lithuanian Freedom Fighters,

### Colonization during the Cold War 
The Soviet regime imported millions of colonizers into the Baltic states from other parts of the Soviet Union. This changed the Baltic states' ethnic composition forever: Declassified archives show that the Soviets took much more money from the occupied Baltic states than they ever invested back. The Soviets forced as many as 400,000 Chechens and 91,250 Ingush from the area within 8 days. This is around the same percentage of population that Cambodia lost during the Cambodian genocide (1975‒79) under the pro-Soviet Khmer Rouge regime.

## Debates about the double genocide theory
### Dovid Katz 
American Yiddish scholar Dovid Katz wrote that the double genocide theory is a form of Holocaust revisionism. He thought the theory resulted from a "recent initiative that seeks to create a moral equivalence between Soviet atrocities committed against the Baltic region and the Holocaust in European history".

### Michael Shafir 
Romanian-Israeli political scientist Michael Shafir shared Dovid Katz's views. He said the double genocide theory was partly "competitive martyrdom". have accused Snyder of "suggesting a moral equivalence between Soviet mass murders and the Nazi Holocaust". In response, Snyder said:

While accusing Snyder of trivializing the Holocaust, Zuroff himself denied the Holodomor and Bosnian genocide, despite the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) having ruled that the Bosnian genocide was indeed a genocide. 

In addition, scholars who hold similar views to Zuroff often accuse the NATO of "inventing" the Bosnian genocide to justify the bombing and "destruction" of Yugoslavia,

While the United Nations were drafting the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, the Soviets reportedly prevented "social" and "political" groups from being included in the list of possible genocide victims. She cited studies done by other scholars to support this theory. She saw those views as "postcolonial trauma narratives". 

She also wrote that people's lived experiences do not divide neatly between "Western" and "non-Western". She argued that "economic and political elites" promoted the double genocide theory because they "fear[ed] a leftist resurgence in the face of [...] extreme social inequalities [... and] the excesses of neoliberal capitalism". She accused these "elites" of "focusing almost exclusively on Joseph Stalin's crimes" when discussing communism, and "linking all leftist ideals to the excesses of Stalinism". jurist Cezary Mik, Karolina Kosińska, and prosecutor Małgorzata Kuźniar-Plota, who investigated the massacre. As many as 7,000,000 people died of starvation under Stalin's policies.

Many Western scholars who reject the double genocide theory have denied the Holodomor. This denial comes from communist sympathies, which prevent them from recognizing the worth of Ukrainians as equal humans, according to other scholars. said:

## Related pages
* Jan Grabowski
* Holocaust uniqueness debate
* Guerrilla war in the Baltic states
* Antisemitism in the Soviet Union

## References