The Hugo Valentin Lectures, VIII–IX
"What’s in a Word? Atrocity Crimes and
the ‘Genocide’ Label" / William A. Schabas
"Communism’s ‘Bright Past’. Narratives of
Loyalty to the Party before, during, and after the Gulag" / Nanci Adler
THE HUGO VALENTIN CENTRE / UPPSALA 2013
Series: The Hugo Valentin Lectures
The 8th and 9th Annual Lectures to the memory of Swedish-Jewish historian Hugo Valentin were given by professors William A. Schabas and Nanci Adler in 2010 and 2011, respectively. Prof. Schabas, of the Irish Centre for Human Rights at the National University of Ireland, Galway, lectured on the concept of genocide, its semantic background, significance and evolution. Coined by renowned international jurist Raphael Lemkin in 1944, Schabas pointed toward the concept’s international legal context since the Nuremberg Trials and how the word’s meaning has been interpreted and exploited in different ways by different groups, including victims, governments and others.
Prof. Nanci Adler, a Russian historian at the Dutch NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies at the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, Amsterdam, lectured about her research interviewing survivors of the Soviet Gulag system. She described the fascinating phenomena that some survivors, despite having lost so much, remained loyal to Stalin’s murderous system and Soviet ideology. Prof. Adler also analyzed the long-term social and individual impact of the Gulag era. Its legacies are still visible today in successor post-Soviet nations.
The two lectures are published together in the 6th volume of the Hugo Valentin Lecture Series, with an introduction by Associate Professor of Holocaust History, Paul A. Levine.
The 11th Annual Hugo Valentin Lecture was held on 27 March 2013 by Prof. Ervin Staub of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.
Series: THE HUGO VALENTIN LECTURES
No.: 6 (VIII-IX)
Series Editor: Paul A. Levine
Number of pages: 49 pp.
Format: 130x205 mm, softback
Published: May 2013
ISSN 1651-6265
ISBN 978-91-86531-09-6