A Rhetorical Crime shows how, over the course of the Cold War era, genocide morphed from a legal concept into a political discourse used in international propaganda battles. Through a unique comparative analysis of U.S. and Soviet statements on genocide, Weiss-Wendt investigates why their moral posturing far exceeded their humanitarian action.

Foreword by Douglas Irvin-EricksonList of AbbreviationsIntroduction1 Soviet Scholars of International Law as Foot Soldiers in the Cold War2 Trial by Word: The Gulag Condemned3 Soviet Satellites Shift Allegiances: Hungary, Yugoslavia4 The Struggle for Influence in Postcolonial Africa and the Middle East: Algeria, Congo, Nigeria, Iraq5 Southeast Asia and the Rise of Communist China: Tibet, Bangladesh, Cambodia6 (Soviet) Piggy in the Middle: American Liberal Left versus Radical Right on US Ratification of the Genocide Convention7 Moscow Taps the New Left: The Vietnam Antiwar Movement, Black Panthers, and the American Indian Movement8 Soviet-Turkish Relations and Socialist Armenia9 The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict10 An Uncertain End to the Cold War and the Reactivation of the Genocide TreatyConclusionAfterword: Genocide Rhetoric and a New Cold WarAppendix A: Articles in Pravda with Reference to Genocide, 1948¿1988Appendix B: Articles in the New York Times with Reference to Genocide, 1948-1988AcknowledgmentsNotesBibliographyIndex¿