HSE Publishing House

This is the first Russian study of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, its historical background, causes, international and domestic contexts, organization, mechanisms, implementation of mass executions, its stages, main actors, and, besides, the role of the international community during the tragedy. Special attention focuses on the analysis of the genocide on the individual level, on the psychology of its perpetrators and reactions of its victims. The study, based on a large number of documents, shows how the “genocidal mentality” in Rwanda was formed, how the administrative mechanisms of government were transformed into the mechanisms of mass destruction of Tutsis portrayed as “natural enemies of Hutus”, how the customary modes of behavior evolved into the most extreme and horrific forms of violence and human rights abuse, what were the methods of extermination and strategies of survival, was it possible to resist the genocide, in what ways and to what extent, why the international community, the UN and international organizations proved so powerless to halt the large-scale slaughter and how the genocide caused the Rwandan ethnocratic state to collapse entirely.