Soviet Street Children And The Second World War

Download Soviet Street Children And The Second World War full books in PDF, epub, and Kindle. Read online Soviet Street Children And The Second World War ebook anywhere anytime directly on your device. Fast Download speed and no annoying ads. We cannot guarantee that every ebooks is available!

Soviet Street Children and the Second World War

Author : Olga Kucherenko
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN 13 : 147421343X
Total Pages : 256 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (742 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Soviet Street Children and the Second World War by : Olga Kucherenko

Download or read book Soviet Street Children and the Second World War written by Olga Kucherenko and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2016-07-14 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A time of great hardship, the Second World War became a consequential episode in the history of Soviet childhood policies. The growing social problem of juvenile homelessness and delinquency alerted the government to the need for a comprehensive child protection programme. Nevertheless, by prioritizing public order over welfare, the Stalinist state created conditions that only exacerbated the situation, transforming an existing problem into a nation-wide crisis. In this comprehensive account based on exhaustive archival research, Olga Kucherenko investigates the plight of more than a million street children and the state's role in the reinforcement of their ranks. By looking at wartime dislocation, Soviet child welfare policies, juvenile justice and the shadow world both within and without the Gulag, Soviet Street Children and the Second World War challenges several of the most pervasive myths about the Soviet Union at war. It is, therefore, as much an investigation of children on the margins of Soviet society as it is a study of the impact of war and state policies on society itself.

Soviet Street Children and the Second World War

Author : Olga Kucherenko
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1474213448
Total Pages : 257 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (742 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Soviet Street Children and the Second World War by : Olga Kucherenko

Download or read book Soviet Street Children and the Second World War written by Olga Kucherenko and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2016-07-14 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A time of great hardship, the Second World War became a consequential episode in the history of Soviet childhood policies. The growing social problem of juvenile homelessness and delinquency alerted the government to the need for a comprehensive child protection programme. Nevertheless, by prioritizing public order over welfare, the Stalinist state created conditions that only exacerbated the situation, transforming an existing problem into a nation-wide crisis. In this comprehensive account based on exhaustive archival research, Olga Kucherenko investigates the plight of more than a million street children and the state's role in the reinforcement of their ranks. By looking at wartime dislocation, Soviet child welfare policies, juvenile justice and the shadow world both within and without the Gulag, Soviet Street Children and the Second World War challenges several of the most pervasive myths about the Soviet Union at war. It is, therefore, as much an investigation of children on the margins of Soviet society as it is a study of the impact of war and state policies on society itself.

The Memory of the Second World War in Soviet and Post-Soviet Russia

Author : David L. Hoffmann
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1000430294
Total Pages : 330 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (4 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis The Memory of the Second World War in Soviet and Post-Soviet Russia by : David L. Hoffmann

Download or read book The Memory of the Second World War in Soviet and Post-Soviet Russia written by David L. Hoffmann and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-08-26 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume showcases important new research on World War II memory, both in the Soviet Union and in Russia today. Through an examination of war remembrance in its various forms—official histories, school textbooks, museums, monuments, literature, films, and Victory Day parades—chapters illustrate how the heroic narrative of the war was established in Soviet times and how it continues to shape war memorialization under Putin. This war narrative resonates with the Russian population due to decades of Soviet commemoration, which continued virtually uninterrupted into the post-Soviet period. Major themes of the volume include the use of World War II memory for political legitimation and patriotic mobilization; the striking continuities between Soviet and post-Soviet commemorative practices; the place of Holocaust memorialization in contemporary Russia; Putin’s invocation of the war to bolster national pride and international prestige; and the relationship between individual memory and collective remembrance. Authored by an international group of distinguished specialists, this collection is ideal for scholars of Russia across a range of disciplines, including history, political science, sociology, and cultural studies.

Evacuee Encounters on the Soviet Home Front During the Second World War

Author : Natalie Belsky
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
ISBN 13 : 1003831974
Total Pages : 227 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (38 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Evacuee Encounters on the Soviet Home Front During the Second World War by : Natalie Belsky

Download or read book Evacuee Encounters on the Soviet Home Front During the Second World War written by Natalie Belsky and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-12-19 with total page 227 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study is the first to examine the experiences of the millions of Soviet civilians evacuated to the interior of the country during the Second World War in the context of their encounters and relations with local communities and populations across Soviet Central Asia, Kazakhstan, Siberia, and the Urals. The book considers the impact of this episode of massive population displacement across Eurasia on individuals, communities, and society more broadly. It explores how the challenges associated with wartime displacement gave rise to tensions between evacuees and local residents. These frictions, in turn, forced individuals to interrogate the meaning, terms, and limitations of citizenship and belonging in the Soviet Union. Evacuation thus played a critical role in the changing relationship between citizens and the Soviet state in the war and postwar periods. Furthermore, this study pays particular attention to the plight of Soviet Jewish evacuees, who constitute the largest contingent of Holocaust survivors in Europe, and the rise of anti-Semitism on the Soviet home front during the war. This volume will be of interest to students and scholars of the Second World War, migration and displacement, the Holocaust, Soviet Jewish history, and the Soviet experience more broadly.

Little Soldiers

Author : Olga Kucherenko
Publisher : OUP Oxford
ISBN 13 : 0191610992
Total Pages : 280 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (916 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Little Soldiers by : Olga Kucherenko

Download or read book Little Soldiers written by Olga Kucherenko and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2011-01-13 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Germany's war against the Soviet Union raised a small army of child soldiers. Thousands of those below the enlistment age served with regular and paramilitary formations, even though they were not formally mobilised or allowed at the front. For several decades after the war, these youngsters played an important part in Soviet remembrance culture, though their true experiences were obscured by the myth of the Great Patriotic War. Situated at the crossroads of social, cultural, and military history, Little Soldiers is the first to tell the story of the Soviet Union's child soldiers in a critical and systematic fashion. Focusing on the mechanisms and psychological consequences of propaganda on Soviet children, as well as their combat deployment, Kucherenko adopts a three-tier approach to writing the history of childhood: 'from above', 'from below', and 'from within'. A wide variety of new sources provide insight into young soldiers' combat motivations and the roles they played in the field, as well as their routine experiences and relationship with older comrades. Far from being victims, Soviet child soldiers emerge as independent social actors capable of making choices about their behaviour . Little Soldiers interconnects with matters of increasing importance: the role of propaganda in military conflicts, the totalization of warfare, child-soldiering, and social reflexivity.

Childhood in Modern Europe

Author : Colin Heywood
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1108685021
Total Pages : 297 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (86 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Childhood in Modern Europe by : Colin Heywood

Download or read book Childhood in Modern Europe written by Colin Heywood and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-09-06 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This invaluable introduction to the history of childhood in both Western and Eastern Europe between c.1700 and 2000 seeks to give a voice to children as well as adults, wherever possible. The work is divided into three parts, covering in turn, childhood in rural village societies during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; in the towns during the Industrial Revolution period (c.1750–1870); and in society generally during the late-nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Each part has a succinct introduction to a number of key topics, such as conceptions of childhood; infant and child mortality; the material conditions of children; their cultural life; the welfare facilities available to them from charities and the state; and the balance of work and schooling. Combining a chronological with a thematic approach, this book will be of particular interest to students and academics in a number of disciplines, including history, sociology, anthropology, geography, literature and education.

Displaced Children in Russia and Eastern Europe, 1915-1953

Author : Nick Baron
Publisher : BRILL
ISBN 13 : 9004310746
Total Pages : 311 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (43 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Displaced Children in Russia and Eastern Europe, 1915-1953 by : Nick Baron

Download or read book Displaced Children in Russia and Eastern Europe, 1915-1953 written by Nick Baron and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2017-04-18 with total page 311 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nurturing the Nation examines the history of child displacement – understood as both state practice and social experience - in Eastern Europe and Russia in the first half of the twentieth century.

Freilegungen

Author : Henning Borggräfe
Publisher : Wallstein Verlag
ISBN 13 : 3835340891
Total Pages : 289 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (353 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Freilegungen by : Henning Borggräfe

Download or read book Freilegungen written by Henning Borggräfe and published by Wallstein Verlag. This book was released on 2017-07-31 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Kinder als Überlebende der NS-Verfolgung und als Displaced Persons nach 1945. Im Mittelpunkt des Jahrbuchs 2017 des International Tracing Service stehen Kinder und Heranwachsende als Displaced Persons (DPs). Der Band bietet Einblicke in individuelle und gesellschaftliche Nachwirkungen des Holocaust und der NS-Zwangsarbeit sowie in die Strukturen und Praktiken alliierter Hilfsorganisationen nach 1945. Zudem werden Ansätze für die historisch-politische Bildungsarbeit zu DPs vorgestellt. Angesichts der aktuellen Migrationsbewegung und der großen Zahl unbegleiteter minderjähriger Flüchtlinge gewinnt die Auseinandersetzung mit den sozialen und politischen Herausforderungen am Ende des Zweiten Weltkriegs auch für die Gegenwart neue Relevanz. Die Beiträge dokumentieren eine internationale wissenschaftliche Tagung, die vom 30. Mai bis 1. Juni 2016 im Max Mannheimer Studienzentrum in Dachau stattfand.

Last Witnesses

Author : Svetlana Alexievich
Publisher : Random House
ISBN 13 : 0399588779
Total Pages : 320 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (995 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Last Witnesses by : Svetlana Alexievich

Download or read book Last Witnesses written by Svetlana Alexievich and published by Random House. This book was released on 2019-07-02 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A masterpiece” (The Guardian) from the Nobel Prize–winning writer, an oral history of children’s experiences in World War II across Russia NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE WASHINGTON POST For more than three decades, Svetlana Alexievich has been the memory and conscience of the twentieth century. When the Swedish Academy awarded her the Nobel Prize, it cited her for inventing “a new kind of literary genre,” describing her work as “a history of emotions . . . a history of the soul.” Bringing together dozens of voices in her distinctive style, Last Witnesses is Alexievich’s collection of the memories of those who were children during World War II. They had sometimes been soldiers as well as witnesses, and their generation grew up with the trauma of the war deeply embedded—a trauma that would change the course of the Russian nation. Collectively, this symphony of children’s stories, filled with the everyday details of life in combat, reveals an altogether unprecedented view of the war. Alexievich gives voice to those whose memories have been lost in the official narratives, uncovering a powerful, hidden history from the personal and private experiences of individuals. Translated by the renowned Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, Last Witnesses is a powerful and poignant account of the central conflict of the twentieth century, a kaleidoscopic portrait of the human side of war. Praise for Last Witnesses “There is a special sort of clear-eyed humility to [Alexievich’s] reporting.”—The Guardian “A bracing reminder of the enduring power of the written word to testify to pain like no other medium. . . . Children survive, they grow up, and they do not forget. They are the first and last witnesses.”—The New Republic “A profound triumph.”—The Big Issue “[Alexievich] excavates and briefly gives prominence to demolished lives and eradicated communities. . . . It is impossible not to turn the page, impossible not to wonder whom we next might meet, impossible not to think differently about children caught in conflict.”—The Washington Post

Social Control under Stalin and Khrushchev

Author : Immo Rebitschek
Publisher : University of Toronto Press
ISBN 13 : 1487544316
Total Pages : 283 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (875 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Social Control under Stalin and Khrushchev by : Immo Rebitschek

Download or read book Social Control under Stalin and Khrushchev written by Immo Rebitschek and published by University of Toronto Press. This book was released on 2023-08-31 with total page 283 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How did the Soviet Union control the behaviour of its people? How did the people themselves engage with the official rules and the threat of violence in their lives? In this book, the contributors examine how social control developed under Stalin and Khrushchev. Drawing on deep archival research from across the former Soviet Union, they analyse the wide network of state institutions that were used for regulating individual behaviour and how Soviet citizens interacted with them. Together they show that social control in the Soviet Union was not entirely about the monolithic state imposing its vision with violent force. Instead, a wide range of institutions such as the police, the justice system, and party-sponsored structures in factories and farms tried to enforce control. The book highlights how the state leadership itself adjusted its policing strategies and moved away from mass repression towards legal pressure for policing society. Ultimately, Social Control under Stalin and Khrushchev explores how the Soviet state controlled the behaviour of its citizens and how the people relied on these structures.

A Companion to Soviet Children's Literature and Film

Author : Olga Voronina
Publisher : BRILL
ISBN 13 : 9004414398
Total Pages : 521 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (44 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis A Companion to Soviet Children's Literature and Film by : Olga Voronina

Download or read book A Companion to Soviet Children's Literature and Film written by Olga Voronina and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2019-10-14 with total page 521 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Companion to Soviet Children’s Literature and Film offers a comprehensive and innovative analysis of Soviet literary and cinematic production for children. Its contributors contextualize and reevaluate Soviet children’s books, films, and animation and explore their contemporary re-appropriation by the Russian government, cultural practitioners, and educators. Celebrating the centennial of Soviet children’s literature and film, the Companion reviews the rich and dramatic history of the canon. It also provides an insight into the close ties between Soviet children’s culture and Avant-Garde aesthetics, investigates early pedagogical experiments of the Soviet state, documents the importance of translation in children’s literature of the 1920-80s, and traces the evolution of heroic, fantastic, historical, and absurdist Soviet narratives for children.

Stalingrad Lives

Author : Ian Garner
Publisher : McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
ISBN 13 : 0228015170
Total Pages : 234 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (28 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Stalingrad Lives by : Ian Garner

Download or read book Stalingrad Lives written by Ian Garner and published by McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP. This book was released on 2022-12-15 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the fall of 1942, only the city of Stalingrad stood between Soviet survival and defeat as Hitler’s army ran rampant. With the fate of the USSR hanging in the balance, Soviet propaganda chiefs sent their finest writers into the heat of battle. After six months of terrifying work, these men succeeded in creating an enduring epic of Stalingrad. Their harrowing tales of valour and heroism offered hope for millions of readers. “Stalingrad lives!” went the rallying cry: the city had to live if the nation was to stave off defeat. In Stalingrad Lives Ian Garner brings together a selection of short stories written at and after the battle. They reveal, for the first time in English, the real Russian narrative of Stalingrad – an epic story of death, martyrdom, resurrection, and utopian beginnings. Following the authors into the hellish world of Stalingrad, Garner traces how tragedy was written as triumph. He uncovers how, dealing with loss and destruction on an unimaginable scale, Soviet readers and writers embraced the story of martyred Stalingrad, embedding it into the Russian psyche for decades to come. Featuring lost work by Vasily Grossman alongside texts by luminaries such as Konstantin Simonov, Viktor Nekrasov, and Ilya Ehrenburg, Stalingrad Lives offers a literary perspective on the Soviet Union at war.

Sacrificing Childhood

Author : Julie K. deGraffenried
Publisher : University Press of Kansas
ISBN 13 : 0700620028
Total Pages : 264 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (6 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Sacrificing Childhood by : Julie K. deGraffenried

Download or read book Sacrificing Childhood written by Julie K. deGraffenried and published by University Press of Kansas. This book was released on 2014-11-18 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the Soviet Union’s Great Patriotic War, from 1941 to 1945, as many as 24 million of its citizens died. 14 million were children ages fourteen or younger. And for those who survived, the suffering was far from over. The prewar Stalinist vision of a “happy childhood” nurtured by a paternal, loving state had given way, out of necessity. What replaced it—the dictate that children be prepared to sacrifice everything, including childhood itself—created a generation all too familiar with deprivation, violence, and death. The experience of these children, and the role of the state in shaping their narrative, are the subject of this book, which fills in a critical but neglected chapter in the Soviet story and in the history of World War II. In Sacrificing Childhood, Julie deGraffenried chronicles the lives of the Soviet wartime children and the uses to which they were put—not just as combatants or workers in factories and collective farms, but also as fodder for propaganda, their plight a proof of the enemy’s depredations. Not all Soviet children lived through the war in the same way; but in the circumstances of a child in occupied Belarus or in the Leningrad blockade, a young deportee in Siberia or evacuee in Uzbekistan, deGraffenried finds common threads that distinguish the child’s experience of war from the adult’s. The state’s expectations, however, were the same for all children, as we see here in children’s mass media and literature and the communications of party organizations and institutions, most notably the Young Pioneers, whose relentless wartime activities made them ideal for the purposes of propaganda. The first in-depth study of where Soviet children fit into the history of the war, Sacrificing Childhood also offers an unprecedented view of the state’s changing expectations for its children, and how this figured in the nature and direction of post-war Soviet society.

Last Witnesses

Author : Svetlana Alexievich
Publisher : Random House Trade Paperbacks
ISBN 13 : 0399588760
Total Pages : 322 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (995 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Last Witnesses by : Svetlana Alexievich

Download or read book Last Witnesses written by Svetlana Alexievich and published by Random House Trade Paperbacks. This book was released on 2020-06-16 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A masterpiece” (The Guardian) from the Nobel Prize–winning writer, an oral history of children’s experiences in World War II across Russia NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE WASHINGTON POST For more than three decades, Svetlana Alexievich has been the memory and conscience of the twentieth century. When the Swedish Academy awarded her the Nobel Prize, it cited her for inventing “a new kind of literary genre,” describing her work as “a history of emotions . . . a history of the soul.” Bringing together dozens of voices in her distinctive style, Last Witnesses is Alexievich’s collection of the memories of those who were children during World War II. They had sometimes been soldiers as well as witnesses, and their generation grew up with the trauma of the war deeply embedded—a trauma that would change the course of the Russian nation. Collectively, this symphony of children’s stories, filled with the everyday details of life in combat, reveals an altogether unprecedented view of the war. Alexievich gives voice to those whose memories have been lost in the official narratives, uncovering a powerful, hidden history from the personal and private experiences of individuals. Translated by the renowned Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, Last Witnesses is a powerful and poignant account of the central conflict of the twentieth century, a kaleidoscopic portrait of the human side of war. Praise for Last Witnesses “There is a special sort of clear-eyed humility to [Alexievich’s] reporting.”—The Guardian “A bracing reminder of the enduring power of the written word to testify to pain like no other medium. . . . Children survive, they grow up, and they do not forget. They are the first and last witnesses.”—The New Republic “A profound triumph.”—The Big Issue “[Alexievich] excavates and briefly gives prominence to demolished lives and eradicated communities. . . . It is impossible not to turn the page, impossible not to wonder whom we next might meet, impossible not to think differently about children caught in conflict.”—The Washington Post

The Dark Side of Early Soviet Childhood, 1917-1941

Author : Boris B. Gorshkov
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN 13 : 135009868X
Total Pages : 233 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (5 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis The Dark Side of Early Soviet Childhood, 1917-1941 by : Boris B. Gorshkov

Download or read book The Dark Side of Early Soviet Childhood, 1917-1941 written by Boris B. Gorshkov and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2023-08-10 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Civil War and early Soviet food policies left millions of children homeless and starving in Russia in the first half of the 20th century. Child mortality rates reached 95% in certain areas, and all of these problems remained endemic throughout the 1920s and 1930s. In The Dark Side of Early Soviet Childhood, 1917-1941, Boris B. Gorshkov investigates the causes of this prolonged homelessness and starvation, the conditions faced by huge numbers of children, and the state's unsuccessful efforts to solve these horrendous issues. Gorshkov pays particular attention to the critical role of the secret police (the VChKa and the NKVD) in this story and draws on a range of previously unused archival sources to reveal the full extent of the suffering of children in Russia at this time, as well as the interconnected causes behind it.

The War of Our Childhood

Author : Wolfgang W. E. Samuel
Publisher : Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN 13 : 1496801571
Total Pages : 383 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (968 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis The War of Our Childhood by : Wolfgang W. E. Samuel

Download or read book The War of Our Childhood written by Wolfgang W. E. Samuel and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2009-09-18 with total page 383 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One survivor tells of the fire-bombing of Dresden. Another survivor recounts the pervasive fear of marauding Russian and Czech bandits raping and killing. Children recall fathers who were only photographs and mothers who were saviors and heroes. These are typical in the stories collected in The War of Our Childhood: Memories of World War II. For this book Wolfgang W. E. Samuel, a childhood refugee himself after the fall of Nazi Germany, interviewed twenty-seven men and women who as children—by chance and sheer resilience—survived Allied bombs, invading armies, hunger, and chaos. “Our eyes carried no hate, only recognition of what was,” Samuel writes of his childhood. “Peace was an abstraction. The world we Kinder knew nearly always had the word ‘war’ appended to it.” Samuel's heartfelt narratives from these innocent survivors are invariably riveting and often terrifying. Each engrossing story has perilous and tragic moments—school children in Leuna who are sent home during an air raid but are strafed as moving targets; fathers who exist only as distant figures, returning to their families long after the war—or not at all; mothers who are raped and tortured; families who are forced into a seemingly endless relocation that replicates the terrors of war itself. In capturing such experiences from nearly every region of Germany and involving people of every socio-economic class, this is a collection of unique memories, but each account contributes to a cumulative understanding of the war that is more personal than strategic surveys and histories. For Samuel and the survivors he interviewed, agony and fright were part of everyday life, just as were play, wondrous experience, and above all perseverance. “My focus,” Samuel writes, “is on the astounding ability of a generation of German children to emerge from debilitating circumstances as sane and productive human beings.”

Return to the Motherland

Author : Seth Bernstein
Publisher : Cornell University Press
ISBN 13 : 1501767402
Total Pages : 210 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (17 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Return to the Motherland by : Seth Bernstein

Download or read book Return to the Motherland written by Seth Bernstein and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2023-02-15 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Return to the Motherland follows those who were displaced to the Third Reich back to the Soviet Union after the victory over Germany. At the end of World War II, millions of people from Soviet lands were living as refugees outside the borders of the USSR. Most had been forced laborers and prisoners of war, deported to the Third Reich to work as racial inferiors in a crushing environment. Seth Bernstein reveals the secret history of repatriation, the details of the journey, and the new identities, prospects, and dangers for migrants that were created by the tumult of war. He uses official and personal sources from declassified holdings in post-Soviet archives, more than one hundred oral history interviews, and transnational archival material. Most notably, he makes extensive use of secret police files declassified only after the Maidan Revolution in Ukraine in 2014. The stories described in Return to the Motherland reveal not only how the USSR grappled with the aftermath of war but also the universality of Stalinism's refugee crisis. While arrest was not guaranteed, persecution was ubiquitous. Within Soviet society, returnees met with a cold reception that demanded hard labor as payment for perceived disloyalty, soldiers perpetrated rape against returning Soviet women, and ordinary people avoided contact with repatriates, fearing arrest as traitors and spies. As Bernstein describes, Soviet displacement presented a challenge to social order and the opportunity to rebuild the country as a great power after a devastating war.