Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, Volume 10, Number 3, Summer 2009 (New Series), pp. 629-682, 2009
The article is devoted to the encounter of Soviet officers, mostly Jewish, with Germany and the G... more The article is devoted to the encounter of Soviet officers, mostly Jewish, with Germany and the Germans in 1945. This article was written on the basis of letters, diaries, and memoirs of Soviet servicemen who ended the war in the territory of the Third Reich.
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Before investigating this problem further, we must first analyze the existing historiography on the "Jewish question" in the Russian Civil War. This article critically explores the literature concerning one of its most important aspects – the history of the relationship between participants in the White movement and the Jewish population of the former Russian empire. Analysis of several of the more significant works demonstrates that these relations were much more complex than has been hitherto recognized. They cannot be reduced simply to a duality of executioners and their victims. I of course do not mean to "whitewash" the White movement; its participants so besmirched its name that no objective historian could bleach it clean. Rather, my task is to formulate, on the basis of the existing literature, the essential questions that confront historians examining the "Jewish question" in the Russian Civil War.
In this article, I consider the attitudes of ethnic Russians, who constituted the overwhelming majority of those residing in Russia, toward the war. I try to answer the following questions: How did Soviet society perceive itself on the eve of the war? How many of its members were really “Soviet”? How were different sections of the population treated at the beginning of the war? How did this war become “patriotic”? I am especially interested in the Russian peasantry, who became the backbone of the Red Army. As it would be impossible to provide comprehensive answers to all these questions within the confines of an article, I instead sketch a number of possible answers and, more specifically, identify problems in need of further research.
The situation radically changed in the 1990s. In the former USSR, there was not only an “archival revolution” but also a “revolution of memory.” Hundreds, if not thousands, of memoirs were published, in rare cases written in Soviet times “at the table,” or off the record, but most appeared in the wake of the wave of historical revision of the Soviet past. Thousands of interviews with war veterans were recorded. Primarily, veterans conversed with military history enthusiasts and amateur historians.
Given these circumstances, the value of more than 4,000 interviews recorded by professional historians in “hot pursuit” of events during the Great Patriotic War or immediately after its end becomes clear. The Commission of the USSR Academy of Sciences on the History of the Great Patriotic War recorded these interviews. The commission was established in January 1942 and worked until December 1945.
CFPs
Международная научная конференция «СССР, Запад и Восток»
27-28 ноября 2018 года, Москва
Before investigating this problem further, we must first analyze the existing historiography on the "Jewish question" in the Russian Civil War. This article critically explores the literature concerning one of its most important aspects – the history of the relationship between participants in the White movement and the Jewish population of the former Russian empire. Analysis of several of the more significant works demonstrates that these relations were much more complex than has been hitherto recognized. They cannot be reduced simply to a duality of executioners and their victims. I of course do not mean to "whitewash" the White movement; its participants so besmirched its name that no objective historian could bleach it clean. Rather, my task is to formulate, on the basis of the existing literature, the essential questions that confront historians examining the "Jewish question" in the Russian Civil War.
In this article, I consider the attitudes of ethnic Russians, who constituted the overwhelming majority of those residing in Russia, toward the war. I try to answer the following questions: How did Soviet society perceive itself on the eve of the war? How many of its members were really “Soviet”? How were different sections of the population treated at the beginning of the war? How did this war become “patriotic”? I am especially interested in the Russian peasantry, who became the backbone of the Red Army. As it would be impossible to provide comprehensive answers to all these questions within the confines of an article, I instead sketch a number of possible answers and, more specifically, identify problems in need of further research.
The situation radically changed in the 1990s. In the former USSR, there was not only an “archival revolution” but also a “revolution of memory.” Hundreds, if not thousands, of memoirs were published, in rare cases written in Soviet times “at the table,” or off the record, but most appeared in the wake of the wave of historical revision of the Soviet past. Thousands of interviews with war veterans were recorded. Primarily, veterans conversed with military history enthusiasts and amateur historians.
Given these circumstances, the value of more than 4,000 interviews recorded by professional historians in “hot pursuit” of events during the Great Patriotic War or immediately after its end becomes clear. The Commission of the USSR Academy of Sciences on the History of the Great Patriotic War recorded these interviews. The commission was established in January 1942 and worked until December 1945.
Международная научная конференция «СССР, Запад и Восток»
27-28 ноября 2018 года, Москва