Call for papers
The USSR and World War II
Paris, 5-7 May 2011
Submission deadline 30 September 2010. The program will be finalized by
the end of October 2010.
Partners: Centre d’études des mondes russe, caucasien et
centre-européen (Cercec: EHESS; CNRS, Paris); Centre de recherches historiques
(EHESS; CNRS, Paris); Centre franco-russe de recherche en sciences humaines et
sociales (Moscou) ; Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies (Harvard);
Institut d’histoire du temps présent (IHTP, CNRS, Paris) Programme de
recherche interdisciplinaire “Le fait guerrier et les violences armées
– Politique, stratégie, sociétés” (EHESS, Paris); Maison des
Sciences de l’Homme (Paris);
Identités, relations internationales et civilisations de l’Europe (IRICE:
Université de Paris 1; CNRS, Paris); Institut de recherche stratégique de
l’École militaire (Paris);
Slavic Research Center, Hokkaido University (Hokkaido); Cold War Studies
(Harvard); ROSSPEN (Moscow).
International Academic Committee: Alain Blum, Dietrich Beyrau, Catherine
Gousseff, Andrea Graziosi, Oleg Khlevniuk, Mark Kramer, Nathalie Moine, Andrei
Sorokin, Alexander Vatlin, David Wolff.
French academic and organizing committee: Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau, Alain
Blum, Sabine Dullin, Christian Ingrao, Jean-Christophe Romer.
Proposals to be submitted to the following address: WWII.USSR@ehess.fr (please use subject
line “Proposal for the USSR and WWII conference”).
All documents are available on the site of the conference: http://www.wwii-ussr.eu
1. Proposals should include a brief (one- or two-page) description of paper
topic, including the sources to be used.
2. The organizers will be able to cover traveling and accommodation expenses
for as many participants as possible. All selected contributors will be
encouraged to pay at least part of the cost of their attendance if possible.
The organizers will gladly provide them with formal invitation letters to be
used when applying for support from universities and other institutions.
3. The conference will be in English, Russian, and French. Simultaneous
Russian-French/French-Russian interpretation will be provided.
The conference is intended to discuss how the large volume of evidence now
available, including archival documents and other primary sources that have
emerged over the past 20 years, illuminates our understanding of the
USSR’s role in the Second World War. Many studies show that considerable
progress has been made in clarifying a range of fields such as civilians’
experience of the war, frontoviki profiles, popular and artistic
representations of the conflict, ethnic and social developments, and the
war’s impact on the Soviet system and the regime’s relationship
with the population. However, these approaches, some highly specialized, have
not been properly combined to achieve a new, more nuanced overall picture of
the USSR and World War II.
This scholarly conference will explore the war as such and the consequences of
the war for “Late Stalinism.” Proposals expected from this
call for papers will concern the following periods and topics:
1) 1939-1941: The German-Soviet Pact, Soviet Expansion to the West, and Soviet
Preparations for War
How was the German-Soviet Pact of Non-Aggression, signed in August 1939,
perceived in the USSR? What types of cooperation were undertaken between the
two temporarily allied powers (for example, transfer of ethnic German
communities from the USSR)? During this period of “non-aggression,”
the USSR behaved as an occupying power, first in the Polish eastern
territories, then the Baltic countries, Bessarabia, and northern Bukovina. To
what extent were these various territorial annexations carried out in a common
pattern, using well-tried repressive measures or more innovative techniques? What
were internal Soviet developments during those crucial years? What was the
impact of the war with Finland?
2) The War
The USSR’s entry into the war led to the mobilization of millions of men.
As the war progressed, with huge losses of manpower and offensives requiring
massed formations, the Soviet government called up younger cohorts of
conscripts. What was the profile of this army? How did it develop, particularly
in its command structure from Stalin and the Stavka and State Defense Committee
(GKO) to the officers on the frontline? What resources were used in support of
the war effort, and how did these help to define new patterns of hierarchy? The
experience of the war itself (solidarity, patriotism, defeatism, etc.), which
requires more detailed research, also includes the experience of captivity.
What was the fate of Soviet POWs in various theaters and at various times
during the war? Any examination of the progress of the war across the whole of
Soviet territory requires a consideration of the diverse status of the
combatants, not only as soldiers of the Red Army but also as groups of
partisans fighting in German-occupied areas.
3) Authority and Control in Wartime
War over the centuries has been linked with the strengthening of state power,
and at no time was this more true than during the Second World War. In the USSR
the exigencies of war and the creation of new command organs accentuated the
already high degree of centralization of political power. How did this alter
the Soviet system of governance? What changes did the war produce in the way
the Soviet system was run, and in the men running it? How was the Soviet war
economy organized and how did it work?
Among the priorities imposed by the war, control over the population led to a
return to repressive action, particularly against certain nationalities. Did
the deportation of “punished peoples” (Soviet Germans,
nationalities in the North Caucasus, Crimean Tatars) introduce a new concept of
the internal enemy, or was it merely an intensification of pre-war practice?
More generally, what role did the NKVD-NKGB play in the war? How did the
repressive apparatus change over those years? How did it police the
population? The war was also a time of partial liberalization in some
spheres (religion, culture) and the partial rehabilitation of some of the
victims of the Stalinist terror. The category of victims became complicated as
some moved back and forth between earlier and new stigmatization. Why was the
severe repression of particular nationalities accompanied by a relaxation of
political control in some areas?
4) The New Geography of the USSR at War
German occupation of the western territories shifted the country’s center
of gravity. The evacuation of part of the population and the massive transfer
of the Soviet Union’s industrial and economic resources marked this
shift. The new position of Central Asia as a refuge for evacuees, the transfer
of administrations and foreign diplomatic missions from Moscow to Kuybyshev
(Samara), and the transfer of industries to the Urals and Siberia established a
new geography for the USSR that has been relatively little researched, whether
in terms of communications, economic effects or social and cultural
repercussions.
What changes did the War bring to these internal regions?
5) Civilian Experience of the War
Civilian experience of the War was diverse. In addition to the occupied
territories, a distinction must be made between front/near-front areas, such as
the besieged region of Leningrad, and rear areas (from the Urals to Central
Asia). How did people survive in these different areas, what constraints did
they face, how were they mobilized by propaganda for the front? How did the
economy’s private and black-market sectors ensure the population’s
survival? Looking back, is it possible to apprehend “states of
mind”, rumors, hopes and fears about the outcome of the war? With total
mobilization, what was the impact of the war on the redefinition of
women’s economic and social roles and the fate of children? Did the
introduction of welfare policies after the war cause new priority categories to
emerge, such as soldiers’ families and war invalids? What happened to the
families of war prisoners?
6) Life and Death in the Occupied Territories
This aspect of World War II in the USSR is one that has been most substantially
revised, mainly because of ongoing work on the history of the Holocaust in the
Soviet Union. This central topic will be specifically addressed in a conference
following on from our scholarly meetings. The progress of knowledge about the
history of the occupied territories largely depends on a comparison that is now
possible between German and Soviet sources to examine anew the patterns of
resistance, collaboration, and accommodation in the occupied areas. An examination
of these sources reveals the diversity of types of occupation from one area to
another. For example, scholars can now more clearly assess the type and degree
of violence exerted, which varied in intensity from one place to another, with
some areas particularly mistreated by the German occupiers, as in Belarus.
7) Re-Sovietization of the Western Territories
The return of Soviet forces to the territories first annexed in 1939 and 1940
often was met with strong national resistance by armed guerrillas. The history
of these regions is dominated by intense campaigns by Soviet organs, aggravated
after 1949 by collectivization. How are the various scenarios in different
places of this new “war after the war” to be described, ending in
the deportation of large numbers of locals? How did these purges, in their
turn, alter the population of the Gulag with the massive arrival of Baltic and
Ukrainian nationalists?
8) The Consequences of the War for the Soviet Union: Internal Repercussions
8a) The Ravages of War
Although the Soviet Union emerged from the war as a great power second only to
the United States, the country had paid an onerous price. Figures such as 25
million homeless and 27 million dead hint at the extent of the disaster and
raise the question of how society rose to its feet again, the new sacrifices it
had to make, and the trials it had to endure, such as the 1946 famine in the
newly annexed western territories. Proposals on wartime losses and the
demographic, social, and gender consequences are welcome.
8b) A Confiscated Victory?
After years of violent upheaval and privation, and also of relaxed political
and social control, what were the society’s expectations as the war drew
to a close? How were these expectations affected by the return of authority and
the restoration of Stalinist economic institutions? How did the Soviet regime
reassert tight control? What did the population’s different strata and
groups expect from victory? What were the characteristics of the new Soviet
elites? How can we analyze the war’s impact on gender relations in the
USSR?
Did a new Soviet social stratification emerge with two
poles—“traitors and heroes”—and the bulk of the
population in between? What were the various forms of political purge, from
“wildcat” purges to trials for collaboration, over time? How
effective was the recognition given to war medal recipients and, more
generally, all the types of award for human sacrifice that were given to
regular soldiers and partisans in symbolic and material ways during the ups and
downs of the postwar decade?
At the end of the War, the Soviet Union experienced unprecedented population
movements from east and west, including re-evacuations from the rear areas;
mass repatriation toward the western borders of the Ostarbeiter forced
laborers, POWs, and demobilized troops; transfers of ethnic communities under
border changes; the return of surviving Jewish escapees; and the settlement of
refugees. This gigantic shift of people was often chaotic and was spurred by
violent repression, particularly for the population transfers and mass
repatriations in the west: How did the process differ from region to region?
How were they received upon their arrival back in the Soviet Union? How were
they reintegrated, political and socially, how did they compete for resources
at a time of severe shortages? How, if at all, did the war and victory
transform the Gulag and, more generally, the Soviet “concentration camp
world”?
9) Soviet Power outside the USSR
The Soviet Union’s contribution to the liberation of Europe gave it a new
presence at the heart of the Old Continent. Although the Red Army was clearly
an occupying power in Germany, what role did it play elsewhere in Eastern
Europe? How important were Soviet troops in converting the East European countries
into Soviet satellites? How important was Soviet control in Eastern Europe in
gaining economic resources to rebuild the USSR?
10) Did the Great Patriotic War Establish Soviet Legitimacy?
Patriotic wartime propaganda confirmed the rehabilitation of the heroes of the
former Russian Empire, preparing for the postwar enthronement of Russia as the
guide of the Soviet peoples, with the support of the restored Orthodox Church.
How was this new ideological reality connected to the heritage of the war—with
the exaltation of sacrifice and the combatants—to reshape the Soviet
postwar project? What was the role of commemorations and the cult of war memory
as encouraged from the top? How did Soviet and post-Soviet historiography enter
the picture? What role did historians play? What were the main stages in the
Soviet and post-Soviet reading of the war? How are we to analyze Leonid
Brezhnev’s new policies in the 1960s? What were their long-term
consequences and their impact on the legitimization effort of Boris Yeltsin’s
and Vladimir Putin’s Russia? What have been the main lines of research,
public debate, and official policy in other former Soviet republics since 1991?
---
Davis Center for Russian and
Eurasian Studies
Harvard University
1730 Cambridge Street, 3rd Floor
Cambridge, MA 02138
T 617.495.4037
F 617.495.8319
http://www.daviscenter.fas.harvard.edu