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This is the first work in any language that offers both an overarching exploration of the flight and evacuation of Soviet Jews viewed at the macro level, and a personal history of one Soviet Jewish family. The book makes a significant contribution to the history of the Holocaust and Second World War in the Soviet Union, presenting one Soviet region as an illustration of wartime social and media politics.
In less than a century, Jews in Russia have survived two world wars, revolution, political and economic turmoil, and persecution by both Nazis and Soviets. Yet they have managed not only to survive, but also transform themselves and emerge as a highly creative, educated entity that has transplanted itself into other countries. Revolution, Repression and Revival: The Soviet Jewish Experience enhances our understanding of the Russian Jewish past by bringing together some of the latest thinking by the leading scholars from the former Soviet Union, Israel and the United States. The book explains the contradictions, ambiguities and anomalies of the Russian Jewish story and helps us understand one...
The first book devoted exclusively to the Holocaust in the North Caucasus, exploring mass killings, Jewish responses, collaboration, and memory in a region barely known in this context
"In an environment where a public Jewish presence was routinely delegitimized, reading uniquely provided for many Soviet Jews an entry to communal memory and identity. This project decodes the complex reading strategies and the specifically Jewish uses to which the books on the Soviet Jewish bookshelf were put"--
This is the first work in any language that offers both an overarching exploration of the flight and evacuation of Soviet Jews viewed at the macro level, and a personal history of one Soviet Jewish family. It is also the first study to examine Jewish life in the Northern Caucasus, a Soviet region that history scholars have rarely addressed. Drawing on a collection of family letters, Kiril Feferman provides a history of the Ginsburgs as they debate whether to evacuate their home of Rostov-on-Don in southern Russia and are eventually swept away by the Soviet-German War, the German invasion of Soviet Russia, and the Holocaust. The book makes a significant contribution to the history of the Holocaust and Second World War in the Soviet Union, presenting one Soviet region as an illustration of wartime social and media politics.
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 an...
In post-Soviet Russia, there is a persistent trend to repress, control, or even co-opt national history. By reshaping memory to suit a politically convenient narrative, Russia has fashioned a good future out of a "bad past." While Putin's regime has acquired nearly complete control over interpretations of the past, The Future of the Soviet Past reveals that Russia's inability to fully rewrite its Soviet history plays an essential part in its current political agenda. Diverse contributors consider the many ways in which public narrative shapes Russian culture—from cinema, television, and music to museums, legislature, and education—as well as how patriotism reflected in these forms of culture implies a casual acceptance of the valorization of Stalin and his role in World War II. The Future of the Soviet Past provides effective and nuanced examples of how Russia has reimagined its Soviet history as well as how that past still influences Russia's policymaking.
During World War II, some two million Jewish refugees relocated from the western regions of the USSR to the Soviet interior. Citizens in the Central Asian territories were at best indifferent—and at worst openly hostile—toward these migrants. Unpopular policies dictated that residents house refugees and share their limited food and essentials with these unwelcome strangers. When the local population began targeting the newcomers, Soviet authorities saw the antisemitic violence as discontentment with the political system itself and came down hard against it. Local authorities, however, were less concerned with the discrimination, focusing instead on absorbing large numbers of displaced pe...
This book provides a bold examination of the political use of history in contemporary Russia. Anton Weiss-Wendt argues that history is yet another discipline misappropriated by the Kremlin for the purpose of rallying the population. He explains how, since the pro-democracy protests in 2011–12, the Russian government has hamstrung independent research and aligned state institutions in the promotion of militant patriotism. The entire state machinery has been mobilized to construe a single, glorious historical narrative with the focus on Soviet victory over Nazi Germany. Putin's Russia and the Falsification of History examines the intricate networks in Russia that engage in “historymaking....
Even before World War II had ended, survivors, historians, writers, and artists tried to make sense of the Holocaust. To do so, they relied on belief systems and narratives that, as the bloc confrontation intensified, were increasingly shaped by Cold War thinking. Foregrounding the Cold War's role in shaping Holocaust memory, this book highlights how the global conflict between East and West influenced research, legal proceedings, and collective as well as individual memories of the murder of European Jews. Contributions focusing on different parts of the world reveal commonalities, differences, and entanglements between Eastern and Western memories of the Holocaust. Examining Holocaust memo...