Stalin's guerrillas: Soviet partisans in World War II

The formation of the partisan units in the rear of the advancing Nazi troops and the establishment of resistance in the first months of the Great Patriotic War were led by the party and Soviet authorities, intelligence departments and political administrations of the Red Army fronts and USSR state security agencies. As some leaders of the first partisan detachments noted, there was an abundance of organisers, but in reality the resistance was literally stuck at the beginning of the war. The paper studies the development and operation of the central headquarters of the partisan movement, its cooperation with the Red Army and state security agencies with the aim of improving the leadership and the effectiveness of intelligence, sabotage and combat operations of partisan units in occupied Soviet territories during the Great Patriotic War. The author points out deficiencies that existed in the organisation of the partisan resistance and draws conclusions about the positive role of the central headquarters of the partisan movement in the organisation and management of combat efforts behind enemy lines.

Ideological Ballast and New Directions in Soviet History David L. Hoffmann (bio) While reading the preceding commentaries, I became aware that the commentators misunderstood the basic purpose of my article. I would like to take this opportunity not to refute their statements or engage in polemics but rather to clarify the article's purpose and suggest a more productive approach to the study of Soviet history. My intention was not to argue whether or not the Soviet system was "socialist." Such an assessment would depend on one's definition of socialism; and as I pointed out, there have been other socialist projects that bore little resemblance to the Soviet system. (I certainly do not believe that, to quote Matthew Lenoe's attempt to paraphrase my argument, "if Stalin calls it socialism, it must be socialism" [725].) The purpose of my article was to re-examine one of the ways that Stalinism has been conceptualized and periodized—namely, that Stalinism (at least from 1934 on, according to Timasheff) marked a conscious ideological retreat by Soviet leaders. I rejected this view and argued that the striking changes in Stalinist culture of the mid-1930s resulted instead from Soviet leaders' proclamation at the 17th Party Congress that they had built socialism and reached a new stage in world history. Scholars may disagree as to whether or not Stalin and his fellow leaders actually believed their ideological proclamations, and it is on this point that the commentators and I differ. Evgeny Dobrenko states that "for the Bolsheviks, and above all for Stalin, ideology was only a tool" (675). Jeffrey Brooks asks skeptically, "did Stalin and his inner circle actually wish 'to transform human nature,' and if so, one may ask from what to what?" (718). Lenoe also doubts "the continued seriousness of the socialist project under Stalin" (726), in particular the Soviet authorities' commitment to the creation of the New Soviet Person. My research in former party archives has convinced me that Soviet leaders indeed took ideology seriously and that they endeavored, albeit unsuccessfully, to create the New Soviet Person—a person whose values and ways of thinking were to be qualitatively different from those who [End Page 731] lived under capitalism, a person free of egotism who was ready to sacrifice personal interests for the sake of the collective. To argue that ideology was more than a tool to Soviet leaders is not to pass judgment on whether the Soviet system was in any ideal sense "socialist." We may demonstrate that Soviet leaders' worldview was informed by Marxist-Leninist ideology; that their categories of class analysis derived from Marxism; and that their policies, from the collectivization of agriculture to the outlawing of free trade and the establishment of a state-run economy, were consciously anti-capitalist and yet still refrain from proclaiming the Soviet system "socialist." Depending on one's definition of socialism, one could just as easily see the Soviet system's inequality as evidence that it was not "socialist." In short, I believe that ideology is crucial to understanding Soviet leaders and their policies, but I do not feel a need to rehash Cold War debates over whether the Soviet system was in fact "socialist." A reconceptualization of Soviet history in the post-Cold War era requires that we move beyond debates that reified socialism. It also requires that we set aside models such as Timasheff's that portray Stalinism as a return to traditional Russian ways. The approach that I have proposed sees the Soviet system as one particular response to the ambitions and challenges of the modern era.1 In countries throughout modern Europe, political leaders and social reformers aspired to solve social problems and rationalize everyday life through the inculcation of new cultural norms. Soviet norms of efficiency, hygiene, sobriety, and literacy all reflected this more general ambition to establish a rationalized and aestheticized social order. Soviet norms regarding reproduction and the family similarly reflected the need of modern states to foster large, healthy populations for industrial labor and mass warfare. Stalinist culture also resembled the culture of other European states in the interwar period in that it incorporated elements of folklore and traditional symbols—not to revive...

Fred Anderson set himself a difficult standard to match with his superb first book, A People's Army.' Massachusetts Soldiers and Society in the Seven Years' War.(1) This carefully-researched and well-written study of the impact of the war of 1755-62 on Massachusetts society and its attitudes toward Great Britain has been followed by similar books on Connecticut by Harold Selesky(2) and on Virginia by James Titus.(3) Not surprisingly, Anderson's general history of the Seven Years' War has been eagerly awaited. The last comparable study, L.H. Gipson's The Great War for the Empire has not worn well,(4) particularly because of Gipson's patronizing attitude toward Indians and blacks and because of his pro-British bias. Anderson's Crucible of War is well-intentioned, fair-minded, and free from jargon, intellectual arrogance, and attacks on other historians. On balance, however, it is somewhat disappointing, excellent in the areas Anderson knows best, but deficient on a number of topics he has not researched adequately. Some 200 of Anderson's approximately 700 pages of text are devoted to American social and political history. (These are intermingled with other topics, but I separate them for purposes of analysis.) His chief concerns are those he studied in his first book, but expanded geographically and chronologically. His argument that the war created stresses between Britain and her American colonies is basically sound, although too much can be read into those stresses (as has been argued by an article which Anderson does not cite by John M. Murrin.)(5) This topic, however, is one that has been studied frequently, by Anderson himself as well as by Alan Rogers, Jack P. Greene, John Shy, and others.(6) Moreover, his selection of 1766 as an end point for his book seems rather artificial. Nevertheless, Anderson is to be congratulated for the skill with which he has presented his argument and the depth of his research. Most of his 86 pages of endnotes deal with American history and he has mastered a wide range of published sources. Roughly 100 pages of text deal with the effects on native peoples of the hostilities of 1754-60, the Cherokee War of 1760-61, and the general uprising of 1763-64 commonly called Pontiac's rebellion. These pages are an intelligent and sensitive synthesis of monographs by a number of historians, including such brilliant scholars as Richard White and Michael N. McConnell.(7) Again, his research is wide ranging and his writing clear and perceptive, even if most of what he says is not particularly original. His work, moreover, can be cursory; he devotes only one paragraph, for example, to the Paxton Boys affair. He is much less sure-footed, however, when he discusses the British inner cabinet and its workings, particularly military strategy and post-war colonial policy. Incidentally, his account is somewhat confused about the relationship of the privy council, the cabinet, and the inner or secret cabinet, the last of which was the real locus of power. Although he has done considerable reading in the field, there are some important authors he does not cite, such as J.C.D. Clark and Karl W. Schweizer, who have not only written important monographs but have also edited the papers of such figures as Earl Waldegrave and the Duke of Devonshire.(8) Anderson tends, however, to lean heavily on secondary sources; for example, he cites only once Sir John Fortescue's edition of King George III's correspondence.(9) Consequently, as a work of British history Crucible of War is rather conventional. Reflecting Anderson's announced intention of reaching a popular audience, one of the largest portions of his book, about 200 pages, is a military history of the war against the French and their Indian allies in North America. Anderson's writing is lively and occasionally creative, such as his account of Washington's attack on the Jumonville party, which began the war. His history is compromised, however, by an excessive reliance on published English-language primary and secondary sources. …

Under Joseph Stalin's iron-fisted rule, the Soviet state tried to forge an army that would be both a shining example of proletarian power and an indomitable deterrent against fascist aggression. In reality, Roger Reese reveals, Stalin's grand military experiment failed miserably on both counts before it was finally rescued within the crucible of war. Reese greatly expands our understanding of the Red Army's evolution during the 1930s and its near decimation at the beginning of World War II. Counter to conventional views, he argues that the Stalinist state largely failed in its attempt to use military service as a means to indoctrinate its citizens, especially the peasantry. After 1928, the regime's recruits became increasingly disenchanted with Stalin's socialist enterprise primarily due to the disheartening changes brought on by collectivization and dekulakization. In effect, these reluctant soldiers turned their backs on both the army and Communist Party leadership, neither of which regained credibility until after World War II. The soldiers' alienation and hostility, Reese demonstrates, was most clearly manifested in the highly volatile tensions between officers and peasant recruits following the military's chaotic expansion during the 1930s. Those tensions and numerous internal conflicts greatly undermined the regime's effort to create a well-trained, cohesive, and politically indoctrinated army. In place of this ideal, the regime stumbled along with a disunited and ineffective fighting force guided by outdated doctrines and led by an undeveloped officer corps. All of those elements made the Soviet Union particularly vulnerable to the devastating military disasters of 1941. Along the way, Reese persuasively dispels a number of myths. He shows, for example, that the Red Army's humiliating defeats at the start of the war were not, as many still believe, due to Stalin's bloody purges of the officer corps during the 1930s nor to overwhelming German military and economic superiority. Stalin, Reese argues, was only one of many key influences on the Soviet's disorganized effort to field an effective fighting force. And, while the Red Army was actually technologically superior to the Wehrmacht, the Germans made far better strategic and tactical use of their forces to overwhelm the poorly led Soviets. A fascinating portrait of an army at war with itself, Reese's study illuminates the daily lives of soldiers, officers, and civilians and forever changes the way we look at the relation between political motives and military needs in the early Soviet state.

After November 1982, when Andropov took over as leader of the Soviet communist party, the Soviet authorities and media devoted a great deal of attention to the problem of social order and discipline in the USSR. It was insistently suggested that the current level of lawlessness and disorder in social life should no longer be tolerated. Soviet citizens must learn to work in a disciplined way, public order must be improved, and officials at all levels must observe the law and not use their positions in the pursuit of personal and local ends. The beginning of the law and order campaign was signalled by Andropov at a meeting of the party central committee in November 1982, when he appealed to the party and to the people as a whole to 'carry out a more decisive struggle against all violations of party, state and labour discipline'.1 The campaign was accompanied by much comment in the press from Soviet citizens, expressing great concern about the state of public order, discipline and legality.KeywordsPublic OrderPolitical ControlStable RuleSoviet SocietyIllegal PracticeThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

From 1941 to 1945 thousands of British and American sailors came to the northern Soviet ports of Arkhangel’sk and Molotovsk with Lend-Lease convoys. On the shore they made many casual contacts with local residents, in particular with Soviet women. These contacts came under close scrutiny of the Soviet authorities who tried to limit the alleged subversive influence of foreign nationals on Soviet citizens. Local women who dated Allied personnel faced harassment and repression that ranged from administrative exile to imprisonment in the Gulag. Resentments against women who had intimate relationships with foreigners during the war were widespread throughout the European theater, and not limited to the USSR. Still the Soviet authorities’ treatment of Arkhangel’sk women who dated nationals of ‘friendly’ countries was particularly harsh. They faced not just moral condemnation, but legal prosecution and long prison terms. The severity of their repression is comparable to how the Soviet side treated civilian Nazi collaborators. Ultimately, Soviet reactions to such wartime contacts with Allied nationals shed light on the broader social history of the Soviet home front, inter-Allied relationships on a grassroots level, and Soviet wartime and postwar justice that was arbitrary in nature and largely defined by local initiatives.

An unexpected result of the Gorbachev era in the USSR has been the intensity of interethnic conflict among non-Russians. Centre-periphery conflict remains a powerful driving force for non-Russian nationalisms, and is fed by Moscow’s resistance to republican claims for sovereignty. But for some republics, economic collapse, the demise of central authority, and the emergence of powerful elites responsive to local opinion, has ‘decentred’ ethnic conflict. For many national minorities within Union republics, intensified competition for jobs, resources, and political representation has rekindled territorial, historical and cultural animosities, and transferred the mantle of exploitation and oppression to the dominant titular nation which, it is feared, will use its new-found power to ensure permanent ethnic domination. Despite Moscow’s refusal to reshape outdated hierarchical federal structures to accommodate demographic changes and reinforce minority rights, national minorities in many cases still see the centre as the best protection against incursions into the institutional and linguistic guarantees established for them by the Soviet system. The minorities’ appeals to Moscow, naturally exploited by the centre in its bid to control the periphery, add an ideological layer to the multifarious antagonisms between dominant and minority nations in the republics. The national minorities are often seen by the titular majority as a potential fifth column allied with Muscovite colonialism.

The perception of the Romanian Minority in Ukraine on the Russian-Ukrainian War

A new era in international relations dawned after World War II: the Cold War was not a conventional war, but it was definitely not the peace people had been waiting for. It was a war that was waged in several arenas as the role of armed forces diminished and the battlefields moved elsewhere: to the United Nations, to the economic sphere, to sports events and concert halls, and to a great extent to international media. Indeed, the media played a decisive role in the development of the Cold War, and they significantly affected policies. The media also played an important role in bringing the Cold War to a relatively peaceful end. With the help of Western radio and television broadcasts, people under communist rule developed a certain image of the West, which arguably contributed to the fact that they did not defend their regimes at crucial moments in 1989-91. Although the media are commonly believed to have played an important part in the Cold War, the more than 40 years of foreign broadcasting after World War II remain a poorly researched area, despite the growing interest in the cultural side of the Cold War in general. The present study is part of the growing literature dealing with the cultural Cold War and addressing the impact of foreign radio broadcasting on the Soviet Union. (1) The United States' radio broadcasting to the Soviet Union had a background that is anything but straightforward. Immediately after World War II, U.S. authorities found themselves with very little information about conditions in the USSR. The United States, therefore, tried to reach across the Iron Curtain to increase its knowledge while avoiding direct military conflict and making an effort to cultivate indirect methods of getting at its adversary. Men like Allen Dulles, George Kennan, and General Lucius Clay were prone to believe that the communist system was vulnerable to aggressive forms of psychological warfare. It was in this context that Radio Free Europe in 1950 and Radio Liberation in 1953 (later known as Radio Liberty [RL]) came into existence. (2) RL not only broadcast to the Soviet Union in Russian, but by 1954 it was using an arsenal of 17 Soviet languages in an attempt to appeal to non-Russian minorities. From the beginning, the ultimate objective of RL was to promote the collapse of the Soviet totalitarian government. It was an integral part of the U.S. Cold War strategy. Subversive international broadcasting as such was not a new phenomenon. The Soviet Union had been a master of radio propaganda ever since the early 1920s. After the defeat of Nazi Germany, the Soviet leaders hardly expected to be seriously challenged by international propaganda, and especially not in their own territory. From the beginning to the end of the Cold War, however, Soviet leaders had to cope with hostile propaganda directed at Soviet citizens. Although Western broadcasting frequently violated international law, strong protests would have forced the Soviets to alter their own activities abroad. U.S. activities did not, however, merely follow the Soviet model; World War II in particular had given birth to several models for future subversive radio stations. Now, when there was no direct military confrontation with the target countries, these techniques were developed to a previously unprecedented level. This is especially well illustrated by the case of RL, a project designed primarily to influence the Soviet Union. I use it here as a case to illustrate the reactions and effects that followed the increase in foreign broadcasting to the USSR. The main objective of this article is to assess the impact of foreign broadcasting on the Soviet Union during the first decades of the Cold War. I propose that as a consequence of Western broadcasting, the Soviet authorities were forced to reorganize and rethink their own domestic propaganda policies, as the scope of foreign broadcasting activity turned out to be more extensive than they had previously anticipated. …

The underground dissident balladeer Vladimir Vysotsky resisted, through verse and song, the terrorism and structural violence of the state. He enjoyed unprecedented popularity during his lifetime, despite the lack of official recognition from Soviet authorities. In an age of made‐to‐order socialist realism, he countered the hypocrisy of approved and widely published writers and the mass media with honest confrontation of the real issues facing his people. In so doing, he became one of the greatest political communicators of the century in the Soviet Union, cutting through the state's impressive propaganda machinery to communicate directly with Soviet citizens from all walks of life. In an ironic twist of fate, the machinery of state has since his death made of Vysotsky, the people's hero, a national icon of open communication and glasnost, using his charisma and mass appeal to lend credibility to its own call for changes in the system.

ARTICLES A key challenge faced by historians of the 1990s all over the world has been to explain the collapse of the Soviet Union and Communist rule in Russia. But more fundamental question, less often addressed, is the real nature of the Soviet system that was finally swept away. Understanding the convulsions of the recent past demands reconsideration of the tumultuous history of the entire century. The astonishing events of 1991 have implanted an almost universal stereotype about the fallen regime. It is considered, in Russia as well as abroad, to have been a 74-year experiment that failed, or some variation on that theme. This judgment flows from literal, simplistic reading of Communist ideology as the main determinant of the Soviet experience. It differs from official Stalinist and neo-Stalinist propaganda only in putting negative rather than positive value on that record. The entire Soviet experience is thus presumed to have had simple historical unity, as the direct, undeviating pursuit of disastrous revolutionary utopia. It follows from this assumption that any proclaimed goals or practices associated with the Soviet system must be rejected without qualification. This reasoning has led the post-Soviet regime into historical vacuum, pursuing its own form of counter-utopia to the point of new national disaster. The main dissent from this viewpoint in Russia has not been based on any new alternative, but only on the opposite valuation of the undifferentiated Soviet past, the nostalgic faith that everything associated with the Soviet regime was essentially correct and heroic. Both attitudes, government and opposition, have been equally oblivious to the real Russian past, and neither has offered the guidance needed to lead the country out of its post-Soviet impasse. Today's profoundly unhistorical misunderstanding of the Soviet experience revolves around three basic problems. First is the nature of the Russian Revolution as long-term process, and its significance as the framework for the overall development of Russian society. The second problem is the challenge of modernization that Russia has faced all during its revolutionary experience, along with the ambiguous relationship between Russia and the West in this respect. A related question is to define the character of post-revolutionary society in Russia, and its relation to modem social trends around the globe. The problem of modernization and social change leads in turn to the third main question about the Soviet regime, namely the relation between ideology and reality, and the confusion that Communist doctrine has created about the social nature of the system. Finally, out of an investigaton of these foundations of Soviet reality some conclusions can be derived about the alleged successes and failures of the revolution and about the assumptions that have governed the post-Soviet regime. THE PROCESS OF REVOLUTION Revolution, obviously, is the central fact in the history of Russia in the twentieth century, as well as cardinal theme of global history in this era. Russians do not need to be reminded that revolution is tragic experience. It is tragic not only in the human suffering it entails, but in the hopes for better world that it feeds on and then betrays. But it would be misguided to blame those hopes, and the ideologies that convey them, for the crimes that may have been committed in their name. This is the approach of ideological reductionism, familiar error in the understanding of revolutions and their consequences, and nearly universal mistake in the post-Communist atmosphere. All the misery of revolution is attributed to the wrong-headed ideas of revolutionaries whose thinking supposedly traces back to the Enlightenment and the hubris of rational intervention in the affairs of society. In reality, revolutions are far more complex and multi-dimensional, far more deeply embedded in the historical evolution of given society, than the simple explanations of dangerous ideas or nefarious plots imply. …

Pre-1939: Rożyszcze, town, województwo wołyńskie, Poland; 1939–1941: Rozhishche, raion center, Volyn’ oblast’, Ukrainian SSR; 1941–1944: Roshischtsche, Rayon center, Gebiet Luzk, Generalkommissariat Wolhynien und Podolien; post-1991: Rozhyshche, raion center, Volyn’ oblast’, Ukraine Rożyszcze is located 19 kilometers (12 miles) north-northwest of Łuck and 51 kilometers (32 miles) southeast of Kowel. According to the 1921 census, 2,686 Jews were residing in Rożyszcze. Following the German invasion of Poland in mid-September 1939, a few local Communists organized a militia to welcome the expected arrival of the Red Army. However, they clashed first with a retreating Polish force before the Red Army entered the town. The Jewish population of the town was increased by the arrival of hundreds of refugees from central Poland, but the Soviets also deported some Jews to Siberia, which paradoxically saved their lives. The Soviet authorities also expropriated land around Rożyszcze, establishi...

The paper discusses collaboration, competition, and clashes between the Soviet and Yugoslav security apparatus in Yugoslavia on the backs of Russian émigrés in Yugoslavia, between the entry of the Red Army into Yugoslavia and the mid-1950s. The Yugoslav security agency, OZNA, had been developed under Soviet influence, which was further enhanced during the Red Army and SMERSH’s presence in Yugoslavia, and yet more when Soviet instructors were present. Under Soviet influence, OZNA established conditions for full-fledged Sovietization such as the one SMERSH achieved in Eastern European countries. Soviet authorities, lacking insight into Yugoslav society outside the new ruling elite, chose Russian émigrés as prime candidates for their informers’ network in Yugoslavia. Yugoslav UDBA uncovered Soviet intelligence activity. Soviet and Yugoslav intelligence officers alike exploited the unresolved citizenship status of Russian émigrés in Yugoslavia for counterintelligence gathering.The paper draws extensively from available UDBA’s reports and analyses from the late 1940s and 1950s.

TWO preliminary observations are necessary to this study of the armed forces of the Union of Socialist Soviet Repub lics. First of all, one must bear in mind that statistics pre pared in Soviet Russia are often unreliable and even dishonest. Bolsheviks themselves make sarcastic comments on this fact. Soviet authorities do not think of statistical data as the basis for scientific deductions, but as something to be arranged so as to serve special propaganda ends. Only by analyzing statistics, comparing them with each other, and then modifying them in view of the special conditions which exist in Russia and in view of what we knew about former conditions in the old Russia, can one form a true picture. second observation to be made is that: one must drop for the time being the conception of Law which is natural to every citizen of a legally constituted State. It must be remembered that the Soviet is a revolutionary r?gime whose inevitable companions are administrative arbitrariness and general lawlessness of life. For all their impressive wording, the articles of the many codes and statutes often remain a dead letter, either on account of the difficulty of executing their provisions or because of the resistance of local authorities. In any case, between the date of the promul gation of a law and its practical and integral application a long period usually elapses. All this is particularly true in the case of the laws which attempt to regulate a citizen's military obligation to the State over a period of years. fundamental Soviet law which regulates the discharge of military obligations is the Law on Compulsory Military Service of September 18, 1925. According to it, the armed forces of the Soviet Union are defined as The Workmen's and Peasants' Red

In June, 1920, before the establishment of the Soviet authority in the region, Armenians have grasped the most part of Nakhchivan. In July a part of XI Red Army and Turkish soldiers under command of major Veysal Univar have arrived to Nakhchivan. In November, 1920, some days proceeded war for clearing of grasped territories of Shahtakhty, Sadarak and passages Dehne. The officer of Turkish army participated in this war Mohammed Rushdie Gunajdyn has compased verses about this heroic battle.