scholarly journals Modern Ukrainian Historiography of World War II: Problems, Approaches, Trends

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Е.В. Дьякова

Цель исследования – выявление круга основных проблем, находящихся в фокусе внимания украинских ученых, исследующих историю Второй мировой войны. Материалами послужили монографии, сборники статей и отдельные статьи в наиболее авторитетных научных журналах страны, опубликованные в 2014–2019 гг. Применены историко-генетический, сравнительно-исторический и типологический методы, позволившие установить, что в последние годы ведущие историки Украины продолжили менять концепцию истории Великой Отечественной войны с учетом «Методических материалов…» Украинского института национальной памяти. Сделаны выводы, касающиеся тематического спектра публикаций современных украинских историков. Отмечено, что особое внимание ими уделялось изучению пропаганды (как советской, так и гитлеровской), вопросам противоборства советских и нацистских спецслужб, уточнялись определения ряда терминов, связанных с событиями 1939–1945 гг. Выявлено большое влияние на содержание данных публикаций преобладающей сегодня на Украине идеологии. The aim of the study is to identify the circle of the main problems that are in the focus of attention of Ukrainian researchers of the history of World War II. In this case, materials published in 2014–2019 served as materials: monographs, collections of articles, and individual articles in leading scientific journals of the country (The Ukrainian Historical Journal and Pages of War History of Ukraine). The historical-genetic, comparative-historical and typological methods are applied. It is noted that, after the events of 2014, there have been quite noticeable changes in the Ukrainian historiography of World War II and its component, the Great Patriotic War. The author notes that, in recent years, leading historians of Ukraine continued to change the concept of the history of the Great Patriotic War, taking into account the “Methodological Materials for the 70th Anniversary of the Expulsion of Nazi Occupiers from Ukraine” by the Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance, published in 2014. These recommendations consolidated the process associated with the exclusion of the term “Great Patriotic War” from scientific discourse in Ukrainian historiography. The author notes that Ukrainian historians clarified some basic military categories, concepts, and terms (military art, strategy, operational art, battle, military operation, etc.) used to describe the events of the Great Patriotic War. The material of theoretical articles is analyzed, which reflects the changes that are introduced into the mythologemes of the Ukrainian concept of World War II. It is indicated that, in many works, there is a negative criticism of the actions of the Soviet Union on the eve and during World War II, as well as criticism of the modern Russian concept of the Great Patriotic War, which is sometimes surprising. The importance of disclosing archival funds (including the archives of the Security Service of Ukraine, both central and regional) for historical research is emphasized. Conclusions are drawn regarding the thematic range of publications of modern Ukrainian historians. It is noted that a special attention is paid to studying both Soviet and Nazi propaganda, issues of confrontation between Soviet and Nazi intelligence services, the fate of German prisoners of war, celebration of the Victory Day on May 9 in different cities of the country. The author points out that the ideology prevailing in Ukraine has a great influence on the content of publications.

Author(s):  
Galina N. Kaninskaya ◽  
Natalya N. Naumova

The article is devoted to the participation of French pilots of the Normandy squadron in battles on the Soviet-German front as part of the Red Army in 1943-1945. After the defeat of France at the first stage of World War II (1940), the occupation of its territory by Germany and the organization of the Resistance movement “Fighting France” in London by General Charles de Gaulle, the pilots joined him expressed a burning desire to fight the enemy in the skies over Soviet soil. Their participation in the ranks of the Soviet Air Force was a unique event in the history of the Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union (1945-1945). The article analyzes the information of the Soviet press during the war years about the French squadron “Normandie-Niemen”, which fought in the Soviet Air Force on the Soviet-German front. It is shown that Soviet readers during the Great Patriotic War could get a very complete and reliable idea of the military exploits of French pilots, find out the names of heroes, get acquainted with the military everyday life of officers, appreciate their patriotism and sincere friendly feelings for the Soviet Union and its people. Along with stories about the air battles of the Normandy, the articles of Soviet correspondents contained information about the history of France, how the pilots reacted to the defeat of their country, how and where they fought in the first stage of the Second World War. The press of the war years gave brief sketches of the everyday life of French fighters on Soviet soil, about the curious events that happened to the pilots of the squadron. On the example of newspaper publications 1943-1945. about the military alliance of our and French pilots, you can get an idea of how the cooperation of the countries of the anti-Hitler coalition developed and strengthened.


Author(s):  
James Mark ◽  
Quinn Slobodian

This chapter places Eastern Europe into a broader history of decolonization. It shows how the region’s own experience of the end of Empire after the World War I led its new states to consider their relationships with both European colonialism and those were struggling for their future liberation outside their continent. Following World War II, as Communist regimes took power in Eastern Europe, and overseas European Empires dissolved in Africa and Asia, newly powerful relationships developed. Analogies between the end of empire in Eastern Europe and the Global South, though sometimes tortured and riddled with their own blind spots, were nonetheless potent rhetorical idioms, enabling imagined solidarities and facilitating material connections in the era of the Cold War and non-alignment. After the demise of the so-called “evil empire” of the Soviet Union, analogies between the postcolonial and the postcommunist condition allowed for further novel equivalencies between these regions to develop.


1988 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 225-241
Author(s):  
David Crowe

The Soviet absorption of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania during World War II caused hundreds of thousands of Baltic immigrants to come to the West, where they established strong, viable ethnic communities, often in league with groups that had left the region earlier. At first, Baltic publishing and publications centered almost exclusively on nationalistic themes that decried the loss of Baltic independence and attacked the Soviet Union for its role in this matter. In time, however, serious scholarship began to replace some of the passionate outpourings, and a strong, academic field of Baltic scholarship emerged in the West that dealt with all aspects of Baltic history, politics, culture, language, and other matters, regardless of its political or nationalistic implications. Over the past sixteen years, these efforts have produced a new body of Baltic publishing that has revived a strong interest in Baltic studies and has insured that regardless of the continued Soviet-domination of the region, the study of the culture and history of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania will remain a set fixture in Western scholarship on Eastern Europe.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 7-44
Author(s):  
A. Yu. Borisov

It is unfortunate to note again today that World War II did not end, it continues in the form of the war of memory. Politicians and scholars who stand as ideological successors of collaborators are trying to rewrite the history of those tragic days, to downplay the role of the Soviet Union in the victory over fascism. They try to revive certain political myths, which have been debunked long ago, that the Soviet Union and the Nazi Germany bear equal responsibility for the outbreak of World War II, that the Red Army did not liberate Eastern Europe but ‘occupied’ it. In order to combat these attempts it is necessary to examine once again a turbulent history of the inter-war period and, particularly, the reasons why all attempts to form a united antifascist front had failed in the 1930s, but eventually led to the formation of the anti-Hitler coalition.The paper focuses on a complex set of political considerations, including cooperation and confrontation, mutual suspicions and a fervent desire to find an ally in the face of growing international tensions, which all together determined the dynamics of relations within a strategic triangle of the Soviet Union — the United States — Great Britain in the late 1930s and early 1940s. The paper shows how all attempts to establish a collective security system during the prewar period had shattered faced with the policy of appeasement, which allowed the Nazi Germany to occupy much of Europe. Only the Soviet Union’s entry into the war changed the course of the conflict and made a decisive contribution to the victory over fascist aggressors. The author emphasizes that at such crucial moment of history I.V. Stalin, F.D. Roosevelt and W. Churchill raised to that challenge, demonstrating realism, common sense and willingness to cooperate. Although within the anti-Hitler coalition there was a number of pending issues, which triggered tensions between the Allies, their leaders managed to move beyond old grievances, ideological differences and short-term political interests, to realize that they have a common strategic goal in the struggle against Nazism. According to the author, this is the foundation for success of the anti-Hitler coalition and, at the same time, the key lesson for contemporary politicians. The very emergence of the anti-Hitler coalition represented a watershed in the history of the 20th century, which has determined a way forward for the whole humanity and laid the foundations for the world order for the next fifty years.


Author(s):  
Vladimir N. Mamyachenkov ◽  

Material living conditions of the Soviet population during World War II and in the postwar years have been studied by a large number of scholars. At the same time, few publications deal with wages as a socio-economic category. This article aimed to examine the level, dynamics, and purchasing power of Soviet citizens’ wages in 1940–1950, taking the Sverdlovsk Region as an example. The chosen topic is relevant, since payment for work is, in the majority of cases, the most important incentive to human activity. The period under consideration was extremely eventful for the Soviet Union, encompassing the Great Patriotic War and the postwar reconstruction. From 1940 up to the early 1960s, the number of scholarly publications on the problematic aspects of wages was rather limited. Importantly, this paper claims that the analysis of wages is unproductive without taking into account the specifics of the realities of Soviet everyday life, which affected consumption figures. It is noted that during the war, the state ration prices remained practically unchanged, while commercial prices rose more than tenfold, which made the goods virtually inaccessible to the vast majority of consumers. The author concludes that the prewar level of consumption for most citizens of the USSR was achieved by the early 1950s.


2016 ◽  
Vol 56 (2) ◽  
pp. 59-97
Author(s):  
Patrick Karlsen

The essay aims to analyse the "Adriatic communism" policy implemented in the period from World War II to the eve of the schism between Stalin and Tito in 1948, with the subsequent rift in relations between Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union and the expulsion of Belgrade from the socialist camp. The essay focuses on the figure of Vittorio Vidali, an Italian communist leader (born in Muggia, near Trieste) with a long and prominent militant role in the Soviet intelligence services as evidenced by his involvement in various events both in Europe and the United States.The choice to focus the analysis on Vittorio Vidali is based on the decisive role he played in the "Adriatic communism" in the stages immediately preceding the Tito–Stalin split and then during the years of the Cominform's opposition against the Party and the Yugoslav regime after 1948.


Author(s):  
Olga Golechkova

This article analyzes an isolated case within the framework of trend of jubilee mania – recent centenary celebration of the Revolution of 1917 in Italy. The author believes that many historical events reappear on the horizon when assigned to play an important role in modern politics. The article describes how the Italians view the Revolution and how it helps to explain modern Russia. The research is carried out within the framework of methodology of public history. Having examined a wide variety of sources (online articles, articles in newspapers and magazines, scientific writings, information on the congresses and conferences, exhibitions, concerts, etc.), the author attempts to demonstrate how the Russian revolutions are reflected in the Italian public opinion. The conclusion is made that the Revolution plays an important role not only in modern Russia, in Italy as well. The latter believe that the Revolution is still present in their culture and politics, correlates with their own path of political history of the XX century, including the powerful Movement for the left that emerged in the country after the World War II. At the same time, Russia did not give due attention to celebration of the centennial anniversary, focusing rather on the victory over Hitler, since this event projects the glory of the Soviet Union onto the modern Russian Federation.


2011 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 175-193
Author(s):  
Richard Pipes

After the Bolsheviks took power in Russia, some of the closest study of the new Communist regime and Soviet state was conducted by Polish scholars, whose country had a long history of troubled relations with Russia. Polish scholars had long been studying the Tsarist regime, but the advent of Soviet rule forced major adjustments. Some of the literature that emerged in Poland about the Soviet Union was perceptive, but other works were warped by anti-Semitism and an obsession with alleged Bolshevik-Judeo conspiracies. By the time of World War II, a substantial body of expertise about the USSR had accumulated in Poland. The war and the subsequent establishment of Soviet hegemony largely brought an end to this tradition, which could not truly be revived until after 1989.


Author(s):  
John Dunn

The disintegration of the Soviet Union, and the collapse of the Soviet model of legitimate political authority throughout Europe, Africa, and mainland Central America, formed the largest single shift in power, ideology, and political organization since the aftermath of World War II. The societies that have now escaped from communism (and who once found themselves imprisoned within it) have a normatively prescribed destination: a political and economic telos, synthesizing representative democracy with the market, which offers an optimal combination of security, prosperity, legitimacy, and collective public decency. In such a transition, a natural history of the forms and distributions of trust and distrust would surely disclose a powerful and insistent deepening, extension, and consolidation of the former, a progressive subsidence of the latter, and an exhilarating net accumulation of social capital. The drama of attempting to foment distrust and labouring to evoke trust (or credulity) goes on all the time and throughout the politics of this state form.


2014 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 13-36 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Grant ◽  
Alice Fisher Fellow

Russian and Soviet nurse refugees faced myriad challenges attempting to become registered nurses in North America and elsewhere after the World War II. By drawing primarily on International Council of Nurses refugee files, a picture can be pieced together of the fate that befell many of those women who left Russia and later the Soviet Union because of revolution and war in the years after 1917. The history of first (after World War I) and second (after World War II) wave émigré nurses, integrated into the broader historical narrative, reveals that professional identity was just as important to these women as national identity. This became especially so after World War II, when Russian and Soviet refugee nurses resettled in the West. Individual accounts become interwoven on an international canvas that brings together a wide range of personal experiences from women based in Russia, the Soviet Union, China, Yugoslavia, Canada, the United States, and elsewhere. The commonality of experience among Russian nurses as they attempted to establish their professional identities highlights, through the prism of Russia, the importance of the history of the displaced nurse experience in the wider context of international migration history.


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