International Memory Wars

2021 ◽  
pp. 62-83
Author(s):  
Marlene Laruelle
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Eastern European ◽  
World War ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Ukrainian Crisis ◽  
Eastern European Countries ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Second World

This chapter argues that the perception of Russia as an antifascist power has been reinforced by memory wars that have reshaped the relationship between Russia and its Central and Eastern European neighbors. It examines how the emergence and gradual visibility gained by the narrative of the Soviet Union as an occupier with a totalitarian ideology shocked the Russian elite and public opinion. Given the context of memory wars, the chapter focuses on the issue of defining who was fascist and who colluded with Nazism — the Soviet Union between 1939 and 1941 or the collaborationist forces in Central and Eastern Europe. This chapter then presents Russia's response to the new memories articulated by Central and Eastern European countries on two fronts: legal and historiographical. Ultimately, the chapter highlights how the Ukrainian crisis demonstrated that memories have been instrumental in “real” wars, as all parties claim that their martyrdom and heroism during the Second World War entitle them to some recognition today.

scholarly journals Accusing Russia of Fascism

2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 100-123
Author(s):  
Marlene Laruelle
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Central And Eastern Europe ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Eastern European ◽  
World War ◽  
The West ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Eastern European Countries ◽  
Second World ◽  
With Memory

With memory wars between Central and Eastern European states and Russia, the Second World War has become a useable past instrumentalized as a currency for legitimacy on the international scene. These memory wars focus on who was fascist and who colluded with Nazism—the Soviet Union between 1939 and 1941 or the collaborationist forces in Central and Eastern Europe? And, subsequently, who are the new fascists advancing a revisionist interpretation of the Second World War today: Putin’s Russia or Central and Eastern European countries? What is at stake here is the recognition of Russia as having a legitimate say in European affairs because of the Soviet victory, or its exclusion for refusing to repent of its role in dividing Europe and occupying a part thereof. This article debunks the accusation of fascism attributed to Putin’s regime and offers to look at the label of fascism as a mirror game between the West and Russia in defining what Europe should be like and Russia’s inclusion or exclusion.

War and Genocide 1939–1945

2013 ◽  
pp. 308-379
Author(s):  
Antony Polonsky
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Dual Process ◽  
World War ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
North Eastern ◽  
History Of ◽  
Total Separation ◽  
Second World

This chapter explores how the outbreak of the Second World War initiated a new and tragic period in the history of the Jews of north-eastern Europe. The Polish defeat by Nazi Germany in the unequal campaign that began in September of 1939 led to a new partition of the country by Germany and the Soviet Union. Though Hitler had been relatively slow to put the more extreme aspects of Nazi antisemitism into practice, by the time the war broke out, the Nazi regime was set in its deep-seated hatred of the Jews. Following the brutal violence of Kristallnacht on November 9–10, 1938, when up to a hundred Jews were murdered in Germany and Austria and over 400 synagogues burnt down, Hitler, disconcerted by the domestic and foreign unease which this provoked, decided to entrust policy on the Jews to the ideologues of the SS. They were determined at this stage to enforce a ‘total separation’ between Jews and Germans, but wanted to do so in an ‘orderly and disciplined’ manner, perhaps by compelling most Jews to emigrate. The Nazis did not act immediately on the genocidal threat of ‘the annihilation of the Jews as a race in Europe’, but during the first months of the war, a dual process took place: the barbarization of Nazi policy generally and a hardening of policy towards Jews.

scholarly journals Friends in war: Sweden between solidarity and self-help, 1939–1945

2020 ◽  
pp. 001083672090438
Author(s):  
Arash Heydarian Pashakhanlou ◽  
Felix Berenskötter
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Second World War ◽  
The Novel ◽  
World War ◽  
Trade Off ◽  
Self Help ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Winter War ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Second World

This article scrutinizes the assumption that friends support each other in times of war. Picking up the notion that solidarity, or ‘other-help’, is a key feature of friendship between states, the article explores how states behave when a friend is attacked by an overwhelming enemy. It directs attention to the trade-off between solidarity and self-help that governments face in such a situation and makes the novel argument that the decision about whether and how to support the friend is significantly influenced by assessments of the distribution of material capabilities and the relationship the state has with the aggressor. This proposition is supported empirically in an examination of Sweden’s response to its Nordic friends’ need for help during the Second World War – to Finland during the 1939–1940 ‘Winter War’ with the Soviet Union, and to Norway following the invasion of Germany from 1940 to 1945.

APPENDIX 2: Russian Legal Instruments Relating to Cultural Valuables Displaced as a Result of the Second World War, 1990–2009

2010 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 427-491
Author(s):  
Patricia Kennedy Grimsted
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Cultural Property ◽  
Postwar Period ◽  
World War ◽  
Cultural Objects ◽  
European Context ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Second World

The following list is limited narrowly to post-1991 Russian legal instruments relating to cultural valuables of foreign provenance seized and transported to the Soviet Union from Germany and Eastern Europe at the end of the Second World War, or in the immediate postwar period. Widely known in Russia as the “trophy” valuables, officially those cultural objects (art, books, and archives) are usually referred to in Russia more euphemistically as “cultural valuables displaced [or relocated] to the USSR,” although most frequently translated in a European context as “displaced cultural valuables.” The term “displaced” is used here, and may include some cultural property and archives that came to the USSR during the war itself, as well as those removed from Germany and Eastern Europe by Soviet authorities at the end of or immediately after the war. Many items involved were actually twice captured, or “twice saved,” as the saying goes in Russia, having been first captured by the Nazis, mostly from “enemies of the regime,” and then captured a second time and “safeguarded” by the Soviets.

The Cominform: Tito's International?

1992 ◽  
Vol 35 (3) ◽  
pp. 641-663 ◽  
Author(s):  
Geoffrey Swain
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Popular Front ◽  
World War ◽  
Cautious Approach ◽  
Coalition Governments ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Second World ◽  
Ideological Context

AbstractAlthough it is now recognized that the Stalin-Tito dispute was sparked off by Tito's desire to intervene decisively in the Greek civil war, the ideological context of that decision has never been fully explored. This article suggests that, since the early days of the Second World War, Tito had been committed to establishing a popular front ‘from below’, i.e. under clear communist control. He did this not only in Yugoslavia, but used his position in the war-time Comintern to persuade other communist parties to do the same. As a result he was dissatisfied with the all-party coalition governments established with Stalin's consent throughout Europe in 1945. Tito favoured a communist offensive, while Stalin, aware of the international position of the Soviet Union, favoured a more cautious approach. When Stalin summoned the first meeting of the Cominform in September 1947 and made Tito its de Facto leader, Tito mistakenly assumed he was to head a new international committed to a revolutionary offensive not only in Eastern Europe but in Greece and even Italy and France.

From the End of the Second World War to the Collapse of the Communist System

2013 ◽  
pp. 380-423
Author(s):  
Antony Polonsky
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Second World War ◽  
New Order ◽  
World War ◽  
East European ◽  
Guerrilla War ◽  
Communist System ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Second World

This chapter studies the situation of the Jews from the end of the Second World War to the collapse of the communist system. The Second World War left the world of east European Jewry devastated. Although the Nazis had been defeated, they had succeeded in murdering a large proportion of the Jews of eastern Europe. The end of the wartime Grand Alliance and the increasingly repressive character of the regimes in the Soviet Union and in Poland form the background against which attempts were made to rebuild the war-torn societies of eastern Europe and to recreate Jewish life. The Nazi occupation left a landscape laid waste by the effort to impose a racially structured New Order and the violent and often fratricidal resistance that it elicited. The departure of the Germans did not lead to the end of hostilities, and guerrilla war against the communist authorities continued in Poland, Ukraine, and Lithuania.

scholarly journals Economic Evolutions During the Cold War – Romania in the COMECON (1949-1965)

2020 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 132-145
Author(s):  
Cristian Bențe
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Eastern European ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Run Up ◽  
Sphere Of Influence ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
European Economies ◽  
Second World

AbstractThe purpose of this work is to present objectively and documented the evolution of Romania within the Council of Mutual Economic Aid (C.M.E.A. or C.O.M.E.C.O.N.) during 1949-1965. Choosing this period of time is not random: in 1949 COMECON was established at the initiative of Moscow, and the year 1965 represented the peak of the “dissidence” politics of Romania within the Council. The Romanian economy after the Second World War followed largely the same path as the other economies in Eastern Europe that entered the sphere of influence of the Soviet Union. The war and the new international situation in which Romania found itself at its end determined a dramatic rupture with the economic model followed in the interwar period. In the run-up to the end of the world conflict, the main interest of the hegemonic power in Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union, was to benefit from the resources of the countries in the area to compensate for the immense damage caused by the war. The exploitation of Eastern European economies intensified after Moscow became aware of the impossibility of obtaining substantial war reparations from Germany.

Moving People

Uprooted ◽  
2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gregor Thum
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Ethnic Minorities ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Eastern European ◽  
World War ◽  
Nation States ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Second World ◽  
First World

This chapter considers how the remapping of Central Europe after the Second World War was radical not so much in terms of changes in national borders, as in the broadscale shifting of settlement boundaries. The borders had already been altered after the First World War and new countries created upon the ruins of the fallen Central and Eastern European empires. Prolonged mass migrations also ensued at that time. Many people did not want to live in the countries they found themselves in after the political map was redrawn, or they fled growing discrimination against ethnic minorities. After the Second World War, the Allied powers abandoned the principles to which they committed themselves in 1918. They wanted the territory between Germany and the Soviet Union to be made up of homogeneous nation-states that were no longer burdened by the existence of ethnic minorities.

Ethno-Symbolic Nationalism, Orthodoxy and the Installation of Communism in Romania: 23 August 1944 to 30 December 1947

2005 ◽  
Vol 33 (4) ◽  
pp. 439-458 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lucian N. Leustean
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Historical Past ◽  
Second World

The presence of Soviet troops in Eastern Europe and the reshaping of Europe's internal borders sped up the separation between the Eastern and Western blocs in the first years after the end of the Second World War. In countries where communism had been declared illegal or lacked the support of the electorate before 1944, the accession of communist leaders to governmental structures had been advanced by the politics of the Soviet Union, based on systematised political intimidation, institutionalised violence, and blackmail. The communist authorities then legitimised their political positions in relation to the historical past of their countries and according to the development of their societies after the Second World War.

Implications

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Edele
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Soviet Regime ◽  
World War ◽  
Ongoing Debate ◽  
Middle Position ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
War Effort ◽  
Second World

This chapter turns to the present and explains the implications of the current study for the ongoing debate about the Soviet Union in the Second World War and in particular about the role of loyalty and disloyalty in the Soviet war effort. It argues that this study strengthens those who argue for a middle position: the majority of Soviet citizens were neither unquestioningly loyal to the Stalinist regime nor convinced resisters. The majority, instead, saw their interests as distinct from both the German and the Soviet regime. Nevertheless, ideology remains important if we want to understand why in the Soviet Union more resisted or collaborated than elsewhere in Europe and Asia.

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