A Soviet Ethnic Cleansing? The Polish-Soviet Population Exchange and the Making of Modern Ukraine, 1944–1947

The article examines the population exchange between Poland and the Soviet Union in 1944–1947, its role in the shaping of modern Ukraine, and its place in the evolution of the Soviet nationality policy. It investigates the factors involved in the decision-making of individuals and state officials and then assesses how people on the ground made sense of the Soviet population politics. While the earlier scholarship saw the transfer as punitive national deportation, the article argues that it was neither punitive nor purely national nor was it a deportation. The article shows that the party-state was ambivalent about the Polish minority and was not committed to total national homogenization of Western Ukraine. Instead, the people themselves were often eager to leave the USSR because of the poor living conditions, fear of Sovietization, and ethnic conflict. Paradoxically, one of the largest Soviet nation-building projects was not the product of coherent nationality policy.

Sociocultural Change in Hungary

Although Hungary joined the European Union in 2004, it seems that it has not yet been able to catch up with its Western European neighbors socioeconomically. The reasons for this are numerous, including the fact that this former historical region (Kingdom of Hungary), today the sovereign state of Hungary, has a specific sociocultural image and attitude formed by various historical events. And the nature of these events can explain why Hungary’s economic development and overarching political narrative differ so markedly from Western Europe. The aim of this article is to present the unique location of Hungary in the context of Central and Eastern Europe, and to address such factors as urbanization and industrialization, migration, population, politics, economic development, and social values crisis. We argue that these factors, including the European status quo that emerged after 1945, have influenced the existing sociopolitical, socioeconomic, and sociocultural differences between Hungary and Western European EU states.

Socialism in the Bedroom

Chapter 8 seeks to explain the evolution of postwar natalist thought in the Soviet Union and its Eastern European allies. While its approach to the developing world came to mirror many aspects of the Western approach to population politics in the Third World, the Soviet Union began to pioneer a new understanding of fertility for developed world populations and gave birth to a new neo-mercantilist discourse on fertility. Perceiving threats stemming from an aging population, a declining labor force, growing obligations to elderly populations, and ethnic others, notably Islamic peoples, the Soviets began to reintegrate pro-natalist policies into the core of state policy. Tracing how this new discourse spread from its home in academic journals to state policy, this chapter demonstrates how government came to reinhabit the wombs of the people by positing a direct relationship between threats to the health of the state and the fertility of the people.

Enemy at the Gates

Chapter 7 takes an in-depth look at the evolution of population politics within the developing world from 1800 to 1980, with a special focus on India and China. An exploration of the role of British influence on early Indian demographic thinking in tandem with the role of indigenous Indian thinkers, this chapter broadens the lessons developed in chapters 2 through 6 and applies them to the newly formed states of the postcolonial world. Similarly, the chapter discusses the origins and evolution of Chinese attitudes toward population control. Exploring the distinct similarities of China’s One-Child policy to other population control efforts of its time, this chapter demystifies China’s efforts, as they stand in ready comparison in style if not in intensity with other efforts occurring throughout the developing world.

Populate or Perish (Europe 1870–1945)

Chapter 4 investigates the birth of a new era in population politics in the years 1870–1945, focusing on France, Germany, and Russia/Soviet Union. The militarization and securitization of childbearing are explored to reveal how and why governments of all stripes chose to manipulate the breeding habits of their people in the name of the greater glory of the state. The chapter explores the creation of Mother’s Day as a national holiday; the execution of a woman in Vichy France for having performed abortions; the Stalinist “Medal of Maternity” for women who had large numbers of children; and Nazi SS breeding camps, where the German elite could pair with young women willing to fulfill their patriotic procreative duties.

“The White Experiment”: Racism and the Broome Pearl-Shelling Industry

With the Federation of Australia, aspiration for racial homogeneity was firmly established as being fundamental to national identity. Therefore, increasing criticism was directed against Asian employment in the pearl-shelling industry of Broome. It was not least against the backdrop of population politics, that several efforts were implemented to disestablish the purportedly ‘multiracial enclave’ in ‘White Australia.’ These culminated in “the white experiment,” i.e. the introduction of a dozen British men to evince European fitness as pearl divers and initiate the replacement of Asian pearling crews. Embedded in these endeavours were reflections of broader discourses on ‘white supremacy’ and racist discrimination.