Category: History

The Second World War: Contemporary Foreign Historiography (in Russian)

Michael

The Second World War: Contemporary Foreign Historiography: a collection of reviews and library-research papersThe collection on the history of World War II has been finally published.  We were going to publish it by last September (80th anniversary of the capitulation of Japan), but actually we only managed to prepare the manuscript by that time, so we received the paper copies in early May—right by the 81st anniversary of the capitulation of Germany.

The volume covers only non-Russian historiography of the Second World War because foreign publications are still quite hard to access in Russia.  Mostly these are papers on political, economical and social history; we almost didn’t consider the warfare history.  The materials of the collection cover not only the Eastern Front, but also the other theatres of World War II (Western and Southern Europe, South-East Asia), some papers deal with the situation in neutral countries.

Contents:

  • Preface
  • J. Eckel, ‘Pivot years: World War II in 20th-century history’ (Abstract)
  • G. Golub, ‘The eagle and the lion: reassessing Anglo-American strategic planning and the foundations of U. S. grand strategy for World War II’ (Abstract)
  • A. Holmila, ‘Parliament and the press: forging the United Nations in wartime Britain, 1939–45’ (Abstract)
  • R. I. Guzaerov, ‘Turtsiia i Velikobritaniia vo Vtoroi mirovoi voine’ [Turkey and Great Britain in World War II] (Review article)
  • O. V. Babenko, ‘Sovetsko-pol’skie otnosheniia 1939–1945 gg. (po materialam zhurnala Przegląd Wschodnioeuropejski 2022–2024 gg.)’ [The Soviet–Polish relations in 1939–45 (based on 2022–24 materials of Przegląd Wschodnioeuropejski)] (Review article)
  • M. H. Folly, ‘ “They treat us with scant respect”: prejudice and pride in British Military Liaison with the Soviet Union in the Second World War’ (Abstract)
  • T. Piffer, The Big Three Allies and the European Resistance: intelligence, politics, and the origins of the Cold War, 1939–1945 (Abstract)
  • M. Fritsche, ‘Spaces of encounter: relations between the occupier and the occupied in Norway during the Second World War’ (Abstract)
  • P. Fonzi, Oltre i confini: le occupazioni italiane durante la Seconda guerra mondiale (1939–1943) [Beyond the borders: Italian occupation during the Second World War (1939–1943)] (Abstract)
  • A. J. Rieber, Storms over the Balkans during the Second World War (Abstract)
  • G. Huff, World War II and Southeast Asia: economy and society under Japanese occupation (Abstract)
  • D. V. Petrukhina, review of A. Pomiecko, ‘ “It is never too late to fight for one’s family and nation”: attempts at “Belarusifying” soldiers in German-sponsored armed formations, 1941–1944’
  • S. G. Holtsmark, ‘Improvised liberation, October 1944: the Petsamo–Kirkenes Operation and the Red Army in Norway’ (Joint abstract)
  • Iu. V. Dunaeva, review of J. K. Hass, Wartime suffering and survival: the human condition under siege in the Blockade of Leningrad, 1941–1944
  • N. Belsky, Evacuee encounters on the Soviet home front during the Second World War (Abstract)
  • A. V. Apanasenok, ‘Kak “chuzhaia” voina stala “svoei” ’ [How the ‘someone else’s’ war became ‘ours’]: Review of V. Davis, Central Asia in World War Two: the impact and legacy of fighting for the Soviet Union
  • J. Rodgers, ‘A single wooden house standing in Stalingrad: Alexander Werth’s “Russian Commentary” on the BBC during the Second World War’ (Abstract)
  • N. Eaton, German blood, Slavic soil: how Nazi Königsberg became Soviet Kaliningrad (Abstract)
  • K. T. Hall, ‘The flyer trials: seeking justice for Lynchjustiz committed against American airmen during the Second World War’ (Abstract)
  • D. A. Harrisville, The virtuous Wehrmacht: crafting the myth of the German soldier on the Eastern Front, 1941–1944 (Abstract)
  • M. M. Mints, ‘Evrei vo Vtoroi mirovoi voine’ [Jews in the Second World War] (Review article)
  • D. C. Clary, The lost scientists of World War II (Article)
  • T. Dedering, ‘German “enemy aliens” in internment camps in South Africa in the Second World War’ (Abstract)
  • G. Papalia, ‘The Italian “Fifth Column” in Australia: Fascist propaganda, Italian-Australians and internment’ (Abstract)
  • Tzung-Ruei Tsou, ‘Schooling in camp: incarceration camps and the Japanese American school experience during World War II’ (Abstract)
  • M. Oprel, ‘Categorisation. Classification. Confiscation: dealing with enemy citizens in the Netherlands in the aftermath of World War II (1944–1967)’ (Abstract)
  • O. V. Bol’shakova, ‘Zhenshchiny vo Vtoroi mirovoi voine: sovremennaia zarubezhnaia istoriografiia’ [Women in World War II: contemporary foreign historiography] (Review article)
  • U. Khaitan, ‘Women beneath the surface: coal and the colonial state in India during the Second World War’ (Abstract)
  • O. Ayers, ‘Jim Crow and John Bull in London: transatlantic encounters with race and nation in the Second World War’ (Abstract)
  • C. O’Connell, ‘A Roman Holiday? African Americans and Italians in the Second World War’ (Abstract)
  • J. P. Smith, ‘Race and hospitality: Allied troops of colour on the South African home front during the Second World War’ (Abstract)
  • D. Littlewood, ‘Conscription in Britain, New Zealand, Australia and Canada during the Second World War’ (Abstract)
  • P. Iacobelli, ‘Japan’s intelligence network in Chile during the Second World War’ (Abstract)
  • N. Glover, K. Arnberg and F. Cottrell-Sundevall, ‘The making of consumer patriotism: mobilizing Christmas in Sweden during the Second World War’ (Abstract)
  • Bibliography
  • Contributors

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The Centenary of the USSR: Contemporary Historiography (in Russian)

Michael

The collection on historiography of the Soviet period published in 2024.  It covers both Russian and foreign historiography.  The materials of the volume analyze various issues relating to the establishment of the Soviet Union, its political system, national policy, economy, culture, science and education.

Contents:

  • Preface
  • F. Asschenfeldt and M. Trecker, “From Ludendorff to Lenin? World War I and the origins of Soviet economic planning” (Abstract)
  • A. Willimott, “Time at home: the October Revolution and Soviet temporalities” (Abstract)
  • J. D. White, “Leon Trotsky and Soviet historiography of the Russian Revolution (1918–1931)” (Abstract)
  • P. Dukes, “The Russian Revolution in The Encyclopaedia Britannica” (Abstract)
  • V. P. Liubin, review of XV Plekhanovskie chteniia: Sovetskii Soiuz v geopoliticheskikh usloviiakh 1927–1941 gg.: Problemy, tseli i rezul’taty v oblasti vnutrennego i vneshnepoliticheskogo kursov stroitel’stva gosudarstva: Materialy mezhdunarodnoi konferentsii, 23–25 sentiabria 2022 g. [The XV Plekhanov Readings: The Soviet Union in the geopolitical conditions of 1927–1941: Problems, aims, and results of internal and foreign policy in state building: Proceedings of the international academic conference, 23–25 September 2022]
  • A. V. Apanasenok, “Kak bezbozhie popytalos’ stat’ religiei [How the atheism tried to become a religion]”: Review of A Sacred Space Is Never Empty: A History of Soviet Atheism, by Victoria Smolkin
  • M. Battis, “On common ground: Soviet nationalities policy and the Austro-Marxist premise” (Abstract)
  • D. V. Petrukhina, “Natsional’no-kul’turnaia politika BSSR v 1920-e gody: Probleny i znachenie [National and cultural policy of the Belorussian Soviet Socialist Republic in the 1920s: Problems and significance]” (Review article)
  • O. V. Babenko, “Novye zarubezhnye publikatsii o sovetsko-pol’skikh otnosheniiakh mezhvoennogo perioda (2022–2023) [New foreign publications on Soviet–Polish relations in the interwar period (2022–2023)] (Review article)
  • E. N. Emel’ianova, “SSSR i Afrika v 1920-e—1930-e gody: zarubezhnaia i rossiiskaia istoriografiia [The Soviet Union and Africa in the 1920s—1930s: Russian and foreign historiography]” (Review article)
  • J. L. Mickenberg, American Girls in Red Russia: Chasing the Soviet Dream (Abstract)
  • M. M. Mints, “Sovetskii Soiuz vo Vtoroi mirovoi voine: za predelami istorii boevykh deistvii [The Soviet Union in the Second World War: beyond the history of military operations]” (Review article)
  • O. V. Babenko, “Deiatel’nost’ frontovykh khudozhestvennykh brigad i teatrov v gody Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny [Concerts and theatrical performances at the front in the years of the Great Patriotic War]” (Review article)
  • “Sovetskaia drevnost’ ”: liudi, uchrezhdeniia, knigi i nauka o drevnosti v SSSR [“Soviet antiquity”: people, organizations, books and scholarship on antiquity in the Soviet Union] (Abstract)
  • K. Świder, “Ekonomiczne przyczyny i mechanizmy rozpadu Związku Radzieckiego [Economical causes and mechanisms of the collapse of the Soviet Union] (Abstract)
  • Ch. J. Sullivan, Motherland: Soviet nostalgia in the Russian Federation (Abstract)
  • About the Authors

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Andrei Volkov, Memoirs of a Lieutenant General (in Russian)

Michael

Андрей Волков. Мемуарные записки (обложка)

Volkov, Andrei Sergeevich. Memuarnye zapiski: vospominaniia general-leitenanta inzhenerno-artilleriiskoi sluzhby. Moscow: INION RAN, 2025.

The book contains the memoirs of Lieutenant General Andrei Volkov (1893–1965) and his diary covering the period from January 1942 to May 1945.  Volkov was enlisted to the Russian Army in late 1914, took part in the First World War, and joined the Red Army in 1918; he was already a major general (one-star general in the Soviet and modern Russian military hierarchy) by 1941.  In May 1941 he received a new appointment to the post of chief artillery supply officer at the Western Special Military District that was transformed into the Western Front after the German invasion 22 June (renamed into the 3rd Belorussian Front in 1944).  He served in this position until the end of the war with Germany and took part in a number of its major operations including the defeat of the Soviet troops in Western Belorussia, the first Battle of Smolensk, Battle of Moscow, Battles of Rzhev in 1942–43, Operation Bagration (one of the most successful offensive operations of the Red Army), the Battle of Königsberg.  His account is quite different from the majority of Soviet war memoirs: he describes mostly not the operations themselves, but the functioning of the supply service, with special attention to the issues of logistics and prudent use of available resources.

Full text (PDF, 38 MB)

I prepared this book for publication in cooperation with Olga Dernova, my colleague from the State Historical Public Library of Russia that had helped me in my work at The Bibliography of Middle-earth.  The descendants of General Volkov are her neighbours; the world is a small place 😉

Rebel movement in the North Caucasus in the first half of the 20th century

Michael

M. M. Mints, “Povstancheskoe dvizhenie na Severnom Kavkaze v pervoi polovine XX veka”, Sotsial’nye i gumanitarnye nauki: Otechestvennaia i zarubezhnaia literatura: Referativnyi zhurnal. Seriia 5, Istoriia, no. 2 (2018): 109–117.

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A review of two monographs and an article published in 2016 that deal with the history of the conflicts between the population of the North Caucasus and the Russian government (imperial, later Soviet) during the first half of the twentieth century.

Gennadii Kurenkov, From conspiracy to secrecy: protecting party-state secrets at RKP(b)—VKP(b), 1918–1941

Michael

An unpublished translation of my review for Gennadii Aleksandrovich Kurenkov, Ot konspiratsii k sekretnosti: zashchita partiino-gosudarstvennoi tainy v RKP(b)—VKP(b), 1918–1941 gg. [From conspiracy to secrecy: protecting party-state secrets at RKP(b)—VKP(b), 1918–1941] (Moscow: AIRO-XXI, 2015).

The original review in Russian was published in Istoricheskaia ekspertiza no. 2 (2017), 258–262.

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The Great Fatherland War in Contemporary Historiography (in Russian)

Michael

My collection of abstracts published in 2015.  One of the first books printed at my Institute after the fire.  Initially we were going to show the current situation in historiography, but so many publications have appeared in recent years that we had to limit our work to a relatively small set of the most interesting books standing out for their subjects or research methods. As a result, most of materials in the collection are based on works of Western historians who still much more often use various methodological innovations than their Russian colleagues. Yet there are also abstracts of several Russian books that deal with some insufficiently explored aspects of the history of the Soviet Union in the Second World War. We used almost no works on history of military operations or of the Red Army as, in spite of their importance, they are not so interesting from the viewpoint of methodology. Instead, we devoted special attention to publications that deal with ‘non-military’ subjects and investigate a human dimension of the Second World War, its long-term consequences and historical context.

The contents of the abstract collection:

  • Foreword
  • Preddverie i nachalo Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny: Problemy sovremennoi istoriografii i istochnikovedeniia [The eve and the beginning of the Great Fatherland War: Problems of recent historiography and source criticism] (Abstract)
  • David M. Glantz about the Red Army in World War II (Joint abstract)
  • A. B. Orishev, V avguste 1941 [In August 1941] (Abstract)
  • The Blockade of Leningrad (Joint abstract)
  • Karel C. Berkhoff, Motherland in Danger: Soviet Propaganda during World War II (Abstract)
  • D. D. Frolov, Sovetsko-finskii plen, 1939–1944: Po obe storony koliuchei provoloki [Soviet-Finnish Captivity, 1939–1944: On Either Side of the Barbed Wire] (Abstract)
  • Jörn Hasenclever, Wehrmacht und Besatzungspolitik in der Sowjetunion: Die Befehlshaber der rückwärtigen Heeresgebiete, 1941–1943 [Wehrmacht and the Occupation Policy in the Soviet Union: The Commanders of the Army Groups’ Back Areas] (Abstract)
  • Igor’ G. Ermolov, Tri goda bez Stalina: Okkupatsiia: Sovetskie grazhdane mezhdu natsistami i bol’shevikami, 1941–1944 [Three years without Stalin: Occupation: The Soviet citizens between the Nazis and the Bolsheviks, 1941–1944] (Abstract)
  • Bogdan Musial, Sowjetische Partisanen, 1941–1944: Mythos und Wirklichkeit [The Soviet partisans, 1941–1944: Myths and Reality] (Abstract)
  • Evacuation and the Rear (Joint abstract)
  • V. N. Krasnov, I. V. Krasnov, Lend-liz dl’a SSSR, 1941–1945 [Lend-lease for the USSR, 1941–1945] (Abstract)
  • Irina V. Bystrova, Potselui cherez okean: ‘Bol’shaia troika’ v svete lichnykh kontaktov (1941–1945 gg.) [A kiss across the ocean: the Big Three in the light of personal contacts, 1941–45] (Abstract)
  • Anna Krylova, Soviet Women in Combat: A History of Violence on the Eastern Front (Abstract)
  • Soviet Jews in the Years of War and Holocaust (Joint abstract)
  • A. Iu. Bezugol’nyi, N. F. Bugai, E. F. Krinko, Gortsy Severnogo Kavkaza v Velikoi Otechestvennoi voine 1941–1945: problemy istorii, istoriografii i istochnikovedeniia [Mountain-dwellers of the Northern Caucasus in the Great Fatherland War 1941–1945: problems of history, historiography and source criticism] (Abstract)
  • Warlands: Population Resettlement and State Reconstruction in the Soviet–East European Borderlands, 1945–50, ed. Peter Gatrell and Nick Baron (Abstract)
  • The Veterans of World War II in the Soviet Union (Joint abstract)
  • The Significance of World War II for the History of the Soviet Union and the Post-Soviet States (Joint abstract)
  • Notes on Contributors

Download the full text (PDF, 3,4 Mb, in Russian).

A Centenary of 1917 Revolutions and the Russian Historiography (Review article)

Michael

M. M. Mints, ‘Stoletie revoliutsii 1917 goda i rossiiskaia istoricheskaia nauka (Obzor)’, in Rossievedenie: v poiskakh utrachennogo vremeni [Russian studies: In search for the lost time], ed. by I. I. Glebova (Moscow, 2019), 180–209.

Download the full text (PDF, in Russian).

The review article deals with the Russian monographs and collections of articles published in 2017 and timed to the centenary of the Russian revolutions of 1917.  These works cover quite a wide range of subjects including the institutional dimension of the revolution (constitutional law, history of politics, local governance), history of political leadership, revolutionary process in the province, role of the army and the navy in the events under review, etc.

As a whole, Russian research papers devoted to the anniversary of the 1917 revolutions make mixed impressions.  On the one hand, it is obvious that the investigation of the issues mentioned above is going on, the historians use new methodological approaches and new sources that have only recently become available.  New subjects are coming under review which were understudied or not studied at all in Soviet years.  On the other hand, many works are purely descriptive, without any real analysis.  Some authors replace such an analysis with blaming the Russian liberals for the collapse of the empire or even with conspiracy theories (the revolution as an anti-government plot).  Most of the works analysed in the article only deal with certain aspects of the history of the revolution, an overall study of those events remains a matter for the future.

200.000 Roubles as a Fine for a Bad Knowledge of History

Michael

A month ago, the regional court of Perm Krai convicted Vladimir Luzgin, for the first time in provincial practice, according to Article 354.1 ‘Rehabilitation of Nazism’ of the Criminal Code, Part One—‘public denial of facts identified by the sentence of the International Military Tribunal for judgement and punishment of the main military criminals of the European states of the Axis, public condoning of the crimes identified by above-noted sentence, as well as dissemination of knowingly false fabrications about the activity of the Soviet Union in the years of World War II’,  that was enacted in a hurry two years ago.  The ‘criminal’ was sentenced to a fine of 200 thousand roubles, that is not too bad, as the maximum punishment in that part is three years of imprisonment.  A criminal case was opened after Luzgin shared in VKontakte social network a link to a propagandistic article of an unknown author, ‘Fifteen Facts about Banderites, or What Kremlin Keeps Silent about’.  As the investigation showed, a huge number of people could read that article by Luzgin’s link—as much as… twenty persons.

What can I say about it?  The text of the article can easily be found in the Internet, and it’s certainly nothing but rubbish.  The author tries to varnish reputation of Stepan Bandera, the infamous leader of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists during the Second World War, but without any success, as Bandera’s hands are coated with too much innocent blood.  The author also doesn’t know history well, otherwise he wouldn’t have written that ‘communists and Germany invaded Poland on 1 September 1939 and thus set off the Second World War’.  As I can understand, it was this phrase that our prosecutors were so angry about.  I can also imagine that a person who shares a link to such a material in a social network is not well-educated either.

What I can’t understand at all, however, is what does this have to do with the Criminal Code.  Especially as the Soviet Union did invade Poland, although not on 1 September, but ‘only’ on 17 September 1939, and did it in accordance to the secret protocol to the German–Soviet non-aggression pact of 23 August.  This fact, of course, was not under consideration at the Nuremberg trials, and we know why.

Of course the case of Luzgin is a purely political process, one could expect something worse in the ‘post-Crimean’ period.  Of course it wasn’t an attempt to establish any kind of censorship.  Nevertheless, this story means that full-aged citizens of this country, if they don’t know history well enough, have now a good chance to get not just a bad mark, but a criminal sentence.  Especially if the issue is the Second World War.  Learn your lessons properly, guys…