Borderlands
World War II in Soviet Eastern Europe
http://www.history.neu.edu/fac/burds/borders.htm
HST3390

". . . the overwhelming brunt of the Nazi occupation between 1941 and 1944,
as of the devastating Soviet reoccupation, was borne not by Russia but by the
Baltic States, by Belarus, by Poland, and above all by Ukraine."
--Norman Davies, New York Review of Books June 9, 1994, p. 23.

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Instructor

Professor Jeffrey Burds
Office: 221 Meserve Hall
Telephone: 373-2079
JBURDS@LYNX.DAC.NEU.EDU

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Course Description

This seminar is devoted to the study of Russia’s western borderlands before, during, and immediately following the Second World War, 1939-1945. Drawing from a variety of original documents, films, and monographic studies of the era, we will evaluate the impact of World War II on Soviet Eastern Europe. The primary task is to train graduate students in the techniques of historical inquiry, research, and writing. Required seminar readings will introduce all students to the basic history of the Second World War in the East, supplemented by several weeks of readings on special themes: Soviet Occupation Policy (1939-1941); Ostpolitik: German Occupation Policy in Soviet territory, 1941-1945; Genocide and the Holocaust; Partisans and Collaborators; Nationalism; Ethnic Reprisals after Soviet Liberation of Occupied Zones; and the origins of the Cold War.

Each student will be expected to write two papers: a short paper of 5-7 typed, double-spaced pages, which represents an analysis of the materials used for a short presentation to be given during the first seven weeks. Ideally, this short paper will overlap with the theme of the student’s semester paper. Students will revise the first paper into a longer 15-20-page study on a theme to be agreed upon with the instructor. Near the end of the semester, this paper will first be read by two students in the seminar, revised, and then submitted to Professor Burds with your original and edited first draft, the written comments of the two students, and your expanded, revised paper. I expect all papers to represent your best work: all papers should conform to the History Style Guide (to be distributed in class), and all written work should be checked closely for spelling and grammatical errors.

The longer paper will consist either of a survey of historiography on a particular theme, or a research paper on some aspect of the Second World War in Eastern Europe -- origins, conflict, legacy. Themes are open, though all paper topics must be approved by the instructor. A list of sample themes and a bibliography of potential readings will be distributed in class.

Final grades will be calculated with attention to the following formula:

• Active and considered class participation is encouraged: 40 percent

• Your presentation and short summary paper should be informative, concise, and

to the point: 20 percent

• Your semester paper should be well-written, well-argued, and informative: 40 percent

• Your review of the papers of two other students in the seminar must be considerate and

they must reflect your careful reading of the material.

Presentation themes will be set during the first two weeks of classes. Generally, these will be devoted to materials related to the assigned reading for a given week. Presentation and short-paper themes will normally overlap directly with themes for the longer papers.

All papers in the course should conform to the History Style Guide, and all written work should be checked closely for spelling and grammatical errors. Sloppy work will receive at least one full grade reduction.

Bibliography An extensive list of useful readings and materials for choosing paper themes.

Check out summaries of the latest research in Soviet Military Studies [Frank Cass Publishing]

Check out the Journal of Slavic Military Studies [David M. Glantz, ed.]

Check out the U.S. Army Homepage, with extensive on-line monographs concnering all aspects of the Soviet military, World War II, Soviet partisans, etc.

Connect to the National Archives

Connect to the British Public Record Office [Press for Catalogue Search]

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SPASI!

A Russian woman and child under attack by Nazi bayonets: "Save us!" This was one of the most memorable images of the Soviet home front in World War II

Visit an on-line exhibit of rare Soviet photographs from World War II.

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Week 1 Introduction (March 28)

Introduction. Discussion.

Please read two short selections BEFORE the first class meeting:
Jeffrey Burds, "Ethnic Memories of the Past," adapted from my unpublished book manuscript, 'A Sea of Blood and Tears': From Civil War to Cold War in Soviet Galicia, 1944-1950

Piotr Wrobel, "Double Memory: Poles and Jews After the Holocaust," East European Politics and Societies Volume 11, Number 3 (Fall 1997), 560-574.

Handout: Bibliographies

FILM: Come & See (Elem Klimov, USSR, 1985)
Described as “142 minutes of raw emotion”, this film won top prizes at the Moscow and Venice film festivals in 1985. The story is based on writer Aleksandr Adamovich’s WWII memoirs of SS reprisals against partisans. Set in occupied Belorussia in 1943, the film follows a raw teenager into the swamps and forests of the Western border provinces, where he undergoes a hell of atrocities, transformed by his hatred for the fascists as he tries to survive the carnage of war. Russian with English subtitles. 142 minutes.

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Week 2 Operation Barbarossa and the German Invasion of Soviet Eastern Europe (April 4)

Alan Clark, Barbarossa: The Russian-German Conflict, 1941-1945, pp. 3-273.

Documents
Nazi-Soviet Relations, 1931-1941 [Documents of the Avalon Project]

Stalin’s Speech Before the Politburo [19 August 1939]

Photo & Text of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact [23 August 1939]

Secret Protocols of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact [23 August 1939]

Handout: Map: Operation Barbarossa

Data on Soviet/German/British/US Wartime Production

Molotov's Note on German Atrocities in Occupied Soviet Territory (January 6, 1942)

Choose paper/presentation themes. Presentations will begin in Week 4.

Recommended

K. I. Bukov, “The Anxious October of '41”, Russian Studies in History Volume 31, No. 4 (Spring 1993): 30-48.

Gabriel Gorodetsky, Grand Delusion: Stalin and the German Invasion of Russia (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999).

Mark Harrison, Accounting for War: Soviet Production, Employment, and the Defence Burden, 1940-1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).

Clement Leibovitz, Alvin Finkel, Christopher Hitchens, In Our Time: The Chamberlain-Hitler Collusion (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1998).

Bruce W. Menning, ed. At the Threshold of War: The Soviet High Command in 1941 in Russian Studies in History: A Journal of Translations Volume 36, Number 3 (Winter 1997-98), pp. 2-93.

Albert Resis, "The Fall of Litvinov: Harbinger of the German-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact," Europe-Asia Studies Volume 52, Number (January 2000): 33-56.

Geoffrey Roberts, “The Soviet Decision for a Pact with Nazi Germany,” Soviet Studies Volume 44, Number 1 (1992): 57-80.

The Russian Campaign, 1941-1945: A Photo Diary (by Otto Willnauer)

Photo Exhibition: World War II Through Russian Eyes [Traveling Exhibit From the Russian Central Armed Forces Museum in Moscow]

Photographs from the Easter Front

World War II in Ukraine [A Photo Essay]

WEB Genocide Documentation Centre: Internet Resources on Genocide & Mass Killings [World War II]

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Week 3 After Stalingrad: The Soviet Drive to Berlin (April 11)

Presentations Schedule

Alan Clark, Barbarossa: The Russian-German Conflict, 1941-1945, pp. 277-465.

Film: The World at War: Stalingrad

Clips from the Soviet celebration of victory on Red Square, 1945

Handouts: Map of the Soviet Drive to Berlin

Handout: Stalin's Toast to Victory (May 24, l945)

Photo credit: Raising the Hammer and Sickle over the Reichstag,
2 May, 1945 by Yevgeni Khaldey

Recommended

Antony Beevor, Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege, 1942-1943(New York: Penguin Press, 1999).

Michael Cherniavsky, "Corporal Hitler, General Winter and the Russian Peasant," The Yale Review Volume LI, Number 4 (Summer 1962), pp. 547-558.

William C. Fletcher, "The Soviet Bible Belt: World War II’s Effects on Religion," in Susan J. Linz, editor. The Impact of World War II on the Soviet Union (Rowman & Allanheld, 1985), pp. 129-156.

Leonidas E. Hill, “The Published Political Memoirs of Leading Nazis, 1933-45,” in George Egerton, ed. Political Memoir: Essays on the Politics of Memory (London: Frank Cass, 1994), pp. 225-241.

Daniel Peris : "’God is Now On Our Side’: The Religious Revival on Unoccupied Soviet Territory during World War II,” Kritika, Volume 1, Number 1 (1999): 97-118.

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Week 4 1939-1941: The Soviet Occupation of Eastern Poland (April 18)

Jan Gross, Revolution from Abroad: The Soviet Conquest of Poland’s Western Ukraine and Western Belorussia (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988). [View on-line in PDF format]

Handouts: Text of the Non-Aggression Pact
Map of Central and Eastern Europe after the Non-Aggression Pact (Fall 1939)
DOCUMENT: Signals from Moscow

Set team assignments.

Of Related Interest

Terry Martin, “The Origins of Soviet Ethnic Cleansing,” The Journal of Modern History Volume 70, Number 4 (December 1998): 813-861.

Victor Zaslavsky, “The Katyn Massacre: ‘Class Cleansing’ as Totalitarian Praxis,” Telos Issue 114 (Winter 1999) 67-107.

Benjamin B. Fischer, "The Katyn Controversy: Stalin's Killing Field," Studies in Intelligence (Winter 1999-2000) [CIA's Declassified Journal]

DOCUMENT

Memorandum on NKVD letterhead from L. Beria to "Comrade Stalin" proposing to execute captured Polish officers, soldiers, and other prisoners by shooting. Stalin's handwritten signature appears on top, followed by signatures of Politburo members K. Voroshilov, V. Molotov, and A. Mikoyan. Signatures in left margin are M. Kalinin and L. Kaganovich, both favoring execution

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Week 5 Ostpolitik: The German Occupation Zone [The Case of Ukraine] (April 25)

Martin Dean, Collaboration in the Holocaust: Crimes of the Local Police in Belorussia and Ukraine, 1941-44 (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1999), pp. 1-168.

Document: Hitler’s Commissar Order, dated 6 June 1941

Of Related Interest on the Problem of Wartime Collaboration

Berhard Chiari, Alltag hinter der Front. Besatzung, Kollaboration und Widerstand in Weissrussland 1941-1944 (Duesseldorf, 1998).

Alexander Dallin, German Rule in Russia, 1941-1945: A Study of Occupation Policies,
pp. 84-167, 305-319, 376-408. [View on-line in PDF format]

John Erickson, “Nazi Posters in Wartime Russia,” History Today, Sep94, Vol. 44 Issue 9, pp14-19.

Jan Tomasz Gross, Polish Society Under German Occupation: The Generalgouvernement, 1939-1944 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979).

Zygmunt Klukowski, Diary from the Years of Occupation, 1939-44 (University of Illinois Press, 1993).

Wolodomyr Kosyk, The Third Reich and Ukraine (New York: Peter Lang Publishers, 1993), pp. 185-315. Documents on pp. 546-548, 548-549, 550, 554 [View on-line in PDF format]

Oleg Zarubinsky, “Collaboration of the Population in Occupied Ukrainian Territory: Some Aspects of the Overall Picture,” The Journal of Slavic Military Studies Volume 10, No. 2 (1997): 138-152.

Nuremburg War Crimes Tribunal Proceedings

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Week 6 Holocaust & Genocide: The Politics of Ethnic Cleansing (May 2)

Christopher Browning, Ordinary Men: Reserve Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland

HANDOUT: Hitler's Willing Executioners

HANDOUT: Perpetrators, Victims, Bystanders

HANDOUT: Beyond Redemption? Reflections on the Holocaust

Visit the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. where there are several on-line photographic and documentary exhibits.

Visit the Gallery of Holocaust Images prepared for an on-line Teacher's Guide to the Holocaust.

Visit an on-line Photographic Exhibition of the Holocaust.

Recommend Reading

Randolph L. Braham, “The Assault on Historical Memory: Hungarian Nationalists and the Holocaust,” East European Quarterly Volume 33, Number 4 (Winter 1999): 411-425.

Catherine A. Bernard, "tell him that I . . . . Women Writing the Holocaust," Stanford University, 1995.

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Week 7 Partisans & Collaborators (May 9)

Truman Anderson, “Incident at Baranivka: German Reprisals and the Soviet Partisan Movement in Ukraine, October-December 1941,” Journal of Modern History Volume71, Number 3 (September 1999): 585-623.

Colonel I. G. Starinov, Over the Abyss: My Life in Soviet Special Operations (New York: Ivy Books [Ballantine Books], 1995), pp. 161-366.

Waldemar Lotnik, Nine Lives: Ethnic Conflict in the Polish-Ukrainian Borderlands (London: Serif, 1999), pp. 7-157.

FILM: Russia’s War -- Volume II

Of Related Interest on the Partisan War

Alexander Dallin, German Rule in Russia, 1941-1945: A Study of Occupation Policies,
pp. 497-636. [View on-line in PDF format]

Leonid D. Grenkevich, Soviet Partisan Movements: A Critical Historiographical Analysis (London: Frank Cass, 1999).

Pavel Sudoplatov, Special Tasks: The Memoirs of an Unwanted Witness -- A Soviet Spymaster (Boston: Little, Brown, & Co., 1994-1995). Revised Edition.

All short papers –at least 7 pages, typed, doubled spaced (conforming to the History Style Guide) -- are due in my office no later than 5:00 pm on Thursday, May 11 . They will be returned and discussed with each of you individually in the week following.

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Week 8 Volksdeutsche: East European Reprisals Against Ethnic Germans (May 16)

Alfred-Maurice de Zayas, A Terrible Revenge: The Ethnic Cleansing of the East European Germans, 1944-1950 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1993).

Of Related Interest on postwar Gender Violence

Jeffrey Burds, “Tangled Lives: Women in the Ukrainian Underground, 1944-1949” [unpublished manuscript, see Week 10]

Lucille Eichengreen, From Ashes to Life: My Memories of the Holocaust (Mercury House, 1994).

Marlene Epp, “The Memory of Violence: Soviet and East European Mennonite Refugees and Rape in the Second World War” Journal of Women's History, 9 (1), Spring 1997.

Waldemar Lotnik, Nine Lives: Ethnic Conflict in the Polish-Ukrainian Borderlands (London: Serif, 1999).

Norman Naimark,”Soviet Soldiers, German Women and the Problem of Rape.” The Russians in Germany: A History of the Soviet Zone of Occupation, 1945-1949 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,1995), 69-140.

Agate Nesaule, A Woman in Amber: Healing the Trauma of War and Exile (New York: Penguin Books, 1995).

Alaine Polcz, A Wartime Memoir: Hungary 1944-1945 (Budapest: Corvina, 1991-1997).

Vieda Skultans, The Testimony of Lives: Narrative and Memory in Post-Soviet Latvia (Lpndpn and New York: Routledge, 1998).

Timothy Snyder, “‘To Resolve the Ukrainian Question Once and For All’: The Ethnic Cleansing of Ukrainians in Poland, 1943-1947,” Journal of Cold War Studies Volume 1, Number 2 (June 1999).

Read a reprint of Jeffrey Burds' H-DIPLO review of Snyder's article.

For More Information
Violence and Self-Identity: Diagnostic Criteria for Evaluating Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder as identified by Judith Herman, M.D. Trauma & Recovery (New York: Basic Books, 1992). Herman identifies trauma as an overlooked epidemic.

Of Related Interest on Postwar Ethnic Violence

Zygmunt Klukowski, Red Shadow: a physician’s memoir of the Soviet occupation of Eastern Poland, 1944-1956 (Jefferson, N.C. : McFarland & Co., 1997).

J. Otto Pohl, Ethnic Cleansing in the USSR, 1937-1949 (Greenwod Publishing, 1999).

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Week 9 Aftermath: Origins of the Cold War (May 23)

Gar Alperovitz, Atomic Diplomacy: Hiroshima & Potsdam (The Use of the Atomic Bomb and the American Confrontation with Soviet Power) (Boulder, Colorado: Pluto Press, 1994). Second Expanded Edition.

New Documents: ‘OPERATION UNTHINKABLE’: Churchill’s Plan to Launch a Third World War Against Stalin [22 May 1945]

Related Documents

Stalin's Analysis of Victory (February 9, 1946)

The Origins of Containment: George Kennan's "Long Telegram" (Moscow-to-Washington) (February 22, 1946)

"The Sinews of Peace": Audio and Transcript of Churchill's Speech at Fulton, Missouri, 5 March 1946

The Novikov Telegram: Soviet Ambassador in Washington DC to Moscow, September 27 1946

Andrei Zhdanov's "Report on the International Situation" (September 1947)

NSC-68 -- The Foundations of American Cold War Policy

Soviet Documents in the Cold War

Compendium of Documents & Readings on the History of the Cold War

Of Related Interest

Cold War/International History Project WEBsite

Cold War Espionage on CNN.COM

Gar Alperovitz, The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb (New York: Random House, 1996).

James Jay Carafano, “Mobilizing Europe’s Stateless: America’s Plan for a Cold War Army,” Journal of Cold War Studies Volume 1, Number 2 (1999).

Hiroshima-Nagasaki: Fifty Years of Deceit and Self-Deception [An Exhibition at Bethune College, York University]

Kenneth M. Jensen, ed. The Origins of the Cold War: The Novikov, Kennan and Roberts "Long
Telegrams" of 1946. 1993 revised edition (US Inst of Peace, 1993).

Christopher Simpson, Blowback: America’s Recruitment of Nazis and Its Effects on the Cold War (New York: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1988), pp. 3-11, 138-175, 264-290.

The Truman Presidential Papers. (University Publications of America) Vol. 1 The Decision to Drop the Atomic Bomb in Japan

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Week 10 Aftermath, Part II: Postwar Soviet Policy in East Europe (May 30)

Jeffrey Burds, Selections from unpublished manuscript: ‘A Sea of Blood and Tears’: From Civil War to Cold War in Soviet Galicia, 1944-1953

Chapter 4. "AGENTURA: Soviet Informants' Networks & the Ukrainian Rebel Underground in Galicia, 1944-1948." A version of this chapter was published East European Politics and Societies Volume 11, Number 1 (Winter 1997): 89-130.

Chapter 5. "Gender & Policing in Soviet West Ukraine, 1944-1948"

Chapter 7. “The Early Cold War in Soviet West Ukraine.” A version of this chapter will be published in The Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East European Studies (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh, 2000).

Of Related Interest

The Anti-Soviet Resistance in the Baltic States (Vilnius: Du Ka Press, 1999).

Juozas Daumantas, Fighters for Freedom: Lithuanian Partisans Versus the USSR (1944-1947). Second Edition. (Toronto, 1975). [Fascinating first-hand account by Lithuanian anti-Soviet guerrilla leader, originally written in 1948. The name is a pseudonym for Juozas Luksa, who escaped to the West in December 1947 and returned to rejoin the Lithuanian Freedom Army in 1950. He was captured and executed by the NKVD in October 1951.]

Dorril, Stephen. MI6: Inside the Covert World of Her Majesty’s Secret Intelligence Service (2000).

Peter Grose, Operation Rollback: America’s Secret War Behind the Iron Curtain (Boston: Houghton-Mifflin Company, 2000).

Mart Laar, War in the Woods: Estonia’s Struggle for Survival, 1944-56 (Washington, D.C.: Compass Press, 1992).

Gregory Mitrovich, Undermining the Kremlin: America’s Strategy to Subvert the Soviet Bloc, 1947-1956 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2000).

Amir Weiner, “Nature, Nurture, and Memory in a Socialist Utopia: Delineating the Soviet Socio-Ethnic Body in the Age of Socialism,” American Historical Review Volume 104, Number 4 (October 1999): 1114-1155.

First drafts of final papers are due on Friday, June2 . Each student should prepare two copies of his or her paper, one copy each to students on his or her team, who will read these papers and give them back to you with written comments by Monday, June 5. A final version of your paper, plus comments and earlier drafts, should be submitted to the instructor by noon on Friday, June 10.

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