Borderlands
World War II in Soviet
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."
--
Instructor
Professor Jeffrey Burds
Office: 269 Holmes Hall
Telephone: (617) 373-2079
JBURDS@AYA.YALE.EDU
Course Description
This
seminar is devoted to the study of
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]
For
83 Detailed Maps of the Eastern Front Action
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
Week 1 Introduction
(January 7)
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
Thursday Evening Film, 6:00 p.m. in 90 Snell
Library. Dinner will be provided.
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.
Week 2 Operation
Barbarossa and the German Invasion of Soviet Eastern Europe (January 14)
Alan Clark, Barbarossa: The Russian-German Conflict, 1941-1945, pp. 3-273.
Documents
Document:
Hitler’s Commissar Order, dated 6 June 1941
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
Battle of Stalingrad: Turning Point on the Eastern Front
The Russian Campaign, 1941-1945: A Photo Diary (by Otto Willnauer)
War
Albums: Two German Soldiers on the Eastern Front
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]
Week 3 After Stalingrad: The
Soviet Drive to Berlin (January 21)
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.
Week 4 1939-1941: The
Soviet Occupation of Eastern Poland (January 28)
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
Week 5 Ostpolitik:
The German Occupation Zone (February 4)
READ: Jan T. Gross, Neighbors: The Destruction of the
Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 2001).
And the review: "Polish 'Neighbors' and German Invaders: Contextualizing Anti-Jewish Violence in the Bialystok District during the Opening Weeks of Operation Barbarossa," Forthcoming in Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry, Volume 16 (2003), by Alexander B. Rossino
OPTIONAL
HISTORICAL
CONTROVERSY: The Reaction to ”Neighbors” in Poland
Yedwabne: [Jewish
Shtetl] History & Memorial Book
Voices
on the Jedwabne Tragedy
Anna Bikont, "Scene
fron Jedwabne," Yad Vashem Studies (2002) A Polish
Jew's discussion of the controversy
Thursday Evening Film (February 6), 6:00 p.m. in 90
Snell Library. Dinner will be provided.
FILM: Angry
Harvest (Agnieszka Holland, Germany, 1986)
Acclaimed Polish film director Agnieszka Holland’s Academy-Award nominated film
is a powerful emotional drama set during the German occupation of southeastern
Poland. Following a raid on the Jewish ghetto, a young, beautiful Jewish woman
manages to escape a sealed train car while en route to a Nazi death camp. A
sexually repressed Polish Catholic farmer discovers her hiding in a nearby
forest, and saves the woman, by then delirious from hunger and fever. This
brilliant psychological drama follows the evolution of their relationship
between inter-dependent love and ubiquitous terror. A tour-de-force of acting
and directing, the film stars Armin Mueller-Stahl, Elisabeth Trissenaar,
Wojtech Pszoniak. German with English subtitles. 102 minutes.
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]
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. 41-59, 78-104,
161-168.
Collaboration in
the Holocaust in its entirety.
John Erickson, “Nazi Posters in Wartime Russia,” History Today, Sep94, Vol. 44 Issue 9, pp. 14-19.
Frank
Gordon, Latvians and
Jews Between Germany and Russia Translated by Vaira
Puķīte and Jānis Straubergs (Stockholm: Memento, 1990)
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).
Excerpts from Klukowski's diary
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]
Richard Rhodes, Masters
of Death: The SS-Einsatzgruppen and the Invention of the Holocaust (New
York: Knopf, 2002)
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
[Complete series on line]
National Archives Collection of
World War II War Crimes Records (RG238)
Reading/Research
on World War II Poland
Week 6 Holocaust & Genocide:
The Politics of Ethnic Cleansing (February 11)
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.
Week 7 Partisans &
Collaborators (February 18)
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.
Week 8 Volksdeutsche:
East European Reprisals Against Ethnic Germans (February 25)
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).
Week 9 Aftermath: Origins
of the Cold War (March 4)
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
Week 10 Aftermath, Part II:
Postwar Soviet Policy in
Jeffrey Burds, Selections from unpublished manuscript: ‘A
"AGENTURA:
Soviet Informants' Networks & the Ukrainian Rebel Underground in
"Gender and Policing in Soviet West
Ukraine, 1944-1948," Cahiers du Monde Russe Volume 42, Numbers 2-4
(April-December 2001).
"The Early Cold War in Soviet
Of Related Interest
The Anti-Soviet Resistance in the
Juozas Daumantas, Fighters
for Freedom: Lithuanian Partisans Versus the
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 (
Mart Laar, War in the
Woods:
Gregory Mitrovich, Undermining the Kremlin:
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,
February 28. 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, March 3. A final version
of your paper, plus comments and earlier drafts, should be submitted to the
instructor by