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This book illuminates a little-known but tremendously significant twentieth-century crisis in the Soviet Union. Drawing on archival materials declassified since the fall of communism, Nicholas Ganson situates the famine of 1946-47 at the crossroads of Soviet social and political history, World War II, the Cold War, ideology, and famine in the modern world. He sheds light on the perspectives of Soviet elites and gives voice to the famine s victims. In revealing the multi-causality of the postwar hunger, this ambitious work challenges the received wisdom about the relationship between politics and famine.
The first systematic study of famine in all parts of Europe from the Middle Ages to present. It compares the characteristics, consequences and causes of famine in regional case studies by leading experts to form a comprehensive picture of when and why food security across the continent became a critical issue.
During the twentieth century, 80 percent of all famine victims worldwide died in China and the Soviet Union. In this rigorous and thoughtful study, Felix Wemheuer analyzes the historical and political roots of these socialist-era famines, in which overambitious industrial programs endorsed by Stalin and Mao Zedong created greater disasters than those suffered under prerevolutionary regimes. Focusing on famine as a political tool, Wemheuer systematically exposes how conflicts about food among peasants, urban populations, and the socialist state resulted in the starvation death of millions. A major contribution to Chinese and Soviet history, this provocative analysis examines the long-term effects of the great famines on the relationship between the state and its citizens and argues that the lessons governments learned from the catastrophes enabled them to overcome famine in their later decades of rule.
A new history shows that, despite MarxismÕs rejection of money, the ruble was critical to the Soviet UnionÕs promise of shared prosperity for its citizens. In spite of Karl MarxÕs proclamation that money would become obsolete under Communism, the ruble remained a key feature of Soviet life. In fact, although Western economists typically concluded that money ultimately played a limited role in the Soviet Union, Kristy Ironside argues that money was both more important and more powerful than most histories have recognized. After the Second World War, money was resurrected as an essential tool of Soviet governance. Certainly, its importance was not lost on Soviet leaders, despite official Communist Party dogma. Money, Ironside demonstrates, mediated the relationship between the Soviet state and its citizens and was at the center of both the governmentÕs and the peopleÕs visions for the maturing Communist project. A strong rubleÑone that held real value in workersÕ hands and served as an effective labor incentiveÑwas seen as essential to the economic growth that would rebuild society and realize CommunismÕs promised future of abundance. Ironside shows how Soviet citizens turned to the state to remedy the damage that the ravages of the Second World War had inflicted upon their household economies. From the late 1940s through the early 1960s, progress toward Communism was increasingly measured by the health of its citizensÕ personal finances, such as greater purchasing power, higher wages, better pensions, and growing savings. However, the increasing importance of money in Soviet life did not necessarily correlate to improved living standards for Soviet citizens. The Soviet governmentÕs achievements in Òraising the peopleÕs material welfareÓ continued to lag behind the WestÕs advances during a period of unprecedented affluence. These factors combined to undermine popular support for Soviet power and confidence in the Communist project.
What really caused the failure of the Soviet Union's ambitious plans to modernize and industrialize its agricultural system? This book is the first to investigate the gap between the plans and the reality of the Soviet Union's mid-twentieth-century project to industrialize and modernize its agricultural system. Historians agree that the project failed badly: agriculture was inefficient, unpredictable, and environmentally devastating for the entire Soviet period. Yet assigning the blame exclusively to Soviet planners would be off the mark. The real story is much more complicated and interesting, Jenny Leigh Smith reveals in this deeply researched book. Using case studies from five Soviet regions, she acknowledges hubris and shortsightedness where it occurred but also gives fair consideration to the difficulties encountered and the successes--however modest--that were achieved.
A time of great hardship, the Second World War became a consequential episode in the history of Soviet childhood policies. The growing social problem of juvenile homelessness and delinquency alerted the government to the need for a comprehensive child protection programme. Nevertheless, by prioritizing public order over welfare, the Stalinist state created conditions that only exacerbated the situation, transforming an existing problem into a nation-wide crisis. In this comprehensive account based on exhaustive archival research, Olga Kucherenko investigates the plight of more than a million street children and the state's role in the reinforcement of their ranks. By looking at wartime dislocation, Soviet child welfare policies, juvenile justice and the shadow world both within and without the Gulag, Soviet Street Children and the Second World War challenges several of the most pervasive myths about the Soviet Union at war. It is, therefore, as much an investigation of children on the margins of Soviet society as it is a study of the impact of war and state policies on society itself.
Reconceptualizes the historical experience of the Soviet Union from a different perspective, that of World War II. Breaking with the conventional interpretation that views World War II as a post-revolutionary addendum, this work situates this event at the crux of the development of the Soviet - not just the Stalinist - system." - publisher.
Author : Robert J. McMahon Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA Page : 201 pages File Size : 29,53 MB Release : 2021-02-25 Category : History ISBN : 0198859546
Author : Susan C. I. Grunewald Publisher : Cornell University Press Page : 167 pages File Size : 12,13 MB Release : 2024-07-15 Category : History ISBN : 1501776037
From Incarceration to Repatriation explores the lives and memories of the nearly 1.5 million German POWs who were held by the Soviet Union during and after World War II and released in phases through 1956, seven years longer than the prisoners of any other Allied nation. Susan C. I. Grunewald argues that Soviet leadership deliberately kept able-bodied German POWs to supplement their labor force after the end of the war. The Soviet Union lost 27 million citizens and a quarter of its physical assets during the war, motivating Soviet leadership to harness the labor of German POWs for as long as possible. Engaging with recently declassified documents in former Soviet archives, archival material from multiple German governments, as well as innovative use of digital humanities methods and geographic information system (GIS) mapping, Grunewald demonstrates that Soviet authorities detained German POWs primarily for economic rather than punitive reasons. In fact, the GIS mapping of the historical materials makes it clear that most of the four thousand POW camps across the USSR were strategically located near industrial, infrastructure, and natural resource sites that were critical to postwar economic reconstruction. From Incarceration to Repatriation is the first book to draw together the distinct fields of Soviet and German history to provide a more nuanced and comprehensive understanding of German POW captivity in the USSR during and after World War II. Attending to the ways that the memory of German POWs remains in circulation in both the former Soviet Union and Germany, Grunewald tracks the political repercussions of war commemoration.