DeGraffenried, Julie K. Sacrificing Childhood: Children and the Soviet State in the Great Patriotic War (review)

Abstract

REVIEWS 367 and institutional biographies that constitute the backbone of this study. Through these diverse case studies, David-Fox reveals a depth of subtlety to Soviet interactions with Western intellectuals that is often missed, while also uncovering the influence of this relationship on the development of key features of the Soviet system. Department of Slavonic Studies Claire Knight University of Cambridge deGraffenried, Julie K. Sacrificing Childhood: Children and the Soviet State in the Great Patriotic War. Modern War Studies. University Press of Kansas, Lawrence, KS, 2014. xvi + 248 pp. Illustrations. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $34.95. The history of Soviet childhood in the Great Patriotic War is coming into its own. After the visionary Svetlana Aleksievich’s oral history Last Witnesses (Moscow, 1985) and Olga Kucherenko’s path-breaking study of child soldiers (Oxford, 2011), Julie K. deGraffenried now provides a detailed study of Soviet children at war. A powerful chapter on children’s wartime experiences sets the stage, followed by an equally enlightening exploration of child labour in support of the Soviet war effort. Next comes a chapter on the values the Soviet state attempted to instil (largely successfully, as deGraffenried argues) on its little subjects, before the ‘Art of Conflict’ chronicles ‘the widely varying images of the child disseminated by the Soviet state during the war’ (p. 104). Shifting from cultural to organizational history, the next chapter then analyses the attempts to regain the control lost at the outset of the war, before the final chapter shifts to how the state tried to remember what had happened between 1941 and 1945 once the war was over. The legacies of wartime childhoods are explored in a succinct conclusion. Following current fashion, then, cultural history — or, rather, the history of representation — takes up many pages. DeGraffenried is at her best, however, where she combines cultural, demographic, social and economic history. Chapters one and two as well as the conclusion provide much food for thought even to historians familiar with the socio-economic history of this war and its legacy. Carefully chosen statistics make powerful points about the significance of the topic and often adjust our vision of how important the agency of children was in Soviet war-making. By mid 1941, for example, more than a third of the Soviet population was fourteen and younger. Between 10 and 18 per cent of industrial workers during this war were adolescents. In numerical terms, then, child labour in industry was much more important to the war effort than the more famous heroics of child soldiers (about 0.2 per SEER, 94, 2, APRIL 2016 368 cent of five- to fifteen-year-olds), while the greatest contribution was made by children working in agriculture. Bucking current trends, deGraffenried thus not only gives serious attention to economic history and to demographic facts, but also does not shy away from exploring the psychological cost of this war on the generation of war children. All the while, she also engages in serious cultural analysis, demonstrating how combining a variety of approaches helps historical understanding. DeGraffenried argues that while there was more than one war experience of Soviet children, there were over-arching traits all shared. Deprivation, loss, displacement, hunger and fear were experienced by most, if not all children. They left deep psychological and physical scars. The state shifted from an essentially passive construction of children as receivers of a ‘happy childhood’ to treating its youngest citizens as little adults, who were expected to participate in the war effort just like their elders. While much of the suffering was ultimately caused by the German aggressors, decisions made by the Soviet side added to the misery. The Soviet state focused on winning the war, and winning the war only. Everything else was dropped for the duration, including the welfare of children. After the war, this basic neglect was papered over by resurrection of the myth of the caring state. When the Soviet welfare state eventually emerged in reality under Khrushchev, the aspirations of many members of the war generation to provide their own children with a carefree childhood coincided with the state’s attempts to live up to some of its promises. The memories of the war years...