Presenting Oneself: Red Army Soldiers and Violence in the Great Patriotic War, 1941–1945

Abstract

AbstractThe article explores how dynamics of violence developed within the Red Army during the Great Patriotic War leading to uncontrolled outbreaks of futile violence committed by single or small groups of Red Army soldiers. It defines the ‘Space of Violence’ for the soldiers as a certain area in which they were obliged to endure and to commit violence. The soldiers could not leave this space either physically or mentally, and the Stalinist state applied not only methods of carrots and (oversized) sticks, but also imposed these methods on the soldiers’ immediate peers, that is their comrades. The article then draws on interviews by Soviet historians with Soviet soldiers close to the battlefields that show how the (assumed) peer pressure of comrades made hesitant soldiers forget about all their doubts, urged them to present one's proneness to violence and led to an over‐spilling of violence.