“She’s Our Fathers’ Daughter”: Soviet Citizens and the “Free Angela Davis” Movement—Re-imagining Communist Belonging Under Brezhnev

Lessons of the Cold War

SEER, 93, 4, OCTOBER 2015 778 Johnston, Timothy. Being Soviet: Identity, Rumour, and Everyday Life under Stalin 1939–1953. Oxford Historical Monographs. Oxford University Press, Oxford and New York, 2011. lii + 240 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Index. £55.00. Since the 1995 publication of Stephen Kotkin’s Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as Civilization, the concept of ‘speaking Bolshevik’ has been influential in Soviet studies. This allowed historians to demonstrate the state’s ability to subordinate people’s minds to ideology, but it also enabled scholars to reveal subjects’ agency in using, (re-)interpreting and manipulating official language to advance personal interests and making individual meanings of life under the Communist dictatorship. Inspired by the idea of ‘speaking Bolshevik’, Timothy Johnston puts at the centre of his analysis questions about how ordinary citizens interacted with ‘Official Soviet Identity’ in imagining and experiencing the outside world between 1939 and 1953. Johnston uses a wide range of primary sources from Russian central and regional archives (Murmansk and Arkhangel´sk) and oral history interviews to demonstrate how an ‘Official Soviet Identity’ was constructed through state-sponsored mass media, films, plays and music. Instead of examining the internal factors of violence, terror and suffering of Stalinist Russia, i.e., rather than focusing on the victim’s perspective, the author shows that the defining feature of Sovietness was the perception of its radical difference from Western ideas, things and people. Sovietness stood in opposition not only to Germany (as the main enemy) but, above all, to Great Britain and the United States. These countries were ‘first antagonists, then uncertain allies, and later clear enemies of the USSR’ (p. xxvii). From this fresh starting point, each chapter offers careful analyses of ‘little tactics of the habitat’ — agents’ strategies for negotiating everyday life through ‘bricolage’, ‘reappropriation’ and ‘avoidance’. By zeroing in on these tactics, Johnson masterfully sheds light on ‘grey zones’ in Soviet citizens’ everyday life (the black market, meeting friends at nightclubs, sexual relationships). These were spheres of contact, conflict and bargaining about what was and was not Soviet. These practices enabled Soviet citizens to get by and get on. He convincingly shows that the question of what could and could not be Soviet did not involve binaries like belief or disbelief, acceptance or resistance but rather, was a matter of negotiations between the individual, the system and the imagined West. The book is very well structured. The first and second chapters examine the period from 1939 to 1945 by showing the increasing militarization of pre-war society and the creation of the USSR’s image as a liberator state offering freedom, opportunity and abundance. The image of the Allies as powers who benefited from the USSR’s leading role in the war persisted throughout the period analysed. Soviet citizens’ deeply rooted mistrust of the Allies, which grew out of Russian national and imperial ambitions, contributed to this negative image. REVIEWS 779 Chapters four and five examine the question of post-war Soviet identity when the Cold War turned the former Allies and the Soviet Union into open enemies. Chapter three, the book’s most innovative part, explores interactions between Soviet citizens and foreign sailors/military experts in Arkhangel´sk and Murmansk. In these port cities the Western world became not only imagined but also lived experiences of everyday encounters. Johnston’s fascinating exploration of Soviet citizens’ everyday contacts with foreigners presents multiple strategies through which Soviet male and female citizens of different generations redefined the boundaries separating Soviet and NonSoviet through their interactions with Allied soldiers. After 1941, Hollywood movies and jazz were rehabilitated, the Soviet public welcomed new magazines (Britanskii Soiuznik and Amerika) and academic/scientific exchanges as sources of information about the West but, in the shadow zone there were exchanges of military hardware, clothing and food that were difficult to control. Being Soviet meant feeling Soviet. Throughout the book the author stresses the tension between shame and pride constantly attached to ‘Official Soviet Identity’: people were deeply ashamed of the country’s low living standards but also proud of belonging to the most peaceful and humane liberator state. This pride was expressed in narratives of military and moral greatness, especially after the siege of Stalingrad...

Intimacy and Race in Late Soviet Central Asia

Soviet reality and emigrant surveys THE SOVIET INTERVIEW PROJECT (SIP) interviewed 2793 former Soviet citizens in the early 1980s who had emigrated to the United States from the mid-1970s to the early 1980s. A second wave of 700 interviews was conducted in the mid-1980s. SIP respondents were from medium to large cities from European republics and hence represent a sample of urban, European residents. Some 86% of SIP respondents were Jewish according to some definition of the term.1 SIP respondents answered questions on their life in the Soviet Union (in the last normal period of life in the Soviet Union) prior to the disruptions caused by the decision to emigrate. The German Soviet Interview Project (GSIP) interviewed 516 former Soviet citizens who had emigrated to the Federal Republic between 1979 and 1983. GSIP respondents also answered questions about their last period of normal life in the Soviet Union prior to the emigration decision. GSIP respondents are of German background who qualified as 'late emigrants' (Spataussiedler) according to Soviet and German definitions. GSIP respondents were from both urban and rural areas, and the majority lived outside the European USSR. The two sets of interviews with former Soviet citizens shed perspective light on living conditions in the Soviet Union. Both surveys focus on life in the Soviet Union and not on the processes of emigration or assimilation. Although the SIP and GSIP surveys were conducted roughly five years apart, modal respondents in both surveys cite 1977-78 as their last period of normal life in the Soviet Union. Hence, the interviews describe life in the Soviet Union as the Brezhnev era was drawing to a close-the period now referred to in the Soviet press as the 'period of stagnation' (period zastoya). The late Brezhnev era provides the essential baseline for understanding the perestroika phenomenon. Presumably, the Soviet leadership had its own perceptions of economic conditions during this period and was becoming increasingly influenced by public concerns about deteriorating economic conditions. Evaluating economic performance during the period of stagnation continues to be difficult because biased performance indicators continued to be generated by the statistical

The article analyzes letters addressed to the Supreme Council of the Soviet Union. In their letters written in the 1960s, Soviet citizens shared their ideas about the new edition of the Constitution. The authors of the article analyze Soviet citizens’ core values and their ideas about the political regime, civil rights and civil liberties. This analysis is essential for the assessment of the role of civil values (such as democracy, guarantees of civil rights and civil liberties) in the Soviet public mind. The article maintains that Soviet citizens of the said period shared a set of mental attitudes to civil and economic issues. The authors conclude that these mental attitudes reflected people’s ideas about democracy and freedoms and were based on a combination of both democratic and totalitarian principles. Soviet citizens actively supported democracy as a key element of civil society and promoted an improvement in the electoral system. However, they were against a multi-party system, they maintained that party organs should be endowed with greater authorities, and the Constitution should grant power to the Communist party. Soviet people highly valued civil liberties and civil rights. However, they believed that it was natural to oppress those who committed crimes or those who didn’t share the generally accepted ideals. The authors conclude that Soviet mental attitudes were only partially based on civil values, which naturally tells on the process of civil society formation in the modern world.

A new era in international relations dawned after World War II: the Cold War was not a conventional war, but it was definitely not the peace people had been waiting for. It was a war that was waged in several arenas as the role of armed forces diminished and the battlefields moved elsewhere: to the United Nations, to the economic sphere, to sports events and concert halls, and to a great extent to international media. Indeed, the media played a decisive role in the development of the Cold War, and they significantly affected policies. The media also played an important role in bringing the Cold War to a relatively peaceful end. With the help of Western radio and television broadcasts, people under communist rule developed a certain image of the West, which arguably contributed to the fact that they did not defend their regimes at crucial moments in 1989-91. Although the media are commonly believed to have played an important part in the Cold War, the more than 40 years of foreign broadcasting after World War II remain a poorly researched area, despite the growing interest in the cultural side of the Cold War in general. The present study is part of the growing literature dealing with the cultural Cold War and addressing the impact of foreign radio broadcasting on the Soviet Union. (1) The United States' radio broadcasting to the Soviet Union had a background that is anything but straightforward. Immediately after World War II, U.S. authorities found themselves with very little information about conditions in the USSR. The United States, therefore, tried to reach across the Iron Curtain to increase its knowledge while avoiding direct military conflict and making an effort to cultivate indirect methods of getting at its adversary. Men like Allen Dulles, George Kennan, and General Lucius Clay were prone to believe that the communist system was vulnerable to aggressive forms of psychological warfare. It was in this context that Radio Free Europe in 1950 and Radio Liberation in 1953 (later known as Radio Liberty [RL]) came into existence. (2) RL not only broadcast to the Soviet Union in Russian, but by 1954 it was using an arsenal of 17 Soviet languages in an attempt to appeal to non-Russian minorities. From the beginning, the ultimate objective of RL was to promote the collapse of the Soviet totalitarian government. It was an integral part of the U.S. Cold War strategy. Subversive international broadcasting as such was not a new phenomenon. The Soviet Union had been a master of radio propaganda ever since the early 1920s. After the defeat of Nazi Germany, the Soviet leaders hardly expected to be seriously challenged by international propaganda, and especially not in their own territory. From the beginning to the end of the Cold War, however, Soviet leaders had to cope with hostile propaganda directed at Soviet citizens. Although Western broadcasting frequently violated international law, strong protests would have forced the Soviets to alter their own activities abroad. U.S. activities did not, however, merely follow the Soviet model; World War II in particular had given birth to several models for future subversive radio stations. Now, when there was no direct military confrontation with the target countries, these techniques were developed to a previously unprecedented level. This is especially well illustrated by the case of RL, a project designed primarily to influence the Soviet Union. I use it here as a case to illustrate the reactions and effects that followed the increase in foreign broadcasting to the USSR. The main objective of this article is to assess the impact of foreign broadcasting on the Soviet Union during the first decades of the Cold War. I propose that as a consequence of Western broadcasting, the Soviet authorities were forced to reorganize and rethink their own domestic propaganda policies, as the scope of foreign broadcasting activity turned out to be more extensive than they had previously anticipated. …

Reviewed by: Graphic Satire in the Soviet Union: Krokodil's Political Cartoons by John Etty Bianca Rowlett (bio) John Etty, Graphic Satire in the Soviet Union: Krokodil's Political Cartoons. University of Mississippi Press, 2019. 223 pp, $30. In Graphic Satire in the Soviet Union, Etty takes on the ambitious task of writing the first book-length study of Krokodil, a popular satirical magazine produced within the Soviet Union and Russia (1922–2000; 2005–2008). Etty's focus on the 396 issues published between January 1954 and December 1964 provides a fresh perspective and important contribution to Russian historiography of this pivotal, transitional time in Soviet history, marked by the death of Stalin, the rise of new leadership under Khrushchev, the relaxation of censorship, and the expansion and normalization of Cold War geopolitics. Throughout the book, Etty rejects Western, structuralist approaches to the study of Soviet media that portray the magazine as simply an ideological propaganda tool operated by [End Page 345] the Soviet state. By utilizing a revisionist approach and a poststructuralist analysis of the graphic content of the magazine, Etty argues that Soviet satire was more complex, diverse, and critical than the traditional propaganda paradigm allows (211). Etty begins familiarizing the reader with Krokodil by providing a brief history of the magazine, its production, and its purpose, discussing the relevant historiography, and outlining the scope of his book. In the first three chapters, Etty examines the conceptual, visual, and satirical dimensions of Krokodil and argues for a revisionist view of the magazine that extends beyond politics. In chapter one, Etty critiques the traditional, structuralist approach towards the study of Soviet media and propaganda due to its overemphasis on state ownership and control over the media and its subsequent characterization of all Soviet media as uniform, ideological propaganda. Etty argues that such an approach ignores the impact and effect of Krokodil on the Soviet population, fails to explain the magazine's popularity among Soviet citizens, and ignores the use of humor and satire in Soviet media (21). Chapter two explores the format and visual language of Krokodil. Etty outlines the historical and contemporary influences on the magazine including Russian Orthodox Iconography, Lubok prints, satirical magazines published in Russia during the 1905 Revolution, contemporary satirical publications in Europe and the United States, and the political theatrical performance and caricature characteristic of Russian political culture in the 1920s. Etty again challenges the propaganda paradigm by claiming that Krokodil was not focused primarily on state issues and foreign affairs, citing as evidence the fact that nearly half of the magazine's content came from readers or amateur contributors reporting on local conditions and issues (54). In chapter three, Etty explores the carnivalesque humor of the magazine, describing it as a seriocomic satirical text that was part of the Menippean satirical tradition (76). He examines Soviet space cartoons, satirical graphics regarding technological inefficiencies and inept bureaucrats, and the use of the 'trickster', the Red Crocodile character that served as both an avatar of the magazine and as a character engaging in acts of retribution against the magazine's targets, and concludes that rather than supporting a state ideology, these satirical images could serve as a means of criticizing the Soviet system and its own inadequacies (83). Chapters four and five focus on the relationship between Krokodil and the Soviet government, along with the transmedia influence of the magazine. Etty acknowledges that Krokodil was part of the Pravda Publishing House which was under the control of the Department of Propaganda and Agitation; nonetheless, he argues that editors had a greater degree of creative autonomy than one might expect. He notes that Krokodil was mentioned in only four decrees coming from the Communist Party Central Committee, two of which encouraged the use of different genres of graphics and called for greater contributions from amateurs and the general public (112). According to Etty, direct political intervention from the state or its censors was infrequent. Moreover, the state welcomed democratic participation from Soviet citizens in the form of letters to the editors, amateur cartoon submissions, and submissions to the magazine's national art, poetry, and prose competitions. Thus, the magazine was distributed largely to individual subscribers but...

In a small cemetery on the bank of the Drava River near Leinz, Austria, lies the mute evidence of a wartime tragedy. The 134 persons buried there all died on June X or 2, 1945, all were Soviet nationals, and all committed suicide. These dead, and a few comrades who still tend their graves, were the only ones to escape forcible repatriation from Leinz. British troops handed over 30,000 others to Soviet authorities.' A similar incident occurred at Fort Dix, New Jersey, where 154 Soviet citizens captured in German uniform were interned.2 On June 29, 1945, the date set for their embarkation for Russia, the group attempted mass suicide. American military police brought the macabre demonstration under control with the use of tear gas, but only after three had succeeded in hanging themselves. At Soviet insistence, the United States repatriated the rest, amid Soviet charges that American soldiers had wounded and tear gassed Soviet citizens to prevent their return home.3

ALMOST five years passed since VE Day-the day when the Russian prisoners of war, refugees, forced laborers, wholeheartedly rejoiced and thanked God for their liberation. Forced labor, gas chambers, the atrocities of the Germans, such as history will never forget, were behind. A new life in free countries, that was what these people were hoping for, but their joy did not last long. Words which were worse than death itself, spread like wildfire throughout the camps: Repatriation, Yalta Agreement. For once the great principles of the United expressed in the words of President Washington, who stated that and more a safe and propitious asylum for the unfortunates of other countries, would be given by the United States, were broken. Hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of Russians were repatriated by force and sent back home. These Soviet citizens knew only too well the horrors that were awaiting them in their country; they knew that even if they were not shot at once, they would be chained like criminals and sent to forced labor camps in the Arctic where for many months they would not see the rays of the sun and would finally die of exhaustion, malnutrition, and cold. . . . Many preferred committing suicide. But they were even deprived of this privilege. The prisoners were watched day and night. Knives, scissors, ropes, anything that they could use to commit suicide were taken away from them. Only a few succeeded in hanging themselves or opening their veins with razor blades. Some three to four hundred thousand Soviet citizens succeeded in escaping. They hid in the forests of Germany and Austria, in the ruins of the cities, in the villages. Every one of these was eager to give up his country. Overnight they became Poles, Serbs, Ukrainians, or Balts. Thousands of Soviet Russian DPs were kept in camps-Russian prisoners of war, former Soviet citizens who were taken for forced labor by the Germans, and those who fled from Russia with the retreating Germany army. These people did not mind living in the cold, crowded barracks, they did not feel the hunger-their only wish was to escape to freedom. Soviet repatriation units were operating in all the zones of Ger-

The considerations of the three Great powers in the final years (1944-1945) of World War II and the question of the Baltic states within the context of international relations and diplomacy of these powers are discussed in the article. In the last years of World War II, the United States were engaged in the creation of the new post-war international organizational model. Participation of the Soviet Union in these postwar plans was an essential condition. In that period of World War II, the question of Baltic states had no significant and independent role in the entire international balance of power. This opinion is grounded on the examples from diplomatic papers which confirm that Baltic states in inter-Allied relations were treated only as a bargaining agent. Considering that in the Teheran conference (1943), Western states accorded the two of the Baltic states to Soviet interest sphere, the U.S. and Britain entered the Yalta conference (1945) with no illusions as to the fate of the Baltic States in particular and Eastern Europe in general. The only one positive aspect regarding Baltic state survived - notwithstanding Soviet attempts, Western states remained firm in its legal commitment regarding Lithuania and the other Baltic States - to not recognize the forcible annexation of Baltic states. Accordingly, Western Allies did not recognize Lithuanians, Latvians, and Estonians as "Soviet citizens" within the context of the 1945 Repatriation Agreement. In reality, the decisive effect of World War II was attempts to retain balance of power in international politics, but not moral or legal commitments. The end of World War II did not restore the independence of Lithuania and other Baltic states. The postwar international system that was leading to division of Europe, bipolar world, and Cold War was the adversity that influenced the plight of small states and nations.

An important concern for United States (US) researchers has been to elucidate foreign policy attitudes that pertain to strategic interactions, strategic sufficiency, and understandings of the security dilemma. A major source for Soviet attitudes remains the Soviet Interview Project (SIP), an omnibus in-person survey administered in Russian in 1983 to 2,793 former Soviet citizens, most of whom migrated to the US in 1979 or 1980. With regard to attitudes toward spending for foreign and military policy, for instance, we know from the SIP Survey that attitudes among the general public preceded the shift in policies and postures by the Soviet leadership. The implication of the security dilemma was little known among Soviet mass publics or even among university-educated, non-specialist publics in the Soviet Union. The December 1988 survey asked whether the Soviet Union was right or wrong to send troops to Afghanistan.

After November 1982, when Andropov took over as leader of the Soviet communist party, the Soviet authorities and media devoted a great deal of attention to the problem of social order and discipline in the USSR. It was insistently suggested that the current level of lawlessness and disorder in social life should no longer be tolerated. Soviet citizens must learn to work in a disciplined way, public order must be improved, and officials at all levels must observe the law and not use their positions in the pursuit of personal and local ends. The beginning of the law and order campaign was signalled by Andropov at a meeting of the party central committee in November 1982, when he appealed to the party and to the people as a whole to ‘carry out a more decisive struggle against all violations of party, state and labour discipline’.1 The campaign was accompanied by much comment in the press from Soviet citizens, expressing great concern about the state of public order, discipline and legality.KeywordsPublic OrderPolitical ControlStable RuleSoviet SocietyIllegal PracticeThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

370 SEER, 84, 2, 2006 in March I945, Pomerania was effectively split in two. The public health situation can best be described as catastrophic, something that cannot be said of neighbouring Czechoslovakia. The basic goal of the authoritieswas to Polonize the region througha combinationof removingthe German population and forcibly assimilatingthose few who would stay on the one hand and resettlingthe depopulated areas with Poles on the other. Between I945 and I950, the overwhelming majority of Germans were expelled. Initially, some people in specializedfieldswere deliberatelyused as forcedlabourersin the reconstructionprocess and later forciblyrelocated to Germany. Between 450,000 and 500,000 Germans had been expelled by September 1948.Those who remainedwere ultimatelyaccordedofficialprotectionswhich, in practice, were rarelyenforced. Overall, this volume representssolid researchby both Polish and German historians.The documentsillustratevividlythe complexityof the transferprocess along with the associatedsuffering.The detailedindices are helpfulto the reader, but abbreviationsof organizationsthroughout the text are somewhat difficult to follow. Nevertheless, this collection of documents will serve as a great resourceto present and futurehistorians. Facuy ofSocialSciences FRANcIs D. RASKA Charles University, Prague Mevius, Martin.Agents ofMoscow:TheHungarian Communist PartyandtheOrgins of Socialist Patriotism I94I-I953. Oxford Historical Monographs. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2005. xv + 295 pp. Illustrations. Notes. Bibliography. Index. ?550.o: $99.00. Given the unpopularityof Communism in Hungary as witnessed by the collapse of the Republic of Councils under Bela Kun in August I9I9 how was the Hungarian Communist Party (MKP) under Maty'asRakosi able to surviveafterWorld War Two? Did it rely completely on Soviet militarysupport ? In Agents ofMoscowMartin Mevius (Editor,Ministryof Foreign Affairs, Netherlands) answers these questions, citing primary party and government documents to show how Hungarian Communists deliberatelyconstructed a nationalistpolicy in order to achieve political supremacy.As Mevius argues, this nationalistpolicy consistedof two main parts.The MKP stroveto portray itselfas both the 'heirto nationaltraditions'and 'defenderof nationalinterests' (P. 134). Its membersretainedstreetnames and kept intactcertainmonuments built before World War Two that honoured nationalistheroes like Kossuth, Petofi, Szechenyi and Rakoczi. Hungarian Communist leaders (e.g. Rakosi, Revai) also appropriatednational holidays such as I5 March and 6 October (p. I9I). In addition,they constructedwhat Meviustermsa 'cultof martyrs' a conscious attempt to glorifysuch 'heroesof the class struggle'as the victims of 'white terror'in I919 and the Horthy regime, the Hungarian casualtiesin the Spanish civil war, and the Communist dead of WorldWarTwo (p. I92). The MKP exploited specific issues to prove to the Hungarian people that it was guarding national interests: the expulsion of the German minority REVIEWS 371 (Swabians)from Hungary, repatriationof Hungarian prisoners of war, and show trialsagainstsuch 'Trotskyitetraitors'as CardinalJozsefMindszentyand L'aszloRajk. The MKP used the question of the Swabians in several ways. First,by dint of being German,the Swabianswere painted as Hitler'serstwhile supporters, Volksbund members, and traitors to Hungary. Pressing for their expulsion showed the MKP as Hungary's defender. Secondly, in allowing the National Peasant Party to lead the anti-Swabian campaign and win support from the peasantry, the MKP was also slowly eliminating its main political rival, the SmallholderParty(pp. iI6, 136).Thirdly, R'akosiurged the Central Committee to exploit the Swabian expulsionsby linkingthem explicitly to land reform, thus - Mevius argues adding an element of ethnic conflict.The total amount of land finallyappropriatedfrom the Swabianswas 'about an eighth of the total 3.2 million hold of land distributedamong the Hungarian peasantry' (p.II7). The MKP was also able to bolster its national image by promising the return of Hungarian prisonersof war, and carryingout the promise. Understandably ,both Rakosiand Stalininitiallyfearedthat the releaseof Hungarian POWs, many of whom were formerright-wingArrow Crossmembers,would strengthen the right-wing parties in Hungary (p. I26). However, according to Mevius, Rakosi decided that the 'propagandavalue' of release of prisoners of war, and Moscow's willingness to expedite their release, outweighed the negatives. Hungarian officers would be releasedjust before the Hungarian elections, 'providing they had not served in the SS, SA, or committed war crimes against Soviet citizens' (p. I27). War crimestrialsand show trialsagainstthe Smallholderswere other useful devices the MKP used between 1945 and 1947 to show itself as the guardian of Hungarian national interests.After 1947 two key Stalinisttrialswere held, 'exposing' the allegedly anti-Hungarian, Trotskyite activities of Cardinal Mindszenty and Rajk (p. 237). Ironically,Meviuspoints out, the MKP could...

SEER, 94, 2, APRIL 2016 372 fits squarely within the European tradition of property. Chapter five examines the implications of Soviet notions of ownership—in particular, the right of occupancy — on the housing policies of the late-Stalin and Khrushchev eras. At the core of Khrushchev’s urban housing programme, Smith argues, was a unique ‘nexus of property and welfare’. As Smith shows, individual forms of ownership did not disappear with the abolition of private property. In the 1920s, property was transformed by the new Soviet state from a ‘profit-generating commodity into a welfare good’ (p. 169). Personal property, a category of tenure that became more widespread during post-war reconstruction, made up one-third of the Soviet urban housing stock by the late 1950s (p. 144). The mass housing campaign built on this Stalinist foundation, shifting towards housing cooperatives rather than individual construction that had formed the basis of housing policy during late Stalinism. Smith frames his discussion of Soviet housing policy with three ideological motifs — sacrifice, beneficence and paradise — each of which came to the fore at different moments to inform policy-making. The dogma of sacrifice dominated in the 1930s, as Soviet citizens were asked to forego decent living standards for the sake of rapid industrialization. During the war, this sacrificial ideology gave way to beneficence, which underlay the state’s determination to raise living standards as a goal unto itself. During the Khrushchev era, as leaders sought to transition from socialism to Communism, paradise was reflected in the desire to use housing as a means to create a new Communist way of life. This sharp study of the urban housing program in the USSR after 1945 is of broad interest to those working in Russian and Soviet studies. Amidst a growing collection of new urban research in Slavic and East European studies, Property of Communists is an indispensable work. Department of History K. Zubovich University of California, Berkeley Le Normand, Brigitte. Designing Tito’s Capital: Urban Planning, Modernism, and Socialism in Belgrade. Culture, Politics, and the Built Environment. University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, PA, 2014. xix + 300 pp. Maps. Illustrations. Figures. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $27.95 (paperback). After a long and unfortunate period of an interest predominantly in violence in Yugoslav history, we are finally seeing an increasing number of new books on topicsthatattempttonormalizeYugoslavia,despiteitsviolentend.Boththefirst and especially the second Yugoslavia displayed many extraordinary features which are worth studying in an international context and also presenting in REVIEWS 373 English to an international audience. One of these was the country’s post-war transformation which Brigitte Le Normand here explores through urbanism, a topic not immediately associated with (Cold War) politics. The book under review is the story of the making of New Belgrade, a city created in the aftermath of World War Two, according to Le Corbusier’s idea outlined in his famous Athens Charter. The city was built on the former flood plains that lay along the Sava and Danube rivers across from the old war-torn but functionally stagnant Yugoslav capital. New Belgrade’s initial success was complemented by the construction of New Zagreb, New Sarajevo and many other cities and towns across Tito’s Yugoslavia. However, by the late 1960s the Yugoslav authorities’ enthusiasm for the original functionalist grand plan was in decline, soon to be replaced with computer modelling and continuous planning as practised in the United States. Intertwining the global history of planning and modernist architecture with the history of socialist Yugoslavia, Brigitte Le Normand meticulously reveals the socio-economic forces and interests, as well as institutional and elite actions, that determined the rise of this most remarkable of Yugoslav socialist cities. Besides reports and minutes from political and planning bodies and interviews with planners, Le Normand draws on the grievances and demands of the city’s inhabitants and the rich resource of the Yugoslav press which pretty much freely deliberated all issues except Tito’s leadership, the Partisan myth and the Communist party’s monopoly on power. The book details how Socialist Yugoslavia’s adoption and appropriation of international modernism in urbanism unfolded in the extreme conditions of post-war austerity, reinforced by the Tito-Stalin split that...

If any Soviet citizens had been eager for news about the Red Army’s Warsaw operation in mid-August, they would have been hard-pressed to find out much about it from reading their government’s official daily. On 15 August, for instance, although kvestiia published Trotsky’s order of the previous day under the usual banner: ‘Defence of Worker-Peasant Russia’, there were no corresponding items describing developments on the battle-field around Warsaw.3 No more attention was devoted to events on the Polish front than to events on other fronts. The featured articles dealt with an armistice recently signed with Finland, a report by President Kalinin on economic problems facing the re-public, and a long biographical sketch of the deposed Hungarian communist, Bela Kun. If Soviet leaders were preparing to risk total confrontation with the West by occupying Poland’s capital, they were certainly not preparing public opinion in Russia for such an all-out struggle.KeywordsParty LeaderPolish FrontSoviet LeaderSoviet CitizenWestern FrontThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.