Eastern Front Research Articles

An Attempt to Reconstruct the Generation of Žemininkai: Benediktas Labėnas

Benediktas Labenskas-Labėnas (1919–1949), a little-known literary figure from the Žemininkai generation, was a soldier and partisan, who died in the early post-war guerrilla warfare. The article presents a part of his work written in gymnasium, in military school and on the Eastern Front. It traces author’s evolution, discusses the relationship of his works to literary tradition, and highlights the distinctive nature of his themes and style. The research employs a hermeneutical approach, the perspective of the history of literature, and the socio-cultural aspect, which enable to identify the ideological and cultural reverberations of a specific historical time and their influence in the works of the young author. Labėnas’s oeuvre grows out of the neo-romantic tradition of 20th-century Lithuanian literature, the songs of volunteers and soldiers’ marching, as well as Christian culture. It takes root in social, psychological, and impressionistic prose. Labėnas’s work is characterized by a sense of harmony between the world and a human being, the imperative of the task of life, an ethical approach, and literary sense of genre and style that became increasingly pronounced with the time.On the one hand, Labėnas’s work has very little in common with the creative engagement of his generation, such as the inclination to existential questions and modern poetic language. On the other hand, his works are associated with a strong connection with the earth and reflection on that connection.

The Virtuous Wehrmacht: Crafting the Myth of the German Soldier on the Eastern Front, 1941–1944

The Virtuous Wehrmacht: Crafting the Myth of the German Soldier on the Eastern Front, 1941–1944

Drunk on Genocide: Alcohol and Mass Murder in Nazi Germany

Ed Westermann is a highly prolific scholar and author on the history of Nazi Germany and the Holocaust. Drunk on Genocide explores the intersection between alcohol, images of masculinity, and German atrocity on the Eastern Front. In his work, Westermann is struck by the number of times that excessive drinking figures in the mass murder of Jewish victims. The schnapps and cognac flowed freely at the Wannsee Conference that planned the Holocaust, during the roundups and shootings, and at post-massacre celebrations. Some of the sickening scenes of sadism and torture carried out by drunken SS-men, German soldiers, and foreign auxiliaries alike—all rendered here in full detail—simply beggar the imagination. Westermann must surmount two tall hurdles in this book. The first is Norman Ohler, the German journalist who published Der totale Rausch: Drogen im Dritten Reich in 2015. Ohler described the pervasive use of powerful pharmaceutical drugs throughout the Nazi chain of command—from the Führer HQ all the way down to the Landser at the front. The book was often sensationalist in tone, however, labelling the stimulant Pervitin (methamphetamine) “National Socialism in pill form” (p. 11). The book has been widely read, and any professor teaching a course on World War II today will find themselves fielding questions from students about the meth habits of German soldiers. Many scholars criticized Ohler’s evidence and argumentation, and accused him of attempting to excuse the crimes of the Third Reich, up to and including the Holocaust. After all, how could the Germans be guilty of anything if they were all “drugged up to the eyeballs” (p. 11), in the memorable phrase of British historian Richard Evans?

The Fortress: The Siege of Przemyśl and the Making of Europe's Bloodlands

The Fortress: The Siege of Przemyśl and the Making of Europe's Bloodlands

Рецензия на монографию Д. Мотаделя «Ислам в политике нацистской Германии (1939–1945)»

The reviewer analyzes the monograph by David Motadel “Islam in the Politics of Nazi Ger-many (1939–1945)” published in German in 2014 and subsequently, on the wave of popularity, re-printed in Turkish (2015), German (2017, 2018), French, Persian (2019), Spanish and Italian (2020) and in Russian in 2020. The review focuses specifically on the fourth chapter, “Islam and the War on the Eastern Front”, since it is in this part of the book that the policy of the Nazis towards Soviet Muslims is described to the fullest. The reviewer questions the correctness of some of the conclu-sions in this monograph and points to the absence of references to historical documents mentioned in the book and allegedly used by the author when writing the work in the archives of Moscow and Simferopol. Meanwhile, such archives as the State Archive of the Russian Federation (GARF), the Russian State Archive of Contemporary History (RGANI), the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History (RGASPI), the Central State Archive of Moscow (TsGA of Moscow), hold the doc-uments whose analysis would provide objective answers to the questions posed by Motadel. The re-viewer also notes some factual errors and believes that, taken together, all this gives the study a ten-dentious character, and David Motadel himself, in accordance with the tradition of anti-Sovietism, seems to be unwilling to show to the Western reader the heroism of Soviet Muslims and the valiant pages of the history of the USSR.

1853-56 OSMANLI-RUS HARBİ’NDE DOĞU CEPHESİNDE BİR İNGİLİZ SUBAY: YARBAY WILLIAM FENWICK WILLIAMS'IN ASKERÎ RAPORLARI

Bu çalışma 19. yüzyılın ikinci yarısında modern savaşların başlangıcı sayılan Kırım Savaşı'nın doğu cephesine odaklanmaktadır. Bilindiği üzere Kırım Savaşı, Avrupalı büyük güçlerin ittifak hâlinde Slav yayılmacılığına karşı koyduğu ve modern teknolojilerin harp için kullanıldığı ilk savaş idi. Osmanlı Devleti hem ekonomik hem de harp becerisi açısından bu savaşı yürütecek yeterli donanıma sahip değildi. Ancak dönemi itibarıyla İngiltere ve Fransa gibi devletlerin deniz aşırı politikaları ve dış tehdit algıları, onları Osmanlı-Rus anlaşmazlığında Türklere ekonomik ve askerî destek vermeye mecbur kılmıştı. O nedenle Müttefikler, Osmanlı ordularının Ruslara karşı savaşma kabiliyetini artırmaya çalışırken diğer yandan da önemli subaylarını Türk ordusuna görevlendirmişlerdi. Müttefikler, Kırım'da yoğun çarpışmalar yaşadığından 1853-56 Osmanlı-Rus Harbi, tarihe daha çok Kırım Harbi olarak geçmiştir. Oysa aynı yıllarda Osmanlı orduları doğuda da Ruslara karşı ciddi mücadeleler yürütmüştür. Kırım'a nispeten coğrafyanın ve iklim koşullarının savaşın seyrine önemli etki ettiği Doğu cephesi bu bakımdan Kırım'ın popülaritesinin gölgesinde kalmıştır. Fakat savaş yıllarında aynı durum söz konusu olmadığı için Birleşik Krallık başarılı subaylarından William Fenwick Williams'ı Erzurum'da konuşlanan Anadolu ordularına müttefikler adına göndermiştir. Williams'ın bu doğrultuda İstanbul'daki İngiliz elçiliğine yazdığı raporlar, dağılma sürecindeki Osmanlı Devleti'nin ordusunu anlamamız açısından önemlidir. Çünkü Williams'ın aynı zamanda Osmanlı merkezine gönderdiği direktifler de Türk ordu yapısının değişmesinde etkili olabiliyordu. Dolayısıyla bu çalışma, 1853-56 Osmanlı-Rus Harbi esnasında Williams'ın gönderdiği askerî raporlara odaklanmakta, onların analizine çalışmaktadır.

ПЕТРОГРАДСКАЯ КОНФЕРЕНЦИЯ СОЮЗНИКОВ 1917 ГОДА КАК ЭТАП СОТРУДНИЧЕСТВА СТРАН АНТАНТЫ

The article deals with the conference of the Allies, which took place in Petrograd in early 1917, on the eve of the February Revolution. This conference was one of the last stages of serious cooperation between the member countries of the Entente and Russia. The article is an attempt to analyze the tasks of the French, British and Russian delegations, which largely determined their positions at this meeting. Each side pursued its own goals. The tasks of the allies were, first of all, to confirm the common interests of the members of the Entente, to coordinate the actions of the military command, and most importantly, to encourage Russia to start new active military operations on the Eastern Front as soon as possible. The goal of Russia, which confirmed its loyalty to its allied duty, was, first of all, to receive the maximum possible volume of military-technical assistance from partners in the alliance. In addition, the allies were very interested in the general state of affairs in Russia, the mood of the elites and the prospects for the development of political life in Russia. The paper examines the course of negotiations, notes the main issues and problems that caused the most heated discussions, summarizes the results of the conference, which determined the further prospects for cooperation between the allies in the framework of the 1917 campaign of the First World War.

The Stalinist Political Culture of the Second Wave of the Russian Diaspora: A Case Study

This article examines the career of Vladimir Vasil’evich Pozdniakov during the Second World War and the early Cold War. A lieutenant colonel in the Red Army who was arrested during the Great Terror, Pozdniakov was captured on the Eastern front in October 1941. He collaborated with the Germans, first serving as the head of camp police in 1942, then becoming a propagandist in the system of POW camps, and finally serving as a high-ranking officer in the short-lived Russian army under General A. A. Vlasov. He escaped repatriation to the USSR after the war and worked as an intelligence agent in the Gehlen Organization and the CIA while also taking part in anti-communist groups in West Germany. Pozdniakov also acted as an amateur historian of the Vlasov movement. Pozdniakov’s career provides a window on the actions of one individual across the upheavals of war, occupation, and Cold War. Pozdniakov’s actions were shaped by the political culture of the Stalinist 1930s. Like other members of the Soviet party-state and military elite, Pozdniakov was opportunistic, suspicious, and dogmatic – all qualities that were crucial for advancement and mere survival in the Stalinist 1930s. The political culture of the 1930s helps to explain his activities during a time of unprecedented chaos and violence: his willingness to collaborate diligently with the Nazis and then with Germany’s Western conquerors, his constant battles within circles of collaborators and the Russian diaspora, and his hagiographic writing of the history of the Vlasov movement while in postwar exile. Pozdnyakov’s example suggests a new approach to the study of the political culture of the second wave of Russian emigration. Due to the historical context of the formation of the second wave – captivity on the Eastern Front, life and sometimes collaboration during the Nazi occupation and flight from repatriation – its members had no other source of public identity other than the continuing devotion to Vlasov’s semi-fictional Russian liberation army.

Civilian population in the frontline zone of the eastern front during world war I

The article deals with the position of the population that appeared in the Eastern Frontline of World War I. The processes of forming ways of life formation and survival in the conditions of the front are analyzed. The specifics of regions where the war passed, namely Galicia, Bukovyna and Volhynia are considered. This paper describes the mode of life that was organized and the interaction of the frontline population with enemy army’s soldiers during the warfare. The author examines the formation and change of mood of the frontline population throughout World War I. Large focus is on the situation of the frontline village, which has become the main victim and source of food for the warring armies. The growth of anti-war sentiments among the population of Galicia, Bukovyna and Podilia is considered. After all, it was the frontline population that felt the hardships of war the most. In general, the findings suggest that the situation of the frontline population was so difficult, but the population sought a way out of the situation. They often interacted with the military or escaped. A problem of position of citizenry in the front-line region of Eastern front is relatively a new theme and needs more wide research. World War I generated many new social problems. Creation of front-line life is one of main problems of military history. World War I showed the new type of war. Eastern front overcame enormous territory of Bukovyna, Galicia, Volhynia and Podilia. Habitants that lived here forced to adapt themselves to the military operations. The populations of frontline territories bore considerable losses from the beginning of war. Many rural horses were taken away on the necessities of front. The population of Western Ukraine entered in the complement of the Austrian empire, accordingly war they perceived as nationals of Austria. With motion of battle actions position changed to the quarrelling armies, thus we can trace emergence of apathy in a population. The primary objective of frontline population was to survive and save the economic potential, it was very difficult in the conditions of war. According to a population along front it was to search possibilities of adaptation before war. Many people resorted to the refugee, however were and those that remained. Exactly on them main attention of research is covered.

Військові дії під Ковелем за свідченнями джерел УПА (січень–березень 1944 р.)

The armed confrontation in early 1944 in the proximity of Kovel within the context of the Soviet-German war is primarily known for the local victory of three incomplete German divisions over the army corps of the first Belarusian Front of the Red Army. Main role in this episode of the World War II was played by the coordinated actions of Wehrmacht and SS units – in particular, attempts to break through of the SS panzer company under the commander of Carl Nicollusi-Lek in the surrounded Kovel, and attack of the 4thWehrmacht panzer division by Dietrich von Sauken in the city, blocked by the Red Army. The actions, which took place in January-March 1944 didn’t change the balance of power at the Eastern front. But for some time they shifted the frontline in northwestern Volyn in the advantage of the German side. Also, to some extent, this victory helped German propaganda to maintain the fighting spirit of the army (which melted uncontrollably), just like a bit later, near Warsaw in August 1944. At the same time, since the formation of the German occupation, Volhynia has become a battlefield for a number of underground organization – primarily Ukrainian and Polish. This was caused by the polyethnic nature of the former Eastern Lands of the Second Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, the specifics of the administrative management of Ukrainian territories by the Third Reich, German actions to "pacify" the local population. German side was actively promoting the incitement of ethnic hatred between Poles and Ukrainians. The latter resulted in a series of armed actions by units of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army and the Home Army (Armia Krajowa), directed against Polish and Ukrainian civil populace, respectively, in 1943. Active phase of this fight hadn’t stopped at the beginning of the following year. At that time, there were departments of UPA-North working in this region, reorganized after the Conference of military officers in 1942: from the Polish side in confrontation were involved 27th division of the Home Army and “Khlopsky’s batallions”. With the shifts of Soviet-German front line, Soviet partisans had begun to come to Volhynia, and they had an experience in confrontation both with German troops, UPA and AK.

Cornelia Gurlitt. A German Expressionist in First-World-War Vilnius

The artist Cornelia Gurlitt (1890–1919) served as a nurse in Kaiser’s army in Vilnius from 1915 to 1918. She was appointed to Vilnius Antakalnis hospital, one of the base hospitals of the Eastern front. Gurlitt was born into a well-off family: her father was an art historian, architect, and art collector. She was into contemporary ideas of women’s emancipation and sought to break loose from the norms of behaviour that society imposed on women. Although Gurlitt’s life turned out unduly short, she found herself in first-world-war Vilnius, spending all of her free time drawing, painting, or sketching: she embraced Expressionism not only as the means of artistic expression, but also as an existential philosophy. Her anxiety and inner contradictions were transformed into works characterised by twisted, roughly stylized forms, and broken lines. Gurlitt was first discovered by Hubert Portz, a German art collector and a gallery owner, later to become her biographer. This undeservedly forgotten artist is again in the spotlight of art historians as 138 artworks belonging to Gurlitt’s hand were found in 2012 among the so-called Gurlitt Trove collection in the apartment of her nephew Cornelius Gurlitt (the son of Hitler’s art collector Hildebrand Gurlitt, Cornelia Gurlitt’s brother). This study seeks to determine the place of Gurlitt as an expressionist artist among the women artists who were creating in Vilnius in the early twentieth century, and especially during the First World War. Gurlitt, a forerunner of modern art, was one of a kind; the other women artists related to the Vilnius school of drawing or the Art Society of Vilnius mostly created in the realistic manner, focusing on domestic scenes. Marianne Werefkin (1860–1938) was an exception and some similarities of the expressionist manner can be found in both artists’ artworks. During the years of the First World War, Gurlitt exhibited her artworks in Vilnius (1917) and Kaunas (1918) in the joint exhibitions of the Ober Ost artists. Gurlitt could and should be included in art history textbooks: her name and artworks should be presented together with other German expressionists, as well as in the art history of Lithuania of the early the twentieth century, because one of the most productive periods of Gurlitt’s creative life is related to Vilnius.

Jewish Forced Labor in Romania, 1940–1944 by Dallas Michelbacher

Reviewed by: Jewish Forced Labor in Romania, 1940–1944 by Dallas Michelbacher Paul A. Shapiro Dallas Michelbacher. Jewish Forced Labor in Romania, 1940–1944. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2020. 174 pp. The Final Report of the International Commission on the Holocaust in Romania, issued in 2004, made it clear that the Romanian state, recognized as Nazi Germany's most significant military ally on the Eastern Front, was also a major perpetrator of Holocaust-era crimes. The Final Report provided a platform for what since has become a significant outpouring of new scholarship on the Holocaust in Romania, most of which has concentrated on topics that were the focus of the Final Report. These fell into five broad categories: Romanian antisemitism; anti-Jewish legislation and crimes committed by the fascist Iron Guard during the "National-Legionary State" (September 1940–January 1941); the effort of Ion Antonescu's wartime regime to rob and rid the country entirely of its Jewish population; Jewish response; and postwar obfuscation and denial. Barely five pages of the four-hundred-page Final Report were dedicated to forced labor,1 and the topic languished largely unaddressed for years. Dallas Michelbacher provides the first monograph in English on Jewish forced labor in Romania.2 He makes ample use of the major document collection published in Romanian by Bucharest's Elie Wiesel Institute for the Study of the Holocaust in Romania3 as well as other published documents. To this he adds in-depth research in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum archives and in major oral history collections. The result is a much more granular study of Romanian forced labor than previously available. The book provides a review of the orders and guidelines issued by the multiple civil and military authorities which administered the forced labor regime. But to this Michelbacher adds a nuanced picture of the corruption that permeated the administration of forced labor, with officials at every level encouraging and accepting payments against labor exemption certificates, preferential retention at one's traditional job, assignment to a particular locality, etc. He describes the varying degrees of risk of verbal [End Page 216] or physical abuse faced by forced laborers according to the personality and motivations of the civilian and military officials overseeing laborers performing tasks that ranged from heavy rail, road, and defense construction work in so-called "external" labor detachments, to humiliating snow shoveling duty assigned to Jews able to remain in their home towns. He captures the antagonistic attitude of local non-Jews toward Jewish laborers and the resentment that the need to keep some 75,000 Jews in technical, managerial, and administrative jobs in order to keep the national economy running created in both official and civil society circles. He provides a glimpse of the impact that removing able-bodied men for labor, under threat of deportation to Transnistria, had on Jewish community organizations and Jewish families left vulnerable to intimidation and blackmail, often lacking in basic necessities, and uncertain as to what would come next. A picture of forced labor at the ground level emerges most vividly in Michelbacher's chapters 4 and 5, which trace developments leading up to Romania's planned mass deportation of Jews to the Nazi death camp at Belzec, and then following Antonescu's decision to abandon the deportation plan. In these chapters the author moves beyond reliance on published sources and draws heavily on previously untapped archival and testimonial source material. He introduces survivor voices, largely absent from earlier studies, and provides graphic detail regarding several well-documented and painfully remembered labor sites—railroad track repair, a canal, defense works, a quarry, etc. Given the power of this new material, it is unfortunate that the book's footnotes provide only partial information, clarifying where a document can be found, but not the precise nature of the cited document. There is an aspect of Michelbacher's approach that leads the author to some problematic conclusions. The difficulty stems from the geographic limitation of the study, for the most part, to forced labor inside the borders of the Old Kingdom (Regat) and Southern Transylvania, isolated from the broader context of what was taking place in Bessarabia, Bukovina, and Transnistria. It...

Székely Hadosztály és a Magyar Tanácsköztársaság történetének néhány összefüggése az erdélyi front összeomlásának tükrében

Szilvássy, Zoltán: Some connections of the history of Sekler Division and the Hungarian Soviet Republic in the light of the collapse of the Transylvanian Front On April 16, 1919, after a successful attack of Romanian intervention forces the counter-revolutionary Hungarian Székely Division and the Red Army were bot unable to hold the Eastern front line. Unfortunately, and as a result of this event, all the great cities of the Hungarian Plain were fallen, including Debrecen. The red terror, carried out by communists, resulted counter-revolution in Debrecen (18 April, 1919) which was crushed by local communist forces within a short time with the help of Austrian internationalists led by Leo Rothziegel. The loss of the city was especially painful for the Hungarian Soviet Republic because Debrecen was the "capital of the Southeast", a major industrial and agricultural center and an important transport hub. The fate of Debrecen, like the rest of the cities of the Tisza region, was determined by the collapse of the Csucsa front line. In an open field, suffering from lack of munition, the Székely Division could not stop the advance of the Romanian intervention army, which reached the line of the River Tisza. The defense of the historic area of the Kingdom of Hungary was not included in the aims of the Hungarian Soviet Republic, which used Hungary as a springboard in the process of spreading the world revolution. The betrayal of the effort for the territorial integrity of the country caused a huge gap between the Székely Division and the communist forces which resulted the collapse of the Transylvanian Front line.

Hitler Looks West: An Irish Diplomat's Unwitting Role in the Plan to Alter Irish Neutrality

Hitler Looks West:An Irish Diplomat's Unwitting Role in the Plan to Alter Irish Neutrality Barry Whelan (bio) Keywords Leopold Kerney, Éamon de Valera, Elizabeth 'Budge' Mulcahy, Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington, Helmut Clissman, Frank Ryan, Second World War, nazism, Germany, Spanish Civil War, Irish Republican Army, IRA, Abwehr, Wilhelm Canaris, Joseph Walshe, Edmund Weesenmayer On 24 August 1942 Ireland's diplomatic representative to Spain, Leopold Kerney, met a senior figure in the SS (Schutzstaffel), Dr Edmund Veesenmayer, in a Madrid café. The German had travelled under false papers on a special mission approved by the Reich Foreign Minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop, to sound Kerney out on Ireland's willingness to alter its neutral policy in the war. Veesenmayer knew that Kerney was a close friend and long-time ally of the Taoiseach and Minister for External Affairs, Éamon de Valera, and that the Irish political leader was godfather to Kerney's youngest son. The Nazi leadership hoped that this close and direct connection to the Taoiseach could be decisive in convincing de Valera to alter Irish neutrality by aligning with Germany in return for a united Ireland. The role of the IRA in this plan as well as Irish assistance to Germany in its invasion of mainland Britain – scheduled for 1943 following victory on the eastern front – were all discussed at this meeting. The story of how this extraordinary encounter came about and the role played by a Sligo woman in shaping Hitler's wartime strategy in the West begins in Paris in 1934. Budge and Helmut Elizabeth 'Budge' Mulcahy was born on 5 August 1913 and grew up in her family home in Oakfield County Sligo. She attended University College Galway (UCG) studying languages before travelling to France to study in the Sorbonne and work as an au pair in Paris. It was there in 1934 that she met Leopold Kerney, then Commercial Secretary in the Irish legation. She worked as an au pair for the Kerney family. During her times minding the young children she taught them Irish, with mixed results: 'Budge Mulcahy has become a great friend of ours,' Kerney wrote to Hanna Sheehy Skeffington, 'and she has just come to live with us; she will, I hope, be as happy "au pair" with [End Page 62] us as anywhere else, and we are delighted to have her company. Raymonde, Micheline and myself are really the only students in her Irish "class". Budge is a tip-top teacher, and if we don't make progress the fault will not be hers.'1 The friendship continued over the years when the Kerney family travelled every summer to Sligo whilst on vacation to see Budge. Politically the Kerney and Mulcahy families were of a similar outlook. Both were republicans who had sided against the Treaty. As one of a number of republican diplomats reinstated into the service by de Valera, Kerney was happy to see the dismantling of the Treaty by constitutional means. He and Budge shared a similar outlook on this issue. It was also in the Mulcahy household that Kerney first met Frank Ryan, a former IRA fighter and leading left-wing political activist. Budge's friendship with Ryan would be another important factor in wartime efforts made by German Military Intelligence (Abwehr) to approach Kerney. The last point of interest in relation to Budge before the war was her acquaintance with Helmut Clissmann. He came to Ireland in 1934 to work in Trinity College Dublin (TCD) as part of a German student exchange programme (Deutsche Akademische Austauschdienst).2 In 1937 Kerney first met Helmut whilst visiting Budge in Sligo. Within a year Helmut and Budge were married. Now, on holiday trips to see Budge, Kerney was meeting both individuals, but what he did not know was Helmut's ties to militant republicans. Irish Army Intelligence (G2), Garda Crime and Security Branch (C3) and the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) all had pre-war files recording Helmut's meetings with active members of the IRA. Using the cover of his academic work, Helmut met men like Tom Barry at republican seminars, clubs, and commemorative events like the annual Wolfe Tone parade to Bodenstown Graveyard.3 British Security Service...

The Unknown War of the Eastern Front: the first American-Soviet television production and Détente’s World War II

This article details the production of the first American-Soviet television collaboration The Unknown War. The 1978 documentary series chronicled the Eastern Front of World War II, an area of the war few Americans were familiar with. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s American film and television portrayals of the war excised or minimized the Soviet Union’s role due to the Cold War rivalry leading to a knowledge gap. The success of the documentary series The World at War spurred the interest of American independent producer Air Time International for a similar series on the Soviet side of the war. For Americans it was capitalizing on a revival of interest in the war while remedying the public’s lack of knowledge on the Eastern. For the Soviet authorities it was a means of furthering relations eased by Détente and bolstering their ‘Cult of the Great Patriotic War’. The series’ creation showcases the difficulties and compromises made to craft a product that suited both sides’ needs. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan led to the series never being rebroadcast in the United States and largely forgotten. It serves as an example of the difficulties of such ‘cross-curtain’ collaborations and the Cold War’s influence on the interpretation of World War II.

Volyn Region in the Period of Combat Actions Deployment on the Eastern Front of the World War I (1914-1916)

Volyn Region in the Period of Combat Actions Deployment on the Eastern Front of the World War I (1914-1916)

Lessons of the Cold War

Lessons of the Cold War

Radu Jude’s Montage Experiments with Documents of Oppression and Mass Murder

The article discusses critically the following films—short and feature-length—by Radu Jude: The Dead Nation (2017), The Marshal’s Two Executions (2018), Punish and Discipline (2019), Uppercase Print (2020), The Exit of the Trains (2020), Caricaturana (2021), Memories from the Eastern Front (2021), and The Potemkinists (2022). In four of them—The Dead Nation, The Marshal’s Two Executions, The Exit of the Trains and Memories from the Eastern Front (the last two co-directed with historian Adrian Cioflâncă)—Jude cinematically curates Holocaustrelated archives, exposing Romanian antisemitic atrocities. Uppercase Print and Punish and Discipline explore state apparatuses of repression from other periods in Romanian history, while The Marshal’s Two Executions and The Potemkinists interrogate the relation between art and historical memory. A number of these films work by juxaposing two different sets of documents, using one set to tease out a narrative that the other set represses. Jude himself has described these works “as timid explorations” into the possibilities of montage (possibilities that the New Romanian Cinema of the 2000s had largely neglected), presided over by the spirit of Sergei Eisenstein. That spirit is explicitly (and playfully) conjured in Caricaturana and The Potemkinists

Italian Catholic Chaplains on the Eastern Front during World War II: Perception of Soviet Reality, Military Realities, and Apostolate in the Territories Occupied by Italy

The author focuses on the role of Catholic chaplains accompanying Italian troops on the Eastern Front between 1941 and 1943. It draws on the memoirs, diaries, letters and reports of the chaplains, including direct reports sent by them to the Holy See during the war, which only became available to scholars in March 2020 when the Vatican archives relating to the pontificate of Pius XII (1939–1958) were unsealed. This subject has never been addressed in Russian historiography and has been barely explored in Italian studies. The aim of this article is to analyse the information relayed by chaplains about the territories where the Italian army was deployed, the situation of the local population, including people of different nationalities, the religious situation on the occupied territories, the actions of the armed forces (mainly Italian and German) and the activities of chaplains themselves, including not only the spiritual care of the Italian troops, but also the administration of sacraments and the holding of religious services for the local population. Newly discovered sources make it possible to understand how the chaplains saw life among the local population in the territories occupied by Italian troops, whether the Vatican was aware of the real situation, and to infer what the Vatican tried or intended to do for the apostolic work of the military chaplains in the Soviet Union.

Russia of the 20th Century in the French School History Textbook

The article analyzes the place and image of Russia in the French history textbook for the senior class by Guillaume Le Quintrec, which is one of the most popular textbooks in France today and was written in accordance with the new school history curriculum adopted in 2019. Unlike the program and methodological recommendations for it, the textbook presents a fairly balanced analysis of the events that preceded World War II. The author focuses on the European "policy of appeasement of the aggressor" and on the Munich Agreement of 1938 as the culmination of this policy. The Soviet-German pact of 1939 is rightly presented by Le Quintrec as a forced measure on the part of Stalin after the failure of Soviet attempts to create a system of collective security in Europe. As for the description of the events of World War II in the textbook, they are more tendentious. The main events on the eastern front, although mentioned, are presented as an addition to what happened on the western front. Thus, French children may get the impression that the Battle of Stalingrad or the Battle of Moscow did not determine the events on the fronts, but only contributed to the victory of the Allies, which does not correspond to historical reality. However, in describing the events of the Second World War, the text of the textbook seems to be more historical than the content of the program, where the role of the USSR in the victory over Nazism is minimized. Also in the textbook, the main blame for the outbreak of the Cold War is laid on the USSR, and modern Russia is called a "resurgent force" that claims to change the world order. In general, despite the obvious negative trends in the approach to teaching history in European countries, on some key issues of the history of the 20th century, the text of Le Quintrec's textbook looks more balanced than the new French history curriculum adopted in 2019.