Soviet Forces Research Articles

Tagasi esivanemate maale: eestlaste evakueerimine Loode-Venemaalt 1942–44 [Abstract: Back to the ancestral homeland: the evacuation of Estonians from Northwestern Russia in 1942–44

For Estonians, similarly to many other peoples, the German occupation (1941–44) stood for massive relocations of people that stemmed from the ethno-political aims and military needs of the National Socialist regime. The evacuation to Estonia in 1942–44 of Estonians who lived in areas to the east of the Estonian border – in Ingria, the region beyond Lake Peipus (the former county of Oudova), and the Luga River and Pskov area – is the focus of this article. This was an operation to bring ethnic Estonians who had emigrated to Russia before World War I back to their ancestral homeland.
 According to the plan of the head of the German SS and Police Heinrich Himmler, the approximately 80,000 Russians who lived along Estonia’s eastern border were to be settled to the east as an element foreign to Estonia both racially and in terms of their mentality and to replace them with the Estonians living on the eastern side of Lake Peipus. To this end, the Germans, Estonians, Baltic Finns and minorities of other origins living in Russia had to be registered first so that they could be resettled in Germany, Estonia, Finland or elsewhere. The registration of ethnic groups that began in October 1941 was completed in Ingria in February 1942. More than 81,000 persons were registered, among them over 12,000 Estonians. Registration continued in the Oudova area and elsewhere in 1942–43. The “yellow card” issued to registered persons permitted them to resettle. The evacuation of Germans began in January 1942. A while later, Estonians also received permission to relocate into Estonia via Narva. This initially took place on a voluntary basis and by the means of the people themselves. The organised extraction of Estonians began in the summer of 1942, while the more massive resettlement took place in 1943. Above all, difficult local conditions, especially hunger, frequent attacks by partisans, and the high-handed behaviour of the German
 authorities, forced the inhabitants to leave. Yet since there was a great deal of uncertainty concerning what lay ahead, many people were hesitated to leave.
 The situation changed in 1943, especially in the latter half of the year, when an offensive of Soviet forces was expected in the Leningrad area. On 21 September 1943, the supreme commander of the rear area of Army Group Nord Kuno-Hans von Both gave the order to implement Operation Roboter. According to this plan, not a single “person who could be put to use” was permitted to be left behind. Four routes were prescribed for the evacuation. A large number of people were brought across Lake Peipus on barges. The forcible evacuation of minorities that began in September was followed by the evacuation of local Russian inhabitants in October, which was carried out violently and at an accelerated pace, causing the inhabitants to flee to the woods en masse. Approximately 30,000 Russians were brought to Estonia in the course of this operation.
 Approximately 24,000 Estonians made it to Estonia in 1942–44. Most of them were put to work in agriculture. While the first Estonian resettlers were permitted to bring as much livestock, grain and property along with them as their means of transportation allowed, those who came later had to settle for bringing a few pieces of hand baggage. There was not enough food or places to live in Estonia. Those evacuees whose relatives invited them to stay with them were in a better situation. Most evacuees who had not found any relatives were housed in camps, from where they moved around chaotically looking for work and shelter, thus arousing fear in the
 local inhabitants of the spread of contagious diseases and annoyance due to the begging that ensued. Although farmers desperately needed a helping hand, the refugees often proved to be unreliable.
 After the Great Terror of the 1930s, in the course of which Estonians in the Soviet Union were murdered on the basis of their ethnic attributes, many regretted that they had not opted to return to Estonia in the 1920s. The dream of passage to Estonia came true in 1942–44 in a rather unexpected way, yet a number of disappointments were in store. The general attitude of Estonians living in Estonia was standoffish towards them as people who had come from “over there”, or the land of the Soviets. Contacts between families had been severed in the 1920s and 1930s. Attitudes, prejudices, fears and the years spent apart generated distrust and estrangement, which in some cases persisted for years. The evacuation of Estonians also meant the final collapse of the Estonian villages and the cultural landscape in Northwestern Russia. About ten thousand Estonians still lived in the oblasts of Northwestern Russia in 1989.

Transformations of Neopaganism in Latvia: From Survival to Revival

Abstract Neopaganism (Dievturība) in Latvia has undergone phenomenal transformations which have been driven by socio-political conditions. The history of the Dievturi movement makes it possible to outline the historical change in the movement due to differing political circumstances. In the first period of its development (1925-1940), Neopaganism displayed itself as a form of politicised phenomenon; it became part of prevailing policies of nationalism by offering a Latvian national religion. With Latvia’s occupation by the Soviet forces (1940) Latvian Neopagans, Dievturi, became a disadvantaged group. Persecution and repression faced by Dievturi (1940-1953) were due to the imposition of Communist ideology and restrictions on freedom. Later during the Soviet regime (1953-1986), the Dievturi were not part of an organised religious movement, their teaching and ritual practice were not further developed during this time period. However, it was while in exile that the Dievturi had the opportunity to develop and expand the movement, but they had to address an urgent problem of preservation of ethnic identity. In the 1980s the Dievturi movement gradually resumed its activity, and it was officially registered as a religious organisation (1990). Today the Dievturi movement in Latvia includes controversial aspects: opposition to globalisation trends and its New Age trajectory.

Origins and Consequences of South Korea’s Social Development

Origins and Consequences of South Korea’s Social Development Walter C. Clemens Jr. (bio) Carter J. Eckert, Park Chung Hee and Modern Korea: The Roots of Militarism, 1866–1945 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016). Daniel J. Schwekendiek, South Korea: A Socioeconomic Overview from the Past to the Present (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2016). How to explain the transformation of South Korea, especially in the 1960s and 1970s? It was one of the most rapid and far reaching in world history. As Daniel J. Schwekendiek makes clear, the Republic of Korea (ROK) produced the world’s fastest growing economy in terms of GDP per capita after World War II. South Korea in the mid-2000s became the world’s tenth largest economy. While South Korea adapted practices from the United States, Germany, and Japan in the twentieth century, Schwekendiek argues that the ROK is now being “chased” by China and other rising economies. To understand a country such as South Korea is it more useful to utilize the tools of history or of social science? Given the two books discussed here, we need not choose. The reader can benefit from the work of two outstanding scholars, each of whom offers a different approach to knowledge. Students of Northeast Asia can forge their own synthesis, drawing from each approach. While Carter J. Eckert’s book is based on documents, interviews, and insights derived from other historians, Schwekendiek approaches his task as a social scientist. In this book and in previous studies he analyzes statistics from the Organization [End Page 341] for Economic Cooperation and Development, official ROK studies, and other sources. Free will or determinism? In the real world there is no absolute division. Both forces interact. Eckert quotes Karl Marx: individuals make their own history, but they do so “under circumstances directly found, given, and transmitted from the past.” While engaged in creating something new, revolutionaries often utilize and sometimes mask names and slogans borrowed from world history. Eckert argues that the foundations of the dynamic but strongly authoritarian Korean state that emerged in the decades after the Korean War were laid during Japan’s occupation. Having trained at the Japanese military academy in Manchuria in the early 1940s, Park Chung-hee and other future ROK officers absorbed the Imperial Japanese Army’s ethos of victory at all costs and later applied it to the tasks of Korean modernization. They believed that the army should intervene in politics in times of crisis and that a central authority should plan and monitor the country’s economic system. The book under review, the first of two volumes Eckert is writing on Park, traces these beliefs to Japanese teachings. To explain Korea’s modernization, however, Eckert takes the reader far and wide. He follows Korean intellectuals and activists as they encountered the ideas and policies that shaped China, Japan, the United States, and Europe in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Thus, having studied and traveled abroad, Yo Kilchun (1856–1914) wrote a nearly 600-page manifesto of the Korean enlightenment to provide Koreans with a detailed understanding of the unfamiliar world in which they found themselves and to offer models on which to base their reforms. Among them was Napoleon’s: making nations tremble. A half century later, Napoleon would capture the imagination of a young Park Chung-hee. To grasp what Korea’s enlightenment reformers learned, Eckert provides insightful sketches of social Darwinists such as Herbert Spencer and Prussian military thinkers such as Clausewitz. A paradox is that Kim Il-sung acquired a similar orientation after serving with communist Chinese and Soviet forces. Indeed, North Korea’s juche ideology of self-reliance includes the can-do spirit that Eckert attributes to the ROK. Both Park and Kim believed that the state should maintain a strong disciplinary presence in society [End Page 342] and exploit violence to maintain order. For communist leaders in China and the USSR, the military was to serve the Communist Party and its leaders, whereas Japanese generals expected the military to dominate and lead politics. Both viewpoints posited that war and politics should be total—mobilizing all resources to serve political ends. Park learned...

The “Begram Ivories”: A Successful Case of Restitution of Some Antiquities Stolen from the National Museum of Afghanistan in Kabul

Abstract:This article details a successful case of restitution of important antiquities stolen from the National Museum of Afghanistan in Kabul during the Afghan Civil War (1992–94). These items had been excavated by the Délégation Archéologique Française en Afghanistan at the site of Begram during 1937 and 1939 and were allocated to the museum in Kabul when the excavated finds were divided between the National Museum of Afghanistan and the Musée Guimet (Paris). In Kabul, the most important objects were put on permanent display, but they were placed in storage in 1989 when the museum was officially closed and the capital threatened by war after the withdrawal of Soviet forces. Many objects were hidden, and some are now touring in an international exhibition hosted by the British Museum in 2011.1 However, most of the Begram ivories were stolen and entered different collections. The following article discusses how a group of 20 of these exquisite carvings were acquired, conserved, exhibited, and returned to Kabul as a direct result of the negotiations for the British Museum exhibition.2 This allowed the first scientific analyses of Indian ivories of this period, and the results provided important new evidence for the extent of polychromy as well as the scale of the different unrecorded conservation treatments previously applied to these highly fragile objects.3 The objects were returned safely to Kabul in 2012. This article also sets out some of the lessons learned from this chain of events and how it can provide an example for future restitutions.

Lukewarm Neutrality in a Cold War? The Case of Austria

Geographically, Austria's position during the Cold War differed significantly from that of Switzerland or Sweden, let alone Ireland. Austria, like Finland, was situated along the Iron Curtain. In 1945, Austria was divided between East and West, and the Soviet Union hoped that the Austrian Communists could quickly gain power by largely democratic means. This effort failed, however, when the Communists lost decisively in the November 1945 elections. Over the next decade, Austria remained under Soviet and Western military occupation. The formal adoption of a neutral status for Austria in May 1955, when the Austrian State Treaty was signed, was a compromise needed to ensure the departure of Soviet forces from Austria. Although some other orientation might have been preferred, neutrality over time became firmly engrained in Austria's collective identity.

Hiding Hedonism in Plain Sight: Acoustic Participatory Camouflage at the DDR Museum in Berlin

This article illustrates the process of acoustic participatory camouflage associated with the organisation of exhibits and space within a place of memory. The DDR Museum is a place of memory that exhibits memorabilia and artefacts of the former state of East Germany, comprised of two sections that structure sense-making about the socialist state. An ethnographic content analysis of photographs and notes taken during two visits to the museum demonstrate that many of the texts and materials portray former East German citizens as hedonistic and juvenile. In addition, the exhibits invite visitors to engage in actions that simultaneously disguise and reinforce negative connotations associated with those portrayals. Ultimately, the museum builds public memory about the average East German citizen as a hedonistic juvenile dupe manipulated by external Soviet forces. Such a public memory plays a role in shaping the experiential cityscape of Berlin for former citizens and tourists alike.

Should the United States Reject MAD? Damage Limitation and U.S. Nuclear Strategy toward China

Abstract As China invests in its nuclear forces and U.S.-China relations become increasingly strained, questions of U.S. nuclear doctrine require greater attention. The key strategic nuclear question facing the United States is whether to attempt to maintain and enhance its damage-limitation capability against China. The answer is less straightforward than it was during the Cold War, because China's nuclear force is orders of magnitude smaller than the Soviet force was. Part of the answer depends on the military-technical feasibility of the United States achieving a significant damage-limitation capability: What would be the outcome of military competition over the survivability of China's intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarine-launched ballistic missiles, and command and control, and over the effectiveness of U.S. ballistic missile defenses? The answer also depends on the benefits that a damage-limitation capability would provide; these could include contributions to homeland deterrence, extended deterrence, and reassurance of U.S. regional allies. The final piece of the analysis concerns the potential costs of a damage-limitation capability, which could include increased escalatory pressures during crises and growing political tension between the United States and China. A thorough analysis demonstrates that the United States should forgo such a capability because the prospects for preserving a significant damage-limitation capability are poor; the deterrent benefits would be small; and the escalatory and political costs would be relatively large.

Mueller, Wolfgang; Gehler, Michael and Suppan, Arnold (eds) The Revolutions of 1989: A Handbook (review)

SEER, 94, 2, APRIL 2016 376 “representative” of Poland on the whole, it offers a very poignant concentration of events, processes, and experiences that have shaped the nation […] since the end of World War II’ (p. 11). As her book successfully illustrates, these are not just repression, resistance and inefficiency. Nowa Huta is also ‘emblematic of post-war rebuilding, successful urban planning, stable and guaranteed work, strong community ties and social institutions, and collective action’ (p. 189). UCL SSEES Anne White Mueller, Wolfgang; Gehler, Michael and Suppan, Arnold (eds). The Revolutions of 1989: A Handbook. Internationale Geschichte/International History, 2. Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Vienna, 2015. ix + 705 pp. Notes. Tables. Chronology. Bibliography. Index. €75.00. The purpose of this compendium is to synthesize twenty-five years of research and reflection on the end of Communist power in Central Europe in 1989. It is primarily a tour of the literature on the political history, and a geographically very broad one at that; the collection’s originality lies in the connections it allows the reader to make between developments in many different areas of the world. In fact, the least surprising part is the opening section on 1989 in the narrow sense of the revolutions in the line of states from Poland to Bulgaria, which are ably summarized by country experts and shown to have been massively over-determined. There is little scope for scholarly controversy when discussing the end of regimes that depended on Soviet force for their survival, and were a poor fit with the educated, urbanized societies they brought about. Once the Soviet balustrade was removed — as early as July 1986, according to Andrei Grachev’s chapter on Gorbachev — it was just a matter of finding a way to let political gravity work. With most of the countries of Central Europe, the only competitor to the standard account of events is a conspiracy theory, especially regarding the negotiations between the Communist authorities and representatives of the emerging opposition that ensured peaceful transitions to free elections and constitutional change. The authors of the country chapters address and largely demolish those often wildly speculative claims of secret deals and bad faith. Only in the case of Romania, where the Soviet hold was weakest and the Ceaușescu regime had pursued a sultanistic path, is there a genuine dispute over how best to explain the violent events. On the superpower level, it turns out that it is American conduct, not the Soviet, that is now the greater subject of disagreement. Norman Naimark, in the book’s liveliest chapter, presents a devastating case for seeing the administration of George H. W. Bush as passive and timid at this crucial time REVIEWS 377 in history. Even when moving fairly quickly to endorse German unification, a topic that receives very thorough attention in this book, the Bush White House was still reacting to someone else’s initiative (Helmut Kohl’s) and was not all that far ahead of the trend (Georges Saunier’s subtle chapter on France shows that by 3 November 1989, a week before the Berlin Wall opened, François Mitterrand was already anticipating the merger of the two Germanies). Philip Zelikow, at the time director for European security affairs on the White House National Security Council, offers a more positive account, crediting President Bush with foresight and boldness, although he is convincing only with regard to the Conventional Forces in Europe talks. One of the book’s strengths is that it factors in other countries under some form of Communist rule that were in crisis but did not experience a change of government in 1989. Péter Vámos’s chapter on China’s Tianamen Square protests is an excellent account of the events and of their importance not just for that country, but also for anxious Central European leaders who lacked the appetite for such a brutal crackdown. The chapters on Yugoslavia and the Baltic states wander too far from 1989 itself and how the fall of nearby Communist regimes was perceived (or, at least, how it was reported in their media) into general accounts of the resurgence of national identities, the politicization of history and crumbling of...

Rural Russia on the Edges of Authority:Bezvlastiein Wartime Riazan´, November-December 1941

Central Russia’s Riazan´ province was on the front lines of World War II for two weeks in late 1941. Placed between German and Soviet forces, the province was on the edges of authorities’ ability to exert full control over the region. In that time, Soviet power dissolved in the countryside. Peasants raided warehouses and dismantled collective farms while enterprising local notables aided the embryonic occupation regime. Documents created during the two weeks and their immediate aft ermath show that rural Russians, even collaborators, defied simple classification as anti-Soviet. Instead, they exhibited survivalist instincts and a traditional antipathy toward central authority rather than a preference for either German or Soviet power. As Soviet power returned to Riazan´ authorities grappled with the mass upheaval that the power vacuum had enabled. Unlike later interpretations, which would stress the role of German atrocities in occupation regimes, Riazan´ authorities blamed “anti-Soviet elements” among the province’s population.

Terek Cossacks in the Final Phase of The Civil War in the Northern Caucasus (1920)

The article explores the little-studied period of the Civil War in the southern territories of Russia: the defense of Terek-Dagestan region from the advancing Soviet forces (mainly, by the Terek Cossack army) and subsequent retreat of the remaining part of the Southern Russian Armed Forces to the other side of the Caucasus Mountains. For his analysis, the author uses the historical and genetic method, referring to archive materials (from the State archive of the Russian Federation) and the participants’ memoirs. At the beginning of 1920, units of the Red army began a large-scale operation in the northern Caucasus aiming to destroy parts of the White army in Terek-Dagestan Region. The main part of the anti-Bolshevik forces in the region was made up of Terek Cossacks. For this reason the history of battles in the northern Caucasus at the beginning of 1920 is strongly connected with the history of the Terek Cossack army. The author analyzes battles at Terek in March, 1920, and reconstructs the evacuation of refugees from Vladikavkaz to Georgia. Also he discovers another way of evacuation — from Dagestan to Azerbaijan. The analysis demonstrates that in spite of retreat, the commanders of the army managed to preserve the Cossack units for subsequent anti-Bolshevik struggle.

Coda: A Conversation with Kim Dong-Choon

For over two decades, Kim Dong-Choon has written about the history of violence leveled at the population since Korea was liberated from Japanese colonial rule and partitioned by Soviet and US forces in 1945. His research and theoretical reflections on state violence—committed by US forces, the South Korean police, military, and right-wing groups, as well as by leftist guerillas and the Korean People's Army—offer unique insight into what he calls the war politics that established and consolidated North and South Korea. Rather than ending the war, the armistice that halted the fighting in 1953 institutionalized this war politics, sustaining not only a near-war situation along the DMZ but also a “state of exception” within both Koreas. In the interview, conducted by Henry Em and Christine Hong in 2012, Kim Dong-Choon explains how the division system, and the war politics that sustains it, function as a bulwark against the consolidation of democracy in South Korea.

Was It the Mud?

In fall, 1941, the Wehrmacht’s Army Group Center launched its last offensive of the year: Operation Typhoon. It was to destroy the Soviet forces west of Moscow and open the way to the capital. Despite a rapid victory that destroyed three Soviet fronts, the offensive ground to a halt before it could take the city. Soviet memoirists and historians claimed that the resistance of the Red Army caused Operation Typhoon to fail. This claim is dismissed by almost all Western historians, who offer a simple explanation: mud. ‘General Mud’ foiled the Germans, leaving them pinned until mid-November frosts again rendered the ground passable.Our examination of the fighting in October 1941 and Wehrmacht records has led us to conclude that it was not mud that stopped the Wehrmacht. Mud was a contributing factor to the breakdown of Operation Typhoon, but it was far from the only, or even most important factor.

Schooling in the Kovno Ghetto: cultural reproduction as a form of defiance

When Soviet forces entered the Kovno Ghetto (Lithuania) on 1 August 1944 they found a scene of mass destruction. What happened at Kovno was a reflection of the extent of the Final Solution, where the goal was to extinguish not only the Jews, but their entire culture. While the Final Solution was instituted throughout Europe, this paper will focus on the inhabitants of the Kovno Ghetto. As they faced extermination, Kovno Jews risked their lives to create detailed records including: lists and accounts of people killed, diagrams of the camp, artwork, journals, and photographs of the events in the camp. One act of defiance chronicled in the photographs and writings was the hidden school system that the Jews conducted to exercise one of the few powers they possessed, the power to preserve their culture. The history of clandestine schools is outlined using the diary of Avraham Tory, excerpts of the diaries of students, historical information provided by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, and other historical resources. Kovno’s schools are compared with traditional purposes of education and an exploration is conducted on what caused the focus of education to shift from traditional purposes to a preservation of culture and humanity. Therefore, the purpose of Kovno’s schooling will be examined through reproduction theory in an attempt to explain why schooling continued in Kovno despite the threat of imminent death. Despite great obstacles, defiance manifested as a refusal to be forgotten and hidden schools were one means of perpetuating Jewish culture.

Western Societies and Islam

It is fair to say that the history of Europe, and by extension the United States, in relation to Islamic regions has been one characterized by violence and misunderstanding. By the end of the 8th century a vast empire from India to the east, spreading across the Middle East, North Africa and into Spain, consolidated Islamic rule. By the end of the 15th century Ottoman rule extended as far north as Hungary and across much of the Balkans. The response in Europe was over eight centuries of armed conflict, starting in the 8th century in a struggle to drive Islam out of the Spanish peninsula, which culminated in 1492, and almost simultaneously a long period of Crusades through the Middle East and Eastern Europe, beginning in the 11th century and lasting until the end of the 15th century. We do not need to revisit this troubled history to understand that what ensued has been an uneasy relationship between predominantly Christian Europe and the Muslim Middle East. At the start of the 21st century, after the horrendous events that have come to be known as 9/11, it would appear that Europe and the US have entered a new round of ‘crusade-like’ conflict with the entire region. Under the pretense of the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center, the US and a loose coalition of so-called allies (mainly the UK) have been engaged in conflict in the region. Like all complex events, the underlying causes of this conflict can be found first in the struggle over Palestine since the end of the Second World War, then in the economic turmoil of the 1973 OPEC oil embargo as a result of the 1973 Arab-Israeli War during which Israel was supplied with military support by the US, and then in the Gulf War of 1990–1991 when a US-led force drove Iraqi forces out of Kuwait. We cannot understand the combination of forces arrayed without also considering the geo-politics of the day, as the US sponsored, trained and armed religious groups fighting against the Soviet forces that had occupied Afghanistan throughout most of the 1980s. As the 20th century came to a close, all of these factors contributed to the events that signaled the beginning of this new crusade. First, the US and some NATO forces invaded Afghanistan with the stated goal of pursuing and dismantling al-Qaeda in response to their role in the 9/11 events. By the Spring of 2003, US forces (again, leading a coalition mainly consisting of the UK, Australia, and Poland) was at war with, and invaded, Iraq under the pretext of what now has been documented to be false assumptions. As the first decade of the 21st century came to a close it appeared that European and US forces were finally withdrawing from the region. Troops were no longer in Iraq, leaving behind chaos and sectarian violence that has destabilized the region. The last troops are scheduled to depart from Afghanistan within the next year, and most people in the US, UK and NATO countries have little interest or willingness to remain engaged militarily – at least to the degree that troops are involved in a ground campaign, though selective bombing and the use of drone attacks continue. Yet, as 2014 comes to a close, the events unfolding in Syria and Iraq, and the rise of yet another extremist faction known as ISIS, has created one more round of saber-rattling in the US (the UK parliament 558198 CRS0010.1177/0896920514558198Critical Sociology research-article2014

Lietuvos šauliai tarpukariu: lietuviai, katalikai, visuomenės elitas | Lithuanian Riflemen in the Interwar Period: Lithuanians, Catholics, the Elite of Society

During the struggle for Lithuania’s independence, defence and guerrilla units started forming inthe countryside, and fought against the Bermontian and Soviet forces and gangs of marauders.In 1919, intellectuals and public servants from Kaunas formed a sports-military guerrilla organisation,and called it the Lithuanian Riflemen’s Union (LRU). The organisation accepted not onlynew members, but also people who had already fought with guerrilla units in northeast Lithuania.Therefore, the ranks of the LRU grew rapidly, and the new paramilitary organisation playedan important role in the struggle for Lithuania’s statehood. The LRU was active throughout theinterwar period, until 11 July 1940, when, after the Soviet occupation, it was officially disbanded.This paper deals with issues of the scope and structure of the LRU, which until now havehardly been dealt with in historiography. The paper has three objectives: 1) it tries to establishchanges in the numbers of riflemen in the interwar period, as well as the numbers of peoplewho belonged to the LRU in different periods, and their total number throughout the interwarperiod; 2) the ethnic, religious and social composition of the Riflemen’s Union is analysed, withthe aim of developing ‘a social portrait of a rifleman’; and 3) the internal structure of the Unionis addressed: the numbers of reserve and combatant riflemen. Key words: paramilitarism, Lithuanian Riflemen’s Union, paramilitary organisational structure,social composition, ethnic composition. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/ 10.15181/ahuk.v28i0.923

Intelligence in the Cold War

This paper asserts that Cold War intelligence was essentially military intelligence. It provides a personal perspective on the UK Defence Intelligence Staff (DIS) and how Cold War intelligence was influenced by the experiences of individuals in the Second World War. It reviews little-studied aspects of the US–UK intelligence relationship, the NATO intelligence dimension, and the British Commanders'-in-Chief Mission to the Soviet Forces in (East) Germany (BRIXMIS), effectively legitimate spies in uniform. It concludes with some reflections on the changes the end of the Cold War brought to the work of the DIS.

Frank, William D. Everyone to Skis! Skiing in Russia and the Rise of Soviet Biathlon (review)

SEER, 92, 3, JULY 2014 576 though propaganda about labour competition and cultural enlightenment was accompanied by considerable cynicism and disorganization, nonetheless the autobiographical evidence and contemporary sociological research suggest that Nowa Huta also inspired enthusiasm and affection. This was especially true by the 1960s, when the infrastructure had finally been built, living standards had improved considerably and ‘skilled workers almost universally aspired for their children to gain a university degree’ (p. 158). On the other hand, for some groups opportunities closed in parallel with de-Stalinization. Lebow shows how both women and Roma benefited from equal opportunities campaigns during the Stalinist period but saw these gains rescinded after 1956. ‘Nowa Huta, meant to have led the way toward women’s equality at work, now exhibited the reverse trend: by the late 1950s, the district had one of the lowest rates of female employment in urban Poland. […] The shift was officially framed as a return to a traditionally Polish understanding of women’s essential role as a mother and a rejection of the “foreign” [i.e. Soviet] idea that women should perform the same work as men’ (p. 122). Although the book’s title suggests that it ends in 1956, in fact chapter six continues the story through to 1989 and beyond. Lebow suggests that ‘Nowa Huta’s embrace of Solidarity in the 1980s […] cannot simply be seen […] as a shedding or rejection of the Stalinist experience, a kind of prodigal son’s return’ (p. 154). Instead, there was always opposition, most importantly the battle over building the church, but also many smaller incidents. In 1968, ‘school dormitories in Nowa Huta has to be put under virtual lockdown to prevent secondary and technical school students from joining their protesting peers in Kraków’ (p. 170). 1970 — usually associated with the events on the Baltic coast — saw the replacement of the steelworks’ general director and first party secretary ‘“under pressure from the workforce”’ (p. 171). Overall, this is an exceptionally readable book which will be enjoyed by anyone interested in Polish history and which is also an important contribution to the literature on social dimensions of Stalinism. Department of Politics, Languages and International Studies A. White University of Bath Frank, William D. Everyone to Skis! Skiing in Russia and the Rise of Soviet Biathlon. Northern Illinois University Press, DeKalb, IL 2013. xii + 396 pp. Illustrations. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $39.95. William D. Frank’s book on Soviet biathlon adds to our knowledge of Soviet sports in several ways. Recognized as a ‘serious’ field of historical study during the last decade, more recent studies and collections on Soviet sports have focused on internationally well-known spectator sports, the most prominent REVIEWS 577 being football. Ice hockey comes in a close second, due to the highly politicized atmosphere around the Cold War hockey games between the USSR and prominent Western rivals such as the USA, Canada or Finland. Biathlon, on the other hand, at first seems an odd choice for a full-blown monograph. A combination of skiing and shooting, it is usually regarded as a direct successor to military patrol events but was formally recognized as an Olympic discipline by the IOC in 1954. Frank, however, places the evolution of biathlon within the larger context of Nordic (cross-country) skiing and opens his account with a concise overview of the evolution of skiing in Russia. He also argues that both the Soviet popularity of this militarized sport and the strong official support for biathlon are closely connected to the Soviet-Finnish war of 1940 (the so-called ‘Winter War’) in which the Finnish soldiers’ proficiency on skis gave them an important and unexpected advantage over the Soviet forces. The author rightly places great emphasis on this crucial episode — both for subsequent Soviet changes in military training, technique and equipment, and as the beginning of a longstanding Finnish-Soviet rivalry in biathlon and skiing. It is tempting to see biathlon as a near-ideal Soviet sport, favoured primarily for ideological reasons — Soviet sports ideology focused on military preparedness and mass practice, and the patriotic myth of the pogranichnik (the armed guard at the country’s frontiers) was ubiquitous during the Stalin years. Indeed...

Defense of Western Civilization or "Polish Imperialism?"

Abstract The Kiev Offensive was a joint Polish-Ukrainian attack against Soviet forces in Ukraine in late April/early May 1920. Poland’s commander in chief, Józef Piłsudski, strove to preempt a Red Army offensive against the newly independent Polish Republic by forcing a battle in Ukraine. He also wished to deny this strategic country, the "breadbasket of Europe," to the Bolsheviks by creating a Ukrainian state allied with Poland. Piłsudski’s plan seemed to materialize as the Poles and Ukrainians swept the Soviet forces before them and liberated Kiev. The Reds soon counterattacked and drove the Poles all the way to Warsaw, where the Soviets suffered a crushing defeat. Communist expansion was temporarily halted and the independence of Poland and the Baltic states secured, at least for two decades, but Ukraine remained under Soviet rule. The communists immediately portrayed the Polish-Ukrainian push for Kiev as imperialist aggression by Polish landlords, allegedly intent on regaining their estates. Some Western historians have also depicted the Kiev Offensive as an opening shot in the Polish-Bolshevik War, in spite of the fact that the Poles and the Soviets had been wrestling for the control of the lands between the Bug and the Berezyna Rivers for over a year. Why did the distorted Soviet propaganda version weave its way even into Western history books?

Afghanistan: Withdrawal Lessons

Afghanistan: Withdrawal Lessons

The workers' state: industrial labor and the making of socialist Hungary, 1944-1958

In 1956, Hungarian workers joined students on the streets to protest years of wage and benefit cuts enacted by the Communist regime. Although quickly suppressed by Soviet forces, the uprising led to changes in party leadership and conciliatory measures that would influence labor politics for the next thirty years. In The Workers State, Mark Pittaway presents a groundbreaking study of the complexities of the Hungarian working class, its relationship to the Communist Party, and its major political role during the foundational period of socialism (1944 1958). Through case studies of three industrial centers Ujpest, Tatabanya, and Zala County Pittaway analyzes the dynamics of gender, class, generation, skill level, and rural versus urban location, to reveal the embedded hierarchies within Hungarian labor. He further demonstrates how industries themselves, from oil and mining to armaments and textiles, possessed their own unique labor subcultures. From the outset, the socialist state won favor with many workers, as they had grown weary of the disparity and oppression of class systems under fascism. By the early 1950s, however, a gap between the aspirations of labor and the goals of the state began to widen. In the Stalinist drive toward industrialization, stepped up production measures, shortages of goods and housing, wage and benefit cuts, and suppression became widespread. Many histories of this period have focused on Communist terror tactics and the brutal suppression of a pliant population. In contrast, Pittaway s social chronicle sheds new light on working-class structures and the determination of labor to pursue its own interests and affect change in the face of oppression. It also offers new understandings of the role of labor and the importance of local histories in Eastern Europe under communism.