Questions for discussion:

What impact did war and occupation have on Soviet society? How did the war alter the nature of the ideal Soviet self?

Set reading (to be prepared for class discussion):

I. V. Stalin, ‘Radio Address to the Soviet People, 3rd July 1941’ Available online: http://soviethistory.msu.edu/1943-2/the-cult-of-leadership/the-cult-of-leadership-texts/stalin-brothers-and-sisters/.

David Brandenberger, National Bolshevism: Stalinist Mass Culture and the Formation of Modern Russian National Identity, 1931-1956 (Cambridge, Mass., 2002), Chapter 10, ‘Popular Engagement with the Official Line during the War’. Scan available here.

Rosalinde Sartorti, ‘On the Making of Heroes, Heroines and Saints’, in Culture and Entertainment in Wartime Russia, ed. Richard Stites (Bloomington, Ind., 1995), pp. 176-193. Scan available here.

Selected further reading:

Jeffrey Brooks, Thank You, Comrade Stalin!: Soviet Public Culture from Revolution to Cold War (Princeton, N.J.: University of California Press, 2000), especially Chapter 7, ‘Many Wars, One Victory’. E-book.

Lisa Kirschenbaum, ‘“Our City, Our Hearths, Our Families”: Local Loyalties and Private Life in Soviet World War II Propaganda’, Slavic Review, Volume 59, Number 4 (Winter 2000), pp. 825-847.

Anna Krylova, Soviet Women in Combat: A History of Violence on the Eastern Front (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010).

Catherine Merridale, Ivan’s War: Life and Death in the Red Army, 1939-1945 (London: Henry Holt and Company, 2006).

Alexis Peri, The War Within: Diaries from the Siege of Leningrad (Harvard University Press, 2017).

Robert W. Thurston, and Bernd Bonwetsch, The People’s War: Responses to World War II in the Soviet Union (University of Illinois Press, 2000)