The Practice and Legacies of Stalinist Repression

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

This panel draws upon the latest historical research to shed new light on the ways in which Stalinist violence shaped individual experiences and impressions of Soviet power. State repression in the Soviet Union assumed myriad forms, from the forced collectivization of the agricultural sector and mass operations against “antisocial elements” to the various show trials of oppositionists and military tribunals convened to issue summary death sentences against the Party faithful. All of these played a profound role in determining how those directly affected understood their place within the larger Bolshevik project. By delving into three distinct yet interrelated cases – the persecution and eventual exoneration of Martemyan Riutin, restitution of property and privileges to the families of rehabilitated elites, and perceptions of the Gulag following Stalin’s death – the papers presented offer novel perspectives on the strategies that various actors within Soviet society employed as they grappled with the party-state’s history of self-inflicted mass violence.

Sub Unit

• History: Russian and Eurasian, since 1924

Chair

• Steven A. Barnes, George Mason U

Papers

• Defining Dissent: The Imprisonment, Retrial, and Rehabilitation of Martemyan Riutin - Cynthia Vickery Hooper, College of the Holy Cross

• The Commissars’ Upright Piano: Property Restitution and Privilege at the Post-Stalin House on the Embankment - Samuel Casper, U of Pennsylvania

• The Gulag post-GULAG - Golfo Alexopoulos, U of South Florida

Discussant

• Cathy Anne Frierson, U of New Hampshire