Combatting Anti-Soviet Resistance in Late Stalinist USSR: Moscow’s Novel Strategies to Address Postwar Threats

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

In the wake of the cataclysm of the Second World War, the Soviets struggled to regain authority over the Soviet Republics. The populations of the western and southern republics who had already experienced the reality of Soviet rule prior to the outbreak of the war, were even more desperate to thwart Soviet domination at all costs at the conclusion of the war. Using new archival sources and approaches, this panel applies an historical lens to explore both the Soviets’ strategies to reassert control over the hostile populations of the Soviet Republics, and also the techniques locals employed to counter the Soviet regime. Igor Casu breaks new ground, examining the extent to which food riots and other forms of rebellion were possible during the postwar Soviet famine in Moldavia and other republics. Violeta Davoliute assesses the strategies Moscow used to win the battle for hearts and minds in the recently annexed Western borderlands after 1945, and particularly how the Soviets used cinema to create a coherent narrative aimed at integrating new territories into the Soviet Union. Alexandra Sukalo makes use of archival sources from nine countries to evaluate how the Soviets trained political police officers in the Soviet republics to quell anti-Soviet activity after the Second World War.

Sub Unit

• History: Russian and Eurasian, since 1924

Chair

• Nicholas Ganson, Hellenic College

Papers

• Do Starving People Rebel?: Food Riots in Soviet Moldavia (Spring 1946) and the Resistance Issue - Igor Casu, Sytate U of Moldova (Moldova)

• 'The Making of a Chekist': Political Police Office Training to Put Down Rebellion in Soviet Republics, 1940-1953 - Alexandra Sukalo, Stanford University

• Resistance and Sovietization of the Western Borderlands in the Mirror of the Cinema of Late Stalinism - Violeta Davoliute, Vilnius U (Lithuania)

Discussant

• David Randall Shearer, U of Delaware

Session Manager

• Alicia Baca, Ohio State U