Soviet War Crime and Collaboration Trials during and after World War II

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

This panel offers new comparative insights into collaboration trials during and after World War II. It brings together young scholars working on trials organized in Ukraine, Lithuania, Moldova, and Crimea. The panel focuses on the Soviet legal system, its organization and transformation from the late 1940s until the 1960s. It establishes a comparative perspective on defendants, revealing peculiarities and similarities of trials organized across regions. Finally, the panel discusses the potential of the postwar trials as a source for studying the history of the Holocaust, everyday life and collaboration in the occupied Soviet territories, and the transformation of the Soviet legal system.

Sub Unit

• History: Russian and Eurasian, since 1924

Chair

• Seth Bernstein, U of Florida

Papers

• Trials against Collaborators in Crimea during and after World War II: Comparative Perspective - Irina Makhalova, NRU Higher School of Economics (Russia)

• From Gray Zones to Red Courts - Wolfgang Schneider, Heidelberg U (Germany)

• Holocaust and War Crimes Trials in Soviet Lithuania: The 1964 Klaipėda Trial in the Context of the 'Second Wave' of Soviet Justice - Gintare Malinauskaite, Branch Office Vilnius, German Historical Institute Warsaw (Lithuania)

Discussant

• Franziska Exeler, Free U Berlin (Germany) / U of Cambridge (UK)

Session Manager

• Ellen Bleier, U of Notre Dame