Russia Archives - Page 3 of 3

The Tatars of Crimea: Ethnic Cleansing and Why History Matters

During the last two weeks, while researching my dissertation on Crimean Tatars in the National Archives of the Russian Federation, some of the people in my documents, such as Tatar leader Mustafa Dzmeliev, started appearing in news stories. Many historical accounts of events in the Crimea simply mention that Nikita Khrushchev “gifted” the Crimea to Ukraine in 1954. This does little to explain Crimea’s current demographic makeup or what happened to put the strategic peninsula in the position to be “given” by Moscow to Ukraine in 1954.

In fact, the transfer was the last in a series of actions concerning the peninsula carried out over several centuries by the Russian Empire and then the Soviet Union. While Crimea has a long independent history going back to Greek times, it was ruled by Crimean Tatars as members of the Golden Horde beginning in the 13th century and then the Crimean Khanate beginning in the early 15th century. The Khanate maintained a diverse merchant population, but this trade included raiding Russian villages and declaring sovereignty to the Ottoman Sultan. In 1774, Catherine the Great invaded Crimea to deter Ottoman control and, in 1783, annexed the peninsula and encouraged Russian and Ukrainian settlers to migrate to the Crimean coast. At the same time, tens of thousands of Crimean Tatars were deported to the Ottoman Empire.

Crimean Tatars by Jean Raoult, 1860s-80s.
Source: New York Public Library

In the mid-nineteenth century, the Crimean War (1853-56) brought another round of ethnic cleansing of Crimean Tatars, and many fled to Tatar communities in Turkey. Despite repressions, throughout Russian imperial history, most Crimean Tatars remained in Crimea. One consequence of state coercion against Tatars was that a Crimean Tatar, Ismail Bey Gasprinskii, began the Jadid Muslim reform movement that sought more modern schooling and the use of local languages written in Arabic script. Jadids such as Gasprinskii did not reject everything Russian but concluded that only a modernized and educated Tatar population in Crimea could protect itself from total Russification. Russian central government allowed Crimean Tatars to staff local positions in the imperial Islamic bureaucracy giving them control over education, religious instruction, and some policing and legal functions.

When the Tsarist regime collapsed in 1917, many Jadids helped form a short-lived revolutionary government, but the anti-Bolshevik White General Wrangel and his army ended Tatar’s attempts at governance by occupying Crimea. Some Jadids joined the Bolsheviks to defeat the Whites, as some Muslims did in the Lower Volga and Central Asia. The new Soviet government compromised with these Crimean Tatars and declared the formation of the Crimean ASSR, where both Russian and Tatar were official languages and local national Soviets oversaw the needs of Russians, Tatars, Ukrainians, and smaller minorities. Radical Jadids now became the direct beneficiaries of a Soviet nationalities policy that promoted indigenous ethnic nationalities, and they formed the political core of the Crimean ASSR during its “golden years” from 1923 to 1928. Even after the Stalinist terror in the 1930s, Crimean Tatars controlled much of the Republic’s government.

*Percentage of Crimean Tatar population by region*

After the Nazi occupation and Soviet liberation of Crimea in 1944, however, Stalin deported the Crimean Tatars to Central Asia for allegedly collaborating with the Nazis. Although it is true that some Crimean Tatars did collaborate, recent scholarship has shown that Tatar treason was no more prevalent than that of any other nationality, including Ukrainians and Russians. Most of the male deportees had fought against the Nazis. More likely, Stalin’s motive in deporting the Crimean Tatars mirrored the fears of his Tsarist predecessors during the Crimean War: the Crimean Tatars were a “fifth column” due to the large diaspora in Turkey, and Sevastopol’s Black Sea Fleet was too important to Soviet strategy to risk.

*Memorial to Mass Deportation of 1944 in Sudak*.
*Source: Wikimedia*

This mass deportation of Crimean Tatars, and not Khrushchev’s gift of the Crimea to the Ukrainian SSR in 1954, was the most important action taken by Moscow in determining the current demographic and geopolitical situation in Crimea. KGB officials quickly deported the entire population of Crimean Tatars (over 200,000 people) to Central Asia in May 1944. During the process, over 40% of Crimean Tatars perished as a result of horrible transit conditions and starvation once they arrived in Central Asia. On June 30, 1945, another order from Moscow liquidated the Crimean ASSR, and the territory became the Crimean Oblast, which is officially now part of the Russian RSFSR. At the same time, KGB and non-Tatar Crimean authorities removed all signs of Tatar life, while state media painted the Tatars as traitors. So when Khrushchev “gave” the Crimea to the Ukrainian SSR, just a year after Stalin died, on February 19, 1954, historical documents show that the demographic situation and the autonomy of local populations had already been greatly altered.

More orders concerning the Crimea following Stalin’s death are equally relevant. Crimean Tatars were one of dozens of Soviet nationalities deported during World War II, but many of the other deported nationalities such as Chechens and Ingushetians saw their autonomous republics reestablished by order of the Kremlin on January 9, 1957. The only large nationalities prohibited from rehabilitation were Crimean Tatars and Volga Germans. An order by Kliment Voroshilov on April 28, 1956 did absolve Crimean Tatars of being traitors and did allow Tatars to move outside of Central Asia, but did not allow them to return to the Crimea or reclaim confiscated property. While the refusal of the Soviet state to reestablish the Crimean ASSR may seem like a technicality, it is very important today. In other autonomous or Soviet Socialist Republics where indigenous ethnic groups remained in control of some governance, national groups have either gained independence from Russia or, as is the case with Volga Tatars, have their own autonomous republic.

Crimea + Ukraine (AP Photo/Darko Vojinovic)

Although Soviet authorities officially allowed Crimean Tatars to return to the Crimea — on September 5, 1967, an order by Mikhail Georgadze gave Crimea Tatars the right to live “anywhere” in the USSR — Moscow refused to organize a return effort with logistical support, was lackadaisical in disputing earlier Stalinist propaganda, placed the legal residency status of Tatars in the hands of Crimean officials, and made discriminatory residency laws. In fact, using the Soviet internal passport system that determined all Soviet citizens’ legal residency status, local police, and KGB in Crimea denied individual Tatar’s residency registration. Through the registration system, Moscow banned former criminals from residing in big cities and resort areas such as Sevastopol, Feodosia, and Yalta. Despite all the obstacles, some Tatars did register throughout especially the 1970s and 1980s, while many thousands more squatted in rural and urban areas and fought prolonged battles for residential registration and reclaiming confiscated land. In response to the difficulties in returning, during the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, Crimean Tatars developed a human rights movement that established connections with other Soviet dissidents and the international human rights movement.

As the Soviet Union collapsed, what had been an intermittent flow of thousands of Tatars returning to the Crimea became a flood of tens of thousands from 1989 to 1991. However, the internal passport and registration laws remained a factor, and Tatars had a hard time establishing themselves in larger cities, although the establishment of a Tatar representative body known as the Mejlis has provided Tatars a voice in Kyiv and on the Crimean peninsula.

But the Russian presence and the attempt to eradicate the Tatar population has had crucial impact. The Black Sea Fleet, whose base in Crimea is guaranteed until 2042, remains the symbol of Russian naval power. The tourist industry and resort culture of the Crimea has remained vital to Russian culture. Many Russians have Crimean summer homes and Russian sailors often retire in the pleasant Black Sea climate.

When the subject of the “gift” of the Crimea to Ukraine comes up, this conversation must include a basic understanding of Crimean Tatar history and the history of the relative autonomy of Russians and Ukrainians in the Crimea from Moscow. Tatars have little reason to trust Moscow after centuries of being on the receiving end of the worst of Russian Imperial and Soviet policies. At the same time, local Crimean officials who are ethnic Russians and Ukrainians have maintained their post-1944 control over the peninsula partly with Moscow’s blessing, and partly with a form of control that gives local officials a large degree of autonomy. This is helpful in understanding why the pro-Russian rhetoric right now has been in favor of a new Autonomous Crimean Republic. The big question is how will any new republic compromise with Tatars and how much autonomy it will have from Kyiv or Moscow.

Andrew Straw is a historian of Soviet Crimea. He has taught courses on Russian and Soviet history at the University of Texas and Huston-Tillotson University. At the moment, he teaches high school world history and is an instructor for the University of Texas OnRamps history program. He continues research as an independent scholar and is preparing a book proposal that will focus on Stalin’s Crimea policy and Crimean Tatars in the immediate postwar period. He can be reached at astraw@utexas.edu or on Twitter at @astrawism1.

Banner Image: Crimean Tatar family, 1925. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

The 1980 Moscow Olympics and my Family

by Andrew Straw

My mother, Rae Straw, and her friend Pam had an odd assignment in 1979 for two travel agents from Houston: selling the Soviet Union to American tourists. For travel agents, such familiarization or “FAM” trips were a regular occurrence, but going to the Soviet Union during the preparations for the 1980 Moscow Olympics was a unique experience. While Red Square, the red stars on Stalinist buildings, the Moscow Metro, and the Hermitage dazzled my mother, her biggest impression was the shear excitement of Soviet citizens at hosting the world. In fact, despite Cold War tensions, since Khrushchev’s “Thaw” Soviets had enjoyed hosting foreigners at a number of international festivals. American citizens and culture were literally transported to Moscow during the World Youth Festival in 1957, and the 1959 “American Exhibition” in Moscow attracted several million Soviet citizens who came to gaze at American consumerism.

Similar to the ongoing Sochi Winter Olympics, impressive preparations for the 1980 Moscow games were surrounded by domestic repressions, corruption, and strained international relations with the West. Despite these similarities, there are obvious differences, particularly the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the subsequent American-led boycott of the Olympics. However, most reporting (aside from The Daily Show’s Jason Jones) has missed another big difference between the atmosphere surrounding both events: the fact that American consumer goods no longer have the potential to transform the way Russians view their state in comparison to the rest of the world.

The irony of the 1980 boycott was that it nixed an influx of American products, people, and ideas into Moscow just at the time a younger and more liberal generation of Soviet politicians and “Baby Boomers” were rising through the ranks of the Soviet system and the growing middle class desired an increase in opportunities, freedoms, leisure activities, and consumer goods. Even if most did not actively challenge the Soviet system, many wanted to experience Western culture and comforts. In this Cold War context, promoting American consumerism, music, high wages and a “life without queues” was the most attractive part of U.S. modernity. While there is no consensus on how crucial “soft power” was in deciding the outcome of the Cold War, many Americans understood the Soviet affinity for U.S. consumerism and pop-culture. Both U.S. government and businesses sponsored the post-Stalin “American invasion” that included Jazz radio programming, political propaganda, tours of musicians, student exchanges, and exhibits of American goods.

Even though travelers such as my mother had little intention of converting communists to capitalists, they loaded suitcases with cigarettes, chewing gum, pens, and blue jeans. Once in Moscow, my mother and her companions sold and bartered their Western-made goods a few blocks from the Rossiya Hotel in central Moscow. But after my mother returned to the U.S., the boycott was announced and her work of selling the Olympic host to Americans and the chance for going back to the USSR ended.

Meanwhile, my future father-in-law, Nail Aminevich Izmaylov, was a driver with the Academy of Sciences Institute in Moscow, and through connections he got a job as a stand-by driver for foreign tourists at the Olympics. While the American-led boycott was a huge disappointment for sports fans, he described the most depressing part as knowing that “business opportunities” for buying Western goods and then profiting on the black market would be limited. Still, the games went on, and drivers prepared by keeping a “driver’s komplekt” of terrible Soviet cigarettes, damp matches, and a broken pen. The idea was, once the chauffeured visitors tried one of these Soviet items, they would immediately offer their own or treat the driver to a shopping spree of Western goods in one of the stores where only foreigners were allowed to shop.

This dynamic of the event as an influx of superior consumer goods is absent in Sochi. Instead, Bosco, the Russian designer brand with ties to the Kremlin, designed the high-quality team uniforms, which are available in shopping centers throughout the country. In general, U.S. fashion and music have largely lost the subversive appeal as Putin’s “Sushi Years” have led to a continued consumerist bonanza that the majority of Russians have enjoyed to varying degrees. In short, Putin has replaced the one-party communist state with a one-party consumerist state.

As my mother and father-in-law watched the Sochi opening ceremony, they reflected on the boycott and 1980 Moscow Olympics with both nostalgia and disappointment. On the one hand, it was a period when adventurous visitors provided a profitable opportunity to savvy Soviets by transporting everyday Western goods into the Soviet Union. On the other hand, the boycott and disappointment of not being able to show Americans around Moscow remains for both my mother and father-in-law. While not shying away from acknowledging the current issues from Ukrainian protests to corruption to anti-LGBT laws, both were pleased that athletes and fans from across the world were participating in the games.

More reading on the Cold War and the Soviet Union:

Donald J. Raleigh, Soviet Baby Boomers: An Oral History of Russia’s Cold War Generation

Walter Hixon, Parting the Curtain: Propaganda, Culture, and the Cold War 1945-1961

Stephen Kotkin, Armageddon Averted: The Soviet Collapse, 1970-2000

Photo Credits:

Rae Straw standing alongside the Moscow River

A queue of Russians in St. Petersburg

A limo parked in Moscow’s Red Square

Rae Straw (far right) pictured with her tour group in Moscow

All images courtesy of Andrew Straw

Great Books on Siberian Voices

Four great books and three great documentaries about the history and people of Siberia.

Benson Bobrick, East of the Sun: The Epic Conquest and Tragic History of Siberia (1992)

Bobrick’s East of the Sun is one of the most well-written and compelling narrative histories of Siberia in the broader context of Russian history. In an exceedingly accessible style, the book recounts the complex two-century process of conquest of the region by the Cossack warrior-traders, who first established Russian outposts in the 16^th century. This is followed by centuries of Russian economic and cultural integration of this vast region, before and especially after the completion of the Trans-Siberian Railway. A story as tragic as it is fascinating, Siberian history is ever shaped by its richness of resources and remarkable beauty, as well as its infamous link to exile and imprisonment.

Steven Marks, Road to Power: The Trans-Siberian Railroad and the Colonization of Asian Russia, 1850-1917 (1991)

Road to Power is a fascinating political and intellectual history of the construction of Russia’s Trans-Siberian railroad at the turn of the 20^th century. The book offers insights into Russian economic development in Siberia, as well as a greater understanding of the extension and contestation of Russian Imperial authority on n its most important peripheries.

Anna Reid, The Shaman’s Coat: A Native History of Siberia (2003)

Shaman’s Coat is a beautifully written account of the history of Siberia with an explicit focus on the indigenous peoples of the region, the Tuvans, Buriats, Evenkis, etc. Using her own journey through the region as a narrative thread, Reid devotes each chapter to a different Siberian ethnic group, including one on Russians, offering insights into the historical development of the region through the lens of Russian-native interaction. Finally she offers interesting impressions of the contemporary state of Siberian shamanism and native culture more broadly.

Ralph Leighton, Tuva or Bust!: Richard Feynman’s Last Journey (1991)

Tuva or Bust is a book about the extraordinary efforts of by Ralph Leighton and his teacher and friend, the prominent physicist Richard Feynman, to travel to the remote region of Tuva, then within the Soviet Union. Feynman died of cancer just before receiving his visa in 1988. The book aptly describes the culture, language and history of Tuva, including the unique phenomenon of Tuvan throat singing, in the context of this famed quest. The book is heavily referenced in the documentary film, Ghengis Blues.

Ghengis Blues (1999)

This documentary film directed by Roko Belicfocuses on the journey of American blues musician Paul Pena to the isolated Russian republic of Tuva. Pena, who was blind, became interested in Tuvan throat-singing after hearing it on shortwave radio. He taught himself to throat-sing (no easy task) over the next few years and eventually met Kongar-ool Ondar, a famous throat singer at a concert in the US. The film follows Pena’s journey to Tuva, where he sang in the triennial throat-singing festival.

Join Me in Shambhala (2002)

In Pursuit of the Siberian Shaman (2006)

Both of these documentary films, written and directed by visual anthropologist, Anya Bernstein, are focused on Buddhism and shamanism among the Buryat peoples of Southern Siberia. Join Me explores the revival of Buddhism (interwoven with local shamanism) among the Buryat peoples of the Russian Federation, as a new generation seeks training and inspiration from Tibetan masters. In Pursuit focuses on the activities of one shaman on Olkhon Island, in the middle of the famous Siberian Lake Baikal. It explores the role of the shaman among locals and tourists, interrogating the notion of the Siberian shaman as real or touristic sham.

New Books in Women’s History

We are celebrating Women’s History Month this year with recommendations of new books in Women’s History from some of our faculty and graduate students. From third-century North Africa to sixteenth-century Mexico to the twentieth-century in Russia and the US, and more…

Judy Coffin:

Deborah Cohen, Family Secrets: Living with Shame from the Victorians to the Present Day, (2013).
A history of shame and changing social norms, of privacy and how a “right” to privacy was established, and of changes in what families will and will not confess — to themselves and to others. It’s bold, refreshing, and readable. (In fact it comes with Hilary Mantel’s endorsement.) Published in Great Britain in January, the book due out here at the beginning of April. You can read the introduction on the Amazon website, and pre-order. This is a book that everyone interested in gender, sexuality, and families will want to read.

Linda Greenhouse & Reva Seigel, Before Roe v. Wade: Voices that Shaped the Abortion Debate Before the Supreme Court’s Ruling, (2010).
Here’s another readable and important book. It reconstructs the everyday politics of contraception and abortion before Roe v. Wade, making it clear that the now landmark decision was one case among many, the justices’ reasoning was rather narrowly cast. This is not an all-roads-led-to-Roe story; it is much more interesting, unpredictable, and historical than that. Siegel is a professor at Yale Law School and Greenhouse covers the Supreme Court for the New York Times.

Lizeth Elizondo:

Catherine Ramirez, The Woman in the Zoot Suit: Gender, Nationalism, and the Cultural Politics of Memory, (2009).
Catherine Ramirez illuminates the ways in which Mexican-American women rebelled and chose to express their individuality by joining the popular zoot suit movement of the 1940s. By focusing on the women behind the suit, Ramirez offers a revisionist interpretation of the involvement of women in the infamous Los Angeles Zoot Suit riots and the Sleepy Lagoon case of 1943.

Alison Frazier:

Thomas J. Heffernan, The Passion of Perpetua and Felicity, (2012).
In one volume, Heffernan presents the essential text and tools for readers to begin thinking through the unique and precious “prison diary” of Vibia Perpetua, the visionary young mother who led a mixed-gender group of Christians to martyrdom in early third-century North Africa.

Laurie Green:

Barbara Ransby, Eslanda: The Large and Unconventional Life of Mrs. Paul Robeson, (2012).
In contrast to the enormous attention paid to the acclaimed African American singer, actor, radical and civil rights activist Paul Robeson, his extraordinary wife, Eslanda “Essie” Robeson has remained in the historical shadows. For the first time, in Ransby’s biography, we can grasp her amazing lifework, including her intellectual career as an anthropologist and journalist, and her passionate involvement in women’s rights, racial justice and anti-colonialist movements on an international scale.

Janine Jones:

Fatima Mernissi, Dreams Of Trespass: Tales Of a Harem Girlhood, (1995).
Scholar and activist Fatima Mernissi’s captivating memoir of her childhood in a Moroccan harem during the end of the French Protectorate is not to be missed.

Halidé Edib, House with Wisteria: Memoirs of Turkey Old and New, 2nd ed., (2009).
Turkish journalist, novelist, and early feminist activist Halide Edib’s lyrical memoir of growing to adulthood during the chaotic collapse of the Ottoman Empire is filled with stories of tragedy, love, and strength.

Anne Martinez:

Felicity Amaya Schaeffer, Love and Empire: Cybermarriage and Citizenship Across the Americas, (2012).
Schaeffer puts desire in the context of the global economy, class, and cultural citizenship in this book about transnational cyber-relationships since the 1990s.

Joan Neuberger:

Marina Goldovskaya, Woman with a Movie Camera: My Life as a Russian Filmmaker, (2006).
“I started school in 1948. In my class of more than forty children, I was the only one who had a father.” This memoir traces Marina Goldovskaya’s career in Soviet television and her emergence as Russia’s best known documentary film maker. Along the way, we get an inside look at the everyday politics of survival and success in two of late-twentieth-century Russia’s most interesting industries.

Megan Seaholm:

Michelle M. Nickerson, Mothers of Conservatism: Women and the Postwar Right, (2012).
The significant role that women played in the rise of conservatism from the 1950s through the 1964 presidential campaign. This careful study of conservative women in southern California explains how “populist housewives” became impassioned activists who influenced the conservative agenda for decades.

Stephanie Coontz, A Strange Stirring: The Feminine Mystique and American Women at the Dawn of the 1960s, (2011).
Fifty years after Betty Friedan published The Feminine Mystique, often credited with igniting the feminism of the 1960s and 1970s, Professor Coontz examines this book and the impact it had on readers.

Susan J. Douglas, The Rise of Enlightened Sexism: How Pop Culture Took Us From Girl Power to Girls Gone Wild, (2010).
Cultural historian Susan Douglas has written a perceptive and often humorous book about the way that icons of popular culture encouraged a generation of women (the “millennials”) to believe that feminism had accomplished its goals.

Ann Twinam and Susan Deans-Smith both recommend:

Camilla Townsend, Malintzin’s Choices, An Indian Woman in the Conquest of Mexico, (2006).
The wonderfully readable and compelling book tells the story of Malintzin, the young Nahua woman who became Hernando Cortés’ translator and mistress during the conquest of Mexico. Townsend takes on the difficult task of giving voice to someone who, while typically vilified as a traitor and sexual siren, left no words of her own. The resulting portrait allows us to see Malintzin’s understanding of her situation and the difficult choices she made in a rapidly changing political landscape.

Napoleon in Russia, 1812

by Joan Neuberger

On October 19, 1812, 200 years ago today, Napoleon Bonaparte was forced to admit that he had failed to defeat Russia and would have to abandon Moscow. The retreat that followed became the symbol of the suffering and folly of warfare for the rest of the century. It was immortalized by Tolstoy in War and Peace as a result of the vanity of tyrants. The invasion and retreat were responsible for one of the most famous visual documents in modern history, Charles Joseph Minard’s chart showing the depletion of the Grande Armee. Beginning with approximately half a million troops in June 1812, more than 4 out of every 5 soldiers had died by the time the French army recrossed the Neman River in December and left Russia behind.

Russia defeated Napoleon with superior strategy and logistics. As early as 1810, Minister of Defense Barclay de Tolly and Emperor Alexander I decided that they would engage in strategic retreat, destroying local crops to prevent Napoleon from obtaining food for his soldiers and fodder for their horses, and engaging only in small skirmishes. Napoleon’s success in western and central Europe was based in his ability to crush the enemy’s army quickly and decisively. The Russian policy of retreat deep into the Russian territory and refusal to engage in battle was deeply unpopular but it won the war. Alexander wavered only twice in his determination to avoid major engagement. First at Smolensk, where the French victory was not decisive enough to gain the upper hand, and then a mere 75 miles outside Moscow at Borodino. The one-day battle at Borodino on September 7, 1812 is one of the bloodiest days in the history of warfare. Estimates vary, of course, but approximately 75-80,000 men died on that day. By comparison, the bloodiest day in the US Civil War, the battle at Antietam, fifty years later on September 17, 1862 resulted in 6,500 deaths. The Russian Commander in Chief, Mikhail Kutuzov, recognized that to continue fighting would not save Moscow, so he again ordered the Russian army to retreat. A week later Napoleon triumphantly entered the ancient capital of the Russian Empire.

That triumph quickly turned to disaster. Alexander had ordered the population to evacuate so Moscow was empty. Then mysterious fires broke out in the mostly wooden city, destroying three-quarters of its buildings. There was no food and people in the surrounding villages refused to give up what they had to the foraging enemy soldiers. The final blow came when Alexander refused to negotiate with Napoleon as long as he and his army were on Russian soil. The message Alexander sent to his soldiers was:

“I will make use of every last resource of my empire; it possesses even more than my enemies yet think. But even if Divine Providence decrees that my dynasty should cease to reign on the throne of my ancestors, then after having exhausted all the means in my power I will grow my beard down to here (pointing to his chest) and will go off and eat potatoes with the very last of my peasants rather than sign a peace which would shame my fatherland and that dear nation whose sacrifices for me I know how to appreciate…Napoleon or me, I or him, we cannot both rule at the same time: I have learned to understand him and he will not deceive me.”

It was not easy for Napoleon to acknowledge that he had been outwitted by the ruler and people of the country he referred to as “the Colossus of Northern Barbarism.”

But after 35 days in Moscow, he took his leave.

Napoleon’s Retreat from Moscow, by Adolph Northern

The retreat was disorderly and deadly. More people died from disease and starvation than battle. But partisans and Cossacks harassed the retreating French army all along their devastated path. Romantic novelists and mythmakers like to blame the harsh Russian winter for the demise of the Grande Armee, but by the time temperatures dropped and it started snowing in early November, most of the damage was already done. The bitter cold of December 1812 caused great suffering but December marked only the final weeks of the six month war.

Although it took more than a year for Alexander I and his allies in central Europe to chase Napoleon back to Paris, the Russian resistance was the turning point of the Napoleonic wars. The defeat showed that Napoleon was not invincible and the retreat came to symbolize those wars’ terrible costs.

Want to read some more about Napoleon in Russia? try these:

Dominic Lieven, Russia Against Napoleon (2011)

Stephen Norris, A War of Images: Russian Popular Prints, Wartime Culture, and National Identity, 1812-1945 (2006)

Janet Hartley, Alexander I (1994)

Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

Pussy Riot

by Joan Neuberger

Pussy Riot, the Russian punk band whose members have been sent to prison for performing a protest song in Moscow’s central cathedral, has been wildly successful at focusing international attention on political corruption and repression under President Vladimir Putin. Not only have they inspired global protests on their behalf, but the European Parliament nominated them for its Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought and they won the LennonOno Grant for Peace supported by Yoko Ono and Amnesty International.

Pussy Riot performing in Red Square in January 2012

In Russia, people are far less enthusiastic about the band’s radical performances, but Pussy Riot has won the attention of the highest members of government, with both Putin and Prime Minister Dmitrii Medvedev continuing to comment on their character and their judicial fate, weeks after the trial concluded. Many bloggers, journalists, and pundits both inside Russia and out, have tried to convince us that Pussy Riot’s importance has been exaggerated and their message misunderstood by foreigners just following the latest fad. The band’s clever indie-pop, visual appeal, their wit-leavened crudeness, and their clear political speech targeting Putin directly all understandably disturb people who prefer more moderate and less offensive forms of politics, but the trial of Pussy Riot marked a shift in Russian political discourse that should not be ignored. The extent of their popularity in Russia and abroad are less important than the fact that they got Putin’s attention and, even after the government made it clear how dangerous that would be for them, the women of Pussy Riot refused to back down or be silenced. As of this writing, they still have Putin’s attention, but tomorrow, October 1*, the court will decide whether to grant an appeal to release them or confirm the two year sentence they received on August 17.

Pussy Riot burst onto the scene in January 2012. The previous month, hundreds of thousands of people in Russia took to the streets in repeated mass demonstrations to protest the flagrant, well-documented election fraud of the Parliamentary elections held December 4. Just as the demonstrations were winding down, this group of young women, dressed in boldly colored dresses and tights, and masking their faces with equally bright balaclavas, or ski masks, climbed up onto a structure in Red Square known as the Place of Execution and performed a song that is usually translated into English as “Putin got Scared” but more accurately means “Putin Peed his Pants.” The lyrics called for people to come out on the streets and overthrow the oppressive government. Federal Security officers arrested the eight women who performed in Red Square that day; they were briefly detained, fined and then released. The performance was, of course, videotaped and posted on Youtube that night, with the song dubbed in. The video went viral and their photo was widely reposted on social media outlets across Europe and the U.S.

Some of the women of Pussy Riot had been involved in previous activist, performance-art events (some of which were far more radical, criminal, and offensive), but in August 2011 they decided to form a punk-rock band because they thought they could get their message across more effectively in that more popular form. They have repeatedly said that they have no interest in commercial, “capitalist,” music venues, preferring surprise, guerilla appearances in public places. They performed in metro stations and on top of trolley buses and outside the prison where leaders of the political demonstrations were being held; there they performed a song called “Death to Prison, Freedom to Protest.”

Pussy Riot performing in Borovitskaia Metro Station in central Moscow

In late 2011 in Russia, political discontent was escalating, especially after Vladimir Putin had announced in September that he would run for President again. Having been forced out of office by term limits after eight years (2000-2008), he became Prime Minister when his hand-picked candidate, Dmitrii Medvedev, won the Presidency and spent the next four years doing Putin’s bidding. Putin’s announcement, followed by the election fraud scandal in December, enraged people in cities all over Russia, though Putin allegedly remains a popular figure in provincial towns and villages. New demonstrations were planned for the weeks leading up to the March Presidential elections, but before they could take place, Pussy Riot staged the performance that would divide Russian opinion and become an international sensation.

On February 21, five members of Pussy Riot entered Christ the Savior Cathedral and for about 50 seconds performed a song with the catchy chorus, “Mother of God – drive Putin out,” and “holy shit, holy shit, holy shit,” before being ejected from the building. Within 24 hours they had edited the video, added a recorded version of the song and posted it to Youtube (the original, unedited tape is also available).

At that point, reportedly, Patriarch Kirill saw the video and phoned Putin and the head of the Moscow police to demand that they take legal action. Two of the women were arrested March 3, on the eve of the presidential elections, and the third was arrested soon after. Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Maria Alyokhina, and Yekaterina Samutsevich were charged with “hooliganism, motivated by religious hatred.” Tolokonnikova’s husband, Petr Verzilov was also arrested but was released without being charged. The women were detained without bail; they spent the next 5 months in prison, in pre-trial detention. Paradoxically, the performance that won them the most attention, also cost them the most popular support in Russia, as many people could not condone their invasion of sacred space, no matter what the cause or how corrupt the institution had become.

Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Yekaterina Samutsevich, Maria Alyokhina

In the meantime, Putin was re-elected, despite new demonstrations and accusations of election improprieties. Another round of demonstrations occurred on May 6, the eve of Putin’s inauguration, but by now he had begun to take serious – and illegal – action against his political opponents. The apartments of opposition leaders were ransacked by police. The wife of an opposition leader received a harsh sentence for possession of heroin, which she insisted was planted. On May 6, riot police clashed with demonstrators, arresting over 250 people in Moscow alone. Aleksei Navalny has since been accused of embezzlement. Gennady Gudkov, one of the few members of government who has voiced opposition to Putin, has been expelled from Parliament for breaking financial conflict of interest rules that are routinely broken by a large number of other representatives.

If the rest of the world was paying attention to increasing repression under Putin, or to the pre-trial demonstrations of support for Pussy Riot in Russia, few beside Amnesty International raised their voices. But then, in August, the trial against the three women of Pussy Riot created an international sensation. They won support from Paul McCartney, Madonna, Green Day, the mayor of Reykjavik, Martina Navratilova, Yoko Ono, and other celebrities. In cities all over Europe and the US, men and women donned bright balaclavas and demonstrated support for the three women who seemed to be speaking out as no one in Russia had yet done. Extremely photogenic in their glass cage in the court room or stepping out of heavily guarded police vans, Tolokonnikova, Alyokhina, and Samutsevich appeared calm and resolved. Displaying no sign of fear or demoralization, Tolokonnikova in particular, smiling with raised fist in her “No Pasaran!” t-shirt, struck a cheerful, defiant, and determined pose. Defense lawyers claim that their clients’ rights were trampled during the trial and on August 17 they were each sentenced to two years in a penal colony.

The most remarkable thing about the trial was the way the three Pussy Riot women on trial rose to the occasion. They never wavered in the clarity of their anti-Putin, anti-authoritarian stance and they never backed down in their defense of freedom of speech above all else. And masks off, they revealed themselves to be anything but simple or superficial pop sloganeers. Their statements and interviews from prison were thoughtful and well-informed by political experience, history, and feminist and critical theory. Given the fact that they fully expected to be sentenced to long prison terms, they were stunningly brave. Their closing statements were moving and articulate, and showed their awareness of the history of dissent in Russia, the spiritual basis for some of that dissent, and the history and deformities of “vertical” political power. Tolokonnikova was especially moving: indicting the court for abusing their legal rights to defend themselves, accusing the government of having learned nothing from the Stalinist terror, for persecuting people who asked only for the right to speak, and exposing the court’s utter failure to prove their animosity towards Christianity. Pussy Riot could easily have maintained their popularity with nothing more than a cheerful smile, a raised fist, and a few rousing choruses of “Holy shit! Drive Putin out!” But instead they gave us sincerity, intelligence, commitment, and remarkable courage.

In the weeks since the trial, writers in both Russia and the US have attacked Pussy Riot supporters for distorting and exaggerating the group’s importance. Many have pointed to polls that show Russian support for the sentencing. But in Russia, the government controlled media has broadcast continual criticism of the women, representing their performance as an assault on religion and insult to all believers instead of a critique of church support for Putin’s assault on free speech. Their insistent feminism has put off many people in a society with relatively rigid gender roles, even among those who support Pussy Riot’s politics. And opposition political leaders, themselves under renewed government pressure, have worried that Pussy Riot’s provocative punk style would distract attention from serious political problems. In the west, bloggers and pundits have attacked Pussy Riot supporters for their ignorance of the Russian political context and for simply jumping on this latest bandwagon. Some writers have criticized the international focus on civil rights issues that are foreign to Russians, but no one can read the closing statements written by the Pussy Riot women on trial, without recognizing that freedom of speech is at the heart of their beliefs and actions. Even yesterday in the New York Times, the Moscow correspondent claimed that Putin had successfully used the Russian disdain for Pussy Riot to drive a wedge between the urban opposition and provincial supporters, but the article in fact showed the opposite: that Putin felt compelled to create a new political party representing provincial workers to shore up support that, while statistically strong, showed signs of weakening everywhere.

In the month since the sentence was decided, Putin has also felt the need to repeatedly disparage Pussy Riot. In an interview on September 6, he tried to minimze their importance by shifting attention from their political message to a 2008 sexually explicit stunt. If Pussy Riot were insignificant and their message truly unpopular in Russia, he would not need to bother. Putin’s increasingly repressive policies towards all acts of opposition were in place before Pussy Riot came to trial, but if he hoped to keep the suppression of civil rights out of the spotlight, Pussy Riot made that impossible. There have been other high profile trials, but because the Pussy Riot trial took place during the rise of a political opposition movement specifically targeting Putin, it focused international attention on Putin’s policies like nothing else had before. Now everyone, not just a handful of journalists, diplomats, and political scientists, is watching Putin do something besides go fishing with his shirt off. It remains to be seen how Russians will react to increasing repression when it doesn’t involve religion or radical feminists and when the oil-based properity falters. It is highly unlikely that the majority of Russians will ever fully embrace the principles of liberal individualism, but I will be watching to see if recent events help curb the move to dictatorship.
On, September 6, the same day as the Putin interview, Pussy Riot released a new video, that clearly seemed to be addressed to international viewers. With the same kind of defiant and direct criticism of the Putin government that Pussy Riot had become known for, members of the group still at large made it clear that they were not intimidated by the harsh treatment of the women under arrest.

History rarely gives us events that mark a clear shift in the political landscape. And in this case, many of the issues Pussy Riot brought to our attention were in the works already. But the trial and the Putin government’s response to the trial are no small matter and no purely local event. We can’t predict what will happen next, but the trial certainly brought about a significant shift in the political discourse in Russia and its the international context. Whatever Putin does next, his human and civil rights policies will be forever joined with Pussy Riot’s defiant demands.

Nadezhda Tolokonnikova began her closing statement by saying, “the three members of Pussy Riot are not the ones on trial here. If we were, this event would hardly be so significant. This is a trial of the entire political system of the Russian Federation, which, to its great misfortune, enjoys quoting its own cruelty toward the individual, its indifference toward human honor and dignity, repeating all of the worst moments of Russian history.”

I think she’s right, but this event would also never have achieved its significance if not for Pussy Riot’s originality, its visual and political appeal, and the clear, brave voice with which they insisted on their right to speak.

*This morning, [on October 1- ed] the court postponed its hearing of Pussy Riot’s appeal until Oct 10. One of the defendants, Yekaterina Samutsevich requested a new lawyer, citing conflicts over strategy.

The Second World War by Antony Beevor (2012)

by Dolph Briscoe IV

Acclaimed British historian Antony Beevor’s recently published The Second World War is a masterful account of the worst conflict in human history, when truly the entire world became engulfed in the flames of war. Having written previously on various aspects of the era, Beevor’s work attempts to synthesize his prior research into a detailed narrative of World War II.

Consisting of over 800 pages, The Second World War is primarily a military and diplomatic history of the war. Beevor provides a brief introduction discussing Adolf Hitler’s rise to power and creation of the Nazi totalitarian state in Germany, as well as Japan’s invasion of China, in the 1930s. The book covers the entire course of World War II, beginning with Nazi Germany’s preparations during 1939 for invading Poland and concluding with American use of atomic bombs to force Japan to surrender. Beevor skillfully describes the military strategies employed by both the Allied and the Axis Powers during the war. He focuses on the particular generals from each country, such as Rommel of Nazi Germany, Zhukov and Chuikov of the Soviet Union, Montgomery of Great Britain, and Eisenhower, MacArthur, and Patton of the United States, contemplating how their individual personalities affected their planning and the course of the war. The author gracefully moves his story from one sphere of the war to another, whether it be Western and Eastern Europe, North Africa, China, or the Pacific islands.Hitler attending a Nazi rally (Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

The leaders of the great powers serve as the major actors in The Second World War. Beevor especially gives much attention to Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin, and fittingly so, as the vicious battles between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union were of central importance in World War II. The author vividly depicts how both dictators possessed excessive vanity and extreme paranoia. Such characteristics contributed to creating brutal totalitarianism in Nazi Germany and in the Soviet Union. Hitler and Stalin bitterly hated each other, and their mutual loathing influenced the course of the war, according to Beevor. Hitler became obsessed with conquering Stalingrad, believing that the loss of his namesake city would humiliate the Soviet leader. This proved disastrous for the German armies. After Hitler’s suicide at the war’s end, Stalin ordered his men to find his corpse and bring it to the Soviet Union as a final punishment for the Nazi leader. Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt also receive much attention from the author. Churchill possessed dogged determination to ensure Great Britain’s survival, even in the darkest hours of the war. Roosevelt’s pragmatism and moderation helped keep the Allied Powers focused on winning World War II, especially when Churchill and Stalin clashed on matters of military strategy and postwar Europe. Beevor also examines their often complicated relationship with allies Chiang Kai-shek of China and Charles de Gaulle of France, and illustrates the significance of the Emperor to the Japanese people.

Prime Minister Winston Churchill, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin pose for photographs during the Yalta Conference. (Image courtesy of the Library of Congress)Representatives from the Allied countries meet in Tehran in December 1943. Standing outside the Russian Embassy, left to right: unidentified British officer, General George C. Marshall, Chief of staff of USA, shaking hands with Sir Archibald Clark Keer, British Ambassador to the USSR, Harry Hopkins, Marshal Stalin’s interpreter, Marshal Josef Stalin, Foreign minister Molotov, General Voroshilov. (Image courtesy of the Library of Congress)

Stalingrad ablaze (Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

The author vividly depicts the unprecedented violence and cruelty of World War II. Soldiers fought to sheer exhaustion in harsh climates. Civilians in China, Poland, the Soviet Union, and Germany suffered from widespread rape, looting, and murder at the hands of enemy armies. Hundreds of thousands of people became refugees and prisoners of war. Starvation affected millions around the world. Bombing raids devastated cities and countryside. Atomic bombs destroyed two Japanese cities and radiation caused lasting health problems for many people in Japan. Stalin’s paranoia led to vicious purges of both real and imagined enemies. And most infamously, Hitler and Nazi Germany conducted genocide against Jews in Europe. Beevor fully describes this horror, discussing concentration camps, sickening medical experiments performed on Jews, and how virulent anti-Semitism and propaganda caused most Germans to ignore these crimes against humanity perpetrated around them. Beevor’s accounts of the brutalities of World War II, especially the Holocaust, reminds readers how hatred can lead to sadism and true evil.

A bombed Hiroshima (Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

Aerial view of Nagasaki before the Allied bombing (Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

Aerial view of Nagasaki after the Allied bombing (Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

Antony Beevor’s The Second World War is a most welcome addition to the vast historiography on World War II. With great skill Beevor narrates the military and diplomatic events of this war while also examining the terrible human suffering of these years. Readers interested in World War II, military history, and international relations will benefit from reading this fine book about the most consequential event of the twentieth century.

You may also like:

Antony Beever talks to the BBC about conducting research for The Second World War.

“Looking at World War II”: Part I and Part II: our blog pieces on recently released German and Russian photographs taken during the war.

Our monthly feature on the UT Austin History Department’s Normandy Scholar Program.

Our review of Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II.

Consuming Russia: Popular Culture, Sex and Society Since Gorbachev ed. Adele Marie Barker (1999)

by Jessica Werneke

Published nearly ten years after the fall of the Soviet Union, this anthology explores the peculiarities of a culture that continues to fluctuate. Caught in the middle of this complex maze of post-Soviet change is popular culture, which “finds itself torn between its own heritage and that of the West, between its revulsion with the past and its nostalgic desire to re-create the markers of it, between the lure of the lowbrow and the pressures to return to the elitist prerevolutionary past.” The quest to find, maintain,and alter cultural identity manifests itself in a variety of ways, which accounts for the large scope of this study.

Contributors to Consuming Russia bring together such topics as pornography, rock music, soap operas, graffiti, and jokes. At the heart of this variety of subjects, all the authors attempt to answera common question: in what ways, both new and old, are contemporary Russians shaping their identityamidst so many conflicting cultural legacies?

Barker’s chapter, “Going to the Dogs: Pet Life in the New Russia,” explains the relationship between class status and pet culture, while Theresa Sabonis-Chafee’s article discusses the increasing usage of communist kitsch in commercial advertising and are popular as souvenirs, complicating the memory ofthe Soviet past with Russia’s current consumer culture. Other chapters address the rise of religious cultsin Russia, responses to the growth, production, and circulation of pornography, and how particular jokesreveal incipient desires to become part of the New Russian elite.

The greatest strength of this volume is the various ways it attempts to approach popular culture. Additionally, it provides an accessible account of a period fraught with ambiguities and thus is of interest to anyone looking to expand their knowledge of post-Soviet Russian consumption culture. Barker points out in her introduction that “popular culture is ultimately inseparable from the process of social changeand the re-formations of identity that accompany it.” As this book suggests, this is especially true of contemporary Russian society.

A street vendor selling Soviet-era souvenirs in a public square..

An elderly Moscow woman walking her dog near a church.

A wedding shoot in Moscow’s Red Square.

Photo credits:

Michelle Li, “Soviet souvenirs,” 22 March 2008

Photographer’s own via Flickr Creative Commons

Varvara Lozenko, “#2,” 20 September 2008

Photographer’s own via Flickr Creative Commons

Yana Skorobogatov, Untitled, August 2010

Photographer’s own via Not Even Past

Trotsky: Downfall of a Revolutionary by Bertrand M. Patenaude (2009)

by Andrew Straw

Within the span of thirty years, Lev Davidovich Bronshtein (Trotsky) went from living as a revolutionary in exile to being one of the world’s most successful revolutionary leaders, only to spend the waning years of his life back in exile and on the run from the regime whose creation defined his life’s work. In Trotsky: The Downfall of a Revolutionary, Stanford Lecturer and Hoover Archives Fellow Bertrand M. Patenaude provides the definitive account of the events leading up to Trotsky’s assassination by a Soviet agent in August 1940 at his Mexican residence. Patenaude’s work highlights the paranoia, contradictions, ideological stubbornness, cultural intrigues, and violence that led to Trotsky’s eventual exile from the Soviet Union and his tense journey through European exile to Mexico, where Trotsky’s violent past caught up with him.

Few authors bring their extensive archival research to life in the way Patenaude does as he ushers the reader through the last years of Trotsky’s life as if writing a fictional thriller. While thoroughly examining the chronology of events during Trotsky’s exile, Patenaude takes strategic pauses in order reflect on Trotsky’s revolutionary career and give events both global and regional historical context. The author reminds readers how Trotsky lost the power struggle to Stalin, delves into family and sexual matters, addresses arguments made by earlier biographers and examines Trotsky’s influence among Communists and Socialists in the Americas and Europe.

Patenaude explores the tensions that Trotsky’s arrival in Mexico created for that country’s leftists and shows how much of his support in the later years came from American Trotskyites from New York to Minneapolis. His friendships with world-renowned artists Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera mix into the narrative alongside Trotsky’s rivalries with Soviet political contemporaries Stalin, Bukharin, and Kamenev. His relationship with wife Natalia and the sad story of his family both in and out of the Soviet Union is another constant thread. Some of the most intriguing parts of the book examine the assassins and GPU (Soviet secret police) infiltrators whose work eventually led, after one failed attempted, to Trotsky’s mortal wounds.

Pantenuade uses his story-telling skills to highlight both the contradictions of Trotsky’s ideological arrogance and portray his real human concerns and sensitivities. Trotsky was an ideologue so stubborn that he could barely agree with many Trotskyites, but he was also talented at seducing women and had a profound love for cactuses. The way in which Trotsky and those around him became increasingly paranoid leads up to the shock and horror of the assassination as it unfolded. One can easily picture oneself standing in the guard’s place and contemplating what steps might have been taken to prevent the inevitable.

Still, the humanization of Trotsky does not necessarily force the reader to sympathize with “the Old Man.” In fact, readers may even be agitated by how such an intelligent and human character could be so stubborn and un-recanting. After all, how could a man who pointed out the dangers in Lenin’s program of centralized terror before 1917 never once question the original Bolshevik revolution, even as the same ideas he once feared were actively hunting him down? Patenaude’s work gives the reader an enhanced understanding of Trotsky’s life and the relevant characters and events leading up to that paradoxical, and bloody fate.

More on Lev Trotsky:

Rare, high quality photographs of Trotsky in Mexico from the Hoover Archives
Bertrand Patenaude discussing his work on Trotsky’s life in Mexico (video)
Trotsky denouncing Stalin (in English) from Mexico (video)

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