Kohle für Stalin und Hitler: Arbeiten und Leben im Donbass 1929 bis 1953
Europe-Asia Studies, 2012
genocide’ (p. 102). Paradoxically, Mark argues that membership of transatlantic organisations, su... more genocide’ (p. 102). Paradoxically, Mark argues that membership of transatlantic organisations, such as the EU and NATO, necessitated that Holocaust history would be more central to Baltic national histories. Chapters Five, Six and Seven take a different route and centre on the refashioning of personal pasts. The author makes great use of his interviews with Communist Party members born between 1918 and 1942. Mark allows the ‘victims’ to reclaim in their own words their identities from the political and state-sponsored memories. In ‘Remaking of Autobiographies’ (Chapter Five), some of the interviewees present themselves as the true inheritors of the anti-fascist struggle, described as ‘writing oneself just to fit in’ (p. 164). The real strength of these chapters is how they show the autobiographies as a continuation of the refashioning of personal pasts from the communist period to the post-communist period. These autobiographies now ‘had to anticipate democracy and liberal ideas’ (p. 165). The colour and richness captured by these chapters shine through as one reads the differing approaches to the rewriting of people’s résumés. Chapter Seven, dealing with the case of Red Army rapes in Hungary, asks whether the revival of the public memory about Red Army rape of Eastern European women could encourage the individual women to go public with their memories. In the final chapter, James Mark concludes that building memories from above in a monolithic fashion was one of the legacies of authoritarian impulses. These legacies show themselves in the interviewed individuals, as they carry the same politicised and divisive autobiographical habits with them into the post-1989 era. Remaking the past from above in the post-communist landscape attempts to build a new unifying national memory that is believed to heal past divides and underpin a new liberal, democratic identity. The unheroic, exclusive and elitist nature of some of the post-1989 negotiations made such mythologisations difficult. At the end of the book the reader may ask whether all those societies which have experienced totalitarianism and gone through regime change remain divided. Although Mark does not elucidate why Eastern European experiences stand out, the book is an erudite comparison of how various pasts are remembered. It is an engaging and accessible work, which should attract a wider audience than just historians of transition.
En 1904, Frederick Soddy, laureat du prix Nobel en 1921 pour ses recherches en radiochimie, specu... more En 1904, Frederick Soddy, laureat du prix Nobel en 1921 pour ses recherches en radiochimie, speculait sur le fait que le decodage, puis le dechainement des forces prodigieuses de l’atome permettraient aux « nouveaux alchimistes » de « verdir les deserts, de fondre la calotte polaire et de transformer la terre entiere en un plaisant jardin d’Eden ». Il predisait aussi que l’Etat qui possederait les premieres armes atomiques operationnelles conquerrait l’hegemonie mondiale. La prise de conscien...
Germany was well informed about the famine in Ukraine in 1932/33. Diplomats sent reports of what ... more Germany was well informed about the famine in Ukraine in 1932/33. Diplomats sent reports of what was happening, and church organisations began collecting aid for the victims. German engineers and labourers working on installations in the country were eye witnesses to what occurred. The first academic study of the catastrophe was conducted in 1941 under German occupation, and the results were extensively exploited for propaganda purposes. The Germans had quite a large amount of information. Yet the instrumentalisation of the Holodomor by the National Socialists and unease within Germany about the country’s own crimes during the war of annihilation and the Holocaust made it difficult to engage with the issue during the postwar years. The Holodomor in Ukraine was also suppressed, forgotten and ignored as a result of the Russia-centric nature of German historical Eastern European research. Today, those who demand that the Holodomor be recognised as genocide also hope to integrate it into the European and global culture of remembrance.
In early 1918, the Bolshevik-dominated Third Congress of Soviets declared the formation of a new ... more In early 1918, the Bolshevik-dominated Third Congress of Soviets declared the formation of a new composite polity—the Soviet Russian Republic. The congress’s resolutions, however, simultaneously proclaimed a federation of national republics and a federation of soviets. The latter seemed to recognize regionalism and localism as organizing principles on par with nationalism and to legitimize the self-proclaimed Soviet republics across the former Russian Empire. The current article compared two such non-national Soviet republics, those in Odessa and the Russian Far East. The two republics had similar roots in the discourses and practices of the Russian Empire, such as economic and de facto administrative autonomy. They also took similar organizational forms, were run by coalitions, and opposed their own inclusion into larger national and regional formations in Ukraine and Siberia. At the same time, both of the Soviet governments functioned as ad hoc committees and adapted their institu...
In early 1918, the Bolshevik-dominated Third Congress of Soviets declared the formation of a new ... more In early 1918, the Bolshevik-dominated Third Congress of Soviets declared the formation of a new composite polity—the Soviet Russian Republic. The congress’s resolutions, however, simultaneously proclaimed a federation of national republics and a federation of soviets. The latter seemed to recognize regionalism and localism as organizing principles on par with nationalism and to legitimize the self-proclaimed Soviet republics across the former Russian Empire. The current article compared two such non-national Soviet republics, those in Odessa and the Russian Far East. The two republics had similar roots in the discourses and practices of the Russian Empire, such as economic and de facto administrative autonomy. They also took similar organizational forms, were run by coalitions, and opposed their own inclusion into larger national and regional formations in Ukraine and Siberia. At the same time, both of the Soviet governments functioned as ad hoc committees and adapted their institu...
Vergessene Opfer von Mord und Missbrauch: Behindertenmorde unter deutscher Besatzungsherrschaft in der Ukraine (1941-1943) und ihre juristische Aufarbeitung in der Sowjetunion
Journal of Modern European History
In November 1943, shortly after the liberation of the occupied territories by the Red Army, three... more In November 1943, shortly after the liberation of the occupied territories by the Red Army, three mass graves with 144 corpses were discovered in a former colony for disabled children in the Zaporizhia region. The disabled inmates had been shot in two mass murder actions by German SS and Wehrmacht units in October 1941 and in March 1943. During the course of the investigations into the case in 1944 by the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD), seven former Soviet employees of the colony, among them four women, were put on trial and convicted for complicity with the Germans in the crime. The trial not only condemned the murder of the disabled, but also revealed their sexual abuse under the German occupation and in Soviet pre-war times. This article combines three different research perspectives. First, the previously unknown context of the crime is described for the first time on the basis of newly accessible Soviet file material from the Ukrainian secret service archives...
A roundtable on Lynne Viola’s Stalinist Perpetrators on Trial: Scenes from the Great Terror in Soviet Ukraine
Canadian Slavonic Papers
Since 2015, our journal’s publisher, Taylor & Francis, has sponsored the Canadian Association... more Since 2015, our journal’s publisher, Taylor & Francis, has sponsored the Canadian Association of Slavists’ Taylor & Francis Book Prize. It is awarded annually for the best academic book in Slavic, ...
In German historiography, the Ukrainian famine has not received adequate attention. A few excepti... more In German historiography, the Ukrainian famine has not received adequate attention. A few exceptions exist, such as the 2004 special issue of the journal Osteuropa edited by Gerhard Simon and Rudolf Mark, but no single monograph in the German language nor any research project deals with the Holodomor. Moreover, amongst the broader German public, the Soviet famine of 1932–3 is relatively unknown, despite being one of the great catastrophes in twentieth-century European history and (in terms of its death toll) one of the biggest single crimes of Stalinism. How can this obvious omission on the part of German academic researchers of Stalinism be explained?
У статті на основі матеріалів понад 90 інтерв'ю, проведених авторами протягом 2001-2018 років на ... more У статті на основі матеріалів понад 90 інтерв'ю, проведених авторами протягом 2001-2018 років на території Донбасу зі свідками нацистської окупації, проаналізовано специфіку сприйняття місцевим населенням німецьких військовослужбовців. Висвітлено особливості усноісторичних джерел, ступінь їх репрезентативності, фактори, що впливали на наративи респондентів, зокрема в умовах сучасного воєнного конфлікту на території Донбасу. Автори визначають чинники формування образу німців, розглядають практики взаємовідносин місцевого населення та окупантів, констатують, що вони не завжди відповідали усталеним в історіографії стереотипам. Зазначено, що усноісторичні джерела надають дослідникам унікальну можливість охарактеризувати окупацію і як особисте переживання, і як історичний феномен.
Zwischen Hunger, Terror und einer „glücklichen Zukunft".Der Arbeitseinsatz im Steinkohlenbergbau des Donezbeckensunter deutscher Besatzung 1941 bis 1943
Der folgende Beitrag entstand im Zusammenhang einer gemeinsamen Studie zum ukraini schen Hochschu... more Der folgende Beitrag entstand im Zusammenhang einer gemeinsamen Studie zum ukraini schen Hochschulwesen für die deutsche Hochschulrektorenkonferenz aus der Feder von Christian Noack, dem an dieser Stelle für Kommentare und Hilfe bei der Materialbeschaf fung gedankt werden soll, und der Autorin, die zudem Peter Hilkes für wichtige Hinweise dankt. 2 Derzavna nacional'na prohrama "OSVITA" Ukraina XXI stolittja. Kyiv 1994. 3 Ebd.
Kohle für Stalin und Hitler: Arbeiten und Leben im Donbass 1929 bis 1953
Europe-Asia Studies, 2012
genocide’ (p. 102). Paradoxically, Mark argues that membership of transatlantic organisations, su... more genocide’ (p. 102). Paradoxically, Mark argues that membership of transatlantic organisations, such as the EU and NATO, necessitated that Holocaust history would be more central to Baltic national histories. Chapters Five, Six and Seven take a different route and centre on the refashioning of personal pasts. The author makes great use of his interviews with Communist Party members born between 1918 and 1942. Mark allows the ‘victims’ to reclaim in their own words their identities from the political and state-sponsored memories. In ‘Remaking of Autobiographies’ (Chapter Five), some of the interviewees present themselves as the true inheritors of the anti-fascist struggle, described as ‘writing oneself just to fit in’ (p. 164). The real strength of these chapters is how they show the autobiographies as a continuation of the refashioning of personal pasts from the communist period to the post-communist period. These autobiographies now ‘had to anticipate democracy and liberal ideas’ (p. 165). The colour and richness captured by these chapters shine through as one reads the differing approaches to the rewriting of people’s résumés. Chapter Seven, dealing with the case of Red Army rapes in Hungary, asks whether the revival of the public memory about Red Army rape of Eastern European women could encourage the individual women to go public with their memories. In the final chapter, James Mark concludes that building memories from above in a monolithic fashion was one of the legacies of authoritarian impulses. These legacies show themselves in the interviewed individuals, as they carry the same politicised and divisive autobiographical habits with them into the post-1989 era. Remaking the past from above in the post-communist landscape attempts to build a new unifying national memory that is believed to heal past divides and underpin a new liberal, democratic identity. The unheroic, exclusive and elitist nature of some of the post-1989 negotiations made such mythologisations difficult. At the end of the book the reader may ask whether all those societies which have experienced totalitarianism and gone through regime change remain divided. Although Mark does not elucidate why Eastern European experiences stand out, the book is an erudite comparison of how various pasts are remembered. It is an engaging and accessible work, which should attract a wider audience than just historians of transition.
En 1904, Frederick Soddy, laureat du prix Nobel en 1921 pour ses recherches en radiochimie, specu... more En 1904, Frederick Soddy, laureat du prix Nobel en 1921 pour ses recherches en radiochimie, speculait sur le fait que le decodage, puis le dechainement des forces prodigieuses de l’atome permettraient aux « nouveaux alchimistes » de « verdir les deserts, de fondre la calotte polaire et de transformer la terre entiere en un plaisant jardin d’Eden ». Il predisait aussi que l’Etat qui possederait les premieres armes atomiques operationnelles conquerrait l’hegemonie mondiale. La prise de conscien...
Germany was well informed about the famine in Ukraine in 1932/33. Diplomats sent reports of what ... more Germany was well informed about the famine in Ukraine in 1932/33. Diplomats sent reports of what was happening, and church organisations began collecting aid for the victims. German engineers and labourers working on installations in the country were eye witnesses to what occurred. The first academic study of the catastrophe was conducted in 1941 under German occupation, and the results were extensively exploited for propaganda purposes. The Germans had quite a large amount of information. Yet the instrumentalisation of the Holodomor by the National Socialists and unease within Germany about the country’s own crimes during the war of annihilation and the Holocaust made it difficult to engage with the issue during the postwar years. The Holodomor in Ukraine was also suppressed, forgotten and ignored as a result of the Russia-centric nature of German historical Eastern European research. Today, those who demand that the Holodomor be recognised as genocide also hope to integrate it into the European and global culture of remembrance.
In early 1918, the Bolshevik-dominated Third Congress of Soviets declared the formation of a new ... more In early 1918, the Bolshevik-dominated Third Congress of Soviets declared the formation of a new composite polity—the Soviet Russian Republic. The congress’s resolutions, however, simultaneously proclaimed a federation of national republics and a federation of soviets. The latter seemed to recognize regionalism and localism as organizing principles on par with nationalism and to legitimize the self-proclaimed Soviet republics across the former Russian Empire. The current article compared two such non-national Soviet republics, those in Odessa and the Russian Far East. The two republics had similar roots in the discourses and practices of the Russian Empire, such as economic and de facto administrative autonomy. They also took similar organizational forms, were run by coalitions, and opposed their own inclusion into larger national and regional formations in Ukraine and Siberia. At the same time, both of the Soviet governments functioned as ad hoc committees and adapted their institu...
In early 1918, the Bolshevik-dominated Third Congress of Soviets declared the formation of a new ... more In early 1918, the Bolshevik-dominated Third Congress of Soviets declared the formation of a new composite polity—the Soviet Russian Republic. The congress’s resolutions, however, simultaneously proclaimed a federation of national republics and a federation of soviets. The latter seemed to recognize regionalism and localism as organizing principles on par with nationalism and to legitimize the self-proclaimed Soviet republics across the former Russian Empire. The current article compared two such non-national Soviet republics, those in Odessa and the Russian Far East. The two republics had similar roots in the discourses and practices of the Russian Empire, such as economic and de facto administrative autonomy. They also took similar organizational forms, were run by coalitions, and opposed their own inclusion into larger national and regional formations in Ukraine and Siberia. At the same time, both of the Soviet governments functioned as ad hoc committees and adapted their institu...
Vergessene Opfer von Mord und Missbrauch: Behindertenmorde unter deutscher Besatzungsherrschaft in der Ukraine (1941-1943) und ihre juristische Aufarbeitung in der Sowjetunion
Journal of Modern European History
In November 1943, shortly after the liberation of the occupied territories by the Red Army, three... more In November 1943, shortly after the liberation of the occupied territories by the Red Army, three mass graves with 144 corpses were discovered in a former colony for disabled children in the Zaporizhia region. The disabled inmates had been shot in two mass murder actions by German SS and Wehrmacht units in October 1941 and in March 1943. During the course of the investigations into the case in 1944 by the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD), seven former Soviet employees of the colony, among them four women, were put on trial and convicted for complicity with the Germans in the crime. The trial not only condemned the murder of the disabled, but also revealed their sexual abuse under the German occupation and in Soviet pre-war times. This article combines three different research perspectives. First, the previously unknown context of the crime is described for the first time on the basis of newly accessible Soviet file material from the Ukrainian secret service archives...
A roundtable on Lynne Viola’s Stalinist Perpetrators on Trial: Scenes from the Great Terror in Soviet Ukraine
Canadian Slavonic Papers
Since 2015, our journal’s publisher, Taylor & Francis, has sponsored the Canadian Association... more Since 2015, our journal’s publisher, Taylor & Francis, has sponsored the Canadian Association of Slavists’ Taylor & Francis Book Prize. It is awarded annually for the best academic book in Slavic, ...
In German historiography, the Ukrainian famine has not received adequate attention. A few excepti... more In German historiography, the Ukrainian famine has not received adequate attention. A few exceptions exist, such as the 2004 special issue of the journal Osteuropa edited by Gerhard Simon and Rudolf Mark, but no single monograph in the German language nor any research project deals with the Holodomor. Moreover, amongst the broader German public, the Soviet famine of 1932–3 is relatively unknown, despite being one of the great catastrophes in twentieth-century European history and (in terms of its death toll) one of the biggest single crimes of Stalinism. How can this obvious omission on the part of German academic researchers of Stalinism be explained?
У статті на основі матеріалів понад 90 інтерв'ю, проведених авторами протягом 2001-2018 років на ... more У статті на основі матеріалів понад 90 інтерв'ю, проведених авторами протягом 2001-2018 років на території Донбасу зі свідками нацистської окупації, проаналізовано специфіку сприйняття місцевим населенням німецьких військовослужбовців. Висвітлено особливості усноісторичних джерел, ступінь їх репрезентативності, фактори, що впливали на наративи респондентів, зокрема в умовах сучасного воєнного конфлікту на території Донбасу. Автори визначають чинники формування образу німців, розглядають практики взаємовідносин місцевого населення та окупантів, констатують, що вони не завжди відповідали усталеним в історіографії стереотипам. Зазначено, що усноісторичні джерела надають дослідникам унікальну можливість охарактеризувати окупацію і як особисте переживання, і як історичний феномен.
Zwischen Hunger, Terror und einer „glücklichen Zukunft".Der Arbeitseinsatz im Steinkohlenbergbau des Donezbeckensunter deutscher Besatzung 1941 bis 1943
Der folgende Beitrag entstand im Zusammenhang einer gemeinsamen Studie zum ukraini schen Hochschu... more Der folgende Beitrag entstand im Zusammenhang einer gemeinsamen Studie zum ukraini schen Hochschulwesen für die deutsche Hochschulrektorenkonferenz aus der Feder von Christian Noack, dem an dieser Stelle für Kommentare und Hilfe bei der Materialbeschaf fung gedankt werden soll, und der Autorin, die zudem Peter Hilkes für wichtige Hinweise dankt. 2 Derzavna nacional'na prohrama "OSVITA" Ukraina XXI stolittja. Kyiv 1994. 3 Ebd.
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