Canadian Slavonic Papers | 2019
Broad is my native land: repertoires and regimes of migration in Russia’s twentieth century
Abstract
Soviet officials, including Stalin, were well informed of the Holocaust from the very beginnings of the German invasion of the USSR. Their responses, however, were inconsistent, the product of “evolving tactical and strategic goals” (31). Karel Berkhoff’s essay on the Holocaust in Soviet media supports this view, noting that while Soviet officials did try to conceal the fact that the Nazis were murdering Jews, “the concealment rarely became complete and consistent, let alone a policy” (111). While the murder of Soviet Jews was publicly acknowledged (even by Stalin) early in the war, Soviet media later spoke of crimes against Soviet citizens without reference to their Jewishness. This move was motivated in part by fears that the Soviet population was receptive to Nazi anti-Semitic propaganda which blamed “the Jews” for Bolshevism. Foreign policy considerations also affected reporting on the Holocaust. By 1943, while still downplaying the murder of Soviet Jews, Soviet media did report on the murder of Jews in Nazi-occupied Poland (in an attempt to deflect attention from Nazi revelations of NKVD crimes in Poland). Tarik Amar’s fascinating chapter on postwar Soviet memory of the Holocaust in Lviv highlights the affinities shared by Soviet official discourse and Ukrainian nationalist discourse on the Holocaust. Zvi Gitelman’s conclusion reiterates the significance of Soviet citizens’ perceptions of Jews since Soviet “authorities based their policies at least partly on their perception of those perceptions” (185). As Shore reminds us, the starting point for Gross’s Neighborswas a victim’s testimony that had been available to scholars for decades. Yet, victims’ testimonies and Jewish responses do not play a central role in most of the contributions, which focus mainly on understanding the actions of perpetrators of and witnesses to genocide. In particular, given the Soviet Union’s role as a haven for 250,000 Jews who survived the Holocaust either because they fled to Soviet territory or were deported by the Soviets to Siberia and Central Asia, more research on these experiences is needed. The essays also do not address important issues such as gender and sexual violence. These criticisms should not detract from the significance of this excellent collection, which provides the best overview currently available on the study of the Holocaust in the Soviet Union and which will be of value to students and specialists alike. The contributors enrich our understanding of local participation in and Soviet responses to the Holocaust and also help to explain why this history continues to elicit controversy in the region today.