Norman M. Naimark

War and Genocide on the Eastern Front, 1941–1945

The historical connection between war and genocide is clear and apparent. Scholars of mass killing have repeatedly pointed out the linkages between the First World War and the Armenian genocide of 1915, between the Second World War and the Holocaust, between the 1993–4 war and the genocide in Rwanda, and between the war in Bosnia and the genocide in Srebrenica. Scholars of war, most often military historians, have been less ready to tie what they see as two distinct social phenomena – war and genocide – into the same bundle. This was especially the case, until recently, for the Nazi attack on the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941, and the subsequent mass murder of the Jews. The Wehrmacht, the German fighting forces, were seen to be implementing an enormously ambitious military campaign against the Soviet Union, which, in the end, they lost. Meanwhile, the Nazi security organs – the SS, the SD, and the Einsatzgruppen – carried out the ‘Final Solution’, inspired primarily by Hitler and the Nazi hierarchs.

Terrorism and the fall of imperial Russia

This article examines the role of terrorism in the decline and fall of Imperial Russia. It analyzes the struggle between terrorists and the Tsarist government during three stages: (1) 1861–66, amidst the ‘Great Reforms’ and radicalization of students; (2) 1877–81, a confrontation between populist terrorists and government; and (3) the crisis of 1904–7, which witnessed open battles between terrorists on the one side and police and military on the other. These periods resemble one another in a number of ways. Government efforts to reform were repudiated by radicals as insufficient and grounds for renewed terrorist attacks. The terrorist response was then used by government officials in order to resist or abrogate the reforms earlier thought so necessary. Liberals initially sympathized with the radicals and offered them moral and financial support. But as terrorism became increasingly bloody and the government increasingly repressive, they withdrew from the confrontation. All three periods ended with a perce...

Stalinist Perpetrators on Trial: Scenes from the Great Terror in Soviet Ukraine, written by Lynne Viola

Lynne Viola’s fascinating and compact new book, Stalinist Perpetrators on Trial, takes advantage of the accessibility of the Ukrainian nkvd archives in Kyiv to paint a collective portrait of a single generation of relatively young and semi-educated second level secret police operatives in the Ukrainian provinces. These men—and they were all men—rose through the ranks of the nkvd from fairly humble beginnings as workers, soldiers, or peasants, who had sometimes experienced the Russian Civil War, but more often cut their teeth as policemen during

Genocide and Global and/or World History: Reflections

Genocide and Global and/or World History: Reflections Mohamed Adhikari, Cathie Carmichael, Adam Jones, Shruti Kapila, Norman Naimark and Eric D. Weitz Department of Historical Studies, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa; School of History, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK; Unit 8 / Political Science, University of British Columbia Okanagan, Kelowna, Canada; Faculty of History, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, UK; Department of History, Stanford University, Stanford, USA; The City College of New York, New York, USA

The Russians and Germans: Rape during the War and Post-Soviet Memories

No one will ever know exactly how many German women were raped by Soviet soldiers at the end of the Second World War and the beginning of the peace. It may have been tens of thousands or more likely hundreds of thousands. If one includes all of the instances of rape, gang-rape, and rape murder during the Soviet offensives against and occupation of East Prussia, Silesia, Pomerania, Austria, the Czech lands and other German-inhabited areas of Eastern Europe, the numbers of victims might reach as many as two million. Some have suggested that over 125,000 women were raped in greater Berlin alone during and after the victorious offensive.1

East European History: The “State of the Field” Report on the Stanford–Yale Workshop, September 17 and 18, 2010

What is east European about east European history, and what is historical about east European studies? Some twenty historians from the United States and Canada gathered at the History Department at Stanford to discuss the present, past, and, most importantly, the future of the east European field, broadly defined.

Stefan Creuzberger and Manfred Görtemaker, eds. Gleichschaltung unter Stalin? Die Entwicklung der Parteien in östlichen Europa, 1944–1949. Paderborn, Germany: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2002.468 pp.

must deal with the Christian resistance to Communism in Korea” (p. xxiv). Unfortunately, he fails to develop this intriguing argument systematically. Although anecdotal information, such as how an Australian doctor found that rubbing Barbasol shaving cream on feet and hands would prevent frostbite, will entertain all readers, these disjointed and episodic reminiscences leave many profound questions unexamined. A good example is widespread racism. Battleaeld bravery won Sergeant Cornelius H. Charlton, a black soldier, a posthumous Medal of Honor, but not the customary burial in Arlington National Cemetery. Millett notes that despite the Herculean labor of courageous South Korean civilian workers, U.S. soldiers still “made silly remarks about all the Asiatics, calling them ‘gooks’ or ‘slants’ or worse” (p. 206). One veteran recalled: “There was no front to speak of, guerrillas and KPA [Korean People’s Army] patrols everywhere. We were very nervous, shot at anything. We burned down a village by mistake” (p. 178). These criticisms aside, Millett successfully eliminates any doubt that the “real loser” in this war was a “divided and ruined” Korea, “which again had drawn in outside foreign powers to its own peril” (p. 8).