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“Every Family Has Its Freak”: Perceptions of Collaboration in Occupied Soviet Russia, 1943–1948

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Jeffrey W. Jones
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Abstract

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Based on archival and other materials from Rostov-on-Don, a major industrial center in southern Russia, Jeffrey W.Jones examines the different representations of collaboration apparent in Soviet society during and after the war. Jones analyzes several different levels of discourse: inner party deliberations and reports on the subject, depictions of collaborators and their actions in the local party press, questions and comments of workers and others at public meetings as recorded by party officials, and Cold War and post-Cold War era memoirs and interviews. These sources overlap to a significant degree but deal with the complex issue of collaboration in nuanced ways, stressing different themes and asking different questions. The evidence reveals a subtle divide in the perception and representation of this issue between party leaders and the population at large while also showing that the party's public assurances of cossack loyalty contrasted with a widely shared assumption of cossack disloyalty.

Type
Forum: On Collaboration in Poland and the Soviet Union during World War II
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 64 , Issue 4 , Winter 2005 , pp. 747 - 770
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 2005

References

Research for this article was supported in part by a grant from the International Research & Exchanges Board (IREX) with funds provided by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the United States Department of State through the Title VIII Program, and the IREX Scholar Support Fund. None of these organizations is responsible for the views expressed. I would like to thank Donald J. Raleigh for his assistance on this article, including allowing me to present it to his class. In addition, I would like to thank Sharon Kowalsky, Jacob Langer, David MacKenzie, Jonathan Wallace, James Wood, and the anonymous readers for their helpful comments and suggestions.

1 For a discussion of Nazi occupation of the Soviet Union, see Barber, John and Harrison, Mark, The Soviet Home Front, 1941-1945: A Social and Economic History of the USSR in World WarII (New York, 1991), 113-16.Google Scholar

2 See, for example, Lloyd, Christopher, Collaboration and Resistance in Occupied France: Representing Treason and Sacrifice (New York, 2003);CrossRefGoogle Scholar Deák, Istán, Gross, Jan T., and Judt, Tony, eds., The Politics of Retribution in Europe: World War II and Its Aftermath (Princeton, 2000)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, including the essay by Deák, “A Fatal Compromise? The Debate over Collaboration and Resistance in Hungary“; Bennett, Rab, Under the Shadow of the Swastika: The Moral Dilemmas of Resistance and Collaboration in Hitler's Europe (New York, 1999);CrossRefGoogle Scholar Kuretsidis-Haider, Claudia and Garscha, Winfried R., eds., Heine “Abrechnung“: NS-Verbrechen, fustiz und Gesellschaft inEuropa nach 1945 (Leipzig-Vienna, 1998);Google Scholar Kenney, Padraic, Rebuilding Poland: Workersand Communists, 1945-50 (Ithaca, 1997);Google Scholar Bennett, Gill, ed., TheEndofthe WarinEurope, 1945 (London, 1996);Google Scholar Conway, Martin, Collaboration in Belgium: Leon Degrelle and the Rexist Movement, 1940-1944 (New Haven, 1993);Google Scholar Hirschfeld, Gerhard and Marsh, Patrick, eds., Collaboration in France: Politics and Culture during the Nazi Occupation, 1940–1944 (Oxford, 1989);Google Scholar Hirschfeld, Gerhard, Nazi Rule and Dutch Collaboration: The Netherlands under German Occupation, 1940-45, trans. Willmot, Louise (Oxford, 1988);Google Scholar Gross, Jan T., Polish Society under German Occupation: Generalgouvernement, 1939-44 (Princeton, 1979);Google Scholar Novick, Peter, The Resistance versus Vichy: The Purge of Collaborators in Liberated France (New York, 1968).Google Scholar

3 For an example of this approach, see Raleigh, Donald J., Experiencing Russia’s Civil War: Politics, Society, and Revolutionary Culture in Saratov, 1917-1922 (Princeton, 2002).Google Scholar

4 Taylor, Lynne, Between Resistance and Collaboration: Popular Protest in Northern France, 1940-1945 (New York, 2000).Google Scholar

5 Azéma, Jean-Pierre and Bédarida, François, eds., Le régime de Vichy el les Francais (Paris, 1992), 67 Google Scholar (cited in Taylor, Between Resistance and Collaboration, 2). See also Fishman, Sarah, Downs, Laura, Sinanoglou, loannis, Smith, Leonard, and Zaretsky, Robert, eds., France at War: Vichy and the Historians (New York, 2000);Google Scholar and Diamond, Hanna, Women and the Second World War in France, 1939-1948: Choices and Constraints (New York, 1999).Google Scholar

6 Yves Durand, “Collaboration French-style: A European Perspective,” in Fishman, France at War, 61-76. See also Hoffmann, Stanley, “Collaborationism in France during World War II,” Journal of Modern History 40, no. 3 (September 1968): 375-95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7 Bennett, Under the Shadow of the Swastika, chapter 3.

8 Weiner, Amir, Making Sense of War: The Second World War and the Fate of the Bolshevik Revolution (Princeton, 2001);Google Scholar and Kuromiya, Hiroaki, Freedom and Terror in the Donbas: A Ukrainian-Russian Borderland, 1870s-1990s (New York, 1998).Google Scholar See also Brown, Kate, A Biography of No Place: From Ethnic Borderland to Soviet Heartland (Cambridge, Mass., 2004);Google Scholar Dean, Martin, Collaboration in the Holocaust: Crimes of the Local Police in Belorussia and Ukraine, 1941-44 (New York, 2000);CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Boterbloem, Kees, Life and Death under Stalin: Kalinin Province, 1945-1953 (Montreal, 1999).Google Scholar

9 See Holquist, Peter, Making War, Forging Revolution: Russia's Continuum of Crisis, 1914-1921 (Cambridge, Mass., 2002), 114.Google Scholar

10 NinaTumarkin points out that the second fall of Rostov marked the end of a year of spontaneous de-Stalinization, as the regime blamed Red Army troops and officers alike for fleeing in panic before the German onslaught, losif Stalin responded by reasserting a degree of terror and control, issuing the “not one step back” order (Order 227), which called for military police to shoot Soviet troops retreating without orders. Tumarkin, Nina, The Living and the Dead: The Rise and Fall of the Cult of World War If in Russia (New York, 1994), 71.Google Scholar See also Kozhina, Elena, Through the Burning Steppe: A Memoir of Wartime Russia, 1942-1943 (New York, 2000), 39.Google Scholar

11 For the population figures see Tsentr Dokumentatsii Noveishei Istorii (TsDNI), f. 13, op. 4 (Rostov City Committee), d. 29 (City party conference, February 1943), 1. 12.

12 At war's end an estimated five million Soviet citizens were outside the country's borders, three million POWs, forced laborers, and defectors in the west (mostly Germany), and two million in the Soviet-occupied regions of eastern Europe. As of January 1946, 2,704 demobilized troops were in Rostov, and that number would increase steadily in subsequent months. Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv sotsial'no-politicheskoi istorii (RGASPI), f. 17 (Central Committee), op. 122 (Orgburo), d. 146 (Demobilization in Rostov oblast), 1. 27.

13 By the middle of 1947 there were an estimated 406,700 people in Rostov, and from that point the city's population grew gradually but steadily, reaching 552,000 in 1956. See Morkovin, V. K., “Rabochie Dona v poslevoennyi period (1946-1950)” (kandidat diss., Rostov State University, 1972), 50.Google Scholar See also Statisticheskoe upravlenie Rostovskoi oblasti, Rostovskaia oblast'za 50 let: statisticheskii sbornik (Rostov-on-Don, 1967), 21.

14 Tony Judt, “Preface,” and Jan T. Gross, “Themes for a Social History of War Experience and Collaboration,” in Deák, Gross, and Judt, eds., Politics of Retribution in Europe, vii-xii and 15-35. Hanna Diamond's study of women in Vichy France likewise emphasizes strong currents of continuity to 1948, the first year after the war with marked improvements in living standards. Diamond, Women and the Second World War in France.

15 See, for example, Hessler, Julie, A Social History of Soviet Trade: Trade Policy, Retail Practices, and Consumption, 1917-1953 (Princeton, 2004);Google Scholar Filtzer, Donald, Soviet Workers and Late Stalinism: Labour and the Restoration of the Stalinist System after World War II (Cambridge, Eng., 2002);CrossRefGoogle Scholar McCagg, William O. Jr., Stalin Embattled, 1943-1948 (Detroit, 1978);Google Scholar and Karl Quails, “Localism during National Reconstruction: A Case Study of Post-War Sevastopol, 1944-1953” (paper, American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies, St. Louis, Missouri, November 1999).

16 On the population's hopes for a postwar liberalization see Zubkova, Elena, Obshchestvo i reformy, 1945-1964 (Moscow, 1993);Google Scholar or, in English, Russia after the War: Hopes, Illusions, and Disappointments, 1945-1957, trans. Hugh Ragsdale (New York, 1998); Dunham, Vera, In Stalin's Time: Middleclass Values in Soviet Fiction (Durham, 1990);Google Scholar Fitzpatrick, Sheila, “Postwar Soviet Society: The ‘Return to Normalcy,’ 1945-1953,” in Linz, Susan J., ed., The Impact of World War II on the Soviet Union (Totowa, N.J., 1985);Google Scholar and Karol, K. S., Solik: Life in the Soviet Union, 1939-1946 (London, 1986).Google Scholar

17 Another term encountered more often is predatel', the literal translation of which is “traitor,” but in a very broad sense. It included those who worked for, assisted, and/or gave information to the Germans, its meaning falling somewhere between “traitor” and “collaborator.” On the war as a litmus test for the loyalty of Soviet citizens see Weiner, Making Sense of War, chapter 2. Numerous historians note the prevalence of collaboration and the strong anti-Soviet sentiments that rose to the fore during Nazi occupation. Kuromiya, for example, maintains that there were widespread anti-Soviet sentiments among the cossack population of Ukraine and the lower Don region, and that many of them served as policemen for the Germans. Kuromiya, Freedom and Terror in theDonbas, 283. Martin Dean likewise shows that there were plenty of volunteers for the German occupying police force in western Belarus and Ukraine. Dean, Collaboration in the Holocaust, 27. Kees Boterbloem points out that “collaboration with the Nazis was common in many parts of Eastern Europe, including Russia,” and also notes an “anti-Soviet mood” in Kalinin oblast. Boterbloem, Life and Death under Stalin, 48, 58. Vera Tolz argues that so many Ukrainians and Russians collaborated with the Germans it was impossible to deport large numbers of them due to what the regime called “technical difficulties.” Tolz, Vera, “New Information about the Deportation of Ethnic Groups in the USSR during World War 2,” in Garrard, John and Garrard, Carol, eds., World War 2 and the Soviet People: Selected Papers from the Fourth World Congress for Soviet and East European Studies, 1990 (London, 1993), 164.Google Scholar See also Dallin, Alexander, German Rule in Russia, 1941-1945 (New York, 1957)Google Scholar, and Barber and Harrison, Soviet Home Front.

18 One source cites 3,738 in the city by September 1945. TsDNI, f. 13, op. 4, d. 148 (Repatriation), 1. 161. Another source, however, cites a total of 3,086 repatriated citizens in Rostov-on-Don as of the same date. This source added that for Rostov oblast as a whole, 37,185 people were forcibly taken to Germany, 6,680 of whom had returned as of the end ofjuly 1945, Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Rostovskoi oblasti (GARO), f. 3737, op. 6 (Rostov City Soviet), d. 40 (Repatriation of Soviet citizens forcibly taken to Germany), 11. 3, 4. Those with relatives living outside the country were also suspect.

19 Both Kuromiya and Brown show that the Germans portrayed their campaign to raise workers for Germany as a great opportunity, and consequently the first wave of young Russians who went to work there often did so voluntarily. But word quickly spread that working and living conditions for the conscripts in Germany were horrible, and thereafter the Germans forcibly conscripted young people. See Kuromiya, Freedom and Terror in the Donbas, 272-73 and 299-300; and Brown, Biography of No Place, 217.

20 The Soviet regime confiscated personally owned radios because it did not want people listening to German propaganda. See K. S. Karol, Solik, 75. Also, as Boterbloem notes regarding Kalinin oblast, “It is impossible to establish how many people deliberately stayed behind to welcome the Germans instead of attempting to flee.” Boterbloem, Life and Death under Stalin, 55. Many communists were caught behind the lines because of the poor organization of evacuation or were left behind by the NKVD to organize partisan activity. Mariia Zhak, who was born in 1901 and lived in Rostov most of her life, remembered in an interview that after the return of Soviet power “people blamed [First Obkom Secretary Boris Dvinskii] for the poor organization of evacuation.” She said he told party members not to panic, assuring them that the Germans would not take Rostov, and as a result many wound up in occupied territory while many others were caught trying to escape at the last minute. Meanwhile, she noted with a sense of irony, Dvinskii himself had no trouble getting away. Mariia S. Zhak, interview, Rostov-on-Don, 3June 1995. On the NKVD keeping party members in occupied territory to organize partisan activities, see Weiner, Making Sense of War, 52 and Boterbloem, Life and Death under Stalin, 47.

21 As Kuromiya notes, occupation policies obliged residents to turn in Jews, partisans, and communists or risk death themselves, but by no means did everyone who stayed in occupied territory assist or work for the Germans. Also, he points out that many Soviet citizens in occupied territory worked out of necessity in order to survive, not out of any particular affinity for the occupying power. Kuromiya, Freedom and Terror in theDonbas, 263 and 275. See also Weiner, Making Sense of War, 7-8; and, with regard to being forced to work to survive in Vichy France, see Taylor, Between Resistance and Collaboration.

22 Weiner, Making Sense of War, 90. Weiner also notes that applications for jobs, universities, party membership, and so on included questions about the whereabouts and actions of one and one's family during the war. 23. See Rigby, T. H., Communist Party Membership in the U.S.S.R., 1917-1967 (Princeton, 1968).Google Scholar

24 See Weiner, Making Sense of War, chapter 2.

25 Of course, the discussions of local party leaders behind closed doors were shaped by a number of factors, including who was talking to whom within a strictly hierarchical structure, as well as the prevailing political winds nationally and the omnipresent local political cliques and conflicts.

26 On members burning their cards see Kuromiya, Freedom and Terror in the Donbas, 265.

27 The city party’s nomenklatura consisted of all district (raikom) secretaries, heads of raikom departments such as agitprop (agitation and propaganda) departments, Komsomol (Communist Youth Organization) secretaries, newspaper editors and prosecutors. All members who stayed had to prove they had a good reason, and the poor organization of evacuation was not a suitable excuse for winding up in occupied territory.

28 Weiner shows how existing networks of political alliances or cliques skewed this process from the outset—there was no such thing as an “objective” review procedure. Weiner, Making Sense of War.

29 TsDNI, f. 13, op. 4, d. 214 (Minutes of raikom meeting), 11. 24-25.

30 TsDNI, f. 13, op. 4, d. 56 (Report on collaborators in positions of responsibility), 11. 10-11. See also TsDNI, f. 13, op. 4, d. 47 (Report on collaborators in positions of responsibility), 1. 3. Another highly placed collaborator, the former director of the zoo, was accused of trying “to protect his circle of friends who actively worked for the Germans.” In late 1944 his replacement purged the staff of those “who do not inspire political trust. “ TsDNI, f. 13, op. 4, d. 102 (Report on collaborators in positions of responsibility), 1. 91.

31 TsDNI, f. 13, op. 4, d. 102,1. 90.

32 Ibid., d. 29,11. 22-23.

33 This was a common form of collaboration in Belarus and Ukraine also. See Dean, Collaboration in the Holocaust.

34 Tsdni, f. 13, op. 4, d. 29,1. 12. there is no indication as to the fate of the ten who were “removed. “

35 GARO, f. 3737, op. 8, d. 34a (City housing administration), 1. 29.

36 TsDNI, f. 13, op. 4, d. 23 (Report on illegal residency in Rostov's housing sector), I. 49. For more reports on the problem of collaboration in housing see also TsDNI, f. 13, op. 4, d. 29,1. 39 and d. 184 (Report on illegal residency in Rostov's housing sector), II. 18-19.

37 Ibid., d. 16 (Report on collaboration in Rostov's education system), 1. 27. Six of them (1 percent) occupied leading roles in the department of fascist propaganda.

38 Ibid., d. 44 (Report on collaboration in Rostov's education system), 1. 2. See also d. 16,1. 27.

39 Ibid., d. 430 (Report on collaboration in Rostov's education system), 1. 15. It does point out, though, that sixty-four of the “suspect” school administrators had already been replaced. The report also notes that one teacher admitted to covering posters of Iosif Stalin and Vladimir Lenin in her classroom with pictures of fascist leaders. Yet another teacher wandered the streets of Rostov in rags during occupation “begging bread from the Germans like a hopeless tramp” and shouting in German, “look at me—I am a Soviet teacher.” After liberation he went from door to door begging for bread from his students, and his “unclean outward appearance makes people sick and is a mockery of our education system.” Ibid., 11. 8–9.

40 Ibid., d. 44, 1. 8.

41 Ibid., d. 23,1. 45. For other examples see also d. 45,11. 60, 78; d. 47,1. 4; and d. 101, 1.7.

42 Ibid., d. 22,1. 77; d. 23,1. 45; d. 44,1. 8; d. 221,1. 20.

43 Ibid., d. 46,1. 13.

44 For reports on this problem, see ibid., d. 102, 11. 27-28; d. 45, 1. 60; d. 46, 1. 14; d. 47,1. 4; d. 55,11. 69-70; d. 64,11. 32, 58-59; d. 75,1. 38; d. 102,1. 14, 27-28; d. 171,11. 3, 6; d. 176,11. 2-3; and d. 330,1. 137.

45 Ibid., d. 309,11. 17-18.

46 Ibid., d. 291,11. 145-46.

47 Ibid., d. 251,11. 1-2.

48 Ibid.,d. 214,1. 83. See also d. 251,1. 2. That report noted that “in the party raikom there is an apprehension about replacing people.” A year later the replacement of collaborators was still proceeding slowly, a city party committee protocol noted, “especially in several specific organizations.” Ibid., d. 230,1. 108. For more reports on party leaders protecting those below them who stayed in occupied territory, see also ibid., d. 221, 11. 222- 23; and d. 291,11. 187-88.

49 Kuromiya and Boterbloem show that while repression remained a prominent feature of Soviet political life in the postwar years, there was no return to the scale of repression witnessed in the late 1930s. See Kuromiya, Freedom and Terror in theDonbas, 299-300; and Boterbloem, Life and Death under Stalin, 153.

50 TsDNI, f. 13, op. 4, d. 29,1. 13. See also 1. 12.

51 Of the 2,200 who stayed in occupied territory, 233 (11 percent) registered with the Gestapo, 50 (2 percent) worked in various leading positions, 351 (16 percent) worked in nonleading roles, 23 (1 percent) were “unmasked” as fascists, and 16 voluntarily left with the Germans. Finally, 667 (30 percent) destroyed their party cards, 6 turned theirs in to the Gestapo, and, the report noted, none of these communists took part in underground partisan activity. TsDNI, f. 13, op. 4, d. 96,1. 68. Also, cases heard later resulted in a higher percentage of expulsion because they involved members who did not register with their party bureaus or who left with the Germans. For example, in October 1944, the city party committee heard the cases of seventeen party members from one district who “voluntarily left with the Germans” and thus were not present at the hearings; all of them were excluded. Ibid., II. 134-35.

52 RGASPI, f. 17, op. 122, d. 98, 1. 90. The figures do not add up, with forty-seven cases unaccounted for.

53 TsDNI, f. 13, op. 4, d. 251,11. 1-2. See also d. 147,11. 1,16, 145; d. 214,11. 24-25; d. 221,1. 20; and d. 44,11. 82-83.

54 On the “us” and “them” mentality of Soviet leaders and society alike for the 1930s see Davies, Sarah, Popular Opinion in Stalin's Russia: Terror, Propaganda, and Dissent, 1934- 1941 (Cambridge, Eng., 1997);CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Fitzpatrick, Sheila, Everyday Stalinism: Ordinary Life in Extraordinary Times; Soviet Russia in the 1930s (Oxford, 1999).Google Scholar For the 1940s, see Zubkova, Russia after the War.

55 TsDNI, f. 13, op. 4, d. 187,11. 45 and 49. For similar expressions of worry by party leaders about the negative influence of repatriated citizens on voters, see ibid., d. 144, 1. 197.

56 Ibid., d. 252,1. 8. See also RGASPI, f. 17, op. 122, d. 198,1. 184.

57 See Kuromiya, Freedom and Terror in the Donbas, 283. The Germans organized Soviet prisoners into battalion-sized combat units to fight against Stalin's forces, with as many as a million troops by 1943. Captured Soviet General Andrei Vlasov led the most famous battalion.

58 TsDNI, f. 13, op. 4, d. 29,1. 36.

59 Ibid., 1. 22.

60 Ibid., d. 44,1. 301. See also 1. 300.

61 Other research indicates that housing was subject to corruption even after the return of Soviet rule, while those in trade and finance with access to goods were often involved in illegal trade before, during, and after the war. On corruption in housing see Jeffrey W.Jones, “'In My Opinion This Is All a Fraud’: Concrete, Culture, and Class in the Reconstruction of Rostov-on-the-Don, 1943-1948” (PhD diss., University of North Carolina, 2000). On people vying for positions in trade and food organizations for the purpose of engaging in illegal trade, see Hessler, Social History of Soviet Trade; Jones, Jeffrey W., “'People without a Definite Occupation': The Illegal Economy and ‘Speculators’ in Rostov-on-the-Don, 1943-1948,” in Raleigh, Donald J., ed., Provincial Landscapes: The Local Dimensions of Soviet Power 1917-1953 (Pittsburgh, 2001), 236-54;Google Scholar and Karol, Solik.

62 Brown shows that in Ukraine members of the urban and rural intelligentsia were more likely than peasants to support the main Ukrainian nationalist organization (OUN) because, she suggests, “they had been trained to think in taxonomies, especially in the national taxonomies of both Soviet progressive reform and repression.” As a result, she continues, members of the intelligentsia had been taught “to believe in the power of origins, to think that one's national affiliation mattered above all else.” One might suggest a similar explanation for the apparently strong tendency toward collaboration among educators in Soviet Russia, although clearly the overtly anti-Semitic aspects of Nazi propaganda represent a complete rejection of the more progressive aspects of Soviet nationality rhetoric and policy from the prewar period. See Brown, Biography of No Place, 215.

63 See Noam Chomsky and Edward Hermann, Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (New York, 1988).

64 Weiner notes as well that there was no public discussion of the party’s verification process on members who stayed in occupied territory. Weiner, Making Sense of War, 87.

65 Molot, 7 March 1943,1.

66 Molot, 9 March 1943, 1.

67 Molot, 16 May 1943, 2.

68 Molot, 8 August 1943, 1.

69 Molot, 8June 1943, 1.

70 On the deportations see Tolz, “New Information about the Deportation of Ethnic Groups“; Martin, Terry, “The Origins of Soviet Ethnic Cleansing,” Journal of Modern History 70, no. 4 (December 1998): 831-61;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Medvedev, Roy, Let History Judge: The Origins and Consequences of Stalinism (New York, 1989);Google Scholar Bugai, N. F., ed., Iosif Stalin - Laverentiiu Berii: “Ikh nado deportirovat'“; Dokumenty, fakty, kommentarii (Moscow, 1992);Google Scholar and Bugai, N. F., “K voprosu o deportatsii narodov SSSR v 30-40-kh godakh,” Istoriia SSSR, 1989, no. 6: 135-44.Google Scholar

71 Molot, 11 August 1943, 4.

72 Molot, 27July 1945, 1.

73 Scott, James, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven, 1990), 2.Google Scholar

74 On economic and other issues the questions raised at these gatherings are very similar to those of the 1930s as reported by Davies in Popular Opinion in Stalin’s Russia and Fitzpatrick in Everyday Stalinism. But the issue of collaboration is, of course, unique to the war and postwar periods.

75 RGASPI, f. 17, op. 88, d. 426,1. 98.

76 Ibid., 1. 149. Elsewhere in the city a worker asked, “Why are betrayers of die motherland returning [from Germany] and why are they free, instead of in Siberia?” Ibid.

77 TsDNI, f. 13, op.4, d. 259,1. 124.

78 Ibid., d. 313,1. 18. Someone at a workers’ club before a showing of “An Education of Feelings” (Vospitanie chuvstv), a war film among Stalin's favorites, said: “It would be more interesting to see how my comrades who stayed in occupied territory and were shipped off [to Siberia] are being treated there.” The party representative writing this report noted that because the lights were out he was unable to identify the person making this statement. Ibid., d. 393,1. 110.

79 Ibid., d. 259,1. 25.

80 Mariia S. Zhak remembered a joke about the lack of candidates during the elections; it compared the elections to God appearing before Eve and telling her, “Choose yourself a husband,” when, of course, Adam was the only choice. Mariia S. Zhak, interview, Rostov-on-Don, 3June 1995.

81 TsDNI, f. 13, op. 4, d. 259,1. 124.

82 Ibid. The report notes that “soldiers often spend the night at her place,” which sounds like a brothel. It does not explain why, if she worked for the German police, she was not already in jail or in exile. Another account stated that a “certain Pletnikov, who stayed in occupied territory and worked actively for the Germans,” tore down an election banner on the street and stated his discontent with Soviet rule, for which he was arrested. Ibid., 1. 25.

83 The French edition, entitled Solik, appeared in 1983 and the English edition three years later. Karol’s father was a successful Jewish businessman in Rostov before the 1917 Revolution. His family left for Poland after the revolution (Karol's modier was Polish). The younger Karol, who was sympathetic with the cause of socialism, returned as a teen to his father's hometown of Rostov when Nazi forces invaded western Poland in 1939. He returned to Poland in 1946 but shortly thereafter left for Paris.

84 Karol, Solik, 157.

85 Karol, Solik, 108, 157, 168, 282, 308-9, 312, 315. According to Karol, there was a rumor “once widely current among cossacks” that Stalin's real surname, Dzhugashvili, meant “son of ajew” in Georgian.

86 Mary M. Leder, My Life in Stalinist Russia: An American Woman Looks Back (Bloomington, 2001).

87 Leder, My Life in Stalinist Russia, 192-94. After the incident in the street with the cossack woman, Leder left Rostov and returned to Moscow. Her in-laws stayed behind, however, and both perished during the Germans’ occupation of the city. For an excellent account of the war years in a cossack village near Rostov, see Kozhina, Through the Burning Steppe.

88 Genadii Ermolenko, interview, Rostov-on-Don, 16 April 1995.

89 Ekaterina G. Karotskova, interview, Rostov-on-Don, 13 May 1995.

90 Svetlana Semenova, interview, Rostov-on-Don, 16 April 1995. Semenova also told about another aunt who purposely scraped her legs with salt and garlic to avoid being mobilized for work in Germany.

91 Oleg Pianiatsev, interview, Rostov-on-Don, 17 April 1995. Penal battalions had the toughest assignments at the front and, of course, a very high casualty rate. “It is a miracle he survived,” Pianiatsev added. Boterbloem cites the similar case of I. G. Tsvetkov, noting that in Kalinin oblast treatment of “alleged” collaborators was perceived as way too harsh. Boterbloem, Life and Death under Stalin, 56-57.

92 On the Germans reneging on this promise, see Dallin, German Rule in Russia.

93 Kuromiya, Freedom and Terror in the Donbas, 283.