Soviet Russians under Nazi Occupation
Fragile Loyalties in World War II

Drawing on archival sources and eyewitness accounts, this book explores Soviet Russians' experience of Nazi rule in German-occupied northwest Russia.

Johannes Due Enstad (Author)

9781108431668, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 19 September 2019

273 pages, 12 b/w illus. 2 maps
22.9 x 15.1 x 1.8 cm, 0.4 kg

'This is an excellent book, a model of historical research, clearly written, and interesting and provocative to boot. I strongly recommend it to anybody interested in the history of either the Soviet Union or the Second World War.' Paul Robinson, Irrussianality

In this compelling account of life and death in a Russian province under Nazi occupation, Johannes Due Enstad challenges received wisdom about Russian patriotism during World War II. With the benefit of hindsight, we know how hopelessly destructive Germany's war against the Soviet Union was. Yet ordinary Russians witnessing the advancing German forces saw things differently. For many of them, having lived through collectivization and Stalinist terror in the 1930s, the invasion created hopes of a better life without the Bolsheviks. German policies on land and church helped sustain those hopes for parts of the population. Drawing on Soviet and German archival sources as well as eyewitness accounts, memoirs, and diaries, Enstad demonstrates the impact of Nazi rule on the mostly peasant population of northwest Russia and offers a reconsideration of the relationship between the Soviet regime and its core Russian population at this crucial moment in their history.

Introduction
1. Life in the 1930s and the limits of Stalinist civilization
2. Hopes and fears: popular responses to the invasion
3. Facing annihilation
4. The ghost of hunger
5. 'More meat, milk, and bread than in the Stalinist Kolkhoz': life in the de-collectivized village
6. Religious revival and the Pskov Orthodox Mission
7. Relating to German and Soviet power
8. Hopes and fears, revisited: the end and aftermath of occupation
Conclusion.

Subject Areas: Second World War [HBWQ], European history [HBJD], Regional & national history [HBJ]