Wartime suffering and survival : the human condition under siege in the blockade of Leningrad, 1941-1944 / Jeffrey K. Hass.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Hass, Jeffrey Kenneth, 1967- author.

Series:

Oxford scholarship online.

Oxford scholarship online

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Resilience (Personality trait)--Russia (Federation)--Saint Petersburg--History--20th century.

Resilience (Personality trait).

Survival--Russia (Federation)--Saint Petersburg--History--20th century.

Survival.

Saint Petersburg (Russia)--History--Seige, 1941-9144.

Saint Petersburg (Russia).

Physical Description:

1 online resource (440 pages) : illustrations (black and white, and colour), map (black and white).

Place of Publication:

New York, New York : Oxford University Press, [2021]

Summary:

During the 872-day siege of Leningrad from September 1941 to January 1944, civilians endured air raids, bread rations as low as 125 grams, food theft and speculation by opportunistic officials and shadow market traders, and death by starvation. As shocks of total war weaken institutions, desperate survival can compel violation of norms, and personal suffering can shatter long-held beliefs and practices. In 'Wartime Suffering and Survival', Jeffrey K. Hass uses the Blockade of Leningrad in World War II to explore the social practices and dynamics by which we cope or collapse. Using hundreds of personal accounts from diaries, recollections, police records, interviews, and state documents, Hass tells the story of how average Leningraders coped with the nightmares of war, starvation, and extreme uncertainty.

Contents:

Cover

Half-Title

Title

Copyright

Dedication

Contents

Tables

Pictures

Acknowledgments

Cursory Timeline of the Blockade of Leningrad

1. With Our Backs Against the Wall: Politics of Survival and Suffering

Who Are We? Survival, the Human Condition, and the Blockade of Leningrad

Our Themes

Framing the Blockade, War, the USSR, and Social Practice

The Stuff of Social Life and Survival: Habits, Anchors, and Fields of Being

Underneath It All: Sensations, Distance, and Empathy

Crystalized Meaning: Valences and Anchors

Crystalized Relations: Fields, "Economies," and Anchors

What of Power? Innovation and Reproduction, Compelled Rationality, and Tragic Agency

From Voices to Narratives: Our Data

Our Journey from Here

PART I: ORDER AND AUTHORITY: BREAKING AND MAKING THE RULES

2. Order Under Assault: Institutions and Authority, Opportunism and Desperation

Effervescent Blockade Agency: Institutional Duress, Insider Opportunism, and Shadow Markets

Food and Personnel, Capacity and Control: Roots of Authority Tested

Opportunism Inside the State

Blockade Markets and Shadow Exchange Unleashed: The Rynok

Coming to Terms with War: Negotiating Agency, Opportunism, and Authority

Remaking Internal Authority: Confronting Insider Opportunism and Shadow Supply

Remaking the Economic Order: Confronting Shadow Exchange

Support Amidst Subversion

Coda: Authority Wounded, but Still Alive and Kicking

3. Ties That Bind: Distance, Empathy, and Relations of Local Order

Local Empathy, Opportunism, and Contention: Social Distance and Survival

Perils of Kith and Kin: Navigating Temptation and Empathy, Contention and Compassion

Distant Strangers, Uncertain Empathy

From Cabbage to Cats . . . to Cannibalism: Symbolic Structures of "Food".

Expediencies and Challenges of Symbolic Innovations: Reclassifying "Food"

Inconceivable Food and Unspeakable Consumption: Cannibalism

Distance, Dignity, and Local Order

Coda: The Local Order of Things

PART II: DIFFERING EXPERIENCES AND UNEQUAL SURVIVAL: GENDER AND CLASS

4. Gendered Survival and Status: Women and Men in the Blockade

Shifting Gender Status: Caregiving, Breadseeking, and the Second Shift

Compelled by Habit and Duty: A Gendered Division of Blockade Labor

Worth, Status, and Critical Judgments

Civilian Men under Duress

Gendered Habits Strike Back: Anchors, Risks, Femininity, Re-.entrenchment

Risk and Re-.equilibration

Contested Adjustment and Blockade Intimacy

Reproduction via Challenge

Coda: Gender Eternal?

5. Durability of Class: Compelled Habits of Survival

Cultural Capital and Conflicted Survival: Contradictions of the Intelligentsia

Privilege and Insecurity

Intelligentsia versus Markets: Banality of Barter and Resentment of the Rynok

Pragmatism, Criticism, and Resignation: Blue-.Collar Workers

Reacting to Class Privilege: Justice, Resentment, and Pragmatism

Workers and Shadow Markets: Compelled Pragmatism, Tempered Criticism

Habits of Status and Authority: Enterprise and Organizational Managers

Class Under Siege

Coda: Class and the Blockade in the Classless Society

PART III: DARK SIDES OF SURVIVAL: LOSS, SUFFERING, AND TRAGIC AGENCY

6. Valence of the Dead: Expedience, Aesthetics, Opportunity, and Dignity

Fields of Power and Labor: Politics, Aesthetics, and Markets of Disposal

Conceptualizing, Counting, and Coping with Mass Death: Expediencies and the State

Political Authority and Aesthetics versus Physical Labor and Opportunity

Fields of Empathy, Compelled Pragmatism, and Moral Economies of Dignity

Bearing Witness to Death's Advance.

Compelled Calculation and Remorseful Rituals: Expediency, Opportunism, and Dignity

In the Shadow of the Leningrad Death

Coda: Fathers and Sons, the Living and the Dead

7. Questioning Suffering, Rethinking the World: Tragic Agency of Blockade Theodicies

Theodicy I: Causation, or Who and What Is to Blame?

Geopolitical Villains: The Germans, of Course . . . and Others?

Cold, Incompetent, or Unaccountable Authorities

Soviet/.Russian Culture and Egoistic Human Nature

Theodicy II: Contested Communities of Authentic Suffering and Dignity

The City Itself: To Stay or to Leave

Contested Communities of Authentic Suffering

Logics of War, Suffering, and Theodicy

Coda: Blockade Meaninglessness and Meaning

Conclusions Without Closure: Legacies and Lessons of the Blockade?

Not Over Yet: Postwar Legacies, Challenges, and Dreams

Beyond the Blockade

Lessons about Soviet Institutions, Practices, and Civilization

Lessons about the Rest of.Us

Last Coda

Notes

Bibliography

Index.

Notes:

Also issued in print: 2021.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

0-19-751429-4

0-19-751430-8

0-19-751428-6

OCLC:

1198088031