Return to the motherland : displaced Soviets in World War II and the Cold War / Seth Bernstein.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Bernstein, Seth, author.

Series:

Battlegrounds. Cornell studies in military history.

Cornell scholarship online.

Battlegrounds. Cornell studies in military history

Cornell scholarship online

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Return migrants--Soviet Union--Social conditions--20th century.

Return migrants.

Return migration--Social aspects--Soviet Union.

Return migration.

Cold War--Social aspects--Soviet Union.

Cold War.

World War, 1939-1945--Forced repatriation.

World War, 1939-1945.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (313 pages)

Place of Publication:

Ithaca : Cornell University Press, 2023.

Summary:

At the end of World War II, millions of people from Soviet lands were living as refugees outside the borders of the USSR. Most had been forced laborers and prisoners of war, deported to the Third Reich to work as racial inferiors in a crushing environment. This book reveals the secret history of repatriation, the details of the journey, and the new identities, prospects, and dangers for migrants that were created by the tumult of war. The book uses official and personal sources from declassified holdings in post-Soviet archives, more than one hundred oral history interviews, and transnational archival material.

Contents:

Introduction: Displaced in War and Peace

Workers from the East

Forced Labor Empire

Collaboration and Resistance

Liberated in a Foreign Land

Ambiguous Return

Repatriation and the Economics of Coerced Labor

Return to Policing

Unheroic Returns

Wayward Children of the Motherland

Return after Stalin

Conclusion: No One Is Forgotten, No One Is Forgiven.

Notes:

Also issued in print: 2023.

Description based on print version record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9781501767401

1501767402

9781501767418

1501767410

OCLC:

1336408078