Demobilized Veterans in Late Stalinist Leningrad: Soldiers to Civilians 9781472590770, 9781474255967, 9781472590787

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Demobilized Veterans in Late Stalinist Leningrad

Demobilized Veterans in Late Stalinist Leningrad Soldiers to Civilians Robert Dale

Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

LON DON • OX F O R D • N E W YO R K • N E W D E L H I • SY DN EY

Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

50 Bedford Square London WC1B 3DP UK

1385 Broadway New York NY 10018 USA

www.bloomsbury.com BLOOMSBURY and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published 2015 Paperback edition first published 2017 © Robert Dale, 2015 Robert Dale has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Bloomsbury or the author. British Library Cataloguing-­in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN: HB: 978-1-4725-9077-0 PB: 978-1-3500-3123-4 ePDF: 978-1-4725-9078-7 ePub: 978-1-4725-9079-4

Library of Congress Cataloging-­in-Publication Data Dale, Robert, 1980– Demobilized veterans in late Stalinist Leningrad : soldiers to civilians / Robert Dale. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4725-9077-0 (hardback) — ISBN 978-1-4725-9078-7 (ePDF) — ISBN 978-1-4725-9079-4 (ePub) 1. World War, 1939–1945—Veterans—Soviet Union. 2. World War, 1939–1945—Veterans—Russia (Federation)—Saint Petersburg. 3. Soviet Union. Raboche-Krest’ianskaia Krasnaia Armiia—Demobilization—History—20th century. 4. Veterans—Russia (Federation)—Saint Petersburg—History—20th century. 5. Saint Petersburg (Russia)—History, Military—20th century. 6. World War, 1939–1945—Social aspects—Russia (Federation)—Saint Petersburg. 7. Saint Petersburg (Russia)—Social conditions—20th century. 8. Soviet Union—History—1925–1953. I. Title. D810.V42S686 2015 362.860947'2109044—dc23 2015007910 Typeset by RefineCatch Limited, Bungay, Suffolk

To Veronica

Contents List of Illustrations List of Tables Acknowledgements Glossary and Abbreviations Introduction 1 2 3 4 5 6

The Troops Come Home ‘Homes for Heroes’: Veterans and the Postwar Housing Crisis ‘As in battle – as in labour’: The Remobilization of Demobilized Veterans Wounds that Would not Heal: Disability, Health and Trauma Disorderly Demobilization: Veterans and Postwar Crime Demobilizing the Mind: Veterans, Politics and Memory

Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index

ix x xi xv 1 17 41 69 99 131 157 179 185 235 259

List of Illustrations 1. Veterans returning to Leningrad’s Baltic Station on 15 July 1945, TsGAKFFD-SPb Ar110406. Photographer David Trakhtenberg 2. Veterans returning to Leningrad’s Baltic Station on 15 July 1945, GAKFD/0-106426. Photographer David Trakhtenberg 3. Veterans returning to Leningrad’s Baltic Station on 15 July 1945, TsGAKFFD-SPb Ar99074. Photographer David Trakhtenberg 4. Returning soldiers receiving a more muted reception on 27 October 1945, TsGAKFFD-SPb, Ar27068 5. Soldiers arriving in Leningrad late in 1945, TsGAKKFD-SPb, Ar98996 6. Poster, Viktor Koretsky, As in battle – as in labour, 1948 7. Poster, Viktor Koretsky, We were victorious in battle – we will be victorious in labour, 1947 8. Poster, Viktor Koretsky, Be in the forefront everywhere! 1947 9. Newspaper illustration, A. Emel’ianova, ‘1944–1947’, Leningradskaia Pravda, 26 January 1947, p. 1

26 27 28 28 29 70 74 75 76

Image 1 is reproduced courtesy of the Russian State Archive of Cinema, Photography and Sound, Moscow. Images 2, 3, 4 and 5 are reproduced courtesy of the Russian State Archive of Cinema, Photography and Sound, St. Petersburg. Images 6 and 8 are reproduced with the permission of Ne Boltai! Collection. Image 7 is reproduced courtesy to AKG Images.

List of Tables 1. Demobilization figures in the city of Leningrad – gender breakdown and officers

2. Percentage of disabled veterans in employment or education by

37

disability grouping

111

oblast’ between 1945 and 1946 by quarter

135

3. Total number of crimes recorded in Leningrad and the Leningrad

Acknowledgements Red Army veterans and postwar Leningrad have been part of my mental world for over ten years. Over that time a number of institutions and countless people have lent their support, time and encouragement to the project, and without their enormous contribution it is doubtful whether this book would have been written. The idea to research the demobilization of Red Army veterans began to take shape in 2003/2004 whilst studying for a Master’s Degree at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London (SSEES UCL). Geoffrey Hosking was instrumental in encouraging me to pursue research, and helped develop an initial proposal. The idea of focusing on a case study of demobilization in Leningrad gradually took hold in 2004/2005 while studying Russian in St. Petersburg. The longer I spent in the city the more intriguing the unique postwar situation facing Leningraders became. Thanks to the incredible patience and dedication of Liubov Belikova, and her colleagues, I received first-­rate Russian language training, which has stood me in good stead ever since. Yet, had it not been for a chance encounter with Richard Bessel, a former teacher and expert on demobilization, my project would have taken a different direction. Richard’s research has been an important influence on my work, but his greatest contribution was to encourage me to undertake my doctoral work under the supervision of Catherine Merridale at Queen Mary, University of London (QMUL). My years at QMUL, when the foundations of this book were laid, were incredibly exciting and immensely rewarding, both personally and intellectually. Catherine Merridale was the perfect supervisor. It was a privilege to work with a scholar whose research interests coincided with my own. The precision and clarity of her prose, and the rigour of her research, remain an inspiration. Cathy’s dedication to her research students is remarkable. She has read draft after draft, offering advice and criticism with astounding rapidity, perfectly balancing criticism with encouragement. Cathy has been the biggest academic influence on my career, helping me learn how to formulate a crisp funding proposal and to write with greater verve and fluency. Dan Todman, my academic mentor, was an invaluable guide on how to approach academic life and offered insightful criticism of my research throughout. The expert tuition of Andreas Schönle, Anna Pilkington and Olga Makarova in QMUL’s Department of Russian helped hone my Russian. The friendship and sounding board provided by Alexandra Wachter, Daniel Furby, Henry Miller, Ed Naylor and Dion Georgiou made my time at QMUL even more stimulating and enjoyable. My examiners Stephen Lovell and Yoram Gorlizki were extremely positive about the thesis, suggesting ways of developing my argument and transforming it into a book. The research for this book would simply not have been possible without the financial support of a number of institutions. A doctoral award from the Arts and Humanities Research Council gave me the opportunity to undertake doctoral study in relative

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comfort, and to have the enviable luxury of a year in the archives in St. Petersburg and Moscow. An award from QMUL’s Stretton Fund allowed me to make an initial foray into the archives. A Dissertation Fellowship from the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation gave me the financial and intellectual breathing space to complete my thesis. A small research allowance from the School of Historical Studies while I was a Teaching Fellow at Newcastle University made it possible to return to St. Petersburg to examine files declassified at my request, to gather additional material and tie up loose ends. The process of turning the thesis into a publishable manuscript was completed whilst generously supported by a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship. The work on my new research project, combined with Stephen Lovell’s support and advice, allowed me to put the experience of Leningrad’s veterans into perspective. My new colleagues at Nottingham Trent University, particularly Bill Niven, were a source of encouragement as I edited final copy. I owe an enormous debt to all of the archivists and librarians in St. Petersburg, Vyborg and Moscow who assisted my research. Despite pressures of time and space in St. Petersburg’s reading rooms, and the financial pressures facing the city’s archival service, archivists consistently did their best for me. Nadezhda Cherepenina (TsGASPb), Natalia Bykova (TsGAIPD-SPb) and Elena Chuprova (LOGAV) all deserve a special mention in dispatches. All three went out of their way to entertain my hunches and share their own. Their help made the long hours of research more rewarding. The newspaper reading room at the Russian National Library, located in a building whose history is part of this story, almost became a home from home. A number of people in St. Petersburg made my research more productive and enjoyable. Natalia Zhitinskaia has been a faithful and unfailingly supportive friend ever since my first visit to the city. St. Petersburg Memorial and Viktor Beilin from the Elektrosila Benevolent Fund helped put me in contact with willing oral history respondents. I owe an even greater debt to those veterans who were prepared to spend several hours, sometimes longer, discussing uncomfortable aspects of their past. These interviews provided insights which simply could not have been gained from the archival record. I will never forget their hospitality, generosity of spirit or their remarkable stories. I can only hope that I have done their testimony justice. Tatiana Voronina, Ilya Utekhin, Natalia Danilova and Georgiy Ramazashvili offered criticism and advice in equal measure. Aleksandr Vakser, himself a veteran, directed me to important materials, even though our interpretations were likely to differ. Staff at GARF, RGASPI and the State Public History Library in Moscow all helped resolve problems at various stages of my research. In particular Vladimir Kozlov shared his team’s database of anti-Soviet agitation cases and offered helpful advice. The enthusiasm and encouragement of Elena Zubkova, who I met by chance in early 2013, gave me an impetus to finish the manuscript. I am particularly grateful to Mark Edele and Christopher Burton for sharing sections of their Ph.D. theses at an early stage of my research. I learnt much about Leningrad during and after the blockade through conversations with Siobhan Peeling, Elizabeth White and Anna Reid. Jeff Jones and Karl Qualls shared their thoughts about reconstruction, and helped put Leningrad’s housing crisis into context, as part of a panel I organized from the Anglo-American Conference of Historians at the Institute

Acknowledgements

xiii

of Historical Research in 2009. Over the years I have benefitted from the opportunity to discuss aspects of my research at conferences and seminars. I am indebted to panellists, participants and chairs for questions and comments which challenged my ideas, and forced me to rethink my position. In particular, the vigorous debate at a workshop exploring disappointment in the twentieth century at the Institut für Zeitgeschichte in Munich in December 2011 and the ‘Aftershocks: Post-Traumatic Cultures since the Great Patriotic War’ conference at the University of Copenhagen in May 2013 have left a deep imprint on this book. Mark Smith has supported my work, shared his research and challenged my assumptions ever since our time together at SSEES UCL. I am particularly indebted for his incisive comments on the parts of the book he read and commented on. Chris Dillon, Edgar Jones and Jonathan Waterlow also read and commented on chapters, and suggested important stylistic and conceptual improvements. Bloomsbury’s anonymous peer reviewers made valuable suggestions for improving the manuscript, and prompted further revisions. Rhodri Mogford and Emma Goode at Bloomsbury have been a model of efficiency, and have shepherded me through the process of seeing the manuscript into print. Erika Wolf and Anna Loginova helped traced several images. During my time covering his teaching at Newcastle University David Saunders became a great friend and benefactor, generously allowing me to raid the shelves of his library. Our regular discussions helped me determine what kind of book I wanted to write, and the direction of my future career. Martin Dusinberre, Felix Schultz and Joan Allen, also at Newcastle, went out of their way to make me feel part of the department. Shane O’Rourke and Richard Bessel gave me the opportunity to spend a year teaching at the University of York, during which David Moon and Simon Ditchfield were a source of wise counsel, and Oli Betts and Anthony Smart became good friends. Early versions of parts of the book, albeit within a different analytical framework, have appeared as ‘Rats and Resentment: The Demobilization of the Red Army in PostWar Leningrad (1945–1950)’, Journal of Contemporary History, 45:1 (2010), and ‘The Valaam Urban Myth and Fate of Leningrad’s Disabled Veterans’, Russian Review, 72:2 (2013). I am grateful to editors and publishers for their permission to reproduce sections of these articles here. I owe an incalculable debt to family and friends. My parents encouraged my interest in history and love of reading throughout my teenage years, even when it meant trying to prop open a book with the sauce bottles at the dining table. Tristan Alder, Christopher Copeland, Mark Grewer, Ian Hall, Brendan O’Donovan, David Sladen, Greg Thurland, Ben Tilley, Roger de Toy, Louise Whitney and Peter Wood have all had to learn ways of moving conversation away from the history of Red Army veterans, demobilization and Leningrad. Jon, Vicky, Rachel and Kimberley Reene always succeed in taking my mind off work and making me laugh, even though I don’t see them as often as I should. Finally, and most importantly, I must pay tribute to my wife Veronica who has been with me every step of the way on the long process of completing this book. We met just days before I left for a year in Russia, but thanks to Veronica’s patience and humour our relationship blossomed. She has never once questioned why I would want to spend my life in archives, libraries or surrounded by books. She has endured summers without holidays, months of enforced separation, my bad moods, and ever growing stacks of

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books and paper in our home with remarkable good grace. The arrival of our son Joseph half-­way through finishing the manuscript gave me the sense of perspective and the motivation I needed to get over the finishing line. Veronica’s contribution to this book has been enormous, from booking travel to looking things up in my notes while I am away. I dedicate this book to her.

Glossary and Abbreviations Blat.  Literally pull, semi-­corrupt practices. Blokadnik (plural blokadniki).  Blockade survivors, usually applied to people who lived through the entire blockade in Leningrad. Fil’tratsiia.  Filtration. The process of screening of POWs and repatriates for antiSoviet elements. Frontovik (plural frontoviki).  Frontline combat soldier. FSB.  Federal Security Service. GARF.  State Archive of the Russian Federation Gorispolkom:  Executive committee of the city soviet. Gulag.  Main Administration of Camps, used to refer to the concentration camp system. Kolkhoz  Collective farm. Kolkhoznik (plural kolkhozniki).  Member of a collective farm. Kommunalka (plural kommunalki).  Communal apartment. Komsomol.  Communist Youth League, the youth organization of the Communist Party. Kontuziia.  Concussion or contusion, war trauma. Lengorispolkom.  Executive committee of the Leningrad city soviet. Lenoblispolkom.  Executive committee of the Leningrad oblast’ soviet. LIETTIN.  Leningrad Research Institute of Work Fitness and the Organization of Work for the Disabled. LONITO.  Leningrad Department of the Scientific Engineering-Technical Society. NKVD.  People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs. Obkom.  Oblast’ party committee. Oblast’.  Province or region. Administrative level below Union Republic. Oblispolkom.  Oblast’ soviet executive committee. Obshchezhitie.  Hostel or dormitory. Osoaviakhim.  Union of Societies of Assistance to Defence and Aviation-Chemical Construction. POW:  Prisoner of War. Propiska (plural propiski).  Residence permits. Raion.  District. Administrative level below oblast’ or city. Raikom.  District party committee. Raspredbiuro.  Office for the calculation and distribution of labour forces. RGANI.  State Archive of Contemporary History. RGASPI.  Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History. RSFSR.  Russian Republic. Samo-kritika.  Self-­criticism.

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Glossary and Abbreviations

Sovnarkom.  Council of People’s Commissars, chief organ of central government. Sovkhoz (plural sovkhoz).  State owned farm. Sovkhoznik (plural sovkhozniki).  Member of a state owned farm. Spetssoobshchenie.  Special communications. Spetssvodki.  Special summary reports. SVAG.  Soviet Military Administration in Germany. Svodki.  Summary reports. Trudoustroistvo:  Work arrangement or work placement. TsGAIPD-SPb.  Central State Archive of Historical-Political Documents St. Petersburg. TsGAKFFD-SPb.  Central State Archive of Film, Photographic and Phonographic Documents St. Petersburg. TsGALI-SPb.  Central State Archive of Literature and Art St. Petersburg. TsGANTD-SPb.  Central State Archive of Scientific and Technical Documentation St. Petersburg. TsGA-SPb.  Central State Archive of St. Petersburg. Uchastnik voiny.  War participant. Upravkhoz.  Building administrator. Vmeniaemost’ (adj. Vmeniaemyi).  Criminal responsibility. Voenkomat (plural Voenkomaty).  Military registration offices. Voennaia kontuziia.  Military concussion or contusion, a form of war trauma. Vozdushnaia kontuziia.  Air concussion or contusion, a form of shellshock or war trauma. VTEK (plural VTEKi).  Medical labour expert commissions, responsible for disability classification. Zabota.  Care and attention. Zaiavlenie (plural zaiavleniia).  Annoucement, petition. Zemlianka (plural zemlianki).  Temporary housing in dugouts and other makeshift shelters. Zhaloba (plural Zhaloby).  Formal letter of complaint.

Introduction

Leningraders spent 8 May 1945, like the rest of the world, impatiently waiting for final confirmation of German defeat. Crowds gathered around public loudspeakers on the streets in anticipation of the moment they had dreamed of for four long years. On Nevskii Prospekt, the city’s main thoroughfare, film and sound crews set-­up recording equipment near the famous Eliseevsky store to capture the crowd’s reaction. There were, however, frustrating delays. The official announcement of Germany’s unconditional surrender was announced at 2.10 am on 9 May 1945.1 The news, when it finally came, spread rapidly across the city and the Leningrad region. Many Leningraders had been too restless to sleep. Some listened in bed to their radios to avoid missing the news. Others gathered back on the streets around public loudspeakers, cheering loudly after the announcement.2 The news, although expected, still came as a shock, and provided a cathartic emotional release. Irina Dunaevskaia, a translator in the Red Army, recorded her sense of disbelief, tears of joy and blissful happiness in her diary: ‘That’s it! We won’t kill and cripple anymore! An unbelievable amount of heavy filth has built up in my soul in little under four years – therefore all the tears.’3 Celebrations soon began. Overnight propaganda and agitation officials had made frantic preparations to mark what would be declared a national holiday. The streets of Leningrad and provincial towns were decorated with flags, slogans and portraits.4 Political meetings were hastily organized for the city’s workers and the region’s collective farmers, who began gathering in workshops and village clubs to hear political speeches from 5.00 am.5 Approximately 1,300 students attended a meeting in the main hall of Leningrad State University, some assembling from 3.00 am.6 Once the political rituals had been fulfilled the music, dancing and drinking could begin. Before long, crowds thronged the city centre. Soldiers, sailors and civilians gathered on Nevskii Prospekt and in Palace Square. Across the city raucous celebrations continued late into the night, culminating in a firework display over the Neva. For a brief moment Leningrad was united by victory. A top secret NKVD public opinion report recorded the patriotic comments made by crowd members, and the expressions of joy recorded in letters intercepted by the military censor. Crowd members praised their leaders, and the unity of the front and rear. Professor V. N. Miasishchev, for example, a leading neuro-­scientist, was recorded declaring that: ‘Even the most farsighted people could not have predicted such a decisive outcome to the war. And only one, Stalin, saw that end from the very beginning . . .’7 Victory Day provided an emotional release and enthusiasm that few Leningraders would ever forget. As Irina Dunaevskaia wrote,

2

Demobilized Veterans in Late Stalinist Leningrad

‘Leningrad is rejoicing! Flags. Meetings. Henceforth 9 May will become THE MAIN CELEBRATION OF OUR GENERATION!!!’8 The euphoria, however, barely masked the appalling human, social and economic costs of victory.9 The war on the Eastern Front between 1941 and 1945, known in the Soviet Union as the Great Patriotic War, was one of the most violent and destructive conflicts in history. An estimated twenty-­seven million Soviet citizens lost their lives, the result was a demographic catastrophe. Approximately 75 per cent of wartime deaths were men, creating a postwar gender imbalance. In 1946, for example, there were ten million fewer men aged twenty to forty-­four than in 1940. In addition to the millions of widows and orphans, there were millions of refugees, evacuees and displaced people. Whole cities were left in ruins. Over 1,700 towns and more than 70,000 villages were totally destroyed.10 The war tore the material and social fabric of Soviet society apart. Nowhere was this more apparent than in Leningrad and the surrounding countryside. The Siege of Leningrad, known locally as the Blockade (Blokada), was a catastrophe for the city and its people. The official death toll, cited at the Nuremberg trials, of 632,253 deaths as a result of starvation and associated illness was almost certainly an underestimate.11 Given the flaws in official statistics historians have suggested a figure approaching a million deaths.12 Regardless of the precise total, no city in modern history has ever suffered a greater loss of human life. Leningrad’s death toll was more than ten times that in Hiroshima.13 The physical fabric of the city and the social fabric of families and communities were severely damaged. Leningraders were on the frontlines of the war, and understood the terrible costs of modern total warfare better than most Soviet citizens. Scrape away the public celebration, and it was clear that blockade survivors (blokadniki) were physically and mentally exhausted by one of the most traumatic civilian experiences of the entire war. On that same morning of 9 May, hundreds of thousands of Leningraders serving in Red Army units scattered across Eastern and Central Europe were also celebrating victory. In some units peace came as a surprise. One soldier recalled in his memoirs his confusion at the military salute which heralded victory. He momentarily mistook the unexpected shouting and shooting as a German attack.14 Elsewhere the news had been anticipated for some time, and partying had begun several days earlier.15 Soldiers celebrated in time-­honoured ways: songs were sung, weapons were fired in the air, and vast quantities of alcohol were consumed. Yet not all soldiers marked victory in the same way. Some frontline soldiers fresh from battle were too exhausted for wild excess. Large numbers of injured soldiers spent Victory Day in military hospitals. Boris Mikhailov, for example, awoke on 9 May in a hospital ward surrounded by female shouts and laughter. As he started vomiting a nurse brought him a bowl and whispered into his ear that the war was over. Moments later a soldier in a neighbouring bed passed away.16 Confined to their beds many soldiers were in no condition, and deprived of any opportunity, for carousing. For many soldiers pride and joy in victory were balanced by other emotions. After the brutal fighting of the war’s final stages soldiers at last had an opportunity to reflect quietly on the deaths of fallen comrades, and their own wartime suffering. For soldiers, like civilians, the cathartic release of Victory Day, 9 May 1945, was counterbalanced by their own experience of the terrible costs of industrialized warfare. Combatants who survived the frontline carnage had witnessed and endured

Introduction

3

terrible things. They understood the horrors of war viscerally, and must have wondered what their families and loved ones back home had endured, and what would await them on their return. After years of exposure to mass death and extreme violence, returning home and rebuilding an ordinary civilian life must have seemed almost impossible. The prospect of returning home, however, was still somewhat in the future. Victory Day was a brief moment which appeared to unite soldiers and civilians in celebration, a ritual of national unity marking the transition from war to peace. However, this sense of collective unity was largely illusory. Photographs of soldiers and civilians cheering together on the streets, or dancing arm in arm in Leningrad’s Palace Square created the impression of the unity of the front and rear. In practice, most civilians and soldiers were separated by large distances, had little idea when they might be reunited and frequently had little communication with each other. The Soviet state and the Red Army, unlike their allies, had not released demobilization plans, or even vague indications when they might do so. Victory Day is usually understood as the war’s end, and a key turning point in Soviet history. The moment of celebration and emotional release was welcome, but for many soldiers the war was far from over on 9 May 1945. Approximately ninety Soviet divisions, totalling 1.5 million soldiers would shortly embark on the long and exhausting journey east to fight Japan.17 In the months and years following May 1945 large numbers of Soviet soldiers would be deployed to fight quasi civil wars in newly conquered borderlands in Western Ukraine and the Baltics. Most of the opposition was eliminated by the end of 1948, but isolated fighting continued into the 1950s.18 For these and other soldiers the threat of death and mutilation remained a serious risk. On 9 May 1945 Tamara Chumakova was serving in a unit disarming landmines on the Leningrad front. The work was exhausting and extremely dangerous. Between April 1944 and September 1945 over 329 of Tamara’s comrades were killed. Her war would not be over until freed from this work. Many soldiers did not consider their war to be over truly until they were fully demobilized.19 When politicians, generals, social scientists, economists and historians deploy the term ‘demobilization’ they often have very different processes in mind. Demobilization is usually defined as either: the institutional and bureaucratic processes by which military formations are dissolved following major conflicts, the process by which soldiers are released from the military at the end of a contractual period of service, or more generally the ways in which societies draw down war efforts and adapt to peace.20 At the outset it is worth clarifying my use of the term demobilization. The process by which the wartime Red Army was dismantled is only part of the story this book explores. Although the book’s first chapter examines how military units were dissolved, how soldiers were transported home and released from their military obligations, my understanding of ‘demobilization’ is wider. Demobilization was more than mobilization in reverse. I use demobilization to mean a more complicated and longer term process by which soldiers readjusted to ordinary life in the months and years following their release from armed service. The experience of combat and the wartime culture of the Red Army fundamentally reshaped soldiers’ identities and sense of self. The disruption to veterans’ careers, family life and personal circumstances would take years to resolve.

4

Demobilized Veterans in Late Stalinist Leningrad

Demobilization, therefore, was a social, economic, cultural and psychological process, as well as a military and bureaucratic one. Demobilization was not simply an event in veterans’ lives, but a complex process by which they readjusted and readapted to ordinary civilian lives following a destabilizing and disorientating war. The terms demobilized soldier, veteran and ex-­serviceman/ex-­servicewoman are used interchangeably throughout the book, to refer to any soldier who had served in the Red Army during the Great Patriotic War, in any capacity, even for relatively short periods, and who was subsequently demobilized. This deliberately broad definition reflects the remarkably diverse nature of veterans: men and women of all ages and social backgrounds. It encompasses not just the military experiences of frontline combat soldiers ( frontoviki), but also those of ancillary forces, disabled soldiers, former prisoners of war (POWs) and female medical orderlies. I avoid the use of the term war participant (uchastnik voiny) since it rarely appears in documents from the late 1940s or early 1950s. The term started to be used widely about a decade after the war’s end, but only enjoyed widespread currency in the Brezhnev era. The definition of war participant that emerged in these years was narrower than the late Stalinist definition of veteran. So by the end of the 1970s many people awarded medals in the immediate wake of war were unable to call themselves war participants. This book is about the complicated processes by which soldiers and civilians were brought back into contact with each other. After years of separation, demobilization returned soldiers to their families, friends and communities. Yet it did not necessarily unite soldiers and civilians, despite widespread hopes to the contrary. Demobilization in Leningrad revealed many of the fractures and fault lines created by the war, but temporarily obscured by Victory Day. Turning soldiers back into civilians brought a complicated process of negotiation between state and society, and individuals and collectives to the surface of society. In general, historians have devoted greater attention to questions of how wars begin, and how they are fought, than the complex ways in which societies manage the transition from war to peace in the aftermath of conflict. Demobilization is often treated as part of the backdrop to postwar reconstruction, or sometimes a concluding chapter drawing a line under soldiers’ wartime experiences. Yet it deserves closer scrutiny. Ensuring that veterans quickly became productive members of society was a matter of great economic, social and political importance to postwar societies. Throughout the twentieth century, in the wake of the violence of modern industrialized warfare, demobilizing mass conscript armies proved exceptionally difficult. The handling of demobilization influenced the lives of veterans, their families and whole societies. It became an important moment of negotiation and contingency between veterans, local communities and nation states, which reveals a great deal about how societies recover from war. This book addresses two interrelated questions. How, and how successfully, were veterans reintegrated into civilian society and turned into ordinary citizens in Leningrad and the Leningrad region during the late Stalinist period? The focus throughout the book is on the range and breadth of Leningrad’s veterans’ experiences as they attempted to resume ordinary civilian lives. As well as the successes of demobilization, the book pays particular attention to the problems of readjusting to civilian life in the most unpromising of social and economic circumstances. The

Introduction

5

complicated processes by which veterans found housing and employment, how they dealt with physical and psychological injuries, and acclimatized to new postwar realities reveals a great deal about the texture of life in postwar Leningrad and the surrounding countryside. The progress, or lack of it, in turning soldiers back into civilians in Leningrad reveals a great deal about the continuing impact of war upon the men and women who fought it, and had serious implications for Leningrad’s, and by implication the Soviet Union’s postwar recovery. Although veterans, and the long-­term impact of war upon their lives, are at the centre of this book, so are veterans’ constant interaction with families, civilian Leningraders, officials, bureaucrats and municipal authorities. Exploring how demobilization was handled at the local level takes us into the micro-­history of postwar Leningrad and its rural hinterland; into how the experience of demobilization was shaped by interactions with officials in administrative settings, by the support of family and friends, with fellow Leningraders in workplaces, domestic settings and public space. Although the legal and administrative framework for demobilization, welfare and medical support was set by the central party-­state in Moscow, local authorities lower down the hierarchy had a remarkable degree of flexibility in implementing and controlling demobilization. Veterans’ prospects of becoming ‘ordinary’ civilians varied enormously across the Soviet Union. The challenges of demobilization were not the same in, for example, Stalingrad, Vladivostok or Chelyabinsk. Detailed local case studies of demobilization and the fate of returning veterans are beginning to reveal that there were many experiences of homecoming, and enrich our understanding of late Stalinist society. In exploring the transition of Leningrad’s veterans from soldier to civilian this book seeks to challenge a number of well established orthodoxies about Red Army veterans, their demobilization and their postwar trajectories. In the pages that follow I argue against many of the commonly accepted ‘truths’ about Red Army veterans, which have become ingrained in the wider historical consciousness and routinely repeated in the wider literature. Although there was much that was impressive about the Red Army’s demobilization, the reintegration of former soldiers into peacetime civilian society was anything but a smooth transition. In the late Stalinist period demobilized veterans, on the evidence of Leningrad and the Leningrad region, were rarely a privileged élite who derived material benefit from wartime military service. Veterans’ theoretical entitlements did not necessarily translate into better jobs, roomier apartments, high-­ quality medical care or advancement within the ranks of the postwar party. Leningrad’s veterans, like everybody else, were caught in a scramble for jobs, housing and healthcare. This book also argues against the highly influential late Stalinist propaganda image of veterans as hard-­working, conscientious, socially active, politically loyal individuals, who were largely unaffected and undamaged by horrific wartime experiences. Although Leningrad’s veterans were remarkably adaptable and extraordinarily flexible in the face of the many obstacles that complicated their transition to civilian life, many veterans were disappointed, even disillusioned, by their postwar fates, and resentful of their treatment by state functionaries. While some veterans openly expressed opinions which were interpreted as anti-Soviet agitation, many more veterans were disengaged or disinterested by formal politics, focusing instead on making improvements to their own personal circumstances. Other veterans were traumatized by their wartime

6

Demobilized Veterans in Late Stalinist Leningrad

experiences, disorientated by demobilization, and unable to make a successful transition from soldier to civilian. Many veterans did not become the model citizens celebrated in the press, novels, posters and film. However, they were not on the whole brutalized by their experiences. Some veterans who did not resume ordinary lives were drawn towards the black market, speculation and crime, but even a society as deeply affected by war as postwar Leningrad was not swamped by a wave of trained killers on the rampage. Despite the critical importance of the Red Army’s demobilization in shaping postwar Soviet society, it has until relatively recently been overlooked as a subject of serious research. Demobilization is often treated as a footnote to the Soviet war effort, briefly mentioned in general surveys of the period, but there have been few attempts to assess the effects of war upon veterans’ future lives. The first attempt at studying the Red Army’s demobilization was made by V. N. Donchenko in an article published in 1970, which set the parameters for discussing demobilization for years to come. Donchenko’s central argument was that returning ex-­servicemen offered the solution to postwar labour shortages, by swelling the ranks of the industrial and agricultural workforces and local party organizations, which provided veterans with an opportunity for upwards social mobility.21 In presenting veterans as highly skilled and motivated exemplary citizens, in terms which differed little from the propaganda of the immediate postwar period, Soviet research helped reinforce official myths. Prior to the ‘archival revolution’ Western historians, although acknowledging difficulties, broadly accepted that veterans were rapidly and successfully reintegrated into the workforce and that they enjoyed a privileged position in postwar society. Veterans, it was argued, were an upwardly mobile group promoted to administrative and managerial positions in factories, offices and collective farms. Many enjoyed relative freedom of movement, privileged access to education and greater opportunity to join the party.22 Of course, much of this was true and has been confirmed by the opening of the archives, which are dominated by reports addressing the official priorities of demobilization, re-­employment and reintegration into party structures. Unsurprisingly, many studies continue to argue that veterans were beneficiaries of the postwar reordering of Soviet society.23 The persistence of this interpretation, in part, reflected the position of late Stalinism as a neglected period of Soviet history. Stalinism was once viewed as a continuous period stretching from Stalin’s ascent to power in the late 1920s until his death in March 1953. Stalin’s last years were considered the apotheosis of totalitarian control, rather than a discrete period, and were of interest to only a handful of historians working on the period’s high politics, and journalists or diplomats with firsthand experience of the period.24 Late Stalinism was regarded as, ‘a kind of bleak desert separating two fertile battlegrounds: on the one side Stalin’s rise, industrialization, collectivization, the purges and the high drama of the Second World War; on the other the succession struggle, de-Stalinization and Khrushchev’s thaw’.25 This view is no longer tenable. Since the so-­called archival revolution the history of late Stalinism has been thoroughly re-­written. Both the history of high politics and the everyday experience of ordinary citizens have been thoroughly reassessed.26 Historians have asked new questions, and examined new thematic areas, ranging from youth cultures and housing, to healthcare and corruption.27

Introduction

7

The renewed interest in late Stalinism also generated greater awareness of the centrality of demobilization to postwar reconstruction. Elena Zubkova, who is credited with single-­handedly resurrecting interest in the late Stalinist period, has highlighted the difficulties faced by demobilized veterans in attempting to rebuild civilian lives. Zubkova stressed that veterans were an important social group, whose experience shaped the postwar atmosphere, and were critical to understanding the period’s social history.28 Amir Weiner has written persuasively about the sense of assertiveness and confidence that the war generated amongst veterans. Weiner’s research is not primarily an examination of the difficulties of demobilization or postwar adaptation, although it makes an important contribution to understanding how war reshaped the ideology, beliefs and practices of the Stalinist regime. In his study of postwar Vinnitsa, veterans emerge as a powerful and assertive group who dominated the local party.29 While this had important implications for Soviet history, the shifts discerned in Vinnitsa were not necessarily typical of Soviet society. The chapter devoted to demobilization in Ivan’s War, Catherine Merridale’s acclaimed social history of the Red Army, provides an eloquent survey of demobilization. Merridale’s understanding of how the violence of the Great Patriotic war shaped soldiers’ subsequent lives adds a different perspective. Trauma and the psychological difficulties of return, as one would expect of an expert on trauma, are more sharply focused than in any other study.30 Beate Fieseler’s research has revealed much about the terrible plight faced by disabled veterans, the most disadvantaged and neglected group of former soldiers.31 Recent studies of Soviet partisans, women on the frontline and late Stalinist youth all deal with aspects of demobilization as experienced by sub-­groups of veterans with their own particular experience of readjusting to civilian life.32 These wider studies, despite their valuable contributions, are unable to devote the space and attention to demobilization that its complexity and importance deserves. The first book-­length study of Soviet Second World War veterans, Mark Edele’s landmark study, was not published until 2008. This book, and a number of supporting articles, firmly put veterans and their demobilization on the research agenda, and provide the most detailed, authoritative and rounded portrayal of Soviet veterans to date.33 Edele traces the emergence of veterans as a social group and movement over a period of nearly fifty years. He re-­examines the formal demobilization process, explores the circumstances of veterans’ postwar readjustment in the immediate aftermath of war, charts attempts to create an organized veterans’ movement in the mid-1950s, and explores the history of this movement and entitlement group until the collapse of the Soviet Union. It is a study that is as ambitious in its chronological and geographical scope as it is impressive in the range of archival materials deployed. The impression of demobilization derived from central archives and official reports, however, offers just one way of looking at Soviet veterans’ experience of demobilization. Demobilized Veterans in Late Stalinist Leningrad, the first study of demobilization in Leningrad in any language, offers a different perspective on veterans’ postwar transition. A local case study, centring on a region with an extreme wartime experience, was almost bound to reveal a different version from the national narrative. Local and national records and reports framed the pressures and challenges of postwar adaptation very differently. The focus on the period from 1945 to 1953, the most intensive period of transition, also

8

Demobilized Veterans in Late Stalinist Leningrad

casts aspects of demobilization in a different light. In these years, veterans were not yet a cohesive social group united by entitlements, collective interests, a shared sense of generational identity, or an organized veterans’ movement. Yet veterans’ experiences in these years frequently shaped their attitudes, behaviour and lives for decades to come. While some veterans enjoyed improved social mobility in the long term, in the short to medium term the experience of demobilization rarely felt like a step up the social ladder. This tight chronological focus is also a way of dealing with what we might call the ‘disappearing veteran problem’. The longer veterans had to reintegrate, the harder it becomes to trace their reintegration. By the end of the period veterans, having largely succeeded in becoming civilians, are increasingly difficult to discern from other members of society in the archival record. The concentration on the period 1945 to 1953, then, allows a detailed and richly textured picture of the challenges of readjustment to be assembled, which would have been harder, if not impossible, to piece together over a longer time period. Leningrad is a unique vantage point from which to examine attempts to turn veterans into civilians. Demobilization in Leningrad and its rural periphery, a society in which the shadow of mass death was every present, was anything but a return to normality. Leningrad’s veterans were returning to a community divided by the legacy of wartime violence rather than united by suffering. Conditions in the city and the surrounding countryside were not typical of a wider Soviet experience, but rather an extreme example of the violence and destructiveness of modern industrialized warfare. Few Soviet or European cities confronted a postwar legacy as traumatic as that of Leningrad. The ‘nine hundred days’ of blockade left a permanent imprint on the city, its residents and the surrounding region. The blockade, a unique local wartime experience, heavily influenced veterans’ postwar readjustment, but not necessarily in ways which might be anticipated. On one hand, Leningrad’s capacity to reintegrate returning soldiers was severely impaired by the traumatic legacy of the blockade. The damage done to urban and rural infrastructure created a housing crisis and destabilized the local labour market making it particularly complicated to provide veterans with work and housing. Former soldiers were often caught up in a desperate scramble for living space, employment, welfare assistance and medical treatment. As ordinary citizens were on the frontlines for much of the Great Patriotic War, veterans did not enjoy a monopoly on claims to special treatment and enhanced social status. Veterans’ theoretical entitlements were often in direct competition with those extended to blockade survivors and re-­evacuees. In Leningrad, perhaps more than any other region civilians could claim an equality of sacrifice with, and even superiority over former soldiers. Although returning to a society devastated and traumatized by total warfare brought additional complexities, on the other hand there were aspects of Leningrad’s tragic wartime experience which facilitated greater understanding between civilians and former soldiers. Veterans of twentieth-­century warfare routinely felt alienated from societies, which they believed could not begin to understand the reality of combat and soldiers’ suffering. But in Leningrad, returning veterans encountered a society better informed about what soldiers had been through. Paradoxically, the prospects of creating a stable accommodation between civilians and ex-­servicemen were brighter amidst Leningrad’s rubble and mass graves than in a location less affected by the war.

Introduction

9

The experiences of Red Army veterans returning to or arriving in Leningrad, however, have largely been overshadowed by the horrors of the blockade. While there have been studies of the memory of blockade, studies of monuments and myths, of postwar reconstruction, of urban infrastructure, and the role of the working class in industrial recovery, there have been no previous studies of the postwar readjustment of Leningrad’s veterans. In contrast to several studies of re-­evacuation, historians have had relatively little to say about how the men and women who fought in the Red Army rebuilt their lives amidst the chaos of postwar Leningrad.34 Alexander Vakser’s landmark study of postwar Leningrad provides an invaluable insight into everyday life, living standards, transport, healthcare, infrastructure and urban administration, but it has little to say about the plight of Leningrad’s veterans, and the difficulties of demobilization against the backdrop of mass death.35 The history of postwar Leningrad has been told in almost complete isolation from the surrounding Leningrad region. Likewise, histories of the reconstruction of war-­ damaged cities and urban life have often been written without sustained reference to their rural periphery.36 This book, however, takes the original approach of interweaving the stories of demobilization in the city and the Leningrad region. In Leningrad, like many places across Europe, war collapsed the distinctions between the urban and rural. The famous wartime photographs of the central St. Isaac’s Square planted with cabbages and cows being herded past the Winter Palace may have become visual clichés, but they capture the growing interdependence of city and village. The immediate postwar years were a period of extraordinary mobility across the Soviet Union, but particularly in north-­west Russia. Veterans, their families and other Leningraders moved between the city and countryside, and vice versa, with ease and regularity. Some veterans lived beyond the city limits, but worked within them. Others regularly visited the city to shop, sell agricultural produce, or take advantage of the city’s cultural infrastructure. Disabled veterans from across the Leningrad region, and even further afield, gravitated towards the city in the hope of obtaining better financial, material and medical assistance. Postwar problems, such as rising crime, spanned city and countryside, with newly arrived rural migrants drifting towards crime in the city, and urban veterans committing crimes in vulnerable rural communities. In the immediate postwar years the city and its hinterland were so interdependent that it is almost impossible to analyse one without the other. The importance of Leningrad as a case-­study of mass demobilization goes beyond the city’s extraordinary wartime story. As the Soviet Union’s second city, Leningrad remained at the centre of both Russian and Soviet postwar history. Although Blair Ruble has argued that the blockade may have led to a provincialization of the city, Leningrad was anything but a forgotten backwater.37 The city’s postwar history was closely interwoven with the course of late Stalinist high politics. Key moments in national political history, such as the opening salvos of the Zhdanovshchina in 1946 and the Leningrad Affair of 1949, as discussed in Chapter 6, had their geographical loci in Leningrad and would provide the political backdrop to veterans’ readjustment. How these moments of local and national political turmoil impinged on veterans’ lives reveals something particular about the progress of demobilization. Leningrad’s status as a leading centre of scientific research, particularly in the field of medical science as

10

Demobilized Veterans in Late Stalinist Leningrad

explored in Chapter 4, provides a unique perspective on demobilization. The presence of academic institutions undertaking research in the fields of prosthetics, military psychiatry and the employability of the war-disabled cast the difficulties of disabled veterans’ postwar readjustment into sharper focus. Leningrad, despite wartime deprivation, depopulation and devastation, remained one of the most economically and politically important cities in the Soviet Union, second only to Moscow. The city proudly boasted a unique cultural tradition, Revolutionary heritage, and the newly conferred prestige of Hero City. While the history of the Leningrad oblast’ has often been obscured by that of the city, it was amongst the most economically important regions of the Soviet Union. Before the war the region had boasted a thriving industrial sector, with many enterprises of national economic importance. The region’s richness in natural resources, particularly construction materials, ensured that it played a critical role in local and national reconstruction efforts. The opportunity to contribute to Leningrad’s phoenix-­like rebirth and the opportunities for work and housing in a depopulated city made Leningrad an especially attractive destination for demobilized veterans. More ex-­ service personnel were demobilized in Leningrad than in any other major Soviet city. By 31 July 1947, little over two years since the start of mass demobilization, 268,378 veterans were demobilized in the city.38 By the beginning of January 1947 there were an additional 53,334 disabled veterans in the city.39 In the months and years that followed their demobilization tens of thousands of further veterans were drawn to Leningrad. This remarkably rapid influx of veterans played an important role in shaping the region’s recovery. In 1945 Leningrad’s population remained less than a third of its prewar level, and by 1947 it was still over a million citizens lower than in 1941. Veterans therefore became an important and highly prominent presence.40 Leningrad’s former soldiers were resuming their civilian lives in a city and region of national economic, social and cultural significance, somewhere of importance for the study of late Stalinist society, but also of importance for understanding the challenges of postwar re-­adaptation more generally. Drawing wider conclusions about the fate of veterans across Soviet Russia and the Soviet Union, or drawing definitive conclusions about late Stalinist society, on the basis of a local study, even a city and region at the centre of Soviet economics, politics, culture and medicine, is fraught with problems. The experience of Leningrad and its rural periphery was anything but typical. The unique challenges of demobilizing so many veterans in a society devastated and traumatized by war, but which remained at the centre of Soviet life, are what makes this study so fascinating and valuable. Indeed, one of the main arguments this book advances is that local factors played an important part in shaping soldiers’ postwar transitions. Demobilization was not a monolithic process uniformly implemented across Soviet Russia, let alone the Soviet Union. Indeed, Leningrad’s officials, planners and politicians were often more radical in their demands on veterans than legislation and regulations demanded. Since success in turning soldiers into civilians varied enormously across Soviet space other local case studies, particularly of cities and regions far beyond the frontlines, are necessary to further interrogate official propaganda myths. However, on the basis of this study of demobilization in Leningrad and the Leningrad region late Stalinism emerges as a

Introduction

11

protracted period of postwar transition, throughout which the tensions, divisions and conflicts created by veterans’ demobilization were rarely far from the surface of society. Although the Stalinist state had made enormous progress in the transition from war to peace by the beginning of 1948, including largely completing mass demobilization, ending rationing and conducting a currency revaluation, the war continued to impinge upon veterans’ lives. Despite official pronouncements about a postwar recovery, veterans were acutely aware that demobilization did not mean a return to normality. Late Stalinism was frequently marked by the dissonance between official narratives of successful postwar transition and individuals’ experiences of the difficulties of postwar life, something which was particularly evident in Leningrad. Although the focus of this book is a local case study of demobilization, it reflects on a wider transnational experience of veterans’ postwar adaptation. The fate of Leningrad’s veterans is not simply a matter of local interest or national significance, but also a valuable case study of the lasting impact of war upon veterans’ lives with global relevance. Throughout the twentieth century postwar societies have faced the challenge of re-­assimilating veterans of extremely violent industrialized warfare. After both 1918 and 1945 the demobilization of mass conscript armies had a profound effect on the future development of combatant nations. The challenges of turning soldiers back into civilians crossed national borders. Although the treatment of veterans varied enormously between nations, depending on economic, political, social and cultural circumstances, American, British, French and German veterans of both world wars would have recognized much in each other’s experience. Veterans’ sense of dislocation, resentment, and neglect was as familiar in London, Lyon and Leipzig as it was in Leningrad. One of the distinctive features of this book is the attempt to gain additional insights into the Red Army’s demobilization by placing it into a wider European and North American comparative context. Despite the temptation to treat the Soviet Union as an exceptional case, the Soviet experience had much in common with that of other societies. As Juliane Fürst writes, ‘(e)ssentially the same forces and structures of modernity that shaped societies elsewhere in Europe were at work in the Soviet Union, albeit with variations’.41 Throughout the book a series of comparisons are drawn between late Stalinist Leningrad and Britain, America and Germany after both the First and Second World Wars. The book is not comparative in the sense of Adam Seipp’s study of demobilization in Munich and Manchester after 1918, or Deborah Cohen’s analysis of the treatment of disabled First World War veterans in interwar Britain and Germany.42 The purpose of comparison here is to stress areas of synergy between European and North American postwar societies and post-1945 Leningrad, and to highlight what was unique about demobilization in an extreme case study. Although comparing late Stalinist Leningrad with Britain after 1918, for example, may appear anachronistic this chronological and geographical scope provides a range of comparisons from both defeated and victorious societies, which undertook mass demobilizations, and with similarly traumatic wartime experiences. This study will, therefore, be of interest not just to historians of postwar Leningrad or late Stalinist society, but also to scholars of veterans and their demobilization more generally. One of the main challenges in writing this book has been the complexity of tracking veterans across a wide array of archives and sources. Demobilization is fascinating

12

Demobilized Veterans in Late Stalinist Leningrad

precisely because it forces the researcher to look across almost every aspect of society, to explore the traces veterans left scattered across the archival record. Demobilization required veterans to rebuild almost every aspect of their lives. They had to find suitable work and housing; obtain new passports, residency permits, and ration cards; and lobby for meagre entitlements. Many veterans faced the additional frustrations of trying to prove their disability, claim a pension, obtain prosthetics or receive medical treatment. Readjusting to civilian life brought veterans into contact with many institutions, administrations and officials, including: local party branches, district, oblast’ and city soviets; housing administrations; factories, plants, collective farms and other workplaces; doctors, polyclinics, hospitals, the police, prosecutors and courts, and countless others. All of these interactions generated paper trails which can be studied. In order to assemble a picture which does justice to the diversity of veterans’ experiences I have drawn upon the widest possible range of sources, including: statistical reports, summaries of public opinion, letters of complaint, legislation, official reports, novels, party-­investigations, the archives of medical research institutes, photographs, posters, police reports, court records and prosecution files. Demobilized Veterans in Late Stalinist Leningrad is the result of extensive original archival research in St. Petersburg’s archives, the Leningrad oblast’ archive in Vyborg and central archives in Moscow.43 Despite the objective of writing a richly textured micro-­history of demobilization centred on late Stalinist Leningrad, a truly complete study is impossible. First, much of the local archival material, which forms the backbone of this study, is inaccessible or incomplete. At the local level, the late 1940s did not witness tangible improvements in record keeping, contrary to what Sheila Fitzpatrick has observed in national administration.44 On the evidence of the Leningrad region, local bureaucracies were over-­worked and understaffed. The result was disorganization, administrative chaos and confusion. Where there are gaps and questions that archival holdings in St. Petersburg could not answer, I have turned to central archives in Moscow. However, many gaps remain. Secondly, surviving documents often have more to reveal about the practicalities of providing demobilized veterans with living space or jobs, rather than the subjective experience of returning to civvy street. Furthermore, once veterans passed through demobilization points, had found somewhere to live and a way of earning a crust they quickly disappeared from the archival record. Uncovering the long-­term reintegration of the hundreds of thousands of Red Army veterans resident in Leningrad and the Leningrad oblast’ within the archives is far from easy. Thirdly, attempting to view historical reality through the Soviet source lens presents a further set of methodological challenges. Since the opening of the Soviet archives in the late 1980s and early 1990s debates have raged about the use, meaning and reliability of the vast range of newly declassified documents suddenly available to researchers. Controversies continue to rage about the comparative merits of certain sources, and how historians should approach and interpret others.45 Of particular relevance are discussions about the reliability of public opinion reports, a source drawn on throughout the book, but especially in Chapters 2 and 3. Although conscious of the weaknesses with these and other sources, it is important to remember that no body of source material is perfect. All documents have their relative advantages and

Introduction

13

disadvantages, and constantly have to be weighed against each other. The traditional approach of casting the net widely, and ‘triangulating’ between as many different reference points as possible, still offers the most productive method of addressing these methodological problems. In addition to the extensive use of archival documents this study makes sustained use of published materials, including documentary, statistical and memoir collections. The most important published sources are local and regional newspapers. Leningradskaia pravda and Vechernyi Leningrad, in particular, shaped the local political agenda, and reflected the texture of everyday life. This book also draws upon less well-­ known newspapers, with smaller circulations, published by prominent industrial enterprises or party committees in rural areas. These sources, as Donald Filtzer has shown, offer valuable insights into local conditions.46 Soviet newspapers, as countless historians have discovered, were dull in format and style, and thin and repetitious in content.47 As Eric Duskin observes, it ‘is undeniable that postwar newspapers and journals are filled with material that is dismayingly repetitive and even when compared with publications from the 1930s, dreadful to read’.48 Despite the frustrations of working with newspapers they provide a wealth of revealing material. At the most basic level newspapers communicated official priorities and policies to returning soldiers. The propaganda campaigns waged in the local press attempted to demonstrate to veterans what their postwar responsibilities were. As well as attempting to shape public opinion, the press also provides an indication of what ex-­servicemen were thinking. Of great interest are the letters written to the editors of Leningrad’s newspapers, and published within their pages, penned by veterans angered by the difficulties they experienced following demobilization. Although these are far from a representative or unmediated expression of public opinion, they do indicate that the state was prepared to acknowledge difficult aspects of demobilization albeit within very strict limits. As Jeffrey Brooks has argued the press was not coterminous with public expression, but it did help contextualize the Soviet experience and impose a structure on the way that ordinary citizens, even non-­believers, thought.49 In addition to press sources this book makes extensive use of two local journals which published edited versions of the decisions and resolutions passed by the Leningrad city and oblast’ soviets, which are a remarkably rich resource.50 Specialist medical journals and published accounts of the research activity of Leningrad’s psychiatrists were invaluable in exploring the physical and mental disability in Chapter 4. Although veterans’ published memoirs and diaries are used throughout the book, these were a less fruitful source than I had initially hoped. The process of readjusting to civilian life rarely features in veterans’ accounts of their lives. Prevented from publishing memoirs in the immediate aftermath of war, most veterans had to wait decades for the opportunity to explore their wartime experiences in print. By the time it was possible to publish personal accounts, in edited collections or single volumes, the narrative and linguistic conventions of the patriotic war cult had reshaped their memories. The focus of the war as the single most important event in an individual’s life often resulted in demobilization being overshadowed by grander wartime narratives. Many memoirs end on 9 May 1945, not on the day an individual left the ranks. The hardships of the months and years following veterans’ demobilization were

14

Demobilized Veterans in Late Stalinist Leningrad

often excluded from personal accounts. For most veterans the war’s continuing legacy and the personal price they paid for victory could not be discussed in print. Oral history, in comparison, offers a rewarding insight into how individuals navigated the demobilization process. The research in this book is informed by a dozen interviews conducted with veterans, either individually or in groups. The shape and texture of what follow owes an enormous debt to these interviews. While they are still alive and willing to talk to researchers, as Catherine Merridale notes, there can be no substitute for talking to veterans.51 The vivid personal testimony, the scorn which met certain questions and the language in which veterans described demobilization told me a great deal about their mentalities and the flaws in my argument and approach. Oral history brings its own challenges for both interviewer and respondents.52 Memory is a complicated process. Veterans’ memories are often fractured and confused. Having been told to forget the uncomfortable aspects of their war experience, the mental barriers to talking about personal difficulties had to be constantly negotiated throughout these interviews. Nor were the vagaries of memory the only obstacle to exploring the difficulties of demobilization. Many veterans were uncomfortable, at least initially, in discussing a version of the past that challenged cherished collective myths, especially with a young educated westerner with no military experience. However, thanks to my respondents’ perseverance and generosity these oral history interviews offered insights that could never have been gleaned from written documents. Indeed, the process of interviewing and the stories I was told shaped my approach to the entire project. The structure of this book follows the trajectory of Leningrad’s veterans from the end of the Great Patriotic War on 9 May 1945 to the end of the late Stalinist period in March 1953. It leads the reader through the process of turning soldiers into civilians as envisaged by local representatives of the party-­state, but also the challenges of readjusting to civilian life in a society devastated and traumatized by war from veterans’ own perspectives. As becomes clearer over the book’s six chapters, veterans and the planners, administrators and officials responsible for demobilization frequently held differing interpretations of what the return to civilian normality should look like. The chapters are structured thematically around the most important challenges facing veterans as they attempted to rebuild their lives. The first three chapters focus on the most pressing problems facing veterans following release from the military, with the last three focusing on long-­term aspects of civilian readjustment. Several factors cut across individual chapters and this structure. In other national contexts or parts of the Soviet Union, family relationships and informal networks, for example, would have merited a dedicated chapter. The important role played by wives and families in easing veterans’ transition to civilian life is well documented. The complicated processes of negotiation within families between husbands and wives and parents and children, as each came to terms with the other’s wartime experiences, undoubtedly reveal a great deal about war’s social and cultural impact. In Leningrad, however, family ties and personal networks were seriously disrupted, and frequently irrevocably destroyed, by the blockade and evacuation. As will become clearer, families could play an important role in providing accommodation, reclaiming apartments, putting veterans in touch with employers, and providing care and financial support to disabled veterans. But,

Introduction

15

many of Leningrad’s veterans no longer had families to return to. Those fortunate enough to have surviving relatives often found the dynamics of their family lives had been transformed. Researching family histories in Stalin’s Russia presents an enormous methodological challenge, but in the extraordinary circumstances of postwar Leningrad is exceptionally difficult. Reconstructing family relationships between blockade survivors and returning veterans is further complicated by the lack of memoir and diary evidence. This book begins where many histories of the Great Patriotic War end. Chapter 1 takes the reader from Victory Day in May 1945 to the moment when demobilized veterans arrived in Leningrad, via soldiers’ difficult journeys home and through the demobilization points established to process them. It sets the scene for subsequent chapters by outlining the legislative framework in which demobilization took place, and examining how diverse the experience of homecoming and the reception afforded to the troops could be. Having passed through demobilized points soldiers were now veterans, but this was only the beginning of their transition to civilian life. Chapter 2 focuses on the most pressing problem facing veterans immediately after demobilization: finding somewhere to live. The chapter examines how housing was allocated by the state, how veterans circumvented official distribution mechanisms, and how the housing shortage impinged on their first steps towards civilian readjustment. Chapter 3 explores how Leningrad’s veterans were reintegrated into urban and rural workforces, and how the experience of reemployment shaped veterans’ perceptions of the demobilization process. It presents broadly similar arguments to those developed in Chapter  2, particularly in relation to the practical advantages that could be derived from official entitlements, the extent to which veterans relied on their own initiative and resourcefulness to resolve their immediate problems, and the remarkable diversity of veterans’ experience of reintegrating into civilian society. Chapter 4 addresses the physical and psychological price paid by Leningrad’s veterans in the years following the end of the Great Patriotic War. This chapter examines the additional challenges faced by disabled veterans in obtaining pensions, employment and medical treatment. It also highlights new evidence of the existence of psychological trauma amongst Red Army veterans, something which has been repeatedly repressed from the official memory of the war. Although disabled veterans are integral to this discussion, this chapter explores the impact on the mental and physical health of all veterans. War was disabling, to a greater or lesser extent, for almost all veterans even if this went unrecognized. Chapter 5 investigates what happened when Leningrad’s veterans failed to reintegrate into peaceful civilian life. Like previous chapters it challenges the notion that the transition to civilian life was seamless. While some veterans were victims of a postwar crime wave, a small minority of ex-­servicemen committed offences which contributed to rising crime. This chapter argues that exposure to extreme violence and mass death did not brutalize Leningrad’s veterans. The rare veterans who perpetrated crime, including violent crime, were generally not compulsive killers, but marginalized individuals, traumatized by war, and unable to find a place in society. For veterans to finally become ordinary civilians they not only had to find new homes, jobs and ways of dealing with damaged bodies, they had to find ways of demobilizing their minds. Chapter 6 explores the processes by which veterans came to think, behave and feel in new unaccustomed

16

Demobilized Veterans in Late Stalinist Leningrad

ways. In adjusting to new postwar realities veterans had to find ways of assimilating the disappointment, confusion and resentment created by demobilization. The chapter evaluates two interrelated aspects of veterans’ efforts to demobilize their minds; namely their relationship with Soviet politics, and their ability to reshape personal wartime memories to fit the official memory of war. By the end of our period most veterans had shed the emotions, mentalities and expectations generated by the war. The rare veterans who had failed to adapt to these mental contortions were likely to face the repressive force of the Soviet state. Although much of the book is concerned with the complicated problems facing returning veterans, the book’s conclusion emphasizes how successful Leningrad’s demobilization had been. Veterans were neither winners nor losers, neither heroes nor villains, neither victims nor perpetrators. In subsequent decades veterans became the subject of great celebration, veneration, even adulation, the beneficiaries of an enhanced system of welfare support, and the centre of an organized veterans’ movement. Yet at the end of the late Stalinist period all of this lay in the distant future. In the decade that followed May 1945 Leningrad’s veterans were anything but an organized movement united by shared entitlements. Amidst the rubble of postwar Leningrad and in the shadow of mass death, the transition to civilian life was beset by problems. The state’s support for returning soldiers was frequently inadequate; veterans were often thrown upon their own resources and initiative. Yet against all the odds veterans succeeded in achieving what must initially have seemed impossible. Veterans had become ‘ordinary’ civilians, almost indistinguishable from other members of society.

1

The Troops Come Home

Red Army soldiers would soon discover that Victory Day did not mark a decisive caesura between the wartime and postwar worlds. Paradoxically, as Jörg Echternkamp and Stefan Martens argue, the ‘war did not end with the end of the war’. It ended at different points of time, for different people, from different places, and often in different ways.1 Boris Suris, for example, recorded 9 May 1945 in his diary as, ‘The day when the war ended’.2 Yet it did not mark the end of military service or the challenges of postwar adaptation. Suris was not demobilized until the summer of 1946, after which he enrolled in the Art History Department of the Leningrad Academy of Arts.3 Nikolai Nikulin, another art historian, marked Victory Day on the western edge of Berlin in Kaulsdorf. In the coming months, as he watched the demobilization of group after group of ‘old men’, his dreams of returning to Leningrad were gradually eroded. At headquarters they ‘consoled’ him by telling him that he would probably have to serve for another two or three years. Nevertheless he continued to rack his brains about how to secure his demobilization, or as he put it in his memoirs, ‘How to break free of this cesspit?’ He was eventually issued with his demobilization papers, as part of a second demobilization wave, because he had been wounded four times. His wartime ‘odyssey’ came to an end when he arrived at Leningrad’s port on 4 November 1945 after a lengthy and eventful journey on a freighter transporting industrial machinery, seized as war reparations, from Stettin to Leningrad.4 Many servicemen had to wait even longer, and faced much tougher postwar futures. For most soldiers Victory Day marked the beginning of a curious period of limbo, a ‘phoney peace’. Once the celebrations had ended and hangovers had been nursed, the sense of relief and joy was gradually replaced by confusion, doubt and anxiety. With the primary enemy defeated the main reason for military service was removed. Fighting had ended, but the discomforts, frustrations and petty humiliations of army life continued. Military routine, army discipline and separation from families still had to be endured. Furthermore, Soviet soldiers knew nothing about their government’s plans for their demobilization, and if and when they might return home. The war had officially ended, but Leningraders who had served in the Red Army would have to fight further battles to find their place in postwar society. The ‘phoney peace’ was a difficult time for the Red Army and its soldiers. In comparison to the brutal fighting of the final months of the war, arguably its most lethal and violent period, the ‘phoney peace’ must have seemed a relief. However, it was also a time of great uncertainty, confusion and suspicion. Soldiers who had

18

Demobilized Veterans in Late Stalinist Leningrad

been preoccupied with waging war and defeating an abhorrent enemy now found that their reason for serving had evaporated. In the days and weeks following the German surrender Krasnaia zvezda, the Red Army’s newspaper, attempted to create the impression that life was gradually returning to normal peacetime rhythms. Training and political education were increased, but there was also time for leisure. Soldiers garrisoned in Vienna, Budapest and Berlin were reported to be visiting theatres, galleries and museums, playing football and volleyball, or spending their evenings singing nostalgic songs of home.5 These articles attempted to mask declining discipline within the Red Army. In reality the behaviour and morale of occupation forces were very different. Victory did not bring about an immediate end to the orgy of violence which characterized the war’s closing stages. Rape, looting and drunkenness were more typical than cultured or sporting pastimes.6 The desire to exact revenge on enemy populations no doubt explains much of this violence. However, as Filip Slaveski argues: ‘The violence carried out by the troops endured long after the war because the whole army, officers and men, was simply incapable of shifting from war to peace.’7 This period of limbo and the uncertainties surrounding demobilization made this transition even harder, and added to declining morale and continuing violence. Peace brought time and space to reflect on what the future might hold. Anxiety, boredom, additional propaganda, and training all created an atmosphere in which rumours that soldiers were being prepared for a future war with America thrived.8 More reflective soldiers worried about how war had changed them, whether they would be able to fit into civilian life and rebuild their lives. These tensions often found expression in drinking, disorderly behaviour and worse. The Red Army, of course, was not the only army to experience a lull and decline in discipline following the long-­awaited victory. The unprecedented scale of wartime mobilization meant that armies and civilian institutions needed time to prepare for the administrative and logistical challenge of demobilization and the influx of returning veterans. Mindful of the failures in demobilization after the First World War, and riots and disturbances which often accompanied it, Britain and America began planning for demobilization years before the end of the Second World War. In September 1944 both countries published detailed release criteria and a framework for demobilization, the result of months of careful preparation. British and American plans aimed at transparency and fairness. The United States Army invested time, energy and resources in developing a points-­based system for demobilization. A draft proposal was circulated to over 20,000 soldiers, their responses shaping the final system. Points were awarded for length of service, length of service overseas, combat experience and parenthood. The unveiling of the points system followed Roosevelt’s approval of the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act in June 1944.9 In Britain the criteria for demobilization and the measures intended to ease soldiers’ civilian reintegration were published in an official guide, Release and Resettlement. The order in which the majority of soldiers were to be released could be calculated from a simple table published in the guide. In summary, the longer the period of service and the older the soldier, the earlier demobilization could be anticipated. Soldiers had plenty of opportunity to scrutinize the plan and its finer details well before the war’s end. On 12 May 1945, barely a week after the end of the war in Europe, Ernest Bevin announced to the House of Commons that

The Troops Come Home

19

demobilization would commence on 18 June 1945.10 In May 1945 British and American soldiers, unlike their Soviet comrades, were well informed about the demobilization process and the welfare system designed to support them. In stark contrast, there is little evidence that the Red Army and the Soviet party-­ state began preparations for mass demobilization prior to Germany’s defeat. The inaccessibility of military archives makes it difficult to evaluate the Red Army’s demobilization planning. Yet it is hard to believe that the Red Army and the Soviet state were unaware of the challenges presented by demobilization or the importance of careful planning. The Provisional Government’s failure to deal with the army’s self demobilization during 1917, which eventually led to the collapse of the Russian Army, played an indirect part in bringing the Bolsheviks to power.11 The early Bolshevik state confronted the challenge of demobilization between November 1920 and December 1922 in the wake of the Russian Civil War and amidst a period of economic collapse.12 It is remarkable that the experience of Russia’s ‘epoch of violence’ cast such a faint shadow over demobilization planning.13 Memories of the Great War were never entirely erased, displaced or repressed in Soviet Russia. A startling array of memories and discourses about the Great War survived in inter-­war Soviet culture.14 As the historian Rebecca Manley argues, ‘World War I, in particular, left an indelible imprint on the nascent Soviet regime . . .’, and, ‘bequeathed to the Soviet state a way of thinking about and managing war.’15 The First World War, for example, remained a key reference point in formulating evacuation policy, as planners aimed to avoid the mistakes of 1914 to 1918.16 The Red Army and the Soviet party-­state also had peacetime precedents and models that might have informed their planning for demobilization. In the 1920s and 1930s the Red Army annually demobilized approximately half of its conscripts. Demobilizing and reintegrating comparatively small numbers of peacetime conscripts, who had served short two-­year terms, however, was an entirely different challenge from the mass demobilization of a wartime army.17 Peacetime precedents were of limited use in preparing to demobilize a larger army, which had waged a murderous four-­year-long war beyond Soviet borders, amidst the social and economic dislocation of industrialized warfare. Regardless of when plans were first drawn up, once Victory Day arrived rank and file soldiers and their immediate officers could only speculate about their government’s demobilization plans, and when they might return home. The news that the Red Army had been nervously anticipating finally came on 23 June 1945, just over six weeks after Victory Day, when the Supreme Soviet of the USSR approved the Law on the demobilization of the oldest age groups of the standing army. This first piece of demobilization legislation provided the bedrock for mass demobilization. Its announcement, as befitted such a significant moment, received extensive publicity. The law was reprinted in full in national and regional newspapers, often alongside a report on demobilization by General Antonov, Chief of the General Staff.18 Even Krokodil, the official satirical journal, published cartoons drawing attention to the law and troops’ imminent return.19 Despite the public fanfare the Soviet response to demobilization had been slow. By the time the Soviet Union announced its legislative framework for demobilization British troops had already been returning home for five days. The slowness of demobilization had consequences not only for soldiers and their

20

Demobilized Veterans in Late Stalinist Leningrad

families, but also for the Soviet Military Administration in Germany (SVAG), who found it impossible to feed both Germany’s urban population and the Red Army. Forced to live off the land the Red Army became caught up in a battle for food and resources with SVAG, which intensified troop violence, and could only be resolved by mass demobilization.20 Soldiers were not simply disappointed by delays. Rather than adopting a points-­ based system, favoured by the British and Americans, the Red Army implemented a system of demobilization by age group. The Law on the demobilization of the oldest age groups applied to men born between 1893 and 1905, the thirteen oldest cohorts officially serving in the Red Army. Catherine Merridale suggests that older men were prioritized because planners assumed that men with established families and careers would be the most impatient to return home.21 Although this was undoubtedly the case, stable nuclear families were not necessarily the state’s highest priority. Decisions about demobilization were rarely made in the interests of veterans, which were secondary to those of state, society and the officials administering the process. Demobilization by birth cohort was far easier, cheaper and quicker to administer than a points system. Furthermore, it is doubtful whether Red Army service records held on the ground by commanders were detailed enough to determine how long soldiers had spent on the frontlines or to assess their personal circumstances. Yet a decision made in the interests of streamlined administration had important consequences for the Red Army, veterans and their families. Release by birth cohort had a profound impact on the shape of demobilization and veterans’ prospects of readjustment. Younger veterans were disadvantaged by having to wait the longest to resume civilian lives. Older veterans, who usually enjoyed greater life experience, more stable family lives and established careers returned in the early phases of mass demobilization. This placed them at the front of the queue for limited resources and opportunities while the youngest generations, upon whom the war’s burdens fell most heavily, were left to scrabble over what was left. In many units there were relatively few soldiers eligible for the first phase of demobilization. Yuri Popov recalled the day when the law was announced to the massed ranks of his regiment. The soldiers to whom the law applied were ordered to take a pace forward. Only four men moved.22 Although mass demobilization had been set in motion the majority of serving soldiers still had no idea when they might be returning home. This did nothing to dissipate the tension, anxiety and uncertainty that characterized the ‘phoney peace’, nor halt the Red Army’s decline in morale. Indeed, demobilization by age group robbed the Army of its oldest, most experienced and best educated soldiers, many of whom had become non-­commissioned officers. It was, ‘losing its most experienced disciplinarians, its non-­commissioned intellectual backbone’; men who wielded the authority to impose, maintain and restore discipline. Their departure, as Filip Slaveski argues, exacerbated the postwar wave of violence amongst soldiers.23 The months, even years, of waiting for demobilization inevitably prompted frustration and grumbling. With repeated delays and disappointments the waiting became almost unbearable. One veteran demobilized at the end of March 1950, interviewed as part of this research, recalled a feeling of disbelief when he was finally discharged. Waiting at the platform for the train home two of his comrades, mistakenly

The Troops Come Home

21

considered for demobilization, were hauled back. For the rest of the journey he expected something similar to happen to him.24 This was hardly the most promising psychological preparation for returning home and starting to rebuild one’s life. Complaints about delays and the slowness of demobilization were not unique to the Red Army. Throughout the twentieth century the process of demobilizing mass conscript armies failed to keep up with ordinary soldiers’ expectations. In Germany in the autumn of 1918 and in the months following the Armistice, soldiers impatient to return home self-­demobilized, winding up their military units themselves and drifting home on their own initiative.25 In Britain in early January 1919 there were disturbances amongst several thousand soldiers stationed in Folkestone and Dover demanding their demobilization.26 Even armies with transparent demobilization plans faced pressure to quicken the pace of troops’ homecoming. After 1945 the British and American armies, and civilian society, frequently expressed dissatisfaction about the slow pace of demobilization.27 As Samuel Stouffer wrote in his classic study of the American soldier in the Second World War: ‘As demobilization proceeded, critics of the Army in and out of uniform formed a swelling chorus of discontent over the alleged slowness with which the Army was discharging men.’28 Unsurprisingly frustration and impatience boiled over into disturbances, even riots. There were protests by American troops in Manila, and spontaneous outbursts in Western Europe, India, China and Korea. By the end of January 1946 approximately 50,000 British airmen stationed from Egypt to Malaya participated in so called ‘demob strikes’.29 In was inevitable that continuing uncertainty about when soldiers might be released generated frustration in the Red Army. In a highly authoritarian society, however, resentments rarely developed into insurrection. Yet transports of returning ex-­ servicemen had an almost timeless capacity to descend into drink-­fuelled mob violence and hooliganism.30 The emotional shock, psychological tension and anxiety associated with demobilization made returning soldiers particularly prone to violent disorder.31 Years after the end of mass demobilization the discipline of trainloads of soldiers in the process of demobilization continued to break down.32 These disturbances, however, were usually isolated drunken disorders, rather than organized and sustained protests against the policies of demobilization, which lacked a political agenda. Soldiers longed for demobilization. Their letters home to their wives and families captured their impatience to escape army life, and expressed their future plans and aspirations.33 They bombarded their employers with repeated requests to return to work. Former students from Leningrad State University’s Geography Department pleaded with their head of department to write to their commanding officers to secure their release so that they could resume their studies.34 There were, however, compensations for extended military service. Many ex-­servicemen subsequently missed the sense of comradeship and belonging provided by the wartime army. Small primary groups of soldiers, forged on the frontline, supported and understood each other in ways which veterans could not always anticipate from their families or colleagues. Continued armed service also brought opportunities. Soldiers stationed beyond Soviet borders had the rare chance to interact with societies very different from their own, and also to acquire loot from local populations. In many respects living conditions were better in the army than in postwar Leningrad. Food was often better

22

Demobilized Veterans in Late Stalinist Leningrad

and more plentiful in occupied Europe, or at least soldiers were higher up the list of distribution priorities than veterans back at home. Before his demobilization in 1947 Boris Mikhailov received a letter from his father advising him that: ‘In Russia there is famine. In Leningrad there is rationing. It’s very difficult to live. If you have any opportunity, try and stay in the army.’35 Boris was nevertheless determined to get home. As Evgenii Moniushko, another Leningrad veteran put it: ‘Although everyone understood very well that they were going back to the hard labour associated with reconstruction and rebirth instead of “heaven”, and that there might not be shelter or food, everyone yearned to return home. Therefore, every day was a tragedy.’36 It was not until 25 September 1945 that a USSR Supreme Soviet decree set in train a second wave of demobilization. It extended the provisions of the Demobilization Law passed on 23 June to the next ten birth cohorts, soldiers born between 1906 and 1915. In addition it offered release to soldiers who had completed higher, technical or agricultural education; former teachers, lecturers and students; people who had sustained three or more wounds, soldiers with seven or more years’ continuous service and women, irrespective of their age.37 A third wave followed on 20 March 1946, with the intention of releasing soldiers born between 1916 and 1921 between May and September 1946.38 Subsequent waves of demobilization were on a smaller scale, releasing single birth cohorts and relatively small numbers of veterans. The youngest age groups might have to wait until the spring of 1948 before finally becoming eligible for demobilization.39 From 31 October 1945 sergeants and rank and file soldiers eligible for demobilization had the alternative option of volunteering for extended periods of service in the Red Army.40 Some Leningraders took up these opportunities continuing to serve in the army through the immediate postwar era; facing demobilization only when they retired from military service in the 1950s, 1960s or 1970s. Demobilization legislation not only determined the order in which soldiers were earmarked for release, it also introduced welfare benefits and entitlements for veterans, which the second and third waves of demobilization subsequently extended. The Law on the demobilization of the oldest age groups theoretically guaranteed demobilized veterans free transportation to their homes, food for the journey, and a full uniform including a set of footwear. Soldiers and officers were to also receive a one-­off cash payment calculated on the basis of length of service and rank. In addition, returning soldiers enjoyed a range of housing and employment rights, which are examined in detail in Chapters 2 and 3. Although these entitlements were meagre when compared to the benefits offered to British or American troops, the beleaguered late Stalinist state frequently failed to meet even these modest legal responsibilities. Demobilization benefits were not universally applied. Shortages of uniforms meant that many veterans returned in incomplete or tattered outfits. In his memoirs, Evgenii Moniushko recalled that in the autumn of 1945 soldiers in his regiment were stripped of their uniforms and footwear in order to adequately clothe those about to be demobilized.41 Reports written by Leningrad’s military prosecutor reveal that throughout 1945 and 1946 even élite NKVD troops were regularly released without the payments, supplies and equipment which they were promised by officers and agitators, and to which they were legally entitled.42 Similar problems were reported across the Soviet Union. For proud soldiers shortages of underwear and confiscation of personal property prior to demobilization

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23

were deeply humiliating.43 Even feeding the thousands of veterans passing through Leningrad daily, on their way to be demobilized elsewhere, created practical problems. There was no guarantee that soldiers would get the rations they were entitled to.44 Worse still, the entitlements created in 1945 and 1946 started to be dismantled in 1947 and 1948.45 Soldiers discharged in 1948, as part of the last wave of demobilization, were no longer entitled to even the limited privileges of the 1945 demobilization law. Just getting demobilized soldiers back to their homes and families was a formidable logistical challenge. Although the state undertook to transport soldiers as far as their homes, the journey to Leningrad was often an ordeal; a world away from the impression of demobilization as a ‘smooth and well organized, festive ritual’ encouraged by propaganda.46 Troops usually travelled in freight or cattle wagons with rudimentary facilities, something which most soldiers were already accustomed to. Millions of soldiers shared the experience of travelling across Europe’s war-­ravaged landscape, via a barely functioning railway network, in dilapidated and rickety carriages.47 Conditions were often terrible. On 17 March 1947 a group of 500 soldiers in Leningrad’s military district were left to wait for three hours on an open platform without warmth or shelter. When the train finally arrived the carriages were in a poor condition. Two were immediately condemned and decoupled. Three others had broken windows, two broken stoves and many carriages had bunks only half the standard length. Water shortages meant that the carriages could not be cleaned. These discomforts had to be endured on the long journey to Odessa.48 Elsewhere the dilapidated condition of the railway network and mismanagement caused unexpected and unexplained delays. Some trains were abandoned for several days. In these circumstances soldiers often turned to drink, sometimes resulting in mass alcohol poisoning, or descended into violence, even pitched battles with local security forces.49 Counterfeit alcohol and riotous comrades were not the only dangers. Boris Korneev, who later found fame in Leningrad as an artist, returned on a transport which was attacked by armed bandits as it passed through the Czech Alps. Most of his comrades were killed; he was lucky to survive.50 If the journey home could be an ordeal, fraught with discomforts, dangers and petty humiliations, what was the experience of homecoming like for returning soldiers? What could returning soldiers expect once they finally arrived in Leningrad or its environs? What preparations were made to greet returning veterans by civilian authorities, and how effective were these at facilitating the transition to civilian life? On Sunday 8 July 1945 a military parade was organized through the centre of Leningrad to honour the city’s heroic wartime defenders. Specially selected soldiers from the 45th, 63rd and 64th guards divisions, élite units serving on the Leningrad front, marched through Leningrad in three separate columns. The routes taken by these columns were carefully and deliberately planned to cover as much of the city and its hinterland as possible. They began in Kolpino, Pulkovo and Uritsk, heavily damaged suburban towns on Leningrad’s southern periphery.51 The columns were to each pass through a grand triumphal arch situated not far from the former front line, hastily constructed in the preceding week from wood and plaster.52 From here the parades continued, according to a strict timetable, through Leningrad’s southern industrial districts, passing through the city centre, past historic landmarks, over famous bridges, before parading through workers’ districts in the north of the city. Hundreds of

24

Demobilized Veterans in Late Stalinist Leningrad

thousands of Leningraders thronged the routes to pay tribute to the troops. The spectacle of thousands of pristine soldiers marching past in disciplined lines, and the opportunity to celebrate the city’s heroic defenders thrilled the crowds. On Stachek Prospekt, near the famous Kirov factory, the men offered the soldiers vodka and the women wildflowers.53 Alexander Boldyrev, an orientalist based at the Hermitage Museum, watched the parade from his window and described the crowd’s reaction to the parade: ‘The “population” formed up in rows on both sides of the street, cheers, applause, flowers. The guards immediately gave the bouquets back to the crowd.’54 The parade received extensive local and national press coverage. Newspaper articles and photographs captured women and children showering the troops with flowers. Soldiers and civilians, once again, were united by the celebration of victory and wartime achievement. Even the heavy police presence failed to dampen the crowds’ spirits.55 The jubilation which greeted the returning soldiers, however, was not entirely spontaneous. A well-­oiled propaganda machine made meticulous preparations. Little was left to chance. The level of detail went far beyond the route and timings. A party official was made responsible for decorating the city with flowers, wreaths, slogans and portraits of Lenin, Stalin, members of the Politburo and military leaders. Political rallies were organized alongside each column’s route. City districts were given a quota for the minimum number of workers to attend. Over 6,000 workers, for example, were to be mobilized for a meeting in Palace Square. Fifty thousand copies of a propaganda leaflet were printed, and were to be dropped from aeroplanes or thrown from moving vehicles. Arrangements were made to ensure that the parade and political meetings were covered by journalists, photographers, newsreels and live radio broadcasts. David Trakhtenberg, Leningradskaia pravda’s staff photographer, for example, took numerous striking photographs. School children were given the responsibility of gathering wild flowers from the city’s outskirts to make bouquets. Drinks stands were arranged along the route to provide refreshments, welcome on what turned out to be a stiflingly hot day.56 The efforts of propaganda and agitation officials were not in vain. 8 July 1945, the day when Leningrad received its heroic defenders, has repeatedly been confused with demobilization. Photographs of the crowds’ enthusiasm for parading soldiers have fused in the popular imagination with homecoming soldiers; they have become part of the visual vocabulary of demobilization. They are frequently reproduced in connection with annual Victory Day celebrations, alongside images of returning veterans. This is not a coincidence. Parades, such as this one, played an important part in how the myth and memory of demobilization were constructed at the time and subsequently. Leningrad’s propaganda officials had a long experience of organizing parades and demonstrations to draw upon. These collective rituals had deep roots in Russian culture, but fulfilled a particularly important function in Soviet public culture: defining communities, creating hierarchies, generating enthusiasm and demonstrating discipline and conformity.57 Victory parades and celebrations, such as the iconic Moscow victory parade of 24 June 1945, played an important part in creating the Soviet postwar order. The parades organized to symbolically reintegrate partisans into the Soviet community, for example, were consciously designed to shape the partisan movement’s image and official history.58 The Leningrad parade of 8 July 1945, like

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countless others across the Soviet Union, was not only a spontaneous celebration of victory, but an attempt to shape the official narrative and popular memory of both the war and postwar demobilization. The image of fit, young and healthy men parading through the city in an orderly and disciplined fashion, to the universal celebration of Leningraders, established the official paradigm for demobilization. By determining who was to be celebrated, and who was to be excluded, the parades established hierarchies, social relations and identities, helping delineate the limits of postwar community.59 Groups excluded from this parade, as we will see, experienced homecomings which conflicted with the nascent official narrative of homecoming. In fact, the guards divisions parading through the streets on 8 July 1845 were not being demobilized. Indeed judging by the photographs many of the fresh faced soldiers were not yet eligible for release. Demobilization in Leningrad did not begin until four days later. In the first days and weeks of mass demobilization Leningraders greeted returning soldiers with great enthusiasm. The same pomp and circumstance, as well as careful planning, which characterized the military parades of 8 July were extended to the first homecoming veterans. Cheering women and children clutching bouquets crowded the platforms anxious to be reunited with their loved ones. Newspaper reporters and photographers were there to document the celebrations and the preparations made to welcome returning heroes.60 The first genuinely demobilized veterans, rather than parading troops, began arriving at Leningrad’s railway termini on 12 July 1945. The first trains brought 1,774 veterans back from Estonia and 2,001 from Latvia.61 Boris Utkin was on hand to take several photographs of the first demobilized veterans stepping onto the platform to the greetings of cheering women and children holding bouquets aloft.62 The following day 1,307 veterans arrived at the Finland Station, having made the short journey from Vyborg.63 Here they were greeted by the traditional bread and salt greeting, a crowd of employees from bread factory No.14, and a political rally with local dignitaries. Vasilli Fedoseev, a TASS photo correspondent, was on hand to photograph the celebrations.64 A further 1,329 demobilized soldiers arrived at the Warsaw Station from Latvia on 14 July 1945. The reception of demobilized troops, at least in its early stages, was carefully orchestrated. Frantic preparations were made to ensure that railway stations were ready for returning heroes. Platforms and the battered trains which brought soldiers back home were bedecked with flowers, posters, propaganda slogans and portraits of Stalin. Local Komsomol cells were mobilized to make the necessary arrangements and to decorate railway platforms.65 Similar, albeit more modest, celebrations were organized in provincial towns across the Leningrad oblast’. In the first weeks, perhaps months, of mass demobilization returning soldiers were hit by the full force of the Soviet propaganda machine. Every effort was made to greet ex-­servicemen, and at this point they were predominately men, in a manner befitting returning heroes. According to official plans all returning transports were supposed to be greeted by delegations of between 500 and 1,000 workers and a brass band. Special rostrums were built at railway termini to provide a platform for party agitators. Veterans listened to speeches from local dignitaries, participated in political meetings, and received short explanations of what remained of the demobilization process.66 Speeches and lectures frequently sought to remind frontoviki of the contribution of Leningrad’s

26

Demobilized Veterans in Late Stalinist Leningrad

civilian war effort, and allay potential friction between civilians and veterans.67 The return of demobilized soldiers, at least in its early phases, was a closely monitored process. The central party propaganda apparatus issued directives encouraging local and regional newspapers to report on the receptions organized to welcome homecoming heroes, and to demonstrate that veterans were reintegrating well.68 The photographs taken of the arrival of the first troop transports, and the celebrations which greeted veterans, captured both the genuine joy and excitement of homecoming, and the construction of an official image of demobilization. They shared a common visual language of smiling soldiers bedecked with medals, joyous women proffering kisses and bouquets, and small children held aloft. The compositions of these photographs give them the atmosphere of spontaneous expressions of happiness as soldiers and civilians are reunited after the long years of war. However, a series of photographs taken by David Trakhtenberg for Leningradskaia pravda provide a reminder that these images were consciously constructed. Although the archival annotations are inconsistent the images share enough to be confident that all four were taken on 15 July 1945 at the Baltic Station. Figures 1 and 2 are different compositions of essentially the same image, a photogenic young woman in a lightly coloured knee-­ length dress extending a bouquet aloft towards a column of veterans lined up on the platform.69 Figures  2 and 3 show several young women, including the same young woman from Figure  1, smiling and presenting flowers to veterans emerging from a railway wagon.70 The singling out of this one woman, the different camera angles and compositions, indicate that these images were staged. While Trahktenberg made his preparations and composed his images veterans were made to wait, line-­up, perhaps even pose. For these veterans the message must have been clear. They were still not quiet civilians in charge of their own time, actions and movements; they remained a propaganda asset valuable in the construction of the postwar order.

Figure 1  Veterans returning to Leningrad’s Baltic Station on 15 July 1945, TsGAKFFD-SPb Ar110406. Photographer David Trakhtenberg

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Figure 2  Veterans returning to Leningrad’s Baltic Station on 15 July 1945, GAKFD/0-106426. Photographer David Trakhtenberg Having been warmly welcomed home and reminded of their future responsibilities, returning soldiers finally passed through demobilization points. Detailed preparations were made to ensure that reception points were well equipped and that veterans would be able to complete the necessary paperwork quickly and efficiently. In a report written on 18 July 1945, while mass demobilization was still creaking into action, Trakhachev, head of the Leningrad Party Military Department, calculated that it would take each soldier between fifty and eighty minutes to pass these formalities and receive their civilian documents. These included military registration documents, civilian passports, ration cards and tokens that could be redeemed for vodka and tobacco.71 Only now with the ink drying on the paperwork were veterans free to re-­enter ordinary civilian life. Although the first veterans received their papers quickly and without fuss, as the days and weeks passed the prediction that documents could be issued smoothly and efficiently proved as over optimistic as the official myth that veterans would quickly adjust to civilian life.

28

Demobilized Veterans in Late Stalinist Leningrad

Figure 3  Veterans returning to Leningrad’s Baltic Station on 15 July 1945, TsGAKFFD-SPb Ar99074. Photographer David Trakhtenberg

Figure 4  Returning soldiers receiving a more muted reception on 27 October 1945, TsGAKFFD-SPb, Ar27068 The propaganda campaign implemented in the first weeks and months of mass demobilization proved remarkably successful at creating the impression that veterans returned to universal acclaim and were smoothly reintegrated into society. The press reports, photographs and spectacle of homecoming have framed the way that demobilization has been viewed ever since, bolstering the official myth that veterans rapidly adjusted to ‘civvy street’. There were, of course, veterans who were satisfied

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with their demobilization, and appreciated the warm welcome they received.72 Most ex-­servicemen and women, however, did not receive a hero’s welcome. Homecoming parades, celebrations and popular attention were the exception rather than the rule. Many of Leningrad’s veterans had lost their entire family during the blockade, something which further complicated their transition. Others found that their relatives were unable to return from evacuation.73 Soldiers released at the start of a demobilization wave were more likely to receive an organized reception and warm welcome. But Leningraders soon tired of ceremonies to welcome home soldiers. Photographs of soldiers returning on 27 October 1945, and later in the year, still showed soldiers passing through triumphal arches, being issued with newspapers and hearing political speeches before portraits of Lenin and Stalin. Dressed in greatcoats and fur hats they lug suitcases and sacks down the platform. But the crowds of civilians proffering bread and salt, and wilting flowers had disappeared.74 Once the novelty of demobilization wore off ex-­servicemen were met with less fanfare and eventually silence. Even those who were greeted with public celebrations soon learnt that demobilization was not all bunting and brass bands.

Figure 5  Soldiers arriving in Leningrad late in 1945, TsGAKKFD-SPb, Ar98996

30

Demobilized Veterans in Late Stalinist Leningrad

For many veterans the notion of homecoming was a misnomer. Amongst the former soldiers attempting to rebuild their lives in Leningrad were thousands of new arrivals with no ties to the city or region. Many arrived in Leningrad not on troop transports, but on civilian trains from the villages, towns and cities where they had been demobilized. Veterans were not static following their demobilization. In theory ex-­servicemen and women were supposed to return to the place where they had volunteered or were conscripted. In practice many exploited opportunities to move to other cities and regions at a time when the controls to prevent movement were inconsistently implemented.75 Mark Edele has argued that peasant veterans frequently returned to their villages, at least initially, but from 1946 onwards as they became disillusioned with conditions in the postwar countryside they migrated to cities.76 Even for veterans previously resident in Leningrad and the surrounding region it was difficult to talk about ‘home’ as a place of cosy domesticity. In many cases the structural and material fabric of homes, as well as the emotional relationships within families, had changed beyond all recognition. In contrast to the heroic official myth of demobilization there was no shared experience of homecoming or demobilization. Different groups of soldiers had very different experiences of the demobilization process and of taking their first steps towards civilian life. These groups were often released via different mechanisms, and were excluded from the public celebrations and propaganda circus which marked the first weeks of mass demobilization. Long before the summer of 1945, large numbers of injured soldiers had been medically discharged from the Red Army. Indeed, they were amongst the first soldiers to have the opportunity to return to civilian life. Their demobilization took place in very different circumstances to either their able-­bodied comrades demobilized from mid-July 1945 onwards or fellow war invalids released from military hospitals after May 1945. First, the war-­disabled did not return in dedicated military transports, but were required to travel home under their own initiative, either on their own or in small groups. Given that many were struggling to adjust to a loss of mobility, the journey on crowded civilian trains could be an ordeal.77 Secondly, war invalids were not welcomed back by cheering crowds and were not surrounded by agitational work. Their return was, in many ways, anonymous. Finally, there was a large gap between the experiences of war invalids demobilized before and after the summer of 1945. Whilst the war raged disabled veterans enjoyed a relatively high status. They provided information about life on the frontlines and an emotional connection with serving friends and relatives. They were often the only men in a community. With manpower at a premium many enjoyed reasonable employment prospects. Yet, with the advent of mass demobilization, war invalids arriving in Leningrad and the Leningrad oblast’ received a more muted reception. The disabled and disfigured were gradually displaced from the pantheon. Their symbolic absence from the celebrations surrounding mass demobilization signalled the beginning of their disappearance from the war’s official commemoration. The war-disabled were not the only soldiers discharged before the start of mass demobilization, or outside the framework established by demobilization legislation. Women were also viewed as a special case for early demobilization. Wartime pregnancies, for example, often brought about women’s early demobilization. Yet pregnancy did not

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31

always mean immediate demobilization. Many women were not released from the military until they were seven months pregnant.78 Between September 1942 and September 1944 a series of decrees established a system of paid assistance and leave for pregnant servicewomen, as well as dedicated gynaecological services.79 It was thanks to these services that Irina Dunaevskaia, a military translator, discovered that she was pregnant.80 Her repeated requests to be demobilized were refused, and she was not sent on maternity leave until 9 July 1945. She was told that as translators were in demand, she could expect to serve in occupied Germany once her maternity leave ended, and would have to wait until general demobilization began for women. Irina gave birth to a daughter on 10 August 1945, the point at which at her wartime diary ends. Yet, a note in the published version of the diary completes the story. At the end of August 1945 she received a summons to report on the following day to her regiment for demobilization. Having made the journey with her newborn baby from central Leningrad to Gatchina she reported to the officer who had previously rejected her demobilization requests. On seeing her he savagely spat out; ‘I’ve already told you in clear Russian that you shouldn’t think about discharge (uvol’nenie).’ Handing over the summons prompted a re-­ examination of her case and later that day she was finally demobilized.81 In the course of their demobilization many veterans encountered dismissive bureaucrats, but Irina Dunaevskaia’s experiences were typical of the mistreatment women veterans suffered at the hands of callous and condescending officials. Most women, it has been suggested, were demobilized by the end of 1945, having been included amongst the groups released by the second wave of demobilization.82 Indeed women veterans, as photographs demonstrate, were amongst the first soldiers to arrive in Leningrad in 1945. In mid-July 1945, for example Krasnaia zvezda, the Red Army’s official newspaper, celebrated the demobilization of women from air defence forces.83 There are, however, indications that many women were demobilized well before September 1945. A secret report dated 5 November 1944, approximately nine months before the first soldiers were demobilized in Leningrad, discussed demobilizing between 700 and 800 women from active service on the Leningrad front.84 It is unclear whether this was a local initiative, or whether other fronts were also ‘offloading’ women from the army. As the final stages of the war approached commanders may have decided to remove what they perceived as a disruptive presence, and begin to recreate ‘normal’ gender relationships within the military and wider society. Despite misogynistic fears about the place of women in the Red Army, their skills could not be dispensed with immediately. As Irina Dunaevskaia found, the Red Army was often reliant on women to fulfil specialist medical, technical and ancillary functions, such as translation, which created obstacles to their rapid demobilization. Although most women could not expect long-­term military careers, a small number continued to serve into 1946 and 1947.85 For all their achievements, sacrifices, and the grudging acceptance they earned from their comrades, women continued to encounter hostility, resentment and indignation both within the army, and following their demobilization.86 Many experienced condescension, hostility, discrimination and even verbal abuse for decades. For all veterans demobilization created new problems that made it difficult to draw a line under wartime experiences. Yet for women veterans in particular the challenges of postwar transition were only just beginning.

32

Demobilized Veterans in Late Stalinist Leningrad

Highly skilled men who had been civilian administrative and technical specialists before the war enjoyed slightly brighter prospects of skipping the demobilization queue, ahead of many of their comrades. If the skills of an individual soldier or officer were deemed sufficiently important official mechanisms could be circumvented. The Leningrad city soviet barraged army headquarters and commanding officers with hundreds of requests to release highly skilled workers, essential for the reconstruction and normal functioning of the city. In the spring of 1944 Popkov, Chairman of the executive committee of the Leningrad soviet, wrote a series of letters to the commanders of the Baltic and Leningrad fronts, Generals Popov and Govorov, requesting the early demobilization of specialists in material supply, civil engineering, and the former heads of construction trusts.87 In turn, institutions under the control of the city soviet lobbied for requests to be made for the demobilization of technical specialists vital to their functioning.88 After May 1945 requests were made to demobilize road builders, staff from the State Hermitage Museum, the former director of Lenzhilsnab (one of Leningrad’s leading housing construction trusts), as well as architects and restoration workers with the specialist knowledge to restore the city’s architectural treasures.89 One notable example was the request made in mid-July 1946 to demobilize Vladimir Lodukhin, who before the war had been director of museums, palaces and parks in Pushkin, and had helped supervise the evacuation and preservation of Leningrad’s palaces and museums. His experience was considered invaluable in the mammoth task of rebuilding and restoring the splendour of the Catherine Palace. Not all requests, of course, were granted. The demobilization of fifteen soldiers, which the Lenfilm cinema studios had requested, was rejected as ‘not expedient at the current time’.90 These alternative mechanisms applied to just a small number of veterans. The Leningrad soviet requested the demobilization of, at most, a thousand soldiers. This was not a Soviet equivalent of Class B demobilization in Britain, which was introduced to release managers, technicians and overseas salesmen (who all made an important contribution to labour creation), as well as teachers, students and skilled manufacturing, mining and agricultural workers. Approximately 10 per cent of British veterans were demobilized under these regulations.91 This was an ad-­hoc solution to local problems rather than a permanent arrangement sanctioned by the centre. The absence of a formal mechanism to demobilize specialists vital to Leningrad’s economic recovery demonstrated the inefficiency of the Soviet demobilization system. Thousands of individuals continued to serve for months, even years, despite their potential contribution to postwar reconstruction. With the exception of the 60,000 child soldiers who served in the Soviet military, the category of veteran whose experience of demobilization we know the least about are Prisoners of War (POWs).92 POWs across Europe and the globe experienced a tortuous journey home, which could see them returning years after other veterans and excluded from the public celebrations and attention that surrounded veterans’ homecoming.93 The story of Nikolai Sokolov, captured on the Leningrad front on 20 September 1941, gives just an indication of the additional problems faced by former POWs. Sokolov’s war was spent in a succession of POW camps in north-­western Russia, Germany and Norway, from where he was repatriated on 22 June 1945. This was just the beginning of many further obstacles and hardships. First he was sent to a filtration camp (see below)

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33

in the Mariiskaia Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (ASSR). On 8 August 1945, whilst still in the camp, he received a letter from an acquaintance informing him of the death of his mother and brother. From here he was sent to serve in a labour battalion in Sverdlovsk. On 7 May 1946, a year after the war’s end, he received notification that he was to be demobilized and could return to Leningrad to study. He finally arrived in the city on 22 May 1946. Although he had lost his home and family, after five years of enormous suffering he was nevertheless glad to return to Leningrad.94 During the war perhaps as many as six million Soviet POWs were taken, almost three million of whom were captured in the disastrous campaigns of the summer of 1941. In the majority of cases ordinary soldiers were captured fulfilling their military duty and through no fault of their own.95 However, from the start of the war soldiers who found themselves in captivity faced harsh penalties, stigmatization and even being branded as criminals.96 In Stalin’s notorious wartime Order No. 270 issued on 16 August 1941 officers and political workers, who were always treated more harshly than the rank and file, were branded as deserters; their families liable to arrest. In July 1942 Order No. 227, the so called ‘not one step backwards order’, expanded the prospect of death and disgrace to all soldiers.97 Although the full extent of Stalinist punishment was not always implemented, official policy towards POWs was at best suspicious, at worst explicitly hostile. A deep mistrust of repatriated citizens and POWs ran through Soviet politics and society. The impulse to reintegrate repatriates and former POWs was always balanced by the desire for retribution.98 The last thing returning POWs expected was to be welcomed home by their government. By 1 March 1946 1,825,774 former Soviet POWs had been repatriated: these included 1,250,758 rank and file soldiers, 195,350 sergeants, and 379,666 officers up to the rank of colonel.99 On crossing the Soviet border former POWs immediately fell under suspicion, regardless of the circumstances of their capture, or their conduct in captivity. Repatriates were subjected to a process known as filtration (filtratsiia), by which they were screened for past participation in the Vlasovite Russian Liberation Army, possible collaboration in POW camps, and potential anti-Soviet activity. Filtration could have several outcomes. Former soldiers passing filtration could be remobilized for military service, especially if they were fit and not eligible for demobilization. Alternatively, as Nikolai Sokolov found, repatriates could be mobilized to serve in labour armies engaged in mining, timber cutting or reconstruction work. There were approximately 340,000 former POWs working in labour battalions at the beginning of January 1946. For these veterans the years of forced labour abroad were replaced by forced labour at home. The wait for eventual demobilization might take months or even years. For an unfortunate few, filtration meant a protracted stay in a filtration camp, a camp sentence, or worse. Leningrad’s proximity to Finland and the Baltics made it an important location in the repatriation of POWs, with a steady flow of repatriated soldiers and civilians passing through the region. The filtration system consisted of two tiers: VerificationFiltration points and Verification-Filtration camps. Repatriates considered by filtration points to pose significant risk were passed to filtration camps for more careful investigation. The Leningrad oblast’ had one main filtration point, established in October 1944 and located in Vyborg, which was amongst the busiest in the entire

34

Demobilized Veterans in Late Stalinist Leningrad

Soviet Union. In 1944 approximately 45,000 repatriated Soviet citizens passed through filtration points in the Leningrad region. This represented about 46 per cent of the total number of Soviet repatriates for 1944.100 Between the end of 1944 and the beginning of 1945 the Vyborg filtration point received between 2,000 and 5,000 repatriates a day.101 The Leningrad oblast’ boasted two filtration camps. Camp 317 was established in January 1945 in the village of Nevdubstroi, to the east of Leningrad, close to Kirovsk, and critically on the October railway line. Camp 323 was opened in April 1945 in Kotly, a village with railway links near to the Estonian border. These filtration camps are reputed to have been amongst the largest in the entire Soviet Union.102 At a national level between 61 and 67 per cent of returning POWs were transferred from filtration points to camps.103 It is unclear how many POWs were transferred from filtration camps to points in the Leningrad region, but local variations are clear. The Tosnenskii district NKVD department, for example, sent all returning POWs to filtration camps regardless of individual circumstances.104 The filtration process was one of the most vivid demonstrations of the repressive power of the late Stalinist state. Conditions were often indistinguishable from the Gulag or German POW camps. Filtration camp inmates were forced labourers in all but name. Former POWs were expected to work exhausting eleven hour days, which preceded the humiliating routine of night-­time investigation and interrogation. Both of the Leningrad oblast’s camps used former POWs for reconstruction projects. Camp 323 deployed prisoners in the reconstruction of the October railway line and construction projects for the Baltic Fleet. Camp 317 played a crucial role in the reconstruction of the Dubrovskaia power station.105 Filtration camps appear to have been deliberately located near important industrial centres or enterprises to harness former POWs for reconstruction.106 The primary purpose of filtration camps, however, remained rooting out perceived traitors and collaborators. According to figures cited by Govorov, between January and March 1946 a total of 12,351 individuals passed through these two filtration camps. 507 former POWs were arrested and 3,108 sentenced to special exile for periods of at least six years.107 Although there was much that was shameful about the treatment of returning POWs locally and nationally, the filtration system was less repressive than some historians have imagined. As Mark Edele notes, historians have often exaggerated the violence of filtration: ‘Stressing the arbitrariness of the process of filtration, some accounts leave the reader with the impression that the typical experience was the bullet in the head or the life of a concentration camp inmate (zek) in Stalin’s Gulag.’108 This was often not the case. Rank and file soldiers, for example, were treated more leniently than former officers. Given the level of violence the Stalinist state was capable of, the number of POWs killed or arrested as a result of filtration was surprisingly low. Yet even POWs who passed through filtration points and camps with relative ease found that suspicion hung over them. Many were faced with discrimination and violations of their legal rights for the rest of their lives.109 Filtration, as Nick Baron has argued, was part of the process of systematic postwar reconstruction of intelligence networks, and re-­establishing the relationship between the individual and the state. Through interrogations and filtration questionnaires, ‘the surveillance state was affirming the legitimacy both of its scrutinising impulse and of the bureaucratic

The Troops Come Home

35

apparatus constructed to register and record’.110 The body of knowledge gathered through filtration lay on file, providing material on which former POWs could be questioned in future. Between 1944 and 1947 repatriated POWs were treated like second class citizens. They did, however, enjoy many of the theoretical privileges extended to demobilized veterans. But around 1947 the political atmosphere changed. No official policy shift was announced, but the political centre stopped sending positive signals about the desirability of reintegrating repatriates and stopped enforcing the legal rights of former POWs. Very quickly they became subject to greater surveillance, routine harassment and the threat of arrest.111 Many faced discrimination in employment, education and housing, while state security organs arbitrarily harassed former POWs.112 Internal passport and residence permit regulations often prevented POWS from living in major Soviet cities, or within 100 kilometres of them.113 In effect this displaced several thousand Leningraders, perhaps even tens of thousands, separating them from their homes and families. At present the available source materials prevent a thorough examination of POWs’ demobilization and their postwar adaptation. In part this reflects the fact that many former POWs were prevented from returning to Leningrad. As a result their experiences and the particular challenges they faced are under-­represented in the chapters that follow. Nikolai Sokolov was exceptional. Not just because he was permitted to return to Leningrad, and because he eventually became a distinguished member of Leningrad State University’s Russian Literature Department, but because he recorded his wartime experiences in a diary and wrote his memoirs, both of which have been published. Reliable or detailed evidence about how former POWs learnt to live with peace, and made sense of late Stalinist society, is rare. Former POWs were treated as a special category of citizen. Soviet archival practice meant that documents about POWs were preserved separately from records relating to other veterans, in parts of the archive which remain inaccessible. St. Petersburg’s filtration records, for example, remain closed to researchers. Local archivists steadfastly maintain that POWs and veterans were different, rather than overlapping, social constituencies. As the official memory of the war tightens once again, and becomes a symbol of national pride, documents detailing discrimination against former POWs are likely to remain classified. For Soviet POWs the war did not end with captivity, or even their repatriation. They would have to fight long campaigns for their wartime experience to be officially recognized, and for welfare entitlements to be extended to them. They were excluded from victory parades and celebrations of demobilization in the summer of 1945, as well as subsequent attempts to frame the memory of the war. Unlike many veterans they were unable to participate in the creation of the official war cult under Khrushchev and Brezhnev by writing and publishing their memoirs. Legal recognition that POWs were ‘war participants’ on an equal footing with other veterans was only granted in January 1995, and even this was inconsistently applied.114 As the distinguished historian Pavel Polian writes, ‘The humiliating process of the restoration of their (POWs’) civil rights stretched for half a century (though they were innocent of any crime).’115 The return of veterans to Leningrad and the Leningrad oblast’ took time to organize and started slowly. What began as a trickle rapidly became a torrent. From mid-July 1945 onwards thousands of demobilized soldiers began arriving on an almost daily

36

Demobilized Veterans in Late Stalinist Leningrad

basis. The pace of demobilization, once underway, was impressive. Simply counting the number of returning veterans flooding into the region presented an administrative challenge. Different bureaucracies counted returning veterans in different ways, for different purposes, which sometimes resulted in statistical discrepancies. The extent and pressure of the task inevitably led to arithmetical errors. The statistics compiled by the Leningrad City Military Registration Office (Leningraskii gorodskii voennyi komissiariat, or voenkomat for short) provide the best record of the scale of the challenge presented by demobilization. By 31 July 1947, the last available set of figures, a total of 268,376 veterans had been demobilized in Leningrad.116 This locally generated figure suggests that more veterans were demobilized in Leningrad than any other Soviet city. 246,218 veterans were demobilized in Leningrad by 1 January 1947, compared to 212,866 in Moscow, 44,571 in Kiev and 32,571 in Gorkii.117 Although local and national statistics may have counted veterans’ demobilization in different ways, there can be little doubt Leningrad veterans were more prominent than those in any other major Soviet city. Given Leningrad’s wartime population collapse, and slow postwar recovery, veterans represented 10 to 15 per cent of the city’s total population throughout the years of mass demobilization. Even these remarkable figures underestimate the total number of veterans living in Leningrad and its environs. By 1 October 1946 a further 47,619 demobilized veterans had arrived in the Leningrad oblast’, although 5,490 of these, approximately 11.5 per cent, had moved away from the oblast’. The majority had presumably found their way to Leningrad. Of the remaining veterans, 33,341 settled in rural districts and 8,788 settled in major oblast’ towns.118 All of these figures exclude large numbers of disabled veterans, former POWs and migrants, who had not been counted as they passed through demobilization points. On 1 May 1946, for example, there were 48,643 war invalids registered with district social security offices in Leningrad, Petrodvorets, Kolpino, Pushkin and Kronstadt.119 The number of war invalids only continued to grow in the following years. Unfortunately there are no reliable figures for the number of Red Army veterans who migrated to the Leningrad region in the months or years following their demobilization, or for the number of former POWs who succeeded in making their homes in the city and region. The Leningrad City voenkomat compiled regular statistical reports about the progress of demobilization, which survive for the period between the beginning of 1946 and mid-1947. These reports make it possible not only to trace the rate of demobilization, but also to reflect on the sociological make-­up of those veterans passing through demobilization points (Table 1). By the end of May 1947 a total of 29,780 women, approximately 11 per cent of the total demobilized, had settled in Leningrad.120 According to these figures just two women were demobilized in the first five months of demobilization.121 But by the end of December 1945 approximately 93 per cent of the total number of female veterans had been demobilized. The overwhelming majority of ex-­servicewomen were demobilized in a concentrated period between September and December 1945. The total number of women veterans was relatively small when compared to the number of officers demobilized in Leningrad. By the end of July 1947, the last available set of statistics, a total of 64,684 officers had been demobilized in Leningrad, representing just under a quarter of the

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37

Table 1  Demobilization figures in the city of Leningrad – gender breakdown and officers Date

Total Number % of Number % of Number % of demobilized of men total of women total of officers total Reference

31/12/1945 143,003

115,068 81

27,935

19

14,487

10

TsGA-SPb f.7384/op.36/ d.201/l.3

15/01/1946 151,462

123,149 82

28,322

18

17,515

12

TsGA-SPb f.7384/op.36/ d.201/l. 7

31/01/1946 157,726

129,075 82

28,651

18

21,150

13

TsGA-SPb f.7384/op.36/ d.201/l.11

01/03/1946 165,863

136,927 83

28,936

17

24,496

17

TsGA-SPb f.7384/op.36/ d.201/l.33

01/04/1946 172,537

143,275 80

29,262

20

28,663

17

TsGA-SPb f.7384/op.36/ d.201/l.41

01/05/1946 177,072

147,605 84

29,467

16

31,507

18

TsGA-SPb f.7384/op.36/ d.201/l.73,75

31/05/1946 186,231

156,731 85

29,500

15

34,777

19

TsGA-SPb f.7384/op.36/ d.201/l.91

30/06/1946 197,858

168,347 85

29,511

15

37,669

19

TsGA-SPb f.7384/op.36/ d.201/l.108

31/07/1946 209,304

179,770 86

29,534

14

41,434

20

TsGA-SPb f.7384/op.36/ d.201/l.145

31/08/1946 220,050

192,500 86

29,550

14

46,210

21

TsGA-SPb f.7384/op.36/ d.201/l.147

30/09/1946 230,501

200,947 87

29,554

13

50,591

22

TsGA-SPb f.7384/op.36/ d.201/l.150

31/10/1946 235,437

205,877 87

29,560

13

53,703

23

TsGA-SPb f.7384/op.36/ d.201/l.163

30/11/1946 241,021

211,261 88

29,760

12

56,003

23

TsGA-SPb f.7384/op.36/ d.201/l.180

31/12/1946 246,218

216,440 88

29,778

12

57,089

23

TsGA-SPb f.7384/op.36/ d.226/l.104

(continued)

Demobilized Veterans in Late Stalinist Leningrad

38

Table 1  (continued)

Date

Total Number % of Number % of Number % of demobilized of men total of women total of officers total Reference

31/01/1947 250,720

220,942 89

29,778

11

58,499

23

TsGA-SPb f.7384/op.36/ d.226/l.48

28/02/1947 252,867

223,087 89

29,780

11

59,467

24

TsGA-SPb f.7384/op.36/ d.226/l.54

31/03/1947 257,221

227,441 89

29,780

11

60,371

23

TsGA-SPb f.7384/op.36/ d.226/l.71

30/04/1947 262,267

232,487 90

29,780

10

61,654

24

TsGA-SPb f.7384/op.36/ d.226/l.116

31/05/1947 265,192

235,412 89

29,780

11

62,804

24

TsGA-SPb f.7384/op.36/ d.226/l.136

30/06/1947 267,253

63,886

24

TsGA-SPb f.7384/op.36/ d.226/l.201

31/07/1947 268,378

64,684

24

TsGA-SPb f./7384/op.36/ d.226/l.208

city’s veterans.122 While the proportion of demobilized women steadily dropped over this period, the proportion of officers gradually rose, stabilizing in spring 1947. The high proportion of officers in the city reflected both the number of officers mobilized from the city, and also the attractions Leningrad offered to veterans able to exploit their military and social status to settle in a major city. Although officers were perhaps over-­ represented, the statistics provide an indication of the remarkable diversity of veterans, who included men and women of all ranks, generations and walks of life. Amongst them were 57,367 men aged between 30 and 40, 6,145 soldiers who had served continuously since 1938, 1,298 veterans with higher and technical education, 1,439 students with more than a year’s higher education, 327 teachers and 2,851 veterans who had been wounded three or more times.123 Although the pace of demobilization was dictated by legislation and a process imposed from the centre, there were regional variations in the dynamics of demobilization. According to national statistics, 40 per cent of all soldiers released during mass demobilization returned between July and September 1945 as part of the first wave of demobilization.124 In comparison by 1 October 1945, the approximate end of the first demobilization wave, 45,770 soldiers had been demobilized in Leningrad. This represented just 17 per cent of Leningrad’s total demobilization. Although the pace of demobilization quickened throughout the summer of 1945, it was not until

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39

the autumn of 1945 that the process reached full capacity. For example, 45,000 soldiers were demobilized in Leningrad in November 1945; approximately the same number as in the first three months of mass demobilization. Just over 13,000 veterans were demobilized in the Leningrad oblast’ in December 1945, representing over 25 per cent of the total demobilized in the oblast’.125 Throughout the last quarter of 1945 and the whole of 1946, demobilization in Leningrad progressed at a steadier rate. The bulk of mass demobilization was completed by January 1947, just 18 months after the start of the process. Only 22,160 veterans, just 8 per cent of the total, were demobilized in Leningrad between January and July 1947.126 The dynamics of mass demobilization were not uniform, but constantly shifted. The decision to structure demobilization by waves of releases organized by birth cohort created peaks and troughs in the rate of soldiers’ return, and subtle month by month shifts in the sociological make up of returning soldiers. The men and women demobilized in the summer of 1945 were very different from those demobilized in the autumn of 1946, or the summer of 1947. They had different lives, wartime experiences and expectations of demobilization. These differences combined with the dynamics of demobilization, the bottlenecks and lulls, would have dramatic implications for veterans’ postwar prospects. The experience of demobilization varied enormously depending on age, gender and the nature of a veteran’s wartime service. The key phase of mass demobilization lasted nearly two years, after which the overwhelming majority of veterans had returned to their civilian lives. From the Red Army’s perspective, demobilization was complete once soldiers arrived at their final destination and had passed through the demobilization checkpoints. Many soldiers initially shared this conceit. Yet in many ways the war was far from over. Demobilization, rather than marking the end of the war, was the beginning of a fascinating story of postwar transition, a story all too often overshadowed by the war itself. The struggle to rebuild civilian lives, as well as divisive conflicts about the meaning and memory of war, were only just beginning. Although the number of soldiers who returned to the region represented only a fraction of those who volunteered or were conscripted, re-­assimilating so many veterans so quickly created problems and real social pressures. It is these difficulties to reintegrate into civilian life, as experienced by Leningrad’s veterans, which form the basis of the chapters which follow.

2

‘Homes for Heroes’ Veterans and the Postwar Housing Crisis

In February 1946 Vasilii Aleksandrov was invalided out of the Red Army. In midMarch he was greeted by his mother, aunt and a cousin, also a disabled veteran, at the railway station in Ordezh, approximately 130 kilometres south of Leningrad. The following day the group set off on the 25-kilometre walk home. Vasilii was shocked by what awaited him: On the way we passed the village of Pochap which had been partially burnt down, but the next village, Beloe, had been completely burnt down, only two homes and two barns remained. Not one building remained in the villages of Tren’kovo and Khrenelki. Our village, Moshkovye Poliany, had also suffered; fourteen buildings had been burnt down, and around fifty remained. Of all the surrounding villages, and there had been nine . . . before the war, only one remained, ours.1

Vasilii was immediately confronted by the most intractable problem facing Leningrad’s veterans; finding somewhere to live. Re-­housing the rapid influx of veterans, at the same time as re-­evacuation and the repopulation of the city brought hundreds of thousands of former and new residents into the city, represented one of the greatest challenges facing Leningrad and its environs. Overcrowding and housing shortages were hardly new problems in Leningrad or for Soviet socialism. Cramped living conditions were common before the revolutions of 1917 and throughout the 1920s and 1930s. However, after the war the catastrophic condition of housing proved a major barrier to re-­establishing ‘normal’ life.2 Postwar Leningrad faced an acute housing crisis, the product of wartime destruction, population movements and enhanced entitlements, which impinged on veterans’ transition to civilian life, and in many instances poisoned their first steps towards civilian readjustment. This chapter explores the official mechanisms by which returning veterans were allocated housing, as well as the many and varied tactics they employed to obtain housing on their own initiative. It argues that in the short-term providing veterans with either temporary or permanent housing proved beyond the means of the Leningrad party and soviet. Ex-­servicemen and their families had legal entitlements to housing, but in practice the right to reclaim former homes or receive new living space was far from automatic. The chapter also examines veterans’ attitudes to housing shortages, the

42

Demobilized Veterans in Late Stalinist Leningrad

inequalities of housing distribution and the abysmal living conditions they endured. The party-­state’s failure to provide ‘homes for heroes’ inevitably created disappointment and resentment. The dissonance between the promises of support for veterans and the reality of demobilization prompted many veterans to privately question the official rhetoric of unprecedented care and rewards for former soldiers. Veterans’ responses to the housing crisis provide an indication of how they evaluated postwar society and their place in it. Housing, to quote the historian Rebecca Manley, was a ‘contested terrain in which individuals and groups fought not only over scarce material resources, but over who won the war, and the extent to which the war would determine the postwar order’.3 Housing, therefore, provides a prism through which the experience of postwar re-­adaptation can be refracted, casting light upon the difficulties of demobilization, but also separating out postwar society’s winners and losers. The provision of housing for veterans in Leningrad and the Leningrad oblast’ also offers a litmus test to evaluate theories of entitlement. One of the main ways historians have approached writing about demobilization has been to focus on the social and welfare benefits extended to veterans. Throughout modern history European and North American societies have created expectations that armed service merited tangible material rewards, sometimes referred to as ‘the military covenant’ or ‘reciprocity’.4 Notions of entitlement have been central to how historians have studied Red Army veterans. Mark Edele, in particular, has argued that in the years before the establishment of an organized veterans’ movement, it was a shared sense of entitlement which bound veterans together as a group.5 ‘Soviet war veterans in the first postwar decade’, as Edele informs us, ‘formed a socially relevant group because they tended to act alike, as they shared a sense of entitlement vis-á-­via the community they had fought for.’6 State benefits played an important role in easing ex-­servicemen’s and ex-­ servicewomen’s transition to civilian life, and shaping their sense of identity. Being a veteran, however, was not just a matter of legal status or entitlement. The effects of exposure to extreme violence and mass death, as subsequent chapters explore, played an equally important role in moulding veterans’ identities and their future lives. Entitlement, the claim to special treatment, and privilege, the institutionalization and reciprocation of these claims, were very different things.7 The enormous gulf between veterans’ legal entitlement to welfare and the reality of their treatment at the hands of states and bureaucracies is a recurring theme in the history of veterans and their demobilization.8 The distribution of housing in Leningrad and the Leningrad oblast’ and the implementation of veterans’ housing rights provide an opportunity to examine the extent to which veterans were able to transform legal entitlement into concrete privilege or social status. The complexities of the local postwar housing crisis suggest that few veterans, at least in Leningrad, extracted practical advantage from theoretical privilege, and failed to emerge as a privileged social group. Vasilii Aleksandrov was just one of many demobilized veterans across the Leningrad oblast’ who were returning to a landscape scarred by trenches, pitted by shells and littered with burnt-­out villages. John Steinbeck, who flew over the region in 1947, described the countryside around Leningrad as, ‘pitted and scabbled like faces of the moon’.9 Sixteen towns and 2,032 villages were destroyed or severely damaged by fighting. According to the oblast’ soviet’s calculations 56,720 residential buildings were destroyed. Districts to

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the south of the city, where combat had been most intense, suffered disproportionately. In the Mginskii district (raion) 62 villages and 6,778 homes were burnt down, while in the Tosnenskii district 169 villages and 12,811 homes were destroyed. Just 20 residential buildings survived in the Kirishskii district. Pavlovsk, Pushkin, Mga and Tosno, all important towns, were all but flattened. In Kolpino, an industrial town to the south of Leningrad, 85 per cent of housing was destroyed, causing an estimated 620 million roubles of damage. The population of the Leningrad oblast’ plummeted due to the combined result of mass death, military conscription, civilian evacuation and the deportation of forced labourers from occupied districts. By August 1945 its population was just 492,952 people, less than a third of its prewar level.10 Thanks to re-­evacuation, repatriation and demobilization population increased rapidly. But by September 1946 the oblast’ population was estimated at 773,000, just 48.7 per cent of its prewar level.11 Veterans were returning to homes and communities that had changed beyond recognition. The Leningrad oblast’ was far from unique in this capacity. Former soldiers returning to former frontline regions, a wide band of territory stretching from Karelia to the Black Sea, were confronted by similar scenes of destruction and depopulation. Finding somewhere to live in this war-­torn landscape was extremely difficult. Some veterans were able to squeeze into friends’ and relatives’ living space. Others gravitated to Leningrad, where the prospects of work and housing seemed brighter. Some found their homes intact, but these were not always empty. In 1946, for example, veterans returning to the Volosovskii Lime Factory discovered they had been made homeless. In 1944 a camp for German POWs had been established in the factory’s residential buildings. Since prisoner labour was essential to the factory’s operation the NKVD refused to relocate the camp.12 No wonder many veterans believed their wartime sacrifices had been forgotten, when the residential needs of the former enemy trumped their own. Other veterans returned to find their families living in temporary shelters and dugouts, known as zemlianki, or they set about building these structures themselves. In July 1945, according to a report by Danilin, head of the local Department of State Aid for Soldiers’ Families, there were approximately 2,000 servicemen’s families living in zemlianki in the Leningrad oblast’.13 Compared to the Pskov, Smolensk, Bryansk and Orlov oblasts this figure was low, but eradicating dugouts was a persistent problem.14 A top secret oblast’ party report from April 1946 bemoaned the slow progress in building homes for collective farmers living in zemlianki in the Os’minskii and Lodeinopol’skii districts. Local party officials were criticized for failing to take the problem seriously. Just a handful of families had been relocated since the beginning of 1946, and only a fraction of the timber earmarked for construction was provided.15 Yet compared to other regions the Leningrad oblast’ resolved this problem relatively quickly. In May 1947 there were still 40,400 families living in zemlianki in Soviet Russia, the majority of which were the families of serving soldiers and war invalids, or war widows and orphans. Only sixty-­two of these families were located in the Leningrad oblast’.16 However, the relatively rapid eradication of the Leningrad oblast’s zemlianki was scant compensation for those who continued to endure such primitive conditions. In the immediate wake of war thousands of industrial workers lived in equally abysmal temporary accommodation. In December 1945 approximately 232 families and 593 single people were working on the construction of the Dubrovskii power

44

Demobilized Veterans in Late Stalinist Leningrad

station in Kirovsk. Three hundred and fifty-­eight people were living in tents, forty-­ three families in plywood huts, and 173 families and 233 individuals in zemlianki.17 Plans to employ demobilized veterans in key industries drawn-­up in mid-December 1945 recommended that 250 veterans were employed in the north-­west of the oblast’ at the Svir-3 hydroelectric power station.18 On arrival they found construction workers living in zemlianki, conditions they shared throughout the winter of 1945–1946. By 9 February 1946, despite the construction of new barracks, there were still 1,444 people, including 250 families, crammed into 260 zemlianki. The dugouts were crowded, deep and dilapidated. It was almost impossible to keep the cold, damp and dirt at bay. Tuberculosis and rickets were widespread. Worse still, many zemlianki were under threat of imminent collapse. One official feared that if people were not re-­accommodated by the springtime thaw deaths were unavoidable.19 Housings conditions were only marginally better in Leningrad. As the historian Mark Smith observes: ‘If the Soviet housing fund was extremely inadequate before 1941, then the extent of the housing crisis precipitated by the war was unprecedented in modern history.’20 Soviet cities, like cities across Europe, stood on the war’s frontlines. They were targets for enemy bombing, and theatres of war in their own right. Compared to other Soviet cities, or fire-­stormed German cities, Leningrad survived the war relatively intact. Approximately 20 per cent of Leningrad’s housing was destroyed, compared to over 75 per cent in Stalingrad, Smolensk, Voronezh and Rostov-­on-Don.21 Foreign observers remarked that much of Leningrad, particularly its historic centre, was remarkably well preserved.22 Architecturally important buildings and monuments had been carefully preserved, and reconstruction work began even before the blockade was lifted.23 While Leningrad’s veterans did not quite return to the urban wasteland of Minsk or Stalingrad, the damage done to Leningrad’s housing was extensive. Many veterans and re-­evacuees hardly recognized their neighbourhoods. According to official figures  148,478 artillery shells, 102,500 incendiary bombs and 4,638 high explosive bombs were fired or dropped on the city.24 German military action was not the only reason for destruction and dilapidation. Between 1 January and 10 March 1942 1,578 domestic fires were reported in the city, some of which raged for days causing extensive damage.25 One unpublished memoir contains the haunting image of exhausted people gathering around burning buildings to enjoy the warmth.26 Less dramatically, but just as importantly, unheated buildings, burst pipes and a lack of investment took their toll on an already poorly maintained housing stock. In November 1947 Lazutin, chairman of the city soviet, estimated that a million Leningraders had lost their homes during the war. The most authoritative figures suggest that 3,174 buildings with a living space of 3,300,000 m2 were totally destroyed and 7,143 buildings were severely damaged with a loss of 2,200,000 m2 of housing. A further 9,000 wooden buildings, many of them residential, were dismantled to provide fuel.27 While the city centre was relatively well preserved, much of the damage was concentrated in outlying districts to the north and west. The Kirovskii, Vyborgskii and Leningradskii districts lost 65, 42 and 40 per cent of their housing respectively.28 The condition of Leningrad’s surviving housing stock, like most late Stalinist housing, was abysmal.29 Few buildings escaped damage or dilapidation during the blockade. In 1944 approximately 80 per cent of buildings required re-­glazing, repairs to

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roofs and re-­plastering of façades. Electricity, gas, and water supply networks had been seriously damaged.30 By 10 August 1945 there were still 5,850 apartments in Leningrad without running water, which housed approximately 6 to 7 per cent of the city’s population.31 Sanitary conditions were a major source of both popular and official concern.32 In order to ease the housing shortage buildings unfit for human habitation were pressed into temporary service. People continued to live in workshops and basements, just as they had done during the blockade. A number of trade organizations still billeted their workers in warehouses, a practice that the city soviet had tried to outlaw.33 On 1 July 1946 Nikulin, head of Leningrad’s State Sanitation Inspectorate, compiled an investigation of living conditions in basement accommodation. Some 3,566 people (1,358 men, 1,698 women and 510 children) were living in basement dormitories. Average living space was 5.3 m2 per person, although in places it was as low as 3 m2. In addition 7,306 people, including 1,733 children, were living in underground apartments with an average living space of 6.4 m2 per person. Much of this accommodation was over two metres below ground and received little or no natural light. Basements even in summer were cold, damp and unsanitary. Standing water was a constant problem. Nikitin’s report recommended no longer housing people, even temporarily, in basements. The Sanitation Inspectorate, however, had made these recommendations before; and it was unlikely that this intervention was any more successful.34 By 1950, according to the official narrative of postwar reconstruction, Leningrad was restored to its former glory as a thriving metropolis. Propagandists boasted about the startling rapidity of reconstruction, in defiance of predictions from the West that rebuilding would take twenty years. Given the enormity of the national and local housing crises there could be neither quick nor comprehensive solutions. While Soviet attempts to rebuild housing, in the words of Mark Smith, were often ‘inadequate, fractured by a focus on prestige cities and projects, and in parts neglectful of basic humane considerations, elsewhere it was relatively and comparatively substantial’.35 Initial results in Leningrad were impressive: 1,600,000 m2 of living space, 3,000,000 m2 of roofing and 940,000 m2 of façade were repaired between 1944 and 1945. Leningraders contributed approximately 52,000,000 man-­hours of voluntary labour in the collective reconstruction efforts.36 The achievements of the early phases of reconstruction, however, were in part the product of prioritizing the lightest and easiest damage to repair.37 A further 1,500,000 m2 were repaired in lightly damaged buildings between 1945 and 1946.38 Major capital construction was therefore largely delayed until the start of the first postwar five year plan. Between 1946 and 1950 approximately 400,000 citizens obtained new housing. 2,400,000 m2 of living space was constructed, considerably more than during the entire 1930s.39 This mirrored the national picture. The amount of housing constructed in the Soviet Union in the ten years after 1945 was much higher than in the ten years before the war.40 By 1950 Leningrad’s housing stock reached 22,800,000 m2, approximately 80 to 90 per cent of the prewar stock.41 Several historians have suggested that at some point between 1948 and 1950 damage to housing and basic urban infrastructure was essentially repaired.42 Leningrad’s successful reconstruction, however, was largely a myth. Rather than bringing discernible improvements postwar reconstruction recreated the overcrowded standards of the

46

Demobilized Veterans in Late Stalinist Leningrad

1930s. Statistics which suggested that prewar housing stocks had been repaired were underpinned by a very low standard of what constituted adequate housing.43 Dark, damp, cold and dirty housing remained the norm. In 1950, even after extensive reconstruction and new construction, the average per-­capita living space was 6.4 m2, well below the theoretical sanitary norm.44 The standard form of housing remained the notorious communal apartments (kommunalki), in which each room housed a single family.45 Self-­contained apartments, the apex of the urban housing hierarchy, were largely reserved for privileged members of the élite, although the aspiration for separate housing percolated much lower.46 Yet for those lower on the housing ladder in crowded barracks or filthy dormitories even kommunalki seemed luxurious, offering greater privacy, security and comfort. Abysmal living conditions in dormitories (obshchezhitie) were a constant source of concern throughout the period, the subject of numerous inspections, anxious reports and district soviet resolutions.47 Elena Babina settled in Leningrad after her demobilization. She found work in the prestigious Kirov Factory, and was given a bed in a women’s dormitory. There were seven beds in my room already and mine was the eighth. Later we all got married, one by one, and brought our husbands to live in the hostel, although the room measured only 24 square metres . . . We lived in the hostel for seven years . . . And then, after seven years, we were given – not flats, but rooms in communal flats. We were all very glad.48

Such conditions were far from unusual at the Kirov works, one of Leningrad’s largest employers and largest employers of veterans, or in the city as a whole. In January 1951 Aleksei Gonchukov, an ex-­servicemen, was appointed as an assistant to the director of the Kirov Factory. In unpublished memoirs written in 1967 he described his shock at workers’ living conditions. Over 2,000 families were living in dormitories which Gonchukov considered unfit for human habitation. Several dormitories presented a ‘nightmarish sight’ (koshmarnoe zrelishe). Eighty-­two families were crammed into a dormitory located in a converted hospital, which had no kitchen, lavatories or running water. Another dormitory was described as a ‘concentration camp’; language not to be employed lightly. A converted secondary school on Stachek Prospekt, used as a dormitory since 1944, attracted the worst criticism. By 1951 over 1,600 people were living there. Rooms housing as many as ten families were sub-­divided into smaller spaces by sheets, towels and newsprint hung from strings. Thanks to Gonchukov’s efforts these workers were resettled by May 1952.49 Yet, the continued existence of such terrible conditions years after the war’s end cut against the myth that normal housing conditions had been re-­established by 1950. When Stalin died in 1953 tens of thousands of Soviet citizens, including demobilized veterans, were still living in makeshift accommodation barely fit for human habitation.50 Leningrad’s veterans were clearly not returning to a promised land. Where housing was available it was of a low standard, and in many cases worse than the barracks and billets soldiers had enjoyed in occupied Europe. Regardless of the conditions that awaited them, many veterans returned with hopes for a better postwar life. Much has been written about the spirit of freedom and independence fostered by the war. Postwar

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memoirs, usually written after the post-Stalin ‘thaw’, frequently recall the war as a release from the repressive tensions of the 1930s. Historians agree that the experience of war fostered a sense of personal liberation amongst Soviet citizens.51 Postwar society, as Elena Zubkova argues, was suffused with an optimistic atmosphere, and a faith that life would quickly improve.52 Ilya Ehrenburg, a writer and journalist whose wartime popularity with soldiers makes him a well placed judge of veterans’ mentalities, summed up many soldiers’ belief that after victory everything would suddenly change . . . When I recall conversation at the front and at the rear, when I re-­read letters, it is clear that everybody expected that once victory had been won people would know real happiness. We realized, of course, that the country had been devastated, impoverished, that we would have to work hard, and we did not have fantasies about mountains of gold. But we believed that victory would bring justice, that human dignity would triumph.53

Amidst the heady atmosphere of postwar optimism it was possible to believe that wartime service had fundamentally reconfigured the relationship between state and society. Charting the complicated ways in which the war recalibrated interactions between ‘ordinary’ citizens and the party-­state lies at the heart of a wealth of recent research into the late Stalinist period.54 Soldiers and civilians anticipated that wartime sacrifices would be rewarded by a mixture of tangible material benefits, and moderation of Stalinism’s oppressive policies. Different social groups had different expectations: peasants hoped for an end to collectivization, workers a relaxation in draconian labour laws, intellectuals expected greater freedom of expression, and party and government officials greater autonomy in decision making.55 Leningrad’s veterans, however, believed they were owed something additional. At the top of their list of expectations was a right to housing; ‘Homes for Heroes’ as it were. Historians have often presented demobilized soldiers as one of late Stalinism’s most privileged groups; enjoying rights, entitlements and a level of upward social mobility unimaginable to other citizens. In theory a host of legislation underpinned the right of serving soldiers, the war-disabled, demobilized veterans and their families to privileged access to housing. A Council of People’s Commissars (hereafter Sovnarkom) resolution issued on 5 August 1941 guaranteed those serving in the Army, Navy and NKVD forces and their families the right to reclaim their prewar living space on return from armed service. Military families who lost homes as a result of wartime destruction were entitled to equivalent accommodation.56 Further legislation passed in May 1942 made housing provision for disabled ex-­servicemen a high priority.57 The 23 June 1945 demobilization law, the legal bedrock of demobilization, reiterated veterans’ housing rights. It contained a commitment to provide veterans with accommodation and to extend to them a system of preferential credit for the reconstruction and repair of housing.58 In September 1945 a law was passed earmarking 10 per cent of new housing construction for war invalids, service families, and demobilized veterans.59 Although veterans’ welfare benefits were incrementally eroded after 1947, many ex-­servicemen continued to assume that spilt blood entitled them to privileged access to housing. Leningrad’s veterans were still invoking their perceived moral rights as former soldiers

48

Demobilized Veterans in Late Stalinist Leningrad

in appeals for better housing under Khrushchev. Military service, however, was only one component in veterans’ attempts to present themselves as deserving citizens. To maximize the effectiveness of their petitions veterans also asserted other identities and sources of entitlement, including proletarian social backgrounds, managerial or research skills and long-­term residency in Leningrad.60 Wartime military service did not replace social class as the determinant of Soviet identities, but rather superimposed another layer of meaning onto existing notions of what it meant to be Soviet.61 Veterans had plenty of opportunity to familiarize themselves with their entitlements before and after their demobilization. Propaganda posters established the link between homecoming veterans and the right to reconstructed housing.62 Demobilization legislation was widely reprinted in the press. Leningradskaia pravda, Vechernii Leningrad and local factory newspapers regularly reported on the welfare payments and support available for veterans.63 Pocketbooks drawing together relevant legislation, political speeches, rules and regulations provided a handy reference guide for entitlements.64 Soldiers awaiting demobilization were the targets of intensive propaganda and agitation from officers and political commissars. In July 1945 Colonel Ivanov, deputy head of Political Administration on the Leningrad Front, for example, reported on his agitational work in Krasnaia zvezda. Great efforts were made to ensure soldiers understood what they were entitled to and that they had the documents to support their claims. The head of one party cell went as far as to discuss demobilization legislation individually with every soldier eligible for discharge.65 Soviet propaganda, therefore, spread awareness of and information about veterans’ benefits, and reinforced the legitimacy of veterans’ claims. Despite the propagandists’ best efforts many veterans failed to grasp the details of their entitlements. Leningrad’s veterans, especially at the beginning of mass demobilization, were frequently confused about their rights. Armies awaiting demobilization are often fertile breeding grounds for rumours and myths. This was particularly the case in the Red Army, where soldiers imagined benefits never officially sanctioned. Official communications were in constant competition with unofficial information sources.66 This was particularly the case in Leningrad where informal means of communication had grown in importance during the blockade.67 Housing benefits were a prominent source of anxiety and confusion. Veterans inundated party agitators, demobilization officials, housing bureaucrats and lawyers with questions about obtaining or reclaiming housing.68 By 29 July 1945, barely two weeks after the start of mass demobilization, Leningrad’s demobilization reception points had received 1,020 enquiries for further information about housing.69 Questions about housing dominated officials’ workload at the Vyborg district demobilization point. Questions included: ‘How does one receive living space if one’s home has been destroyed, and in what timescale will it be provided? By what means can occupied living space be freed? Who should provide living space if a demobilized veteran lived in an employer-­controlled building before entering the army? Where can one obtain building materials?’70 An important source of information and advice for Leningrad’s veterans and their families was the Leningrad City College of Lawyers, which regularly provided free consultations at locations throughout the city. The demand for these legal services was unprecedented. Between 1 April 1945 and 1 April 1946 lawyers provided 2,488 days of voluntary service at demobilization reception points, the central city officers’ club,

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district social security offices, district offices of the Department of State Aid for Soldiers’ Families, the executive committees of district soviets and large employers, including the Kirov, Bolshevik and Shorokhod factories. In total 65,082 people received free legal consultations. In additions lawyers gave 94 public lectures to audiences, consisting largely of veterans, in the second half of 1945, followed by a further 381 lectures between January and March 1946.71 However, the demand for legal assistance was too large to be met by voluntary provision alone. The legal complexities of obtaining or reclaiming housing often required paid professional assistance, which led to an explosion in demand for commercial legal assistance. Approximately 80 per cent of free legal consultations became cases where lawyers received payments.72 During 1945 the City College of Lawyers gave paid advice to over 185,000 citizens, four and a half times more than in 1944.73 Some lawyers exploited the legal confusion surrounding the housing crisis by charging excessive fees. A meeting of the College of Lawyers reported that in May 1945 the average monthly earnings for a lawyer were 2,892 roubles, over double the wage of a senior manager or skilled engineer; by September it had reached 4,581 roubles. By April 1946 there were reports of lawyers earning up to 10,000 roubles in just six months.74 Despite extensive propaganda many questions remained about what support veterans could expect in finding and reclaiming housing. For a supposedly privileged élite Leningrad’s veterans were remarkably unclear about their entitlements. The demobilization law, and its local reiterations, contained little detail about how the law was to be implemented or what to do when individual circumstances departed from the norm. Advice on bringing a lawsuit to reclaim an occupied apartment, or obtaining temporary housing, was not freely available. Many veterans, therefore, depended on local and official advisers to help resolve their housing problems. Given the rushed nature of central demobilization planning, local authorities had little opportunity to develop or implement robust plans for accommodating veterans. Local planners were forced into action by the Law on Demobilization. On 28 June 1945 the executive committee of the Leningrad oblast’ soviet (Lenoblispolkom) passed a resolution interpreting the law and offering local solutions to the issues it raised.75 The executive committee of the Leningrad city soviet (Lengorispolkom) produced a similar resolution on 5 July 1945.76 These local plans delegated the responsibility for re-­housing veterans. District soviets, major industrial employers and collective farms were encouraged to take all necessary measures to create normal living conditions for demobilized soldiers and their families. Their living space, where it survived, was to be inspected to ensure that it met minimum standards. Reserves of empty accommodation and temporary dormitories were to be created in each of the city’s fifteen districts. Dormitories containing between thirty and fifty beds were to be created in all oblast’ towns and district centres. In Leningrad a housing reserve of 1,200 rooms was to be established. By 15 July 1945 each city district was to have organized between 300 and 350 beds in dormitories. In the city supplies of building and decorating materials were to be distributed to veterans. Free timber was to be made available for the construction and repair of buildings in rural areas. The language of law, entitlement and planning contained within official resolutions was, however, detached from the reality of the housing crisis facing the city and its

50

Demobilized Veterans in Late Stalinist Leningrad

rural periphery. Within days of local plans being approved, thousands of demobilized veterans began arriving in Leningrad, intensifying an already difficult situation. The enormity of the challenge of providing housing for demobilized veterans, at the same time as the influx of returning evacuees, repatriates and new migrants was not lost on the Leningrad party-­state. A party organization-­instructional department report dated 26 July 1945 openly stated that: ‘To more or less fully satisfy the claims of all the demobilized, in particular of families, to separate living space can’t even be pretended to be possible.’77 Party officials acknowledged that the ‘question of billeting many thousands of demobilized (soldiers) was the greatest difficulty for a city which had lost three million m2 of living space during the war’.78 Local planning proved wholly inadequate in the face of this problem. Even implementing modest plans proved extraordinarily difficult. Investigations into the implementation of the Gorispolkom resolution from 5 July 1945 revealed a catalogue of problems. Only 800 rooms, two-­ thirds of the proposed reserve, had been found and vacated within the proposed timescale.79 Many city districts failed to fulfil their quota; the Petrogradskii district soviet, for example, contributed just forty of a planned hundred rooms. The condition of housing within the reserve was far from luxurious; many rooms fell far below a standard considered acceptable for returning heroes. Many rooms were tiny. Others were located in basements or in contested property, where only courts could determine future use.80 Even if these plans had been realized, the modest reserves envisaged by local planners were unable to cope with the volume of veterans with a legal entitlement to housing. Local planners consistently underestimated demand for housing from veterans. As an officer, V. M. Evseev had confidently assured soldiers under his command that on demobilization they would be provided with housing. Yet his personal experience contrasted with the optimistic picture he had painted of postwar re-­integration. On contacting his local district housing administration he was told that there was no free housing and that he would be placed on a waiting list.81 Tens of thousands of veterans shared this experience. Nowhere was the failure of local demobilization planning or the practical reality of veterans’ limited entitlements clearer than on housing waiting lists. As the pace of demobilization quickened housing waiting lists lengthened rapidly. The number of veterans’ families registered on housing waiting lists was recorded in statistical reports compiled by the city soviet’s housing department and the planning statistics department. Both statistical series, despite minor inconsistencies, documented a steady increase in the number of demobilized soldiers and service families waiting for permanent accommodation.82 When mass demobilization was announced in June 1945 the families of 10,512 serving soldiers and war invalids were registered on housing waiting lists.83 Over a year later, on 1 September 1946, a total of 93,211 people, including the families of 9,981 veterans, 2,775 war invalids and 18,134 serving soldiers were on waiting lists.84 With the passing of time Leningrad’s housing crisis was intensifying, rather than easing. In February 1947 Gosteev, head of the city soviet’s housing administration, claimed that there were over 59,000 families on waiting lists, including 12,000 veterans’ and 3,000 war invalids’ families.85 To put this figure in perspective Moscow, a larger and more populous city, had 23,000 families on housing waiting lists. Gosteev attributed Leningrad’s

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particular difficulties to the widespread destruction of wooden buildings during the blockade, although this was an over-simplification.86 Waiting lists, however, were still to peak. Gosteev feared that the imminent arrival of the fourth demobilization wave would aggravate an already tense situation.87 By 1 October 1946 the families of 4,173 veterans had received a total of 65,954 m2 of living space at an average of 15.8 m2 per family. A further 10,073 families remained on the waiting list.88 Between November 1945 and October 1946, the period for which data is available, the number of housing recipients hovered below 40 per cent of those registered on lists.89 The number of veterans successful in obtaining housing in any given reporting period was tiny; between 1 and 15 September 1946 just forty military families received housing.90 For every veteran allocated housing many more joined the list. Although 125 families obtained rooms between 1 and 15 January 1946, the waiting list lengthened by 425 families.91 Providing living space for veterans whose prewar accommodation had been destroyed or illegally occupied, as investigations into the implementation of local demobilization planning complained, progressed extremely slowly.92 It would take many veterans years to obtain housing through these official channels. One such example was M. I. Kasatkevich, a highly decorated 31-year-­old war invalid. In August 1947 he wrote to Popkov, Secretary of the Leningrad city and oblast’ Communist parties, demanding a room of at least six square metres. He had been on the housing waiting list since 30 July 1945. Although he was now living with his sister, whose prospects of marriage and family life he felt he was impeding, he claimed there had been times when he had slept, ‘in basements, on staircases, under fences, on benches in parks and gardens, in public toilets’.93 Khristofor Tur’ev was demobilized on 25 October 1945, having served continuously since 10 June 1941.94 In January 1943 when the wooden building in which his wife and son had been living was dismantled they were resettled by the Vyborgskii district housing administration.95 On 27 July 1946, after nine months of civilian life, he received notification from the Vyborgskii district procuracy that his family was to be ‘administratively resettled’. The prewar occupant of the room into which the Tur’evs had been moved in 1943 had been demobilized and was reasserting his tenancy. The family, including a newly-­born daughter, were about to be thrown onto the streets.96 Due to extreme shortages the Vyborgskii district housing administration was unable to provide them with alternative accommodation, predicting that suitable housing would not be available until 1947 or 1948.97 As veterans like Khristofor Tur’ev were discovering across the city and oblast’ the tidy bureaucratic world of entitlements, waiting lists and housing regulations was largely an imaginary one. The blockade not only brought death and destruction, but also legal and administrative chaos. In the face of the extraordinary circumstances normal bureaucratic order, at least temporarily, broke down. The blockade fundamentally ruptured prewar patterns of settlement in Leningrad and the surrounding countryside. In the autumn of 1941 as the blockade tightened, Leningraders began to move within the city, in order to escape the results of destruction, dilapidation and the threat of death. While some individuals and families sought refuge with relatives in other parts of the city others found space in undamaged rooms, apartments and buildings. Mass death and evacuation left plenty of rooms and apartments empty for people whose homes had been destroyed.98 Some families moved to the lower floors of

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Demobilized Veterans in Late Stalinist Leningrad

apartment buildings, or north facing apartments to escape shelling from German artillery located in the south of the city.99 From December 1941, as tram services ceased functioning, many factory workers moved closer to their workplaces to avoid lengthy walks to and from work. Factory employment brought access to vital services, food, warmth and sense of comradeship vital to survival, and it paid to be closer to these ‘factory enclaves’.100 District housing administrations sanctioned some of this movement within the city, but many families acted on their own initiative.101 As a result tenancy rights became thoroughly confused. Detailed instructions on how to register vacant living space and establish the tenancy rights of previous occupants, issued in March 1942, were never properly implemented.102 Speaking at a meeting in February 1947 Gosteev acknowledged that during the blockade a process of housing reallocation, in which individuals and families relinquished their former and registered their new living space never formally took place.103 Restoring bureaucratic order to the housing economy proved exceptionally difficult. In January 1946 the Primorskii and Vasilievskii Ostrov district housing departments were castigated for failing to keep registers of vacant accommodation and accurate waiting lists, for not inspecting the living conditions of those registered on waiting lists and for a general attitude which created the potential corruption.104 Such failings were far from exceptional. The card indexes maintained by district housing administrations, a key tool in Soviet surveillance techniques, were hopelessly out of date. An inspection of the waiting lists in the Smol’ninskii district revealed that 10 per cent of names were ‘dead souls’ (mertye dushi). People who switched accommodation independently of official mechanisms left no record. There were thousands of people on waiting lists who could not be contacted by housing departments, because there was no record of their temporary addresses or workplaces.105 Consequently, ‘(n)either the police nor the housing administration had a firm grasp on who lived where or whether people whose deaths had not been recorded were actually alive’.106 Not knowing where its citizens lived was hardly a new problem for the Soviet party-­state, but after the war, as the regime attempted to regain administrative, political, economic and social control in Leningrad, this was a particularly troubling state of affairs. As a result Gosteev recommended a full re-­registration of names on housing waiting lists.107 This was formally proposed in July 1947, and duly conducted in September 1947.108 Inevitably many thousands of veterans, war invalids and re-­evacuees returned to find that their homes were occupied by other people, or that they had been turned into offices, workshops or even woodsheds.109 This reshuffling of housing patterns was not unique to Leningrad. In Kharkov, for example, the oblast’ prosecutor claimed that not a single person was living in the same apartment as before the war.110 In 1945 the reception room of the USSR Supreme Soviet received 10,148 appeals related to housing, 45 per cent of which were from former owners whose living space was occupied.111 In Leningrad, however, the resolution of housing disputes was especially complicated and emotionally charged. The war undoubtedly created a sense of entitlement amongst veterans, but the unique circumstances of the blockade created an equally important and competing sense of entitlement amongst blockade survivors (blokadniki) and evacuees, who also believed that their wartime sacrifices and heroism should also be recognized and rewarded.

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The legal duty to preserve the living space of serving soldiers, a responsibility reiterated by the city soviet on several occasions, was a thin bureaucratic veneer which obscured the chaos of local housing administration.112 Faced by the blockade’s extraordinary pressures rules were routinely ignored. Housing was found wherever available, regardless of the rights of former tenants. Administrators made little concession to what might happen after the war. Well ordered paperwork was a low priority. Even officers, a group who were theoretically entitled to retain possession of their apartments after leaving the city, found that their rights were regularly infringed.113 In theory all demobilized veterans had the right to reclaim their prewar accommodation even if it was now occupied by new residents. Administrative resettlement powers gave courts and prosecutors the power to remove ‘illegal’ occupants from contested living space. Tenants were given a date by which to voluntarily vacate accommodation, after which they faced police eviction. In practice disentangling the complex interwoven patterns of settlement and entitlement created a legal and administrative nightmare, which could take months or even years to unravel.114 As the pace of demobilization and re-­evacuation quickened the number of administrative resettlement cases mushroomed. District courts and prosecutors were swamped. In the second half of 1945 alone city courts examined 15,998 housing cases, an increase of over 300 per cent on the first half of the year.115 Some 22,967 cases of administrative settlement were brought in 1946, approximately 75 per cent of which involved serving soldiers.116 Administrative resettlement was a highly disruptive process. For every family or individual successfully reclaiming prewar living space, another lost their ‘home’. Eviction forced another family onto waiting lists, into temporary accommodation, and even into pursuing their own disputes. The stakes for both parties in housing claims were high; preserving or reclaiming one’s home was a matter of great importance. As a result, the already enormous caseload was swelled by a huge volume of correspondence, as individuals attempted to further their cases by lobbying and disputing rulings. Between July and October 1945 the city and district prosecutors met 55,980 petitioners and received 21,183 letters of complaint, the majority of which related to housing disputes.117 Despite this enormous bureaucratic undertaking only a fraction of administrative resettlement case files survive in the archives. Surviving files, never previously examined by historians, provide a fascinating insight into arbitration disputes, and challenge the notion that veterans were the beneficiaries of privileged access to housing. They are the product of re-­examinations of individual cases prompted by letters of complaint (zhaloby) and petitions (zaiavleniia) produced by interested parties. These were an unrepresentative sub-­set of housing disputes. We have no information about the archival processes of selection employed in preserving certain files and destroying others. However, these documents vividly demonstrate the complexity of individual circumstances and the personal tragedies which lay behind legal battles. Many of the files contain correspondence from both sides of the dispute, preserved alongside the efforts of procuracy officials to disentangle enmeshed entitlements and substantiate rival claims. As such they provide an exceptionally rich source of information about arbitration and the tactics claimants employed to strengthen their cases.118

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On the basis of this evidence housing entitlements were not as straightforward as law codes suggested. Even the most skilled administrators found the labyrinthine complexity of housing claims and counterclaims confusing. Legislation did not envisage many of the complicated situations which arose in Leningrad. Months after the war many aspects of housing entitlements remained unclear. Ambiguities about the rights of war invalids, servicemen and veterans who had previously lived in employer controlled accommodation, or veterans with no residential status after ending professional military careers of over fifteen years were still being discussed in February 1947, despite such issues being amongst the questions posed by returning veterans in July 1945.119 Administrative procedure, especially where housing was involved, rarely operated according to the exact letter of the law. Incorrect decisions breaking the law or observing it too rigidly were frequently made by district courts and prosecutors.120 Procuracy reports had to regularly reiterate the circumstances in which individuals could be resettled.121 The volume of paperwork generated by these processes was remarkable. The file relating to the dispute between Evgenii Riushkin, a veteran medically discharged in July 1944, and Ekaterina Zolina, a nurse demobilized in July 1945, contained 279 sheets of paper, many of them handwritten letters scribbled on notepaper, squared paper torn from exercise books, the back of wallpaper and musical scores. These complaints were addressed to, amongst others, the city procuracy, the Supreme Court of the USSR, the USSR Procuracy, the General Staff of the Red Army, Sovnarkom and Stalin. Copies of these letters were then returned to the Leningrad procuracy for further investigation.122 Attempting to reclaim or retain residency required an investment in time and energy and infinite patience. Returning to Leningrad after demobilization in July 1946 L. I. Mikhailov found his prewar living space occupied and began the lengthy process of reclaiming it. He refused to accept several decisions ruling against him.123 On 12 October he addressed a detailed and lengthy letter to the chairman of the Leningrad soviet, explaining his situation and complaining about the ‘callous’ attitude of the procuracy.124 In time this letter was forwarded to the city procuracy and led to a re-­ examination of the case.125 In mid-November 1946 the city prosecutor ruled in Mikhailov’s favour. However, the current occupants Mariia Sadovskaia, her daughter and husband, a disabled veteran, also had housing rights.126 Their home in the Vyborg district had been dismantled, and they had already been relocated twice.127 Delays ensued while the Dzerzhinskii district soviet found the Sadovskiis suitable accommodation.128 The situation was not finally resolved until March 1947.129 Veterans, serving soldiers and member of their families consistently emphasized their or their relatives’ exemplary frontline military service in their appeals. Peter Mikhailov’s letters recounted how, prior to his demobilization on 10 December 1945, he had spent five years commanding a tank unit, that he had been awarded four medals, had been wounded twice and heavily shell-­shocked twice (kontuzhen tiazhelym sotriaseniem mozga).130 His approach was typical of the ways in which veterans framed their entitlements. They listed length of service, date of demobilization, medals awarded, and physical injuries as proof of their claims’ validity. Other appeals were more forceful in stressing wartime sacrifice. Both sides in a fractious dispute over the tenancy of a prestigious apartment on Admiralty Embankment, in the centre of the

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city, highlighted their service records. Liashenko emphasized that he had been mobilized on the first day of the war, had won two medals and spent three years on the frontlines spilling his blood for the Soviet cause.131 His opponent, Goncharov, was angered that a serving soldier could be ‘thrown onto the street’.132 If they did nothing else these appeals highlighted that the correspondent was a veteran or serving soldier with legal rights. Wartime service, however, was just one of many factors which determined the outcome of housing disputes. Social background, party membership, prewar residency, ethnicity, family circumstances, persistence and luck could all influence the outcome. No matter how strongly they stressed their claims for entitlement, veterans did not enjoy a monopoly upon claims for special treatment. Evacuated workers and blokadniki conceived of their wartime work as a military duty; like soldiers they anticipated a measure of reciprocity for their service.133 Blockade survivors and re-­evacuees also had theoretical rights to reclaim housing, although these were often precarious and poorly enforced.134 Historians have repeatedly suggested that ex-­servicemen, serving soldiers and their families had stronger and more durable rights than evacuees. Rebecca Manley has argued that, ‘the rights of evacuees to the return of their living space were frequently abrogated in the name of the rights of the families of servicemen’. As Manley continues ‘it would seem that the rights of service people were substantially extended by officials on the ground, encroaching upon the less well-­defined, but nonetheless recognized rights of others’.135 Leningrad’s evacuees undoubtedly found their rights progressively eroded by central and local political bodies both during and after the war.136 From the start of the war there was an official tendency to view evacuees with suspicion, as unproductive and unreliable elements.137 This, however, did not mean that the rights of ex-­servicemen automatically trumped those of evacuees. There were many examples of former soldiers who failed to reclaim or hold onto housing. In 1942 all the inhabitants of a wing of a building on Baburin Lane in the Vyborgskii district were moved out. During 1943 and 1944 the wing was refurbished, and used as housing for disabled ex-­ servicemen. From mid-1945 the district prosecutor began to evict these war invalids in order to return prewar tenants to their homes.138 Nor did military rank guarantee housing provision. Demobilized officers, including two colonels in Luga who had both served in the Red Army for twenty-­five years, often found themselves on housing waiting lists. Across the Leningrad oblast’ demobilized officers, and their families, were living in inadequate temporary accommodation including woodsheds, attics, or corners of friends and relatives’ rooms.139 Leningraders rarely divided into neat categories of soldiers and civilians. The chaos and confusion created by death, destruction and population movements transcended administrative categories, and affected ex-­servicemen and ordinary citizens in almost equal measure. Many demobilized veterans settling in Leningrad were outsiders with no previous connections to the city and its inhabitants. But in many cases the fate of demobilized Leningraders and ordinary citizens were interlinked. Re-­evacuated citizens and the families of serving soldiers, fallen heroes, disabled and demobilized veterans were often the same people. Total mobilization ensured this. Civilians frequently had rights beyond their status as re-­evacuees. The claim that veterans derived privilege at the expense of re-­evacuees fails to appreciate the sheer complexity

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of the social situation in postwar Leningrad. Furthermore, the responsibility for pursuing housing claims often fell on wives and mothers returning to Leningrad before the demobilization of their husbands and sons. Close relationships to former and serving soldiers were frequently invoked in attempts to reclaim or retain disputed living space.140 On occasion women undertook the burden of fighting legal battles ahead of their apathetic or incapacitated husbands. Evgeniia Smirnovaia lobbied to keep two rooms, one of 18 m2 and one of 9 m2, that she shared with her husband, a demobilized veteran, and her daughter. Her husband passed away before the dispute could be resolved. Eventually the procuracy concluded that a single 18 m2 room was now adequate for her smaller family.141 Demobilized veterans were not only in competition with re-­evacuees and new migrants, but also their former comrades in arms. Housing disputes between veterans were by no means uncommon. The ‘frontline brotherhood’ proved fragile in the face of the postwar scramble for jobs and housing. Veterans stressed their own entitlements, and refuted rival claims. Khristofor Tur’ev, who we encountered earlier, argued that his opponent had joined the Red Army in 1942, whilst in evacuation, and was only entitled to accommodation in his place of conscription, and had therefore lost the right to housing in Leningrad.142 Tur’ev also argued that it was unjust that his family faced eviction, whilst a single person enjoyed an ‘excessive’ 21 m2 of living space.143 On 2 November 1946 the district prosecutor concluded that the decision to evict Tur’ev was correct.144 Housing disputes did little for social cohesion amongst veterans, or between veterans and the wider community. The idea that the war and blockade united Leningraders was largely a fantasy created by a mixture of propaganda and wishful thinking. Shortages of housing placed Leningraders and newly arrived migrants in direct competition. Housing, just as it did in the 1920s and 1930s, remained a deficit commodity that people would go to extraordinary lengths to obtain or protect.145 As a result postwar housing arbitration had much in common with the apartment disputes of the 1930s.146 Temporary hostels were envisaged as a critical component in the plan to provide veterans with shelter, whilst more permanent accommodation was sought. In theory demobilized soldiers who arrived in Leningrad without accommodation, for whatever reason, were entitled to receive a temporary bed in a hostel. Demobilization plans ordered that hostels were created across the city, with every city district providing between 300 and 350 beds. There were some successes; for example 200 beds for ex-­ servicemen and 20 for former officers were organized at the Moscow Station for veterans passing through Leningrad.147 However, this aspect of veterans’ housing provision, like so many others, did not always operate as intended. Freeing up 300 to 350 beds proved beyond the means of already overworked district housing administrations. In August 1945 a Gorispolkom investigation revealed that hostels in the Petrogradskii and Krasnogvardeiskii districts were equipped for just 220 and 100 people respectively. The report declared that the failure to realize this aspect of the plan might lead to ‘serious organizational problems’, euphemisms for homelessness and disaffection.148 By November 1945, according to the statistics compiled by the city housing administration and the statistics planning department, just six of fifteen city districts had organized hostels with more than 300 places.149 Little had improved by the

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arrival of the third demobilization wave in April 1946. Gosteev was deeply troubled by the ‘negligible’ number of beds available in temporary hostels. Indeed the Frunzenskii, Vyborgskii and Vasilievskii Ostrov districts were closing hostels rather than opening new ones.150 The 3,573 spaces, 2,475 for men and 1,098 for women, recorded in November 1945 marked the highpoint in provision.151 In subsequent months, just as waiting lists lengthened, the number of hostel beds decreased. By May 1946 dormitories could accommodate just 1,272 veterans, approximately a third of the number seven months previously.152 Despite the steady reduction in the total number of beds, the number of veterans registered in temporary hostels consistently exceeded capacity. On 1 December 1945 there were 5,294 veterans registered in hostels intended to accommodation 2,032 people. Individual examples were even more striking. In the Voldarskii district in January 1946 there were 161 men and 201 women registered in hostels equipped to house 35 men and 65 women.153 By mid-May 1946 there were still 2,337 people registered in 1,272 spaces.154 This was not evidence of extreme overcrowding, although it was not uncommon. The number of veterans registered in hostels frequently bore no relation to the actual number of residents.155 Leningraders, once again, were not necessarily living where they said they were. On 1 November 1945 there were 4,018 veterans registered in 3,553 spaces. In reality there were only 1,294 occupants, leaving 2,259 beds empty.156 A month later there were 5,294 veterans registered in temporary hostels, but only 1,054 actual residents.157 There were two explanations for this curious situation. First, there were advantages to registering in hostels but living elsewhere. Many veterans, according to one report, did this believing that they would receive their own living space more quickly if officials thought they were living in temporary hostels.158 More importantly, registering in a veterans’ hostel created the possibility of obtaining a residence permit (propiska), a document vital in obtaining employment and state assistance. Obtaining a propiska, as it had been in the 1930s, was a constant source of anxiety for Leningraders. Without the requisite stamp in their passports Soviet citizens were vulnerable to deportation and criminal conviction: 32,865 people in 1946 and a further 37,681 in 1947 were forced to leave Leningrad because they lacked residence permits.159 Veterans frequently experienced great difficulty obtaining residence permits. These frustrations often featured in letters intercepted by the military censor.160 Veterans were sometimes refused propiski in their spouses’ living space, because they lacked the paperwork to prove marriage or prewar residency. One veteran described the vicious circle of not being able to obtain a propiska: because he did not have a marriage certificate, which he could not obtain because the police would not issue a passport because he did not have a propiska.161 Unsurprisingly a thriving black market in fake permits in wartime and postwar Leningrad developed to service the demand for these vital documents. Corruption rackets in Red Army units on the Leningrad Front were producing false prewar permits in significant numbers.162 Registering in temporary hostels offered a cheaper and safer method of obtaining propiski without resorting to the black market. Secondly, conditions in veterans’ hostels were horrific, as bad as any in postwar Leningrad. Only veterans with no alternative remained in hostels for more than a few days. In December 1945 Konopel’no, a member of the city soviet, was tasked with

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inspecting the Dzerzhinskii district’s temporary hostels. A hostel on ulitsa Nekrasova had inner window frames that were unglazed, and damp walls covered in mould. One room contained ten beds, but nobody was living there. According to Konopel’no; ‘Naturally, nobody is living in the hostel, and nobody would live in it.’163 At a hostel on ulitsa Chernyshevskaia several veterans were sleeping on the floor, whilst unglazed windows were stuffed with pillows.164 Elsewhere hostels had dirty bedding, no hot water or electric light and windows were boarded with plywood.165 Security was often non-­existent; hostels had no locks on their doors, and nowhere to keep valuables, a real problem in a city experiencing a postwar crime wave.166 The profusion of inspections by state representatives indicated official concern about the effects substandard temporary accommodation might have upon veterans. A city soviet resolution, passed on 14 February 1946 and aimed at improving conditions in temporary hostels had little impact. By mid-April conditions were still ‘extremely unsatisfactory’. Hostels remained cold, damp and dirty. These conditions were causing skin diseases such as impetigo and eczema amongst some demobilized residents.167 As late as October 1947 a Gorispolkom resolution described the terrible conditions in two hostels for demobilized veterans in the Volodarskii district. The dormitory was home to 83 adults and 22 children, with three or four families crowded into 15 m2 or 16 m2 rooms. The building needed major repairs. The roof was leaking, plaster was crumbling from walls, doors were broken, windows unglazed and running water only worked intermittently.168 Even for veterans accustomed to barracks and dormitories such conditions were a disappointment. As a number of veterans complained; ‘It isn’t as if we have been at the front for years and haven’t earned (separate) rooms.’169 Legal entitlements and official propaganda were designed to create the impression that veterans were the beneficiaries of privileged state support in obtaining and reclaiming housing. In reality Leningrad’s veterans were rarely the direct recipients of state assistance. By 1 May 1946 approximately 171,967 veterans had been demobilized in Leningrad.170 Yet by 15 May 1946 only 3,223 veterans’ families had been allocated housing by district housing administrations, 726 veterans were resident in hostels, and a further 8,584 veterans’ families were registered on housing lists.171 Even accounting for the turnover in temporary hostels the number of people directly assisted by Leningrad’s housing administration represented a tiny fraction of the veterans in need of accommodation.172 In Leningrad’s postwar scramble for housing, former soldiers were neither a privileged élite nor downtrodden victims. Although there was much that was inadequate, chaotic and unjust about state housing provision, Leningrad’s veterans proved remarkably adaptable and creative in the face of exceptional difficulties. ‘From 1944 to 1950’, as Mark Smith has argued, ‘people were sometimes permitted to resolve their own housing problem as they thought best, without support or hindrance from agencies of the state; at other times, these agencies provided people with the financial, legal and practical help that made an autonomous response realistic.’173 Some of these solutions, such as individual housing construction, enjoyed official support; some, such as relying on the support of friends and family, were tolerated; while others, such as bribery, were illegal. Regardless of the mechanism, the overwhelming majority of Leningrad’s veterans found living space on their own initiative independent of state help.

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In Leningrad employers controlled a much greater proportion of living space than the city and oblast’ soviets, making them a critically important institution in solving the housing crisis, and in supporting veterans. Leningrad’s employers, however, often experienced great difficulty providing sufficient housing for their rapidly expanding workforces. In 1946, for example, Elektrosila, one of the Soviet Union’s largest prewar manufacturers of electrical machinery, had to call a temporary halt to recruitment due to a housing shortage.174 In February 1946 the wagon repair workshops of the tram and trolleybus administration revealed that construction of housing for the factory’s employees had ceased due to shortages of building materials and poor construction plans. Over 300 veterans employed in the workshops were waiting to receive housing, a backlog which hindered further recruitment.175 Those veterans who found space in communal apartments, barracks and dormitories provided by employers were far from privileged. Here veterans lived side by side, sometimes literally, with the rest of the population. In many instances veterans’ living conditions were indistinguishable from other members of society. Personal networks played an equally important role in assisting veterans in finding housing. Families who remained in the besieged city, or who had returned from evacuation before demobilized relatives, were well-­placed to help family members. Wives, parents, siblings and other relatives, if they survived, were already integrated into newly emerging postwar patronage networks, and in possession of information and contacts from which veterans benefitted. In the 1930s, as Sheila Fitzpatrick reminds us, ‘(p)ersonal connections’, such as these, ‘took the edge off the harsh circumstances of Soviet life, at least for some people’.176 In late 1940s Leningrad these personal contacts took on added significance. Official records tend to underestimate the importance of unofficial networks in veterans’ transition to civilian life, but the generosity and support of friends and family filled the gap created by inadequate state provision. During the war Evseev’s home and property was destroyed. Following his demobilization in January 1946 he returned to the ruined village where his wife and daughter were now living.177 When his brother-­in-law offered to make a small room in his Leningrad apartment available, a return to the city became possible. This proved a vital staging post, eventually allowing the family to exchange their relative’s small room for a larger one.178 Other veterans spent months moving between the homes of friends and relatives. The city soviet was aware of these informal mechanisms for obtaining housing, but largely powerless to prevent them. Indeed, it relied upon them to shelter the influx of veterans. In February 1947 Gosteev even suggested permitting individuals to settle and register their relatives in their homes provided there was adequate space, thereby formalizing a practice already occurring without official sanction.179 The long-­term solution to Leningrad’s postwar housing crisis ultimately lay in rebuilding the city, and investing in new construction; something that was not realized until Khrushchev’s mass housing campaign. Nevertheless, in the wake of the blockade Leningraders set about an extremely ambitious plan for Leningrad’s ‘renaissance’.180 Restoration plans had been developed by the city’s architects and planners even before the Blockade was lifted in January 1944. Preserving the integrity of Leningrad’s historic cityscape was central to these plans. Although the restoration of war damaged buildings in the city centre did provide additional housing, this was not the primary purpose of the

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postwar reconstruction plan. Indeed, the city’s chief architect, Baranov, was more concerned with restoring historical monuments and creating grand public spaces than domestic construction.181 Some scholars have suggested that the city’s reconstruction was designed to erase local wartime memory. By removing ruins and repairing all traces of wartime damage local politicians were consciously shaping war memories. Ruined buildings which might have become focal points of popular memory were removed and supplanted by official monuments.182 Reconstruction of the historic centre was envisaged as a fitting tribute to Leningraders’ suffering and resilience, a means of memorializing the blockade and resilience.183 The official narrative of a city rapidly and successfully rebuilt thanks to the joint efforts of the people and the state became a keystone of collective memory. Aesthetic initiatives to plant trees and shrubs, and even grow sunflowers on balconies, improved the public mood and carried messages about rebirth and renewal, but they did little to replace destroyed housing.184 For a community impoverished and traumatized by war there was much that was impressive about reconstruction, and much to be proud of, but scratch below the surface and reconstruction’s achievements were less impressive. Many veterans, of course, benefitted from new construction, and the repair of damaged buildings. From 1944 onwards special efforts were made to repair and rebuild the homes of service families, disabled and demobilized veterans. In 1944 alone 28,083 service families had repairs made to their living space. City districts were encouraged, in the spirit of socialist competition, to compete to repair the most rooms.185 By repairing service families’ homes first the oblast’ and city soviets were helping reduce future demand for housing from men yet to be demobilized, although this always remained high. On 21 September 1945 in response to the difficulties of creating housing reserves and lengthening waiting lists Sovnarkom issued a resolution which required 10 per cent of all newly repaired and constructed living space to be reserved for demobilized veterans, war invalids, the families of serving and fallen soldiers.186 The local press regularly reported occasions when veterans and war invalids were given rooms and apartments in newly constructed or refurbished accommodation, creating the impression that a steady stream of housing was being made available to veterans.187 Once the propaganda rhetoric was stripped away veterans were less obviously the beneficiaries of reconstruction. In February 1947 Gosteev recommended that the percentage of repaired or newly constructed housing made available to service families was doubled from 10 to 20 per cent.188 The previous arrangements had failed to have much impact on the lengthening queues of veterans registering for housing. Evidence of official frustration and popular dissatisfaction with the rate of reconstruction abounded, despite the public celebration of notable successes. The press was full of articles and photographs reporting on construction plans, showing people labouring on building sites, and exhorting builders to work harder.189 Yet, housing construction lagged behind the planned targets across the entire Soviet Union. This reflected the complexities, inefficiencies and structural weaknesses of the central planned economy. Based on partial information, manipulated data and over-ambitious targets, the planned housing economy was incapable of providing construction on time and on budget.190 Nowhere were the vagaries of the excessively rigid, yet inordinately flexible, planned economy more visible than in Leningrad and the

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Leningrad oblast’. Between 1945 and 1950 the oblast’ and city soviets repeatedly demanded improvements to construction rates.191 City soviet resolutions complained that in the first half of 1945 reconstruction was seriously behind plan, and lower than the equivalent period in 1944.192 Industrial enterprises, amongst the city’s largest employers, were routinely criticized for failing to build sufficient housing. Finance, labour and building materials were routinely leached away from construction in order to meet other pressing production targets.193 The strongest brake upon construction in Leningrad and the Leningrad oblast’ was the shortage of building materials. National and local shortages of the most basic materials, including bricks, cement, timber, glass, paint and even nails, continually held up construction.194 In the early stages of demobilization, for example, the city soviet had little or no glass to distribute to veterans who needed to repair windows.195 As late as July 1949 it was not uncommon to see the windows of residential buildings still boarded over with sheet metal or plywood.196 Even timber, despite the proximity of the vast forestry resources of the Karelian Isthmus, remained in critically short supply. The war had done enormous damage to the basic infrastructure on which future reconstruction was dependent. In the course of the war the Leningrad oblast’ construction trust, for example, lost 65 heavy lorries, 12 light lorries, 180 horses and 3 timber-­working plants.197 In Leningrad the blockade’s unique effects complicated an already difficult situation. A shortage of bricks was exacerbated by the loss of the First Brick and Pumice Factory, one of the city’s principal brick factories. In February and early March 1942 the factory’s giant kilns were converted into a crematorium for the disposal of the corpses of blockade victims. Approximately 117,300 corpses were cremated here between 7 March and 9 December 1942.198 Once used for this purpose the factory could not be allowed to stand or ever be used for firing bricks again. The factory was levelled, and the site became part of the Moskovskii Victory Park.199 Green public space was provided as a convenient compromise, offering an alternative use for the land but without providing an obvious memorial. Yet the plot’s connection to mass death perhaps explains the impressive popular activism in establishing and planting the park, and the special reverence in which Leningraders held and continue to hold the park. Veterans, compared to other sections of the population, enjoyed relatively privileged access to what building materials were available. A number of organizations distributed construction supplies to veterans whose accommodation required repair or redecoration: 18,098 sheets of plywood, 27 tons of chalk, 22.5 tons of alabaster, 24.8 tons of limestone, 2,354 m2 of glass, 5.6 tons of nails, 10,000 metres of electric cable and 52,393 sheets of wallpaper were issued to demobilized veterans, war invalids and service families by September 1945.200 Although at first glance these statistics appear impressive, given the size of the eligible constituency and the extent of damage and dilapidation these materials were at best a temporary stopgap. This may explain why veterans looted vast quantities of building materials from occupied Europe.201 Responsible for conducting their own repairs, they sought materials wherever they could. Once again promises of state assistance and entitlement coexisted alongside individual initiative and action. Popular grassroots activism played an important part in Leningrad’s reconstruction. In August 1945 the city soviet established social commissions to assist in the repair and utilization of housing. These organizations drew workers, engineers,

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Demobilized Veterans in Late Stalinist Leningrad

technicians and skilled tradesmen (many of them veterans) together to repair buildings, and their electrical, heating and water supply systems. By 1948 over 20,000 individuals organized in 2,832 commissions had volunteered their time, skills and experience. Between 1946 and 1947 alone these commissions repaired over 77,000 apartments and over 1,000,000 m2 of roofing. These commissions proved so successful that the RSFSR Council of Ministers recommended that other cities follow Leningrad’s lead.202 These commissions were a prime example of the officially encouraged self-­mobilization programme that sometimes grew up in the face of wartime and postwar emergencies.203 The combination of state assistance and individual initiative was a key feature of one final piece of public policy intended to increase construction. Demobilization legislation extended a scheme for preferential credit for self-­built construction, initially passed in May 1944 to assist people in occupied zones, to returning veterans who needed to repair, reconstruct or build homes. Demobilized veterans were able to borrow up to 10,000 roubles to be paid back over a ten-year period.204 Historians dispute the effectiveness of state financed self-­building initiatives. According to Donald Filtzer the self building campaign ‘was hampered by lack of funds, material shortages, managerial reluctance to provide workers with the necessary technical assistance and massive amounts of bureaucratic red tape’.205 Mark Smith concedes that self construction was often constricted by a ‘bureaucratic chain (that) was certainly slow-­moving and convoluted’, and that results could be very variable, ranging from shacks to professionally planned blocks.206 However, he argues that state backed individual construction between 1944 and 1950 represented the first substantial national government directed housing construction policy in Russian or Soviet history, which produced significant housing volumes, and laid important foundations for Khrushchev’s mass housing campaign. The evidence from the Leningrad region is mixed. The scheme appears to have been relatively popular amongst veterans settling in rural districts of the Leningrad oblast’. By August 1946 a total of 1,407 demobilized veterans and war invalids had received 10,739,000 roubles in construction credit. However, shortages of building materials and difficulties transporting them slowed construction and pushed the price of construction up. One veteran, for example, was constructing a six by eight meter house on preferential credit, which despite having no roof, ceiling or floor had already cost 15,000 roubles.207 Individual construction appears to have been a far less important mechanism for providing housing within the city. In August 1945 Leningrad requested 50 per cent more credit to support individual construction projects, indicating a strong demand for credit. There were, however, limitations to the extent of individual construction within the city. Individual building appears to have been discouraged in the city centre, probably because of the disruption it might cause to the idealized version of the cityscape envisaged by architects and planners.208 The Stalin Metalworks, for example, planned just nine buildings in the whole of 1947.209 Where individual construction was permitted it was concentrated in the suburbs surrounding the city.210 In January 1949, for example, the city soviet issued a set of regulations for individual construction in suburban areas, which specified streets in Kolpino, Pargolovo, Pesochnaia, Levashovo and Beloostrov suitable for development.211 The scheme also prompted official concern because of serious abuses of construction credit. In a

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number of cases the communal bank had been defrauded of large sums of money by people who obtained credit on forged documents, and never intended to use the money for construction.212 In 1946, for example, A. V. Shershenev, a demobilized veteran, borrowed 3,000 roubles from the Tikhvinskii branch of the State Bank before disappearing.213 Another veteran drank his way through the 500 roubles he had borrowed and then disappeared. There were also examples of veterans using credit to purchase existing homes, which did nothing to boost the housing stock. According to a communal bank investigation some veterans borrowed money, and then used it to meet everyday expenditure rather than housing construction. In the Volkhovskii district thirty veterans borrowed 44,000 roubles, which they had spent in the following ways: 21,000 roubles on bread, 3,000 on shoes, 2,400 on clothing, 2,000 on purchasing goats, 1,000 roubles on other cattle, 10,000 roubles on goods for speculation, and 4,600 for various other purposes.214 Although individual housing credit helped some veterans, there were easier ways to obtain housing. On the Karelian Isthmus, territory only recently acquired from Finland, there were large numbers of empty homes abandoned by Finns. Central government made plans to repopulate the rural Vyborgskii, Koivistovskii, Iaskinskii, Rautovskii, Kannel’iarskii and Keksgolskii districts with a thousand demobilized veterans and their families. Rather than build new homes it seems likely that many occupied the empty dwellings littering the countryside.215 Something similar occurred in Latvia, where levels of individual construction were low, a situation attributed to the mass appropriation of dwellings left vacant by owners fleeing the oncoming Red Army.216 Corrupt officials ran scams to sell, dismantle and relocate unoccupied wooden buildings within the Leningrad district. In September 1946 Georgii Pozdniakov, head of the Rautovskii district housing department, was arrested by the police. In exchange for bribes Pozdniakov had ‘sold’ uninhabited buildings to private individuals. In cooperation with Krylov, a driver from the oblast’ transport department with a lorry at his disposal, arrangements were made to dismantle and transport wooden buildings to different locations. Grigorii Sokol, a disabled veteran employed at a tram depot in Leningrad, proved a willing customer, paying 1,500 roubles for a building to be moved to Pargolovo.217 Such practices were sufficiently widespread for the oblast’ soviet to pass a decision banning the breaking up theft and unauthorized relocation of houses and other buildings by official organizations and private individuals.218 Scams such as these once again demonstrated the adaptability of veterans to the circumstances of the housing crisis. Veterans returning to Leningrad and its environs did not expect to return to a flourishing region. Few soldiers arrived in Leningrad ignorant of the tragedy that had unfolded in the city. Soldiers stationed on the Leningrad Front would have known about the damage wrought on their homes, although precise details were harder to establish. Throughout the war the front and rear lines intermingled, defying the best efforts of military commanders to keep soldiers and civilians apart. Soldiers and civilians, even during the blockade, had opportunities to meet, exchange goods and information.219 Leningraders serving on other fronts learned about the damage inflicted on their homes through official propaganda. Returning soldiers understood the destructive capabilities of modern warfare as well as anybody. As soldiers fought

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Demobilized Veterans in Late Stalinist Leningrad

westward they encountered the wreckage of German occupation, and on their long journeys home they witnessed vast swathes of territory laid waste by war.220 Most veterans had lived with housing shortages, overcrowding and dilapidated homes before the war. The failure to provide ‘homes for heroes’ nevertheless created widespread resentment. Expectations that military service would be rewarded quickly turned to disappointment and dissatisfaction. Veterans’ anger and disenchantment were recorded in reports compiled by Leningrad’s military censor, part of the regional secret police administration, and preserved in the secret archive of the Leningrad soviet. These reports, headed ‘special communications’ (spetssoobshchenie), were based on excerpts of intercepted private letters written by veterans to their friends and families. The monitoring of veterans’ moods was part of established practices of surveying public opinion in Leningrad. Systematic perlustration of private correspondence was nothing new; it had been practised since the early years of Soviet power.221 Extensive and increasingly sophisticated attempts were made to monitor popular opinion between 1934 and 1941.222 Although the war and blockade disrupted many bureaucratic functions, this did not extend to the extensive apparatus monitoring public opinion. Monitoring, shaping and controlling Leningrad’s popular mood assumed a greater importance during the siege.223 Regular and comprehensive summaries of public opinion, including overheard conversations, reactions to important events, and intercepted letters were compiled throughout the blockade by both NKVD and party officials.224 The impulse to closely monitor public opinion continued well after the lifting of the blockade and the end of the war.225 Surprisingly military censors continued to pay special attention to ex-­servicemen’s correspondence even after their demobilization.226 The military censor’s delicate work remains shrouded in secrecy.227 V. A. Ivanov, a researcher with access to closed archives, is perhaps the only historian to have examined the work of the military censor in any depth.228 Perlustration in wartime Leningrad was a major undertaking. Between 1941 and 1945 Leningrad’s military censor employed approximately 840 people. Between May 1943 and December 1945 the military censor examined 252 million letters, telegrams and small packages. Over 109,000 items were confiscated and sections excerpted from 2.5 million items. Leningrad’s military censor was ‘drowning’ under the weight of correspondence.229 Little, however, is known about precisely what censors were looking for, or how these reports were compiled, but several broad points are discernible. The censor aimed to intercept letters which contained information perceived to damage military or civilian morale, such as references to hunger, destruction or ‘harmful’ political views. In addition, a blacklist of suspect correspondents, whose letters were routinely opened, was maintained.230 The value of these sources as indications and evidence of public opinion has been questioned. Spetssoobshchenie have much in common with svodki, summary reports of public opinion, which have been the subject of intense methodological debate. Popular opinion reports created by a militantly ideological state were far from a value free indication of what people really thought.231 These sources inevitably over-­represented ‘harmful attitudes’. Spetssobschenie were highly mediated documents. They were written according to official guidelines and templates, and were the product of an extensive bureaucratic apparatus, which filtered out negative sentiments and then selected the

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most appropriate material for inclusion in reports.232 Furthermore, as Sarah Davies writes, ‘the choice of subjects warranting reports were dictated by regime priorities, which did not necessarily coincide with the people’s own interests (or with those of a future historian for that matter)’.233 The difficulties of housing, however, were amongst the greatest challenges facing postwar Leningrad and therefore highly represented. Despite similarities in production, these sources are qualitatively different from svodki. The letters from which spetssoobshchenie were compiled were ‘real letters’ sent to friends or family either oblivious or defiant of the censor. Large sections of letters were quoted with little or no commentary or analysis. The language in which veterans expressed their frustrations has an authenticity lacking in other sources. Rather than the ‘contrived Soviet self-­representations’ or rehearsed discourses typical of zhaloby or zaiavleniia, or the anaemic language of party officials ‘speaking Bolshevik’ the letters included in these reports give the impression of real people, confronting extraordinary problems and expressing genuine emotions. To quote Lesley Rimmel, if these sources ‘do nothing else, they help us humanize an often inhuman era’.234 Finding that their homes were destroyed or occupied and that official planning had failed to make adequate provision for their return many veterans were understandably angry. Some found themselves living in corridors, without any hope of finding suitable housing.235 Others were homeless. This was not the heroes’ return that veterans felt they deserved or which they had been promised. Rage and disappointment flooded from veterans’ pens. Zakharov, amongst the first veterans demobilized in 1945, questioned why he fought for four years, sleeping in bogs (bolotakh) and in the rain yet on his return had nowhere to live, and nothing to put on his feet.236 Some veterans felt insulted rather than disappointed. Bogdanova returned from demobilization in July 1945: Leaving the unit so many promises were made to us, but they all turned out to be empty. Having been to the district military registration office (raiony voennyi kommissariat), they offered me (a place in a) hostel. All the girls are disappointed that they returned home to the city they defended. Four years wandering between and crawling around dugouts and suddenly this, it’s very offensive.237

This resentment was not confined to the first returning veterans, although the military censor was more alarmed by the earliest expressions of dissatisfaction. A. I. Zaitsev vented his anger about veterans’ housing provision in November 1946. His frustration tipped over into depressive thoughts: For what, I ask, is there to live for now, it would have been better to have been killed, than live like this. In the name of what did I fight for seven years, I didn’t gain anything, they won’t even give me my own room back. I ask, what is there to live for now? Where is the truth – I don’t know! How much longer can I wander between hostels like an old monk (starets) with a sack?238

For a number of veterans it was the interminable waiting to receive permanent housing that generated the most anger. On 18 July 1945 N. I. Novikov wrote to his wife about the progress of demobilization. For him any satisfaction derived from leaving

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Demobilized Veterans in Late Stalinist Leningrad

the army was tarnished by not finding housing: ‘I began the torment (connected with obtaining) living space, they promised me (housing) no sooner than in five – six months, but I suppose that deadline won’t be kept . . . I’ve temporarily registered in a hostel for demobilized veterans, but at night I stay with Marusa. I want to explore different options to try and speed up receiving living space.’239 Novikov’s prediction was almost certainly right; most veterans waited months, sometimes years. A. T. Zarubin was demobilized on 13 July 1945. He was impressed by the welcome veterans received at the station, and the way in which they were transported to their homes by car. Reality kicked in the following day, when he went to the district housing department and was told there were no available apartments. He spent five days, from morning to night, kicking his heels at the office.240 Zarubin’s eloquent letter was amongst several which prompted an investigation by the Leningrad soviet. His home had been broken up for fuel during the blockade, and his family was still in evacuation. Having been placed on the housing waiting list, he returned to the district housing administration seven times. On 24 July he temporarily registered with an acquaintance.241 Veterans hated paperwork, lengthy queues and being constantly pushed from one office to another. As one wrote in August 1945: ‘You can’t find an end anywhere; they only write that there is everything for the demobilized. You go to one institution and they send you to another and so on. And so you travel from one end of the city to the other without end.’242 Another veteran spoke of having to do a daily round visiting the chairman of the district soviet, the district prosecutor, the district housing administration, the building administrator and the police. She felt that she would go mad before she succeeded in getting her room back. ‘In general there is a lot of talk about the reception of the demobilized, but when I arrived, I wasn’t able to get anything from anywhere.’243 F. I. Khaitovich’s apartment on ulitsa Rubinshteina had been occupied by a returning evacuee in October 1944.244 He was angered that it took so long to enforce his rights: ‘We fought, we tormented ourselves, we suffered, and how cruelly we suffered. We returned as victors and suddenly . . . this terrible inertia and bureaucracy.’245 This Kafkaesque bureaucratic nightmare was a world away from legal entitlement and privilege. Worse still was the cold-­hearted, sometimes mocking, attitude of bureaucrats. The official who placed Pavlov, an officer demobilized in the autumn of 1946, on the housing waiting list insensitively told him to marry a woman who already had a room.246 One female veteran, helped by a friend to write a letter, reported that the district prosecutor and chairman of the district soviet just laughed at her when she went to see them.247 Another veteran complained of the ‘loathsome and outrageous attitude towards the demobilized’, amongst officials.248 Veterans often felt that they were dealing with a layer of society which lacked basic decency, and had been corrupted by the war. On his return M. I. Krylov learnt that he was to lose the room in which he and the five members of his family had lived before the war. Faced with the prospect of moving his family into a hostel for single veterans he expressed the burning rage typical of resentful veterans: all of this [veterans’ entitlements and rights] remains empty words, thanks to those who saved their skins deep in the rear camouflaged from the threat of death, who

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accumulated sizeable capital and now having returned home get the best apartments, we who lived through the horrors of the hardest days of the war once again have to wander around as if we are unworthy of society, for the salvation of which we spilt our blood and covered the motherland with the everlasting glory of victory and all of that to turn up discarded on the edge of life.249

It was not just angry young men who learnt to ‘speak veteran’.250 An intercepted letter written by a female veteran on 1 August 1945 expressed her low regard for bureaucrats. In her mind concern for veterans extended no further than clean floors and a vase of flowers at demobilization points. When I began to speak to the prosecutor about how my living space had been demolished and that I had nowhere to live, he tried to change the conversation to any other subject, if only to escape a sore point . . . It would have been better to have come back earlier, to not return home to see these disgusting bureaucrats, which during the war were able to firmly entrench themselves in the rear, and arrange their own well-­being, and now take up prominent positions in order to support their own existence.251

Accusations that some form of ‘lubrication’ was required to get administrative wheels to turn were a constant feature of veterans’ letters. Writing in June 1946 one veteran was convinced that: ‘The queue for receiving living space exists as a screen, while space is given out by blat and bribes. It is only possible to get two metres of land on death.’252 Estimates of the size of bribes passing hands to secure accommodation ranged from 3,000 to 25,000 roubles.253 The belief that housing allocation was corrupt was widespread. Although this may have reflected the military censors’ sensitivity towards suggestions of corruption, there was abundant evidence that corruption was a genuine problem. The scarcity of housing created a situation in which bribery and corruption became highly lucrative, something against which the city soviet waged a semi-­public war. Almost every issue of Leningradskaia pravda and Vechernii Leningrad carried reports of corruption and rudeness amongst housing officials.254 A. F. Shigoreva, a building administrator (upravkhoz), was arrested in May 1946. She had kept information about vacant living space from the district housing department, hiding it from official registers. In exchange for bribes she illegally housed people in these spaces. Over a year she illegally settled thirty-­seven rooms. A further nine empty rooms were discovered on her arrest.255 Other building administrators would add people to housing waiting lists in exchange for bribes.256 Against this background veterans’ accusations of corruption were entirely plausible. The feeling that veterans would have been better off had they remained in the army was a constant refrain in veterans’ letters. The possibility that the Red Army offered a more comfortable existence than civilian life was perhaps the most eloquent evidence of the state’s failure to meet veterans’ expectations. In the minds of resentful veterans, the experience of finding somewhere to live quickly revealed the rhetoric of Stalinist care and concern for the ‘glorious defenders of the motherland’ to be a fiction. The complexities of reclaiming housing through legal channels and/or obtaining living

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space through district housing administrations were amongst the first interactions many veterans would have with state representatives after their return. These first postwar encounters with officialdom set a pattern for veterans’ future dealings with minor state functionaries. In the minds of many ex-­servicemen heartless and corrupt ‘rear-­line rats’, who had shirked military service in favour of administrative jobs safe in the rear, became their preferred scapegoats. Encouraged by specific attacks on bureaucrats published in the local press and a public culture which continually blamed ‘enemies’ for social, economic and political difficulties, disenchanted veterans vented their spleens at minor state functionaries, channelling their anger away from central political leaders or the vagaries of the Soviet political system.257 Veterans’ treatment at the hands of housing officials and legal representatives led many to question their wartime sacrifices and created doubt about how easy it would be to fit into a society in which bureaucracy and corruption were firmly entrenched. The difficulties of finding housing stemmed from the level of damage to housing and basic infrastructure in Leningrad and the surrounding countryside, the high demand for housing amongst veterans, returning evacuees and migrants, the slowness of reconstruction and the policies pursued by the central party-­state and local leaders. Although the sympathetic help of a conscientious housing administrator could soften the disappointment ex-­ servicemen felt at the loss of housing or the prospect of years on waiting lists, the shortage of housing remained an enduring problem. Complete reconstruction of the city took decades, not years. Despite their theoretical entitlements Leningrad’s veterans could not be protected from the postwar housing crisis. Even before the systems of privileges extended to veterans was eroded and dismantled, veterans in and around Leningrad understood that these benefits only existed on paper. Reintegration into civilian life meant sharing in the abysmal living conditions experienced by other Leningraders. Finding that official entitlements rarely corresponded with reality many veterans pursued their own strategies to obtain housing. Some were so disenchanted by the hassle involved in obtaining handouts that they made their own arrangements wholly independent of the state, often entirely circumventing official distribution mechanisms. Veterans barraged legal authorities and local government with appeals for assistance and letters of complaint, attempted to discredit opponents in housing disputes, exploited loopholes in the residency permit rules, or obtained living space through informal channels, including paying the bribes which so angered their comrades. Rather than being a privileged layer of society rewarded by the state, veterans were forced onto their own resources. Ironically, entitlement and privilege did not create a loyal social group grateful to the state, but a resentful body of men and women aggrieved by the difficulties they experienced following their demobilization.

3

‘As in battle – as in labour’ The Remobilization of Demobilized Veterans

For as long as wars have been fought, societies have faced the challenge of reintegrating returning veterans into civilian life. However, as the nature of armed service has changed, so have the difficulties created by demobilization. Before the advent of mass standing armies, campaigns were short and seasonal. Whilst soldiers spent short periods away from home civilian readjustment was comparatively straightforward. The formation of larger, better trained and more disciplined armies in the early modern period meant that soldiers were retained for extended service periods, since it was inefficient to demobilize skilled specialists at the end of campaigns.1 The longer soldiers spent in uniform the harder it was to resume or begin successful civilian careers. Russia did not face a ‘veteran problem’ until the end of the eighteenth century, comparatively late by European standards. Death, rather than demobilization, was the common soldier’s most likely fate. The introduction of professional standing armies, the result of Peter the Great’s military reforms, however, made re-­employing discharged soldiers increasingly difficult.2 If they survived twenty-­five years of armed service the most fortunate veterans might find themselves sent to monasteries, confined to invalids’ homes, or discharged to garrison units. Village communities were often reluctant to integrate old and injured men, who had lost their land rights and had little prospect of acquiring new trades.3 Consequently, many former soldiers were cast out by communes, forced to beg for alms and sometimes exiled to Siberia.4 In the twentieth century the pressures generated by modern industrialized warfare fought by mass conscript armies intensified the complexities of demobilization. Once wars ended, the mobilization of millions of soldiers had to be reversed. Conscripts, whose lives were fundamentally changed by prolonged exposure to extreme violence and mass death, frequently found the transition to civilian life highly problematic. After both world wars almost all combatant nations experienced difficulties re-­employing veterans whose working lives had been interrupted by war. As postwar labour markets were flooded by returning soldiers the state was increasingly expected to play a role in helping veterans find work. Yet creating employment opportunities whilst economies were recalibrated from war to peace often proved exceptionally difficult. Obtaining employment marked a critical moment in veterans’ civilian readjustment. Through work ex-­servicemen could regain control of their lives. After years of having almost every dimension of their lives, including food, clothing and shelter controlled

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Demobilized Veterans in Late Stalinist Leningrad

Figure 6  Poster, Viktor Koretsky, As in battle – as in labour, 1948

by armies, work gave veterans their independence. Returning to the civilian workforce had a strong material dimension, but it was about more than simply earning money. Work is central to how societies operate; it frames lives, occupies the majority of an individual’s time, and helps define identities. Throughout the twentieth century and across the globe work has been central to veterans’ transition to ‘civvy street’. As one historian of demobilization writes: ‘For most veterans, in the temporal space when war ends and civilian life begins, employment – getting hired, paid and treated with decency – rapidly becomes the paramount concern; no number of Veteran Days or commemorative stadiums will ever alter this basic issue.’5 By re-­entering the workforce veterans became fully productive members of society, wiping away any remaining liminality in their social position. Whether resuming prewar trades and professions or learning new skills, work enabled veterans to put their wartime experiences behind them and focus on the future. In the years following the First World War European and North American societies were far from successful in re-­employing demobilized veterans. Bankrupt economies were unable to give veterans much support in re-­entering the workplace. Unemployed ex-­servicemen were familiar figures in Britain after 1918. By January 1922 unemploy­ ment exceeded two million, of which half a million, according to the British Legion, were unemployed ex-­servicemen.6 The spectre of mass unemployment also overshadowed the demobilization of defeated German veterans. In late 1918 and early 1919 German unemployment peaked at approximately 6 per cent of the labour force. Politicians feared that unemployment threatened the fabric of German society and

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the state’s future viability. Yet as a distinguished historian of Germany’s demobilization writes: ‘Most soldiers returned to their jobs fairly quickly, and the sudden shift of millions of men from field grey into mufti does not seem to have put the German labour market out of joint.’7 Given the extent of Germany’s postwar problems, unemployment was remarkably low and relatively short-­term. Memories of unemployment after the First World War, although sometimes exaggerated, heavily influenced British and American demobilization planning during the Second World War. Many observers feared that demobilization would result in a return to mass unemployment. In Britain 43 per cent of respondents to a Mass Observation study conducted in the autumn of 1943 anticipated crippling postwar unemployment.8 Fifty-­six per cent of American soldiers surveyed in May 1945 anticipated a depression.9 Legislators and planners were keen to avoid the perceived mistakes of 1919 and 1920, and were conscious of the need to support dislocated labour markets by re-­employing veterans.10 The US Army’s Research Branch, for example, began studying soldiers’ postwar employment plans as early as the summer of 1943.11 The combination of active social policy and an acute labour shortage made it easier to re-­employ British and American veterans after 1945 than anticipated. Soldiers were rarely reduced to selling matches on the streets as they had been after 1918. As one historian writes: ‘Postwar Britain would be a bleak and austere place in many ways, but few who wanted work were left idle.’ Although veterans often found the transition back into paid employment difficult, many were the beneficiaries of opportunities created by consistently high demand for skilled labour throughout the late 1940s.12 Although re-­employment played an important part in demobilizing armies in all postwar societies, historians of the Red Army’s demobilization after 1945 have focused particularly closely on veterans’ economic remobilization. This contrasts with a lack of interest amongst British labour historians in the return to work of several million men in less than three years.13 The very first Soviet studies of veterans’ homecomings treated demobilization and re-­employment as synonyms. After all the workers’ state was uniquely placed, at least in theory, to provide work and manage the transition towards employment. The most influential of these studies, published in 1970, explored the injection of manpower provided by demobilized veterans. On the basis of national statistics it argued that veterans quickly and successfully returned to work, and provided a solution to a postwar cadres problem. Amongst the massed ranks of ex-­ servicemen were numerous skilled workers who had acquired administrative and political skills in the army. These individuals were well equipped to assume managerial roles in the industrial and agricultural sectors, and in party and soviet bureaucracies.14 Western scholars have accepted much of this analysis. Several scholars have argued that wartime military service led to upward social mobility for Red Army veterans. Many veterans returned to their village to become collective farm chairmen, others took advantage of their relative freedom of movement to enter the urban workforce, while soldiers who had risen through the ranks or who had joined the party were promoted to administrative or managerial positions.15 Although individual veterans enjoyed upward social mobility, wartime standing did not always translate into enhanced civilian status.16 On the whole there was no large-­scale postwar cadres

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Demobilized Veterans in Late Stalinist Leningrad

exchange, comparable to that of the 1920s and 1930s, for veterans to exploit.17 In practice, as the historian Mark Edele writes: ‘There was little official across-­the-board affirmative action policy for veterans qua veterans in the immediate postwar years, which would have contributed to a general elevation of the social standing of all veterans.’18 This chapter focuses on a detailed local analysis of the reintegration of Leningrad’s veterans into the urban and rural workforce in the months and years immediately following their demobilization. The workplace was conceived as the most important battleground in turning ex-­servicemen back into ordinary citizens. The state evaluated demobilization’s success predominantly through veterans’ re-­employment statistics. Work therefore provides an important indication of veterans’ progress towards postwar readjustment. This chapter argues that the transition into the civilian workforce was exceptionally difficult, even for veterans who found suitable employment. Despite wartime damage Leningrad remained a major city at the heart of the Soviet industrial economy, vital to the Soviet Union’s reconstruction. The Leningrad oblast’ was home to important industrial enterprises, raw-­material plants and agriculture production. Wartime depopulation created a local labour shortage that if the model of veterans’ upward social mobility was accurate, should have created a wealth of employment opportunities. The situation in Leningrad, however, was far more complicated. Although the majority of Leningrad’s veterans were able to find work quickly, the available employment opportunities did not satisfy their expectations of ‘good’ employment. Former soldiers were often forced to accept menial or low-­paid positions. Veterans’ attitudes towards the re-­employment process and the kinds of work they obtained also reveal much about their hopes and expectations for civilian life, and their general attitude towards demobilization. Veterans were far from a cohesive social group with a collective experience of re-­entering the workplace. They found work in all areas of the economy, not just heavy industry and agriculture. Their experiences of re-­entering the workplace varied enormously; different veterans faced different problems. Women, officers and the youngest veterans faced additional difficulties, which have often been obscured by the propaganda myth of collective upward mobility. Soviet veterans, when compared to their former British and American allies, were given remarkably little support finding employment. British veterans were entitled to fifty-­six days of paid discharge leave. Their prewar employers were obliged to rehire them for between six to twelve months, depending on the length of their prewar employment. Veterans had to contact their employers within a month of demobilization, and begin work within a further month.19 The American G.I. Bill offered veterans unemployment benefit of $20 a week for up to a year, the so called 52–20 club, as well as loans to start businesses and financial assistance for vocational training. Federal agencies and state administrations also pursued a policy of veterans’ preference in civil service appointments.20 Red Army veterans were led to believe that Soviet state support far surpassed anything offered by its former allies. The propaganda campaign which accompanied the passing of Soviet demobilization regulations stressed that only Soviet socialist society could guarantee to meet ex-­servicemen’s needs, provide work and secure their future.21 The claim that ‘there is not another country in the world where demobilization legislation was so suffused with care for soldiers and their families’,

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became an official mantra.22 Demobilization legislation was celebrated as an expression of Soviet society’s respect for veterans. In October 1945, for example, Leningrad’s chief prosecutor, A. Falin, reiterated the Soviet state’s unique promise to re-­employ veterans: ‘Such a wide formulation is only possible in a socialist country. In any other state concern about work placement (trudoustroistvo) of demobilized soldiers is their private business.’23 The press hammered this point home by reporting international plaudits for Soviet legislation, and by contrasting Red Army veterans’ prospects with those of veterans in capitalist societies.24 Krokodil, the official satirical journal, for example, published a number of cartoons highlighting the plight of unemployed American veterans, including images of veterans sleeping on street benches and begging for work close to the United States Capitol.25 Veterans’ employment rights were outlined in clause seven of the 23 June 1945 demobilization decree. Ex-­servicemen were required to resume work within thirty days of demobilization. Local soviets, the management of industrial enterprises and other local institutions were required to provide demobilized soldiers with work no lower than their prewar employment and commensurate with skills and experiences obtained in the army. Soldiers who had volunteered for the front had the theoretical right to regain precisely the same prewar jobs.26 This legislation was silent on how employment rights would operate in practice, or whether postwar jobs should be equivalent to prewar jobs in status or salary. There was no guidance on how to treat veterans whose workplaces have been destroyed, closed, evacuated or converted to other forms of production; all serious problems in Leningrad. In these circumstances local officials, reacting to specific local factors, appear to have had a measure of flexibility in applying regulations. Demobilization was not implemented uniformly across Leningrad and its rural periphery, let alone across the Soviet Union. Demobilization was increasingly presented as a gift earned by veterans, not the state’s duty towards those who fought for its survival.27 What Jeffrey Brooks terms ‘the economy of the gift’ required ex-­servicemen to repay the state for its fatherly attention.28 Demobilization came with strings attached, most importantly the commitment to become a productive citizen. As one propagandist explained: You honestly served the motherland (rodina) during the years of the war, you were in the first ranks of fighters for the freedom, honour and independence of the Soviet fatherland (otchizna), you will now be in the first ranks of workers in the USSR, fighting for the reconstruction and further blossoming of the power and glory of the Soviet state.29

Veterans’ postwar duty was clear. They were to return to work and devote themselves to production with the same diligence and determination demonstrated at the front. This message was projected most clearly through propaganda posters. The Stalin prize winning graphic artist Viktor Koretsky, for example, produced a highly acclaimed and widely circulated series of posters which exhorted veterans to devote themselves to civilian labour as if it was an extension of battle. The posters’ titles echoed popular slogans: As in battle – as in labour, 1948 (Figure 6), We were victorious in battle – we will be victorious in labour, 1947 (Figure 7) and Be in the forefront everywhere! (Figure 8).30

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Demobilized Veterans in Late Stalinist Leningrad

Figure 7  Poster, Viktor Koretsky, We were victorious in battle – we will be victorious in labour, 1947

The posters were split into frames juxtaposing veterans’ wartime heroism with their future civilian achievements. Infantrymen were transformed into miners; tank drivers into combine-­harvester drivers. Soldiers proudly scrawled their names on the Reichstag’s walls, and on the list of participants of postwar production competitions. Commanders of guns became commanders of production.31 Published in both Moscow and Leningrad, and distributed widely, Koretsky’s posters were part of a national propaganda campaign to remobilize veterans. Yet, locally rooted images also carried the same message and employed similar visual vocabularies. In one image the Admiralty spire, a familiar Leningrad landmark, looms in the background, as the exploits of a soldier in 1944 and 1947 are contrasted (Figure 9).32 Throughout the second half of 1945 and in 1946 the national and local press were full of reports describing veterans returning to work, usually in skilled or managerial positions.33 Although these articles, written in a staid bureaucratic style, now appear stale and repetitious they nonetheless carried important signals for Soviet citizens, and reveal a great deal about official priorities.34 The state regarded newspapers as the principal method of communicating official political messages to demobilized veterans. So important, for example, that in June 1946 the oblast’ party ordered that 5,500 copies of Leningradskaia pravda and 1,000 copies of the local Komsomol newspaper Smena were earmarked for demobilized soldiers on a daily basis.35 Demobilization and work placement (trudoustroistvo) became synonymous in the press; confirming the state’s

‘As in battle – as in labour’

Figure 8  Poster, Viktor Koretsky, Be in the forefront everywhere! 1947

75

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Figure 9  Newspaper illustration, A. Emel’ianova, ‘1944–1947’, Leningradskaia Pravda, 26 January 1947, p. 1.

obsession with harnessing veterans’ labour. Elsewhere in the Soviet Union, newspapers which failed to devote sufficient attention to veterans’ re-­employment faced intense criticism. In 1946, for example, a party report criticized several regional newspapers which had failed to celebrate Den’ Tankistov (Tankists’ Day), the second Sunday in September.36 Needless to say, Leningrad’s press remained steadfastly on message. Leningradskaia pravda, Vechernii Leningrad, factory and district newspapers were filled with articles stressing that Leningrad’s veterans were highly skilled workers making a vital contribution to postwar reconstruction.37 They created the impression that veterans were returning to

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the same factories, sometimes even the same workshops and workbenches, from which they had been mobilized. These articles frequently evoked the metaphor of a family reunited. Veterans were said to be working enthusiastically, and to have been well received by their colleagues. The emphasis on returning to prewar jobs and communities projected important messages about the healing of wartime wounds. This was particularly important in Leningrad where the blockade had destroyed family networks and whole communities. In other parts of the Soviet Union and other postwar societies the burden of easing veterans’ civilian reintegration frequently fell on women and families.38 Yet with so many civilian deaths and so many service families still in evacuation, Leningrad’s workplaces were given a surrogate role in facilitating veterans’ transition. In Leningrad the nurturing and supportive functions considered a woman’s duty were, at least in part, discharged by workplace collectives. In attempting to balance the imperative to remobilize veterans’ productive capacity, with an emotional need to recognize wartime achievements, propaganda disseminated mixed messages.39 It encouraged veterans to become ordinary citizens, but simultaneously suggested that veterans enjoyed a special status, distinguishing them from the rest of society. This paradox was often hard to reconcile in former soldiers’ minds. On one hand the war was presented as an aberrant experience, which had disrupted the course of normal life. Veterans were therefore expected to demobilize, reintegrate and stop claiming special rewards as quickly as possible.40 They were encouraged to think of themselves as workers first, and veterans second. Returning to work meant resuming normal quotidian rhythms after the drama and excitement of war. As one newspaper article from January 1947 explained, thousands of heroes, their chests covered in medals, were returning to ordinary jobs, where they could once again become ordinary citizens.41 Veterans were to put the war behind them, and concentrate upon the future. Indeed, the privileges of demobilization were dependent on a tacit agreement to repress darker memories of wartime experience and not to wash the Red Army’s dirty linen in public.42 Although, as one poet observed, wartime memories could not be packed away as easily as an old uniform.43 On the other hand the Great Patriotic War became a foundational moment for Soviet society, which allegedly fostered positive qualities amongst soldiers. In theory the bravery, decisiveness, stubbornness, resourcefulness, self-­confidence and leadership skills that veterans demonstrated at the front had a practical application in the civilian economy. Exemplary veterans were celebrated as role models for Soviet society. In March 1946, for example, Vechernii Leningrad published an article describing veterans as the ‘gold reserve’ of Soviet labour: ‘These cadres have been through the rigorous school of the Great Patriotic War. They have learned to surmount any difficulty; they found liberty and persistence in achieving these ends. They occupy an honoured and glorious place in the struggle for the realization of the grandiose Stalinist Fourth Five Year Plan.’44 Re-­employed veterans were required to become exemplars of labour discipline, to be active participants in socialist competition, and leading workers in the battle to fulfil and over-­fulfil production plans.45 A wave of popular novels built upon these tropes, and played an important part in the creation of the propaganda stereotype of veterans as exemplary citizens.46 Ex-­servicemen devoted to the reconstruction of the countryside or raising industrial production became the positive heroes par excellence.47

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Special status was also balanced by social expectations. Victory could not be allowed to go to veterans’ heads. Nobody could be allowed to rest on their laurels. As a pocketbook for ex-­servicemen reminded its readers: ‘You are obliged, as your duty before the motherland, to always and everywhere uphold the highest honour and virtue of the Red Army, and on returning to the motherland to be an example of modesty, discipline, orderliness and procedure.’48 Rather than being judged on wartime achievements, the true mark of a hero was how he behaved after demobilization. As the hero of Semen Babaevskii’s novel Cavalier of the Gold Star is reminded: You’ll have to renew your military glory every day in your work, so it will not be tarnished and appear corroded with conceit. They say that the decorations on a soldier’s chest are the mirror of his soul. That’s probably quite right. But in that mirror people see only our past and our present; the future must find its reflection in our deeds.49

Surrounded by agitation before, during and after demobilization it was hardly surprising that many veterans internalized this rhetoric. Veterans often strongly identified with the heroes of postwar novels.50 They were attracted to characters which reflected their own self-­image, in the same way that American soldiers in Vietnam emulated the characters John Wayne played on screen.51 After demobilization many veterans did exactly what was expected of them; they immediately became exemplary workers and started to over-­fulfil the plan.52 According to the press, Leningrad’s veterans were clear on their duty to become model workers. A conference of demobilized veterans organized in Leningrad oblast’s Voznesenskii district in October 1945 demonstrated veterans’ ability to assimilate familiar propaganda tropes. One veteran reportedly declared: ‘We weren’t afraid of bullets, nor shells, nor whistles over our heads. Why would we be afraid of work?’ Another said: ‘Our duty is to prove that we are not only good soldiers, but good labourers.’53 The press frequently presented veterans pledging to work as they had fought in battle.54 Factory newspapers proudly boasted of exemplary veterans achieving impressive feats of Stakhanovism, many fulfilling their production targets several times over.55 One of Elektrosila’s demobilized employees concluded an article with a typical expression of official rhetoric: ‘Everybody asks me: well frontovik, how are you doing? How are you adapting to civilian life after the war? Well I answer: it’s like this – you’ve got to roll up your sleeves and work, and work.’56 In many of these instances veterans were ‘speaking Bolshevik’, parroting official language in public settings, whilst maintaining private attitudes about their postwar social status. The propaganda press could be expected to propagate the image of veterans as exemplary figures. Yet internal party documents reported the same readiness for veterans to knuckle down to reconstruction.57 This suggests that both veterans, and the officials monitoring them, had internalized the official rhetoric. However, we should not dismiss the prospect that many ex-­servicemen genuinely identified with the image of the model worker. Leningrad was a city with a strong industrial heritage proud of the achievements of its working class. Having left the army behind many Leningraders found readopting working class identities a comfort in a confusing environment. Furthermore, the manner in which veterans were incorporated into the workforce was impressive.

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Many made genuine contributions to reconstruction, achieving remarkable things in difficult circumstances. However, the discourse surrounding exemplary veterans often masked a more difficult experience of finding appropriate work and reintegrating into the workforce. Settling back into the civilian workplace was a challenge for all veterans, even those able to return to their previous careers. Former soldiers were not returning to model workplaces, but confusing and disorderly environments. Soldiers who imagined life as a holiday or fairy-­tale-like existence, like Konstantin Simonov and Boris Galen, were bound to be disappointed by their rapid remobilization.58 Postwar emotional demobilization often involved a shift from hope to resentment.59 Almost anything would have been a disappointment when compared to wartime dreams. Veterans were always likely to feel frustrated as they moved from an environment where discipline, routine, technical skill and production supplanted courage and initiative.60 Work, especially in heavy industrial and construction industries, was exhausting and relentless. Many workplaces continued to demand that their employees work long shifts, even after the eight-­hour day was theoretically reinstated. One veteran wrote to his brother expressing his disappointment: ‘I will tell you openly that civilian life and employment did not receive us as I thought. We rushed home and it turns out that there is very little joy here. One puts one’s entire soul into work from the morning to late at night. In general one works like a horse and lives like a dog.’61 Returning to work was anything but therapeutic; normality was hard to find in postwar Leningrad’s workplaces. Even when veterans could return to prewar jobs and employers, their workplaces were very different places. Many factories, enterprises and institutions in the city and countryside were hardly recognizable. Having been converted to war production in the summer of 1941, many plants took time to return to prewar production patterns.62 Approximately 65 to 70 per cent of the city’s industrial plant, including 133 complete factories, had been evacuated eastwards. Industrial production was running at barely a third of its prewar level. Workplaces, no less than housing, had suffered from bombing and shelling. 840 industrial buildings were completely destroyed and over 3,000 seriously damaged.63 When Aleksei Gonchukov, who we encountered in the previous chapter, returned to the Kirov works in November 1946 he was struck by how much the factory had changed: ‘The factory was not the same factory which we left behind when leaving for the front. War had left deep wounds on the factory. The factory was separated from the enemy’s position by three to four kilometres. Looking at the factory made you involuntarily remember all the unhappiness that the war brought our people.’64 Such a description could have applied to any number of Leningrad factories, particularly plants in the vulnerable southern districts of the city. The Kirov, Bolshevik, Elektrosila and Izhorskii factories, all major employers, were located on or just behind the frontlines. Indeed, the southern industrial districts were so close to the fighting that many workers were assigned firing positions in their workshops.65 When veterans began to return to work many factories were still being rebuilt. Unglazed windows and broken heating systems meant workers were often unprotected from the elements. The only source of heat in many workshops during Leningrad’s harsh winters continued to be braziers.66 Three workers at the Bolshevik factory complained that temperatures were so low in November 1946 that it

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was impossible to work. Similar complaints were recorded at other plants.67 Many factories were uncomfortable, chaotic and dangerous places and industrial accidents were commonplace.68 A party report from February 1946 painted a frightening picture of dilapidated workshops where snowdrifts piled up in broken window frames and sections of rusty ventilation piping frequently fell from roofs onto the workers below.69 Accidents at the Bolshevik factory between July and December 1945 were double the corresponding figure in 1944.70 The workforce to which veterans returned had also changed beyond all recognition. In April 1945 women constituted 76 per cent of Leningrad’s industrial workforce, compared to 47 per cent in 1940.71 The change was even more striking in specific production sectors. Women’s share of the workforce in garment factories rose from 83.4 per cent in 1940 to 98.6 per cent in 1945, from 79.6 per cent to 90.2 per cent in textile production; 55.9 per cent to 89 per cent in wood working; 31.5 per cent to 69.6 per cent in metalworking, and 28.7 per cent to 69.1 per cent in power stations.72 Just as soldiers had initially objected to sharing the trenches with women, many veterans now resented that their workplaces were dominated by women. This was something that male veterans would have to accept. Demographic structures had been so fundamentally disrupted by the war and blockade that women could not be pushed out of the workplace as quickly as happened in other societies.73 By 1950, once mass demobilization had brought over 250,000 male veterans to Leningrad, women still represented 57 per cent of Leningrad’s workforce, a 10 per cent rise of the prewar level.74 The repopulation of Leningrad and the replenishment of its workforce were largely achieved by importing rural migrants to the city, something that according to many Leningraders contributed to the city’s postwar provincialization. In 1946 alone the city and oblast’ authorities planned to recruit nearly 200,000 people from beyond the region to fulfil the needs of industrial production.75 As the historian Blair Ruble writes: ‘Behind the neo-­classical and baroque facades of the Moika and Fontanka came to live, not dispossessed gentry and honoured revolutionary heroes, but one more generation of peasants in workers’ clothing.’76 According to a party official from the Kirov factory 75 to 85 per cent of the workforce in 1945 were completely new workers.77 These were not the highly skilled workers that had been the pride of revolutionary ‘Red Petrograd’. Many of the new migrants had low literacy levels. Indeed, in subsequent years combating adult illiteracy became an area of great concern for city and district soviets.78 Many of these workers were younger than veterans; coming from a generation that had escaped frontline service they often had a different outlook on life.79 However, we should be careful not to exaggerate the impact of new arrivals. Waves of rural migration were nothing new in Leningrad. Indeed, many of the veterans returning to Leningrad were themselves former peasants who had migrated to the city in the 1930s. There was little continuity between prewar and postwar workforces, despite the propaganda rhetoric which presented workplaces as reunited families. Returning veterans often found it difficult to fit into new collectives. Few knew their new colleagues. Many veterans were acutely aware of the conspicuous absence of friends and colleagues who had died at the front, during the blockade or had not returned from evacuation. The shift from tightly knit primary groups of men in the army, to an environment in which women now dominated could also be difficult. Making friends

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with newcomers was not easy for many ex-­servicemen. Most preferred to stick together with fellow veterans. Demobilization, then, could be disorientating even for those individuals who returned to established careers. While soldiers served their country at the front a great deal had changed at home. For some it was galling how rapidly their fallen comrades had been replaced, and how easily production continued in their absence. Unsurprisingly, workplace morale was often lower than propaganda suggested. In January 1946 L. Ganichev, Pravda’s Leningrad correspondent, wrote to his editors with a list of labour discipline infractions in the Krasnogvardeiskii and Volodarskii districts. The Bolshevik factory’s workers came in for the most serious criticism. ‘In the workshops slackness and a decline in labour discipline reigns. Workers mooch about without purpose, often they return to the workshop after lunch in a state of intoxication.’ Elsewhere workers objected to working a ten hour day, expressed alleged ‘anti-Soviet’ ideas and even failed to arrive for work.80 Having internalized the message that their duty was to become exemplary workers, some veterans objected to the chaos and disorder that prevented them from doing so. In April 1946 a dozen highly qualified veterans employed by Leningrad’s tram and trolleybus administration wrote to Leningradskaia pravda complaining that they had spent three months waiting to start meaningful work. A lack of spare parts, tools and management’s attitude frustrated their attempts to knuckle down.81 In September 1946 one veteran, who had risen from the ranks to become a captain, complained about the lack of labour discipline where he worked. Having grown accustomed to strict military discipline he was infuriated by the tendency of fellow employees, particularly trainees, to arrive late for work, to be rude to senior staff and to demand regular smoking breaks.82 Such denunciations were unlikely to make veterans popular with their colleagues. Work frequently failed to provide a therapeutic space in which veterans could readjust to postwar normality. Working environments were confusing and disorientating. Veterans were not returning to the welcoming bosom of the factories, offices and farms they left behind, as propaganda encouraged them to think. In many ways these places no longer existed. Not only were workplaces populated by different people, veterans themselves were very different people whose outlook had been transformed by war. The clock could not be turned back, no matter how much veterans or their government wished that it could. Yet, official statistics demonstrate that returning veterans rapidly re-­entered the civilian workplace. In the first months of mass demobilization re-­employment rates amongst veterans in both the city and oblast’ indicated initial successes. By 1 November 1945, approximately four months after the arrival of the first veterans, 71 per cent of veterans demobilized in the oblast’ and 71.5 per cent of veterans demobilized in Leningrad had been re-­employed. In just four months Leningrad found employment for 52,500 veterans, and the Leningrad oblast’ for a further 11,335 veterans. As veterans settled down and officials gained experience, re-­employment rates steadily improved. On 1 December 1946 80.9 per cent of the city’s demobilized soldiers, 95,842 out of a total of 118,500, had returned to work.83 Further improvements were recorded in the following months. By January 1946 86 per cent of Leningrad’s veterans had been re-­ employed, amounting to 126,291 veterans out of a total of 148,000.84 By June 1947, the

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last set of available figures, it was calculated that 258,548 out of 267,253 demobilized veterans, approximately 96.7 per cent, were once again in civilian employment.85 Leningrad and its rural periphery were remarkably successful in finding employment for veterans. In mid-March 1946 the central party organizational-instructional department reported that 94 per cent of veterans had been re-­employed. This compared favourably with a national average of 71.1 per cent.86 The official version of veterans’ return to work, captured in these statistics, was only part of the story. War invalids discharged from military hospitals during and after the war, former POWs released from filtration camps and veterans migrating to the region after demobilization in other cities or regions, were not included in these figures, and were far less successful in finding employment. No matter how impressive the percentage of former soldiers engaged in full-­time employment a significant number of those arriving in the city and oblast’ found obtaining employment very difficult. Soviet society, contrary to the propaganda myth, never completely eradicated unemployment. Letters intercepted by the military censor frequently captured veterans’ complaints about the vagaries of the labour market. ‘Things in Leningrad are bad with work’, as one veteran explained in December 1946, ‘there isn’t work anywhere and I don’t know what to devote myself to. All the second-­hand things I had I’ve sold for nothing. Nobody pays the demobilized any attention. One only gets nonsense from the decrees and orders about benefits and the like.’87 Another veteran wrote to his family in early 1946 about the difficulties of finding work: ‘Yesterday I met a major, he has already been searching for work for a month. Wherever you go, in the majority of places, you hear the answer: “everything is already occupied”. ’88 A. Skorokhodov wrote in desperation to Leningradskaia pravda with a list of employers that had refused to employ him, because of his lack of experience: Before the war I finished at ten-­year school, enrolled at a university, from where I was taken into the army, I was demobilized with the rank of major, five years in the party. I am twenty-­eight years old and I can’t find work for myself. I have a father and mother as dependents . . . Tell me, what I have to do? Where do I need to apply?89

Yet on the whole the reintegration of veterans into the civilian economy was impressive. Despite numerous obstacles the Soviet economy incorporated approximately twelve million people to its workforce between 1944 and 1950.90 Between mid-1945 and 1948, especially in the first eighteen months of demobilization, Leningrad and the Leningrad oblast’ made systematic efforts to remobilize demobilized veterans. The rapid expansion in the civilian workforce was the product of extensive planning and the intervention of a number of institutions, not just the actions of large employers or individuals’ responses to their own circumstances. Re-­integrating veterans into the local workforce was a serious business. Several administrative bodies were involved in arranging work for ex-­service personnel, including: trade-­unions, district soviets, party committees, the Komsomol, military registration offices (voenkomaty) and offices for the calculation and distribution of labour forces (raspredbiuro). These institutions were repeatedly reminded of the importance of facilitating veterans’ transition to the

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workplace. Veterans could not be left as isolated elements in Soviet society, with time to dwell on the past. They had to be made into productive citizens as quickly as possible.91 Directing veterans towards work was prioritized ahead of solving their housing problems – although the two issues were often interconnected. Stalinism, as a rule, was more successful in mobilizing populations than meeting material or consumer needs. The task of remobilizing veterans began as soon as they arrived in the city. Demobilization points were therefore key locations for recruiting veterans. Industrial managers, factory directors and party factory committees were supposed to regularly visit demobilization points to meet potential employees. The Primorskii district demobilization point, for example, maintained a list of specialists required by local employers, and organized an exhibition of the products manufactured by eight prominent local enterprises.92 Factories sometimes sought to recruit suitable candidates from amongst veterans passing through demobilization points. Elektrosila, for example, employed a recruiter to, ‘familiarize those arriving with the factory, its history and to tell those wishing to come to our factory about the professions we can train them in’.93 Recruiters, however, were not always entirely scrupulous in their dealings with veterans. In March 1946 a group of ex-­servicemen wrote a collective letter of complaint about Rog, the head engineer of Automobile Repair Factory No.61. In order to recruit veterans Rog had promised prospective employees: firewood, shoes, work clothes, help in repairing apartments, high salaries and 150 kilograms of potatoes and vegetables each. These were promises which neither he nor the factory could honour.94 The most important institutions in remobilizing veterans’ labour, however, were district offices for the calculation and distribution of labour resources (raspredbiuro), institutions subordinated to local soviets. Raspredbiuro were intended to act as middle men between veterans and prospective employers. They were supposed to liaise with employers in their district, ascertain their labour requirements and then match veterans on the basis of their skills and experience to these vacancies. In theory raspredbiuro were to ensure that veterans were issued with work assignments at demobilization points, alongside passports, proof of military service, military registration cards and ration cards.95 Veterans’ re-­employment was also closely monitored by district military registration offices (voenkomaty), and reported to local party committees. These organizations routinely compiled detailed reports documenting the number of veterans in and out of employment, the type of work they had obtained, which factories and organizations were re-­employing veterans in large numbers, training initiatives and unfortunate failures in the demobilization system. The Leningrad city voenkomat collated this information and produced regular statistical reports recording the number of soldiers demobilized in the city, and the percentage re-­employed.96 This created a situation typical of Soviet administration; a party institution was tasked with monitoring the actions of a bureaucracy controlled by local soviets. This created administrative duplication, but ensured that the actions of any one organization were supervised and counter-­balanced by a potential competitor. In practice veterans had much greater control over their choice of employment. Formal work allocation mechanisms, just as with housing distribution, competed against informal practices. Between November 1945 and November 1946, according to national data, the majority of veterans, rising from 51 to 61 per cent during this period, did not

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use official channels to find work, preferring instead to use their own initiative.97 Many of Leningrad’s veterans contacted their previous employers and made arrangements to return to their former jobs wholly independent of state work allocation mechanisms. Others exploited personal contacts. The factory committee of one optical factory reported that between January and June 1946 it recruited half of its workers from demobilization points, but it also encouraged existing employees to recommend friends and relatives.98 Despite the important role played by Soviet economic planning, market mechanisms also had their place in recruiting veterans. When N. Maiorov was demobilized in August 1945 he found announcements inviting the demobilized to work in factories and enterprises wherever he looked.99 Throughout December 1945 and January 1946 the back pages of Vechernii Leningrad were filled with advertisements offering veterans employment. The building administration Narkomstroi advertised for a wide range of professions and trades including: engineers and building technicians, tractor, lorry and excavator drivers, metalworkers and pneumatic drill operators.100 A garment factory sought tailors, sewing machine operators, assistant workers and offered disabled veterans training.101 Another construction trust advertised for: carpenters, joiners, bricklayers, stove-­fitters, roofers, plasterers, painters, decorators, glaziers, plumbers, metalworkers, electricians, electro-­welders, concrete workers, blacksmiths and general fitters. Other advertisements sought experienced engineers for the city’s gasification project, demobilized sailors to work on ships, metalworkers for factories, and machine operators in a knitted-­garments factory.102 There was clearly great demand, and some competition, for veterans’ labour particularly in the reconstruction and building trades. Despite the importance of informal mechanisms, state institutions played a central role in mobilizing veterans in the Leningrad region. From the start of mass demobilization Leningrad’s officials were anxious about veterans’ re-­employment, and anticipated a more rapid remobilization of veterans than envisaged in demobilization legislation. As veterans were about to discover, decisions about remobilizing labour were made in the interest of the state’s economic recovery, not veterans’ best interests.103 Leningrad’s veterans found that their freedom to choose employment was often constrained by official policy, and the determination of the local party-­state to direct veterans towards key economic sectors. Veterans’ labour was envisaged as a key resource in reconstruction and economic recovery. In December 1945 the executive committee of the oblast’ party drew up plans for remobilizing veterans as quickly as possible. The document included a list of the oblast’s key industrial enterprises, and the number of veterans district raspredbiuro were to direct to each workplace. There were 8,905 positions in total, in raw material production and industries linked to reconstruction, including: brick factories, sawmills, forestry, turf cutting enterprises and railway reconstruction gangs. The largest employers were the Boksitogorskii mine (600 workers) and the Pikalevo cement factory (500 workers) in the Tikhvinskii district, the Volkhovskii aluminium factory (600 workers) in Volkhov, the Svirskaia power station project (400 workers) in the Podporozhskii district, and the Naziia turf cutting enterprise (350 workers) in the Mginskii district. Positions for skilled workers and managers, which propaganda linked with veterans, represented only a tiny fraction of these jobs. Veterans who had worked in agriculture prior to mobilization were to return

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to collective or state farms, while former tractor drivers and soldiers with experience driving military vehicles were to be directed towards employment at machine and tractor stations.104 A similar list of industries and infrastructure projects towards which veterans and re-­evacuees were to be directed was drawn up in Leningrad in December 1945. The tram and trolleybus administration, for example, was to employ 4,500 workers, over half of the projected vacancies, to help repair vital transport infrastructure.105 Veterans were to be remobilized for reconstruction work, the project to connect homes and workplaces to mains gas, repairing tramlines and as workers in major industrial enterprises.106 On 30 May 1945, even before mass demobilization, the city party committee passed a resolution making formal provision for workers to be redirected towards employment in reconstruction work.107 Official reports stressed that large numbers of veterans found work in the industrial sector, on building sites and on infrastructure projects. Between 17 October and 8 December 1945 the Dzerzhinskii district employed 436 veterans in the city’s gasification project.108 In November 1945 the Smol’ninskii district re-­employed 568 demobilized soldiers in Gazoapparat and Gazosetsroi, work gangs linked to the gasification project.109 Leningrad’s gigantic industrial enterprises were well placed to assimilate returning veterans. By January 1946, according to one historian, approximately 60 per cent, 88,000 in total, of Leningrad’s veterans had been re-­employed in industrial enterprises.110 Yet major employers welcomed home only a fraction of the number of workers mobilized to fight. 1,085 soldiers had been demobilized in Kolpino by the end of 1945, including 869 at the Izhorskii defence industry works, the town’s largest employer.111 But, to put this into perspective, in January 1946 veterans represented approximately 11 per cent of a workforce of 7,694.112 Despite their rapid influx into the region, veterans were still a minority in the postwar workforce. At the end of December 1945 a Leningrad procuracy report monitoring the implementation of demobilization legislation noted that the Kirov factory had hired around a thousand demobilized veterans, the majority of whom were former employees hired as skilled tradesmen or in an administrative capacity. One hundred and thirtynine veterans found work at factory No.678, an electrical production enterprise, while 108 were previous employees with high qualifications. All of these were using their prewar skills and trades. Six had been hired in a managerial capacity and forty as engineers or technicians.113 By the end of 1945 the Bolshevik factory had employed 641 demobilized soldiers.114 The Stalin Steel factory employed 660 veterans, 516 of them in skilled positions.115 Fifty-four per cent of workers taking jobs at Elektrosila in 1946 were demobilized prewar employees.116 The large number of veterans employed in Leningrad’s gigantic industrial plants were not, however, proof of veterans’ high skill levels, but rather a reflection of the nature of the local economy, and an indication of veterans’ desire to become exemplary industrial workers. The mechanisms developed to reintegrate veterans into the workforce prioritized the needs of the party-­state, rather than individual veterans’ interests. What administrators, and subsequently historians, seized on as the success of demobilization, namely the rapid remobilization of large numbers of returning troops, was achieved by infringing upon veterans’ legal entitlements. Demobilization legislation theoretically guaranteed veterans employment matching their skills and experience in positions no lower than

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their prewar jobs. But in order to achieve a rapid remobilization and to direct veterans towards reconstruction or heavy industry, officials frequently ignored previous qualifications and skills. Throughout 1945 and 1946 the editors of Leningradskaia pravda received many letters from returning troops complaining that they were unable to find work matching their skills.117 Before the war P. Krugliakov had worked as a metalworker at the Izhorskii factory in Kolpino. Following demobilization in January 1946 he was re-­employed in a different factory, with a position and salary five rungs lower on the pay scale.118 The disparity between prewar and postwar occupations was often even more striking. Two veterans, one a cobbler, the other an artist, were sent to work at a tram depot.119 In November 1945 a holder of the prestigious Order of the Red Star complained the Volodarskii district demobilization point had been unable to find him work in his previous career. A week after demobilization he was sent to work as an unskilled labourer on the city gasification project. His letter of complaint, addressed to the chairman of the Leningrad soviet, questioned whether demobilization legislation had ever been circulated in the Volodarskii district.120 These problems were far from unusual. The under-­utilization of workers’ skills affected all sections of the population not just veterans. In April 1945, before mass demobilization started, a party report bemoaned that work assignments were issued without consideration of prewar trades and skills.121 Yet for soldiers with valuable skills, and expectations of privileged treatment, having to accept menial or unskilled work was especially insulting. As one veteran complained: ‘Is it fair? We return from the army, our native factories wait for us, and make requests for our labour, the raivoenkomat shelves these. And here we are, defenders of the motherland, but we have to go like little boys to learn new professions and to live half-­starving without anything to wear.’122 The timeframe for resuming work highlighted another important tension between the official narrative of demobilization and the reality experienced by veterans. In Leningrad, many veterans were forced back into employment sooner than they envisaged. Locally issued work assignments required veterans to start new jobs within five days of demobilization, despite demobilization permitting veterans to take thirty days. In the Leningrad oblast’ a rest period of ten days was permitted.123 Raspredbiuro directives dictated that ration cards were not to be issued to those who had not accepted work assignments. Those who did were given rations for a further five days, and received a permanent ration card only when they committed to a specific job.124 According to a report dated 13 October 1945 written by Trakachev, the head of the Leningrad city voenkomat, demobilization points’ work was complicated by the fact that many military units incorrectly explained demobilization legislation to soldiers: ‘All demobilized (troops) say that they were told in their units that they would receive a month’s furlough, and after that they themselves could choose what kind of work they wanted.’125 This perceived ‘misunderstanding’ of the legislation was widespread. Despite the repeated description in the press of workers returning to work immediately after their homecoming, many ex-­servicemen continued to demand that the law entitled them to thirty days’ rest.126 Trakachev continued: ‘Having encountered this situation some demobilized soldiers declare that nobody had the right to send them to work right now as they had been granted a month’s leave, that demobilization law was being broken, and that they would write to comrade Stalin about this arbitrariness and so

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on.’127 Falin, Leningrad’s chief prosecutor, reported instances when returning soldiers refused to work during this period. This insistence on a period of rest was repeated across the Soviet Union.128 For soldiers who had served for four years, longer for those who had served in the Winter War, a month’s rest did not seem extravagant. This heavy handedness generated enormous resentment. The link between employment and the allocation of ration cards introduced an element of compulsion. Control of ration cards was intended to enable raspredbiuro to pressurize veterans back into civilian employment, even when they needed time to physically and mentally recuperate. The rationing system could also create a barrier to re-­employing veterans, especially for veterans attempting to find employment independent of the state. Workplaces had a limited quota of ration cards, which once reached prevented them hiring further workers, a circumstance which often thwarted returning veterans.129 This proved to be a particular problem in the autumn and winter of 1946, when the number of ration cards issued to the population was restricted. During these months many enterprises were forced to turn away prospective employees. In October 1946, for example, Leningrad’s Sverdlov machine tool factory refused work to fifteen demobilized veterans, all former employees of the factory with between five and fifteen years’ experience, because of the ration card shortage.130 A letter sent from Leningrad to a serving soldier in November 1946, presumably between comrades, painted a bleak prospect of finding work. I am not working at present, I was laid off, and many manufacturers are reducing their staff. They are not giving out ration cards . . . A second blockade has begun and they aren’t hiring new workers, because everywhere a reduction (in staff) is ongoing. Well I don’t know what is best to advise you when you leave the army. Perhaps you can still stay and gossip in the army, or arrange to come home to Leningrad and die from the cold.131

Veterans who encountered these difficulties were inevitably disappointed and became disenchanted. Hopes and expectations of privilege and a special place in postwar society quickly evaporated. As another veteran wrote in December 1946: ‘I have been demobilized. I have been kicking my heels for two months in order to find work, but they don’t give out ration cards. You can enter work, but you have to live on just holy-­ spirit. There is no kind of concern for demobilized (troops). Just try and live, I am surviving by selling my last rags.’132 Veterans’ search for work was also complicated by serious and widespread failings in the working practices of the institutions responsible for allocating work. Many district raspredbiuro, responsible for arranging employment for both re-­evacuees and demobilized veterans, were simply unable to cope with the volume of work. Administrators were under enormous pressure and working in highly stressful environments. In 1944 and early 1945, for example, Nina Mantula, head of the Kuibyshevskii district raspredbiuro, had just two employees at her disposal. Even before demobilization began their workload was unmanageable.133 In several districts extremely inexperienced members of staff, including assistants and support workers, were placed in charge of remobilizing frontoviki. During the inspection of a demobilization point in

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Leningrad’s Sverdlovskii district a teenage girl, a former manual labourer, was discovered to be in charge of labour allocation.134 Work at demobilization points was neither prestigious nor pleasant. It often involved communicating disappointing news to aggressive and traumatized frontoviki. Perhaps the employment of a young girl was a deliberate ploy to disarm the angry reactions of veterans aggrieved at how dramatically the reality of re-­employment differed from the propaganda image. Given staffing shortages and the pressure of work it was understandable that officials were abrupt or even callous in their attitude towards veterans. Frontoviki reacted to the administrators controlling re-­employment with the same animosity directed at housing officials. Veterans who sought work with their prewar employers, only to be told that they could not offer them anything, as Aleksei Gonchukov initially experienced at the Kirov works, were understandably angry.135 Others were aggrieved by the behaviour of paper-­pushing ‘desk rats’, who appeared to care little for veterans’ predicaments. One veteran wrote to a friend in Kiev about his experience at the district raspredbiuro office: ‘Well, there sit such loathsome little people, they don’t have a single drop of humanity, it’s all facts with them – this and that piece of paper . . . Oh, I’m tired with all this bureaucracy these formalities and stuffy paperwork . . . nearly everybody has lost their conscience.’136 Other veterans, such as G. I. Dorokhin, complained about perceived corruption in the distribution of work assignments. In February 1946 he wrote that: ‘Leningrad as a city, like all other cities has its bad side, in order to get a job one needs a lot of acquaintances or so-­called pull (blat) or a colossal quantity of money . . . If you don’t have money and many acquaintances then they won’t send you to work in a profession but to work on seasonal employment.’137 Seasonal employment was a euphemism for unpopular, low-­paid and back breaking jobs in construction, agriculture and forestry.138 Failures in working practices, allegations of corruption and the resentments they generated may well have contributed to the decision, taken in midOctober 1946, to dismantle the raspredbiuro network.139 Leningrad’s veterans were not just industrial or construction workers. By the end of December 1945 a total of 15,753 veterans had passed through Leningrad’s Smol’ninskii district demobilization point. Amongst them were 3,278 metalworkers, 925 builders, 2,175 drivers, 194 textile workers, 203 woodworkers, 70 printers, 270 tailors, 372 shoemakers, 356 students, 283 nurses, 595 labourers, 802 traders, 593 electricians and 3,067 accounts clerks.140 Many demobilized soldiers were recruited to work as policemen. In November 1946, for example, a party decision recommended that 1,100 policemen were recruited from amongst demobilized junior officers.141 Other veterans returned to work in professions such as teaching, journalism or medicine. Between April 1945 and April 1946 sixty-­one lawyers, returned from the armed forces and resumed practice in Leningrad.142 In November 1945 Smena reported that a number of demobilized soldiers were resuming careers as professional sportsmen.143 Veterans even found work in precisely those administrative positions, such as district housing administrations and raspredbiuro, which their former comrades found so disagreeable.144 While the state insisted on directing veterans towards jobs in heavy industry and other key economic sectors many veterans had very different ideas about what constituted desirable employment. Of course many welcomed a return to their former

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workplaces, and an opportunity to practise familiar skills. Yet, as a number of party reports made clear, many former soldiers were not interested in returning to humdrum jobs. What constituted a good job was highly subjective. It depended on a host of factors: pay, distance from home, the nature of the work and the people with whom they were working. For the majority of veterans labouring jobs on construction sites were extremely unpopular. Pay rates and working conditions in construction were poor, and the work was back-­breaking.145 Two hundred and fifty ex-­servicemen released from the army in 1943 because of their injuries were mobilized into a construction gang. They could not wait to escape this work. They were still petitioning the executive committee (ispolkom) of the Leningrad oblast’ soviet to be released in May 1946, arguing that had they still been serving they would have been demobilized long ago.146 Between March and April 1946 the Supreme Soviet received over 2,500 petitions from former Soviet POWs pleading to be released from quasi labour armies.147 Work on Leningrad’s construction sites would almost certainly have brought veterans into contact with German POWs. There is also evidence that a small number of German POWs were working at both the Kirov and Elektrosila plants up to at least 1947.148 Quite what victors thought of being forced to work alongside the former enemy is unclear, but it almost certainly reinforced their impression that demobilization had dealt them a bad hand. Rather than grumbling about the inequalities of employment allocation other veterans actively sought positions that would free them from production line drudgery or exhausting manual labour. Jobs in institutions or enterprises which handled food, just as they had been during the blockade, were particularly desirable.149 As a Leningrad party report forwarded to Moscow at the end of July 1945 observed, many veterans expressed a desire to work in food processing plants, in milk and meat production, in the trade network or in canteens. The Moscow district reception point directed 170 veterans to work at a meat processing plant, perhaps the closest thing to an ideal job.150 Veterans returning to the Frunzenskii district were no doubt pleased to learn that the Krupskaia chocolate factory and the district food trading administration were amongst the workplaces towards which veterans were being directed.151 These kinds of job were popular because they provided veterans with access to food, perhaps the most valuable commodity in Leningrad given its recent history, and a buffer against future and widely predicted food shortages. What veterans and their families did not consume themselves could be sold on the black market.152 Jobs in canteens, cafés, bars and breweries serving, distributing or producing alcohol were especially coveted. The sums changing hands for employment in such positions were astronomical. The going rate for a bribe to be appointed as a vendor selling beer was approximately 15,000 roubles, while for the head of a bar it stood at around 30,000 roubles, many times the annual salaries of skilled industrial workers.153 Many veterans also strove to become drivers in distribution organizations or transport pools. This allowed them to continue using a skill developed in the military, from which men often derive personal satisfaction, while additional income could be earned from transporting people and their property, or trading in what ‘fell off the back of the lorry’.154 A report investigating the progress of demobilization in the Leningrad oblast’ dated 15 December 1945 expressed concern that veterans’ enthusiasm for these forms of work was damaging the interests of important industrial

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enterprises and construction sites. In the Efimovskii district over 300 unemployed veterans were trying to secure work in supply bases and warehouses, despite a severe labour shortage in the forestry industry. In other districts former collective farmers attempted to find work in warehouses or as administrators, rather than in agriculture.155 After a war which had transformed their entire world, some veterans hoped to begin new lives. This was a conflict that plucked men and women from obscure workaday jobs to perform interesting, exciting and dangerous jobs in often unfamiliar or exotic places; after it, many were reluctant to return to safer, smaller and duller civilian lives.156 In the Soviet Union, as in Europe and the USA, the state attempted to make veterans’ choices for them, but many veterans attempted to make a fresh start. By the end of 1945, for example, 81 of Leningrad’s demobilized veterans and 44 war invalids had enrolled in the theatrical institute, no doubt hoping to begin a stage career.157 Others made more radical changes in their lifestyle. In 1939 L. Poliakov graduated from Leningrad’s medical institute. For the next ten years he served as a doctor in the Soviet Army. During the war he found religion. In 1949, after his demobilization, he became a priest at the Preobrazhenskii church, close to Liteinyi Prospekt.158 In the village of Sablino, close to Tosno, a disabled veteran who had previously worked as a railway signaller made a living selling milk from his privately owned cow, and by conducting religious services, mainly christenings and funeral services in people’s homes.159 Such evidence challenges Amir Weiner’s assertion that a wartime religious revival did not penetrate the Red Army.160 The end of the war permitted some veterans, although perhaps fewer than in other societies, the opportunity to reinvent themselves and their lives. Reintegrating into the civilian workforce was hardest for inexperienced and impressionable young veterans born between 1923 and 1927, the so called ‘frontline generation’.161 The war’s psychological impact was deepest and longest lasting on these birth cohorts; young men and women with little peacetime life experience. The frontline generation often enjoyed elevated military careers which ‘did not give them adequate civilian competencies, and therefore demobilization often meant a step back in life-­ cycle stage and social standing, at least initially’.162 Veterans that had joined the army straight from the school bench, without any prewar trade, profession or experience, found obtaining work particularly difficult. Because the Red Army’s demobilization was organized by age group the youngest birth cohorts were demobilized once the best employment opportunities had already been taken by their older comrades. Conscripts born in 1926 were not demobilized until 1950; those born in 1927 not until 1951. By the time these young men were discharged much of the programme of entitlements had been dismantled. There was little or no support for these veterans. A veteran demobilized in 1950, interviewed as part of my research, laughed at my questions about the training opportunities for veterans. Such a thought was ridiculous. After a moment’s thought he replied that the only real preparation he had for the workplace was the few months he spent working as a plumber in Leningrad during the winter of 1941–1942, aged just fifteen or sixteen.163 Not all veterans were forced to find work. Many used demobilization as an opportunity to resume an interrupted education or to enter higher or technical education for the first time. The enthusiasm of some veterans for an opportunity to gain further qualifications was remarkable.164 For many, a familiarity with military

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technology fostered an interest in science and engineering and a desire to develop this interest. In theory veterans enjoyed privileged access to education, including preferential admissions, exemptions from tuition payments, assistance in sitting entrance examinations and even additional maintenance grants.165 This reinforced the general framework of reconstruction and economic growth. Ex-­servicemen attempting to enrol on courses at engineering, industrial construction, machine-­building or railway engineering institutes were given additional support in preparing for entrance exams.166 However, the total number of veterans was small. According to city raspredbiuro statistics 7,210 veterans had enrolled in education institutions by the end of June 1946, approximately 4 per cent of the total demobilized.167 Soviet educational privileges were not the engine of social mobility created by the American G.I. Bill. Fifty-­one per cent of American Second World War veterans, almost eight million in total, took advantage of the G.I. Bill’s education and training provisions. By 1947 veterans accounted for 49 per cent of students in American colleges.168 In comparison in 1947 veterans constituted 17 per cent of students in Soviet universities, and just 1 per cent of veterans were students.169 Not all former soldiers chose courses consistent with the state’s economic goals. Frontoviki resuming or commencing their studies at Leningrad State University were spread across all departments; from physics to mathematics, biology to geography, and philology to history.170 Despite suggestions that veterans were beneficiaries of affirmative action, something often resented by their fellow students, many veterans proved themselves to be leading students and eventually began academic careers.171 The number of veterans reported to be achieving top grades and winning additional grants in part reflected the propaganda that they should study as they had fought in battle.172 Leningradskii universitet, the university newspaper, regularly carried reports about exemplary ex-­servicemen’s achievements.173 This was not entirely propaganda rhetoric. Many veterans were highly talented. Ivan Kotov, for example, a Hero of the Soviet Union celebrated in one article, would go on to teach economics and enjoy a glittering academic career.174 Veterans, however, were given much greater attention than their peers and in subsequent years they became the subject of almost hagiographical study.175 Despite being in a minority veterans came to dominate local university structures. They gained a virtual monopoly of positions in university Komsomol cells, dominated university committees and controlled student societies.176 This ‘mafia-­like’ dominance did not always endear ex-­servicemen to their fellow students, who felt like poor relations compared to the men upon whom praise, attention and material support were lavished.177 Other students, many of whom had lived through the blockade, resented ex-­servicemen returning and throwing their weight around. Likewise, veterans often felt that they had little in common with students who had escaped the frontlines, by virtue of being born just a few years later. Feeling estranged from their peers, ex-­ servicemen tended to stick together, preferring the company of fellow members of the frontline brotherhood to civilians. The mutual animosity between frontoviki and younger students aggravated an already difficult transition. Adapting to the slower pace of life in the classroom after the drama of army life was always going to be difficult. The routines of university life were about as far removed from army life as was possible. A cartoon published in Krokodil alluded to the difficulties of adjustment. Two young

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men, one in uniform, both wearing medal ribbons were pictured, surrounded by their fellow students, sitting drinking tea and reading textbooks. One observes to the other the absurdity of their situation: ‘Kolia, you and I took Warsaw, and then Berlin . . . and now here we are taking geology, mineralogy and chemistry . . .’178 Despite the obstacles some made the transition with surprising ease; testimony to the esteem in which they held education. For them, the shift from war’s physical challenges to a more cerebral life was embraced with enthusiasm. Although some veterans experienced a measure of prominence and power in their universities and Komsomol cells, students were generally at the bottom of the postwar socio-­economic ladder. Students, including the veterans amongst them, had a particularly tough time after the war. They lived in some of the worst accommodation, received tiny stipends and barely subsistence rations. In January 1947, according to a top secret police report addressed to Stalin, intercepted letters written by dissatisfied Leningrad students complained of serious food shortages, hunger and a subsequent wave of students quitting their studies.179 Such difficulties were by no means uncommon. In memoirs published in 2001 Dondukov, a demobilized veteran who began studying at the Oriental Studies Department of Leningrad State University in August 1946, described the difficulties faced by students through the 1946/47 and 1947/48 academic years. According to Dondukov in addition to their miserly grants students received a daily ration of 400 grams of black bread and 200 grams of white bread. He often sold his white bread ration, giving him spare cash to visit the cinema, and supplemented his ration by spreading fish oil, bought from a pharmacy, onto his black bread. Students receiving the best marks were often given bottles of kefir, and often earned extra money loading wagons with potatoes. Dondukov described how he and his fellow students were often depressed by material shortages, life on the poverty line and the constant nagging feeling of hunger.180 Veterans who re-­entered education were not, of course, the only group of veterans who discovered that there was little correlation between their wartime status and their postwar position. Reintegrating female veterans into the workforce presented specific challenges, as Mikhail Kalinin, the Soviet Union’s nominal head of state, acknowledged to a meeting of female soldiers on 26 July 1945. It was one thing to demobilize a kolkhoznik (male collective farmer) who already had a purpose, home and family to return to, another to reintegrate a 23-year-­old woman, whose only work experience was at the front, and had gained her independence during the war. Yet Kalinin expressed confidence that 99 per cent of women veterans would have no difficulty fitting back into civilian society. After all they were physically and mentally the toughest, as well as the most politically conscious, examples of Soviet womanhood.181 The small minority who might experience difficulties could rely upon the assistance of the Komsomol, which would do everything possible to assist girl soldiers’ (devushki-­voiny) transitions.182 By the end of May 1947 a total of 265,192 veterans had been demobilized in Leningrad and its suburbs. Of these 29,780 or approximately 11 per cent were women.183 Women’s experience of demobilization was often very different from that of their male comrades. Most women veterans arrived in Leningrad in a concentrated burst during the first six months of demobilization and 93.8 per cent of women veterans, 27,935 in total, were demobilized by the end of December 1945.184 By way of contrast in the first

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five months of 1947, according to Leningrad voenkomat figures, just two women were demobilized.185 Subsequently, monthly reports stopped analysing the gender breakdown of veterans.186 Reintegrating these women into the civilian workforce, as Kalinin had indicated, was a responsibility that Leningrad’s Komsomol organizations took seriously. After all the Komsomol played the leading role in encouraging, channelling and in certain circumstances coercing female military service.187 Across the Leningrad oblast’ Komsomol organizations directed over 600 female veterans to work in village reading huts, as nurses, as radio operators and accounts clerks.188 In addition, 215 female veterans had been assigned to leadership roles within local Komsomol cells by November 1945.189 The majority of female veterans, however, appear to have been directed back towards gender appropriate employment. It was recommended that those female veterans demobilized from the Leningrad front in 1944 either returned to the land or were given training in cooking, sewing or clerical work.190 A large number of women found work in traditionally female jobs, such as machine operators in Leningrad’s textile factories.191 Many women, like their male counterparts, were unable to find civilian work that reflected the highly specialized and prestigious work they had undertaken during the war. Few Soviet airwomen, for example, were able to continue flying in either military or civilian aviation. Many would end up in low status and poorly paid jobs linked to aviation, or in other very different roles.192 ‘For some,’ as Markwick and Charon Cardona write, ‘the loss of a meaningful career meant being thrust back down to impoverished social roots.’193 The experience of Leningrad’s women veterans challenges Edele’s assertion that the problems faced by female frontoviki ‘were related to marriage chances, family life, and the politics of sexual morality rather than to employment and career’.194 A. Sokolova, for example, was demobilized from the Red Army in 1945. Aged just eighteen at the beginning of the war she volunteered for the front, leaving behind her work as a shop-­ assistant. In four years of armed service she was wounded twice, received a number of medals, and joined the Komsomol. The war changed her life beyond recognition. Yet, any hope that being a veteran would open doors was cruelly dashed. On her demobilization in the summer of 1945 she was sent to check the weight of produce at an organization distributing fruit and vegetables (Lenzagotplodoovoshtorg). She was told that at the end of the growing season she would be released from this job and would have the opportunity for further study or return to shop work. Seven months later she still had not been released. She worked first as a stevedore and then a cleaner, earning just 200 roubles a month.195 Of course under-­employment and the disappointment created by menial jobs cut across gender. Both sexes would have to come to terms with postwar careers which failed to satisfy personal aspirations. But women had the added frustration that decisions about their future employment were made on the basis of assumptions about their gender. The disappointment that women veterans felt about the kinds of work they were allocated was not just an anxiety about material conditions. It also reflected a realization that prewar misogyny had not been eradicated by the war, and that prevailing attitudes towards gender had shifted remarkably little. The Red Army, especially in the summer of 1942 when young women were first recruited, was riven with misogyny.196 It was not unusual for male soldiers to make angry protests about women’s participation in combat.

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Male soldiers’ reactions to women in their ranks included: growing pale, open-­mouthed gasping, swearing, depressed silence and even inarticulate screaming. Overcoming masculine prejudice and demonstrating their effectiveness as soldiers became an important part of women’s combat motivation.197 For men who had witnessed women’s skill at violence at close quarters initial scepticism about female combatants was gradually replaced by a begrudging acceptance or respect for and even excitement about women soldiers. Over time male and female soldiers often formed close comradely bonds, and accepted each other as part of the same ‘military family’. The acceptance that female soldiers sought, and which many achieved, had implications for how they framed their own gender identities after the war.198 Amongst fellow frontoviki, female veterans (to a large degree) could expect to avoid male chauvinism. Yet following their demobilization they came into greater contact with civilians with little or no knowledge or understanding of women’s military achievements. ‘Rear-­line rats’ displayed a patronizing attitude, which women veterans found particularly galling. The manner in which they were pushed into traditional female occupations, which ignored their wartime achievements, demonstrated that the war had changed society less than they had imagined. The battle for sexual equality would have to be fought all over again. Officially revered as heroes, many women veterans were treated with suspicion, contempt and even outright hostility. When the medal ‘For Battle Merit’ (za boevye zaslugi) was worn by women, it was often ascribed to sexual merit (za polevye zaslugi).199 Many women would attempt to hide the fact of their frontline service for fear that it would stigmatize them as mobile field wives (pokhodno-­polevye zheny).200 It was not long before Krokodil began publishing smutty cartoons poking fun at women wearing their medals in public.201 Prewar gender structures then had not been fundamentally reworked by the war. Nor was military service a guarantor of respect. Rank was another dividing line influencing veterans’ re-­assimilation. Officers, unlike rank and file soldiers, enjoyed better prospects of extending their period of service beyond 1948. Although this was an attractive prospect for many, an extraordinary number of former officers chose to settle in postwar Leningrad. By the end of July 1947, according to city voenkomat statistics, 64,684 officers had been demobilized in the city. Officers of all ranks constituted 24 per cent of the total number of Leningrad’s veterans.202 This was a remarkably high proportion. It was unlikely that all of these individuals were native Leningraders. A large number were probably attracted to the Soviet Union’s second city, despite the level of destruction and deprivation, in the hope of better prospects. Demobilized officers, more than any other sub-­group of veterans, expected to achieve some form of postwar social advancement. Although returning to a supposedly classless society, former officers were keen to capitalize upon their rank. Career officers and soldiers who had risen through the ranks in wartime did not want to relinquish prestige and social capital by returning to humble civilian roles. Ex-­officers were better placed than ordinary soldiers to assert their employment rights and demand appropriate work. S. A. Kuznetsov, for example, a demobilized major, refused to return to his prewar employment as a wagon craftsman, and demanded an administrative-­managerial position. He refused several further job offers including work as an inspector with a salary of 500 roubles, and the position of

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production leader in an asphalt and concrete factory with salary of 1,000 roubles. He demanded a monthly salary no less than 1,400 roubles.203 Kuznetsov was typical of many senior ranking demobilized officers who arrived in Leningrad expecting to obtain managerial or administrative positions, their aspirations fed by a mixture of propaganda and policy. As early as 1944 Colonel General Golikov envisaged preferential employment for demobilized officers in provincial and district soviets, in party posts, particularly in military departments, in the defence industry and even as history teachers in secondary schools.204 The Frunzenskii district military department’s annual report for 1945 noted that before joining the army many demobilized officers had been ordinary workers, ‘during their years in the army they gained a great experience of administrative-­managerial, party-­leadership work and now aspire to positions which correspond with the experience obtained’.205 Many officers took it for granted that man-­management skills developed in the armed forces would be in demand amongst Leningrad’s employees. There was, however, no shortage of demobilized officers with glittering leadership credentials in postwar Leningrad. Between July and December 1945, the first six months of mass demobilization, 14,487 officers were discharged in Leningrad.206 Although there were suggestions that officers were not given sufficient support finding suitable work, they were re-­integrated with moderate success. This would change in 1946 as the pace of demobilization quickened. 23,182 officers were demobilized in Leningrad between January and June 1946 and 19,420 between July and December 1946. Nearly 65 per cent of all officers returned to Leningrad in 1946.207 The demobilization of officers would taper off in 1947, with just 7,595 officers demobilized between January and June.208 In 1946 as an influx of former officers all looking for well-­paid managerial work flooded the postwar labour market, competition for ‘good’ employment became intense. Given these problems, re-­employment rates amongst demobilized officers were impressive. By August 1946, for example, 91 per cent of junior and middle ranking officers and 89 per cent of senior officers had returned to work.209 Yet finding suitable work proved difficult. Leningrad’s economy was simply unable to generate sufficient high status work to satisfy demand. The situation was sufficiently challenging and considered a sufficiently high priority for a city-­wide commission for the work placement (trudoustroistvo) of demobilized officers to be established in 1946, which helped foster co-­operation between party and soviet structures. Indeed, the commission claimed credit for raising rates of re-­employing newly-­arrived officers from 80 per cent between August 1945 and January 1946, to approximately 95 per cent in the seven months of 1946.210 Despite the commission’s best efforts, problems persisted. The most intractable stemmed from the high proportion of officers who had joined the army straight from school or had served for fifteen to twenty years without accumulating civilian employment experience.211 These men had little idea about how civilian administration operated and few professional skills outside of the army. Even within a society as authoritarian as late Stalinist Russia, civilian man-­management skills were radically different from army command structures. Finding vacancies for ex-­officers in this position could be especially difficult. Colonel Ivan Ivanov, a professional officer, was refused work as: the head of a fire brigade for a building trust on 16 June 1946, the head of a warehouse at the Molotov factory on 3 July 1946, the head of a supply organization

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on 9 July 1946, all because of a lack of experience. He was eventually employed as the head of a supply department for Lenpromstoi, an industrial construction trust, on 20 July 1946.212 Despite efforts to collate requests for administrative work a large number of ex-­officers remained unemployed, sometimes for several months. On 1 September 1946 there were 7,402 unemployed ex-­officers.213 The majority of these made efforts to re-­enter the workplace, but several hundred consistently refused the positions they were offered, insisted on administrative or managerial work, or work as teachers, doctors or book-­keepers, and some even absented themselves from the city to take lengthy summer breaks.214 It could be particularly difficult to find work for some specialists, such as doctors or lawyers, where there were no vacancies.215 Unemployed officers were closely monitored, with those who repeatedly refused work assignments or were out of work for long periods subject to careful supervision. In the interests of forestalling long-­term unemployment, pressure was applied to recalcitrant ex-­officers. 975 former officers were summoned to explain the reasons for their unemployment in July 1946. In addition 64 former officers were investigated at their homes. Investigators made contact with 38, the rest according to building administrators and neighbours were rarely at home.216 Throughout March 1947 the Vasilievskii Ostrov district voenkomat used 50 members of local Komsomol cells to monitor unemployed veterans, and visit them at their homes.217 In July 1946 a group of officers from the Leningrad oblast’ voenkomat and the political administration of the Leningrad military district conducted a detailed investigation of the employment and living arrangements of demobilized officers.218 The results of these and other investigations did not always confirm the suspicions that unemployed officers were avoiding work. The police records of unemployed ex-­officers were frequently inaccurate. Amongst the ranks of the unproductive were recently demobilized officers, former officers who had found work on their return but who had been dismissed, economically inactive women officers who were now supported by their husbands, officers who were cramming for university entrance exams, and many people who had found work on their own initiative, but who had failed to inform the relevant authorities.219 Although demobilized officers were supposedly the most politically aware of veterans, encouraging them back into the workforce and remobilizing their productive capacity was far from straightforward. Their expectations, personal circumstances and the availability of suitable employment combined to create barriers to employment which representatives of the party-­state were uncomfortable with, but powerless to resolve. Although many officers did find well-­paid and prestigious positions it was not possible to satisfy the demand for suitable employment. There were limits on the number who could become senior administrators and managers. This was especially apparent in the rural economy. Historians have often claimed that veterans returned to take charge of the postwar village, becoming the chairmen of collective farms and rural soviets.220 Indeed, many veterans in the Leningrad oblast’ assumed the leadership of their communities or were newly promoted to positions of responsibility. Internal party reports noted that ex-­servicemen were the main source of recruits to be chairmen of farms, village and district soviets.221 By the beginning of September 1945, for example, thirty veterans had been elected to leadership roles in the Volkhovskii

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district. These included three village soviet chairmen and 14 kolkhoz chairmen.222 In the same district five demobilized veterans had become the chairmen of village soviets, 26 had become collective farm chairmen and 31 had become brigade leaders by the beginning of 1947.223 The local press rarely missed an opportunity to report an instance where ex-­servicemen were appointed to positions of authority in the village.224 However, at the beginning of 1946 there were just 1,742 collective farms and 90 state farms in the Leningrad oblast’.225 The number of veterans who would be able to become local leaders was constrained by the number of farms. The decision to use a thousand former soldiers and their families to repopulate collective farms on the Karelian Isthmus created additional opportunities. Veterans were to provide the backbone of new agricultural communities established in newly acquired borderlands. Tough, reliable and stoic heroes were cast as modern-­day Cossacks, ideally equipped for new lives in a harsh landscape not suited to collective agriculture.226 The plans were not entirely successful. By the end of 1945 only 200 families had moved to the region. Indeed, partial figures suggest that 70 per cent of those who initially registered to move to the region later changed their minds.227 As 1946 drew to a close Leningradskaia pravda published an article written by a veteran who had joined the Pobeda collective farm in the Keksgol’mskii district. The article described the farm and its achievements in glowing terms.228 The minutes of its general meetings told a different story. A number of veterans joined the farm in its first years, expanding from 56 members in 1946 to 122 in 1947. Yet it was far from a productive enterprise. By the beginning of 1948 there were just 28 able-­bodied men aged between 16 and 60 out of its 122 members.229 Despite their numerical inferiority veterans dominated positions of authority. Senior lieutenant Ivan Chernov joined the farm in September 1945, and by 5 April 1946 had risen to become its chairman.230 Chernov’s leadership bore more than a passing resemblance to the propaganda stereotype of the veteran turned collective farm chairman. While the authoritarian and ruthless fictional kolkhoz chairman Egor Trubnikov, the central character of the 1964 film The Chairman (Predsedatel’), gradually won the respect of his fellow collective farmers, and proved popular with cinema-­going audiences, Chernov was disliked.231 One member of the collective objected to Chernov’s militaristic leadership style. When challenged why he was still at home at 13.00 rather than working he responded: ‘We are not in the army now, as a former officer you should get used to that.’232 Discipline was a recurring problem. Pushkin, a former senior sergeant and member of the farm administration, repeatedly got so drunk that he started fights with other collective farmers.233 Similar behaviour was recorded in other farms in the district.234 A return to agricultural labour was rarely an attractive prospect for ex-­servicemen. As the war drew to a close rumours circulated in the Red Army that the state was planning to abolish collective farms, something that said a lot about soldiers’ attitudes to collective agriculture.235 Although peasants made up the bulk of the Red Army, a number of historians have suggested that large numbers of peasant soldiers chose not to return to their former homes and occupations, but contrived to find work in urban areas.236 However, the overwhelming majority of peasant veterans returned, at least initially, to their villages. Aside from the administrative requirement to return to the location from which they were demobilized, most veterans had a psychological need to

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see the homes, families and lives they had left behind. Only in subsequent years, once they had become thoroughly disenchanted with postwar rural poverty, did peasant veterans drift towards the city.237 Therefore, once Leningrad had assimilated all those veterans demobilized within its boundaries, it would have to find further room for rural veterans attracted to the city in hope of a better life. The process of re-­employing veterans in Leningrad and the Leningrad oblast’ was complicated and intricately balanced. The claim that veterans were rapidly and successfully turned into civilian workers was partially true. Finding work for hundreds of thousands of veterans in a city and region devastated by war was a remarkable achievement. But such a rapid remobilization of veterans was achieved by infringing veterans’ legal entitlements. A large proportion of Leningrad’s veterans were directed towards key sectors of the local economy, often with a measure of compulsion, and usually within days of their arrival. The mechanisms used to remobilize veterans created complications. Forcing veterans into low status jobs that did not take account of prewar experience generated enormous resentment. Cynicism was an equally common response to the realization that the reality of the postwar employment did not correspond with hopes and expectations fostered by propaganda. Of course propaganda helped mobilize veterans, and many identified with the stereotype of exemplary ex-­ servicemen. But, in contrast to the propaganda myth only a minority of veterans found employment as leading workers or experienced upward social mobility. Some veterans were fortunate in being able to return to well-­paid and respected jobs, others were pushed into menial and demeaning work. The decision to encourage, even force, veterans back into employment within days of demobilization had another consequence. After years of physical exertion, emotional strain and psychological stress veterans were given no opportunity to obtain the rest and recuperation they so badly needed. There was no opportunity to gradually adapt to civilian life. This aggravated veterans’ already fragile physical and psychological health. Former soldiers were expected to knuckle down to the tasks allotted to them straight away. This gave frontoviki no time to dwell on their wartime experiences. Uncomfortable memories had to be repressed at all costs. Not all veterans, however, had the luxury of putting the war behind them. Disabled veterans, another important sub-­group, had yet another experience of readjusting to civilian life. They found it even harder to come to terms with the disparity between the reality of demobilization and the official mythology.

4

Wounds that Would not Heal Disability, Health and Trauma

The housing crisis and the difficulties of re-­entering the workplace were, at least in theory, problems which had solutions. Over time, through a mixture of state assistance and personal initiative, most veterans were able to find somewhere to live and ways of supporting themselves, even if the conditions of their housing or employment left much to be desired. There was, however, another set of problems which were difficult, sometimes impossible, to resolve. The war had inflicted wounds and injuries that in many cases never completely healed. This chapter counts the physical and psychological costs of the war paid by Leningrad’s veterans. It focuses on the additional challenges faced by disabled veterans in readjusting to civilian life. Unlike their ‘able-­bodied comrades’ the war-­ disabled faced the complexities of obtaining a pension, finding suitable employment and accessing desperately needed medical care. In addition they would have to come to terms with the lasting physical and psychological scars of war, and the widespread social stigmas attached to disability. Tens of thousands of disabled ex-­servicemen and women gravitated to Leningrad, where they became highly visible reminders of the war. Caring for them was an enormous challenge for a society impoverished by war and struggling to find the resources to rebuild. Despite their theoretical privileges many war invalids were failed; pushed aside by a society that had little time for the weak or vulnerable. Injured ex-­servicemen faced further battles to be recognized as disabled, let alone receive pensions or access medical treatment. Many were struck by the disparity between their treatment, and the propaganda celebrating care and attention for the war’s victims. Disabled veterans were in theory amongst the most privileged and honoured of former soldiers, in practice they faced the most difficult transition. Although war invalids are at the heart of this discussion, this chapter widens the lens to look beyond the most visibly disabled veterans. The typical image of Great Patriotic War invalids, familiar from both archival sources and late Stalinist public culture, was that of a male amputee who had lost one, perhaps two limbs. ‘Circumscribed within the limits of a physiological paradigm’, as Anna Krylova writes, ‘the party press presented the war’s legacy as readily remedied by means of reconstructive surgery and high-­quality false limbs.’1 Amputation was indeed the most commonly recorded reason for disability amongst veterans, but the costs of war were more varied and complicated. Red Army soldiers suffered virtually every form of injury and illness, including: blindness, deafness, disfigurement, venereal disease, tuberculosis, facial disfigurement and mental

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trauma. The impact of war on veterans’ minds and bodies stretched far beyond the official definitions of disability. Disability, as many veterans were about to discover, was a malleable category subject to revision, manipulation and periodic reassessment. In many ways, the war was a disabling experience for all combatants even if they were not officially categorized as war invalids. Few supposedly ‘able-­bodied’ veterans survived the war without sustaining some form of injury or damage to their health. This chapter, therefore, explores the effects of the war on veterans’ general physical and mental health. There was nothing new or unique in the challenge faced by Leningrad and its periphery in re-­integrating wounded ex-­servicemen into mainstream society. Wars have always had the capacity to maim and disfigure combatants. Imperial Russia battled with the difficulties of providing and caring for disabled ex-­servicemen for centuries.2 The advent of modern industrialized warfare in the early twentieth century intensified these problems and developments in military technology created horrific new injuries. Mobilizations of mass conscript armies put ever more soldiers in the firing line.3 By the end of 1918 there were approximately eight million disabled veterans in Europe.4 Advances in military medicine, particularly in infection control and antibiotics, ensured that severely injured soldiers survived the battlefield in ever greater numbers. During the First World War just 20 per cent of Canadian and American soldiers with spinal cord injuries survived to be repatriated. The equivalent figure for the Second World War was approximately 90 per cent. Sixty per cent of injured survivors of the First World War died in hospitals within two months of their return. In the Second World War mortality rates among British, Canadian and American soldiers were cut to between 2.2 and 7.8 per cent.5 The Red Army, despite the shortcomings of its medical services, experienced similar increases in survival rates. Leningrad, like all postwar societies, found providing medical and financial support for the increasing number of surviving disabled veterans a challenge. Nor was the shameful treatment of disabled soldiers, despite good intentions, a uniquely Soviet problem. Throughout the twentieth century the treatment of the war-­disabled repeatedly fell short of expectations. Few twentieth-­ century societies had a history of treating disabled veterans well. The stinginess of pensioning authorities in Britain and France after 1918, for example, was legendary. Successive governments dodged their responsibilities to disabled veterans, preferring to limit their liabilities rather than submit to veterans’ demands for adequate compensation.6 Everywhere veterans complained of insensitivity and indifference from bureaucrats, who treated the war-­disabled as little better than beggars or frauds.7 Callousness and neglect were commonplace. Nor have these problems disappeared. Veterans of conflicts in Vietnam, the Falklands, Iraq and Afghanistan continue to face similar difficulties. Ultimately, no matter what assistance is put in place to support the war-­disabled, they can never be adequately compensated for their sacrifice. While the story of Leningrad’s disabled veterans’ postwar fates strikes many parallels with the history of the wardisabled in other societies and at other times, it nonetheless represents an extreme case study of the physically and mentally damaging effects of modern warfare. The prospects of finding a welcoming therapeutic community amidst the rubble and emotional wreckage of the blockade were bleak. Yet Leningrad and its environs were faced by a rapid influx of wounded former soldiers, which tested the capacity of local officials and resources to cope.

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Establishing the number of disabled veterans resident in Leningrad presented many of the same difficulties as calculating the total number of demobilized soldiers. According to the Leningrad Research Institute of Work Fitness and the Organization of Work for the Disabled (Leningradskii nauchno-­issledovatel’skii institut ekspertizy trudosposobnosti i trudoustroistva invalidov – LIETTIN), a key organization in assisting disabled veterans back into employment, 35,498 former soldiers were declared disabled by medical boards between June 1945 and June 1946.8 Several historians cite this figure as a reliable measure of the number of war invalids resident in Leningrad, but in fact the number of disabled veterans was significantly higher.9 By 1 May 1946 there were 48,483 war invalids claiming pensions from district social security offices in Leningrad, Petrodvorets, Kolpino, Pushkin, and Kronstadt; 47,233 of them in Leningrad itself. Only 65 per cent or 30,729 were registered with the Medical Labour Commissions from which LIETTIN compiled its figures.10 In subsequent months the number of disabled ex-­servicemen claiming pensions in Leningrad grew, as soldiers still receiving treatment from military hospitals were discharged and demobilized.11 By the beginning of January 1947 there were 53,334 disabled veterans registered to claim pensions from Leningrad’s district social security offices.12 Based on this figure, war invalids constituted approximately 18 per cent of the total number of veterans demobilized in the city.13 This was an extraordinary number of disabled ex-­servicemen and women for a war-­torn city to reintegrate and support. By way of comparison, in 1948 there were just 45,000 disabled veterans in the whole of Great Britain.14 The official count almost certainly underestimated the number of veterans in Leningrad. Their ranks were swelled by itinerant war invalids eking out an existence on the margins of society by begging, small-­scale trade and petty crime.15 Many disabled veterans resident in the Leningrad oblast’, of which there were 13,951 claiming a pension in July 1945, appear to have made regular visits to the city, often to sell produce from their families’ private plots, purchase supplies or seek medical treatment.16 Inhabitants of the quasi-­industrial hinterland surrounding Leningrad were no strangers to the city and its urban sub-­cultures.17 Leningrad and its rural periphery were not separate spheres, but interdependent and overlapping spaces, which disabled veterans were particular adept at moving through. Disabled veterans who made regular visits to the city from the surrounding region were a conspicuous presence although they were never formally counted. Many disabled ex-­servicemen settling in Leningrad were not ‘native Leningraders’ (korennye Leningradtsy), but postwar migrants. Disabled veterans from Leningrad’s rural hinterland and across the Soviet Union may have chosen to take advantage of their relative freedom of movement and start their lives afresh in a new place.18 Migrants were drawn to Leningrad for many reasons. Its historic cityscape, proud revolutionary heritage, heroic wartime myths and the special atmosphere of Russia’s western-­facing cultural capital were all part of the attraction. Practical considerations also played their part. Life in a major Soviet city, even against the shadow of mass death and wartime destruction, was an attractive prospect for war invalids living in isolated villages. In theory the prospects of finding work and claiming a pension were brighter here than in an isolated village. Most importantly, Leningrad’s standing as the leading centre of Soviet medicine made it an especially attractive location. The city was home to flagship hospitals, medical research institutes, teaching institutions, pharmaceutical factories

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and prosthetics workshops. Many war invalids came to Leningrad to avail themselves of these resources and facilities. Here, perhaps more than in any other Soviet city, disabled veterans expected to receive good medical care. The number of ex-­service personnel classified as war invalids poorly reflected the physical price paid by the Great Patriotic War’s combatants. One historian estimates that 8 per cent of all serving Red Army soldiers were permanently disabled by the war.19 Yet many millions were seriously injured on the frontlines. Between 1941 and 1945 there were over 22.3 million instances of hospitalization, including 14.7 million cases of injury and 7.6 million cases of sickness.20 The majority of Leningrad’s veterans classified as disabled had very serious injuries or illnesses. According to LIETTIN’s figures, the most common reasons for disability amongst veterans were amputated limbs, damaged joints and broken bones. 25.1 per cent of war invalids had damaged or amputated upper limbs and 28.5 per cent damaged or amputated lower limbs.21 Few soldiers escaped the war without experiencing some damage to their bodies, but minor injuries were unlikely to be recognized as disabling. Most soldiers were hospitalized at least once during the war; many were injured multiple times. Indeed, listing the number and nature of injuries sustained at the front became key components in the formulation of postwar letters of complaint.22 By April 1946 1,595 veterans had been demobilized as part of the second demobilization wave, because they had received three or more wounds.23 Yet, the rigid implementation of regulations governing what constituted invalidity hid the true extent of war-­related illness and sickness. Even if soldiers survived the war without disability, the conflict took its toll on their health. Official sources are largely silent about the lingering aches and pains, the long-­ term effects of malnutrition, hearing loss, or even the dental problems experienced by veterans. But these were all part of the price paid by veterans, and contributed to their physical and mental exhaustion. Most soldiers served continuously from the day they volunteered or were conscripted without formal leave.24 Many were visibly aged by the war’s stresses and privations. Only veterans with obvious physical wounds could expect medical treatment. Leningrad’s doctors and nurses lacked the time and resources to pay much attention to the digestive complaints, raised blood pressure or heart problems observed amongst some veterans in the first few months of peace.25 Some of these symptoms appear to have been psychosomatic complaints observed amongst traumatized veterans seeking support and reassurance from the medical profession.26 The prevailing conception of stoic masculinity combined with the gaunt figures of women and children who had survived the blockade persuaded many veterans that their own health problems were of secondary importance to that of their families.27 Disabled veterans, regardless of the extent of their injuries, were competing with the rest of the population for limited medical resources, and just one of several groups with pressing medical needs. The war was fought at the expense of the whole nation’s health. For nearly four years civilians had been overworked and malnourished, compromising their resistance to illness and disease.28 The catastrophic state of urban sanitation and water supply made city dwellers vulnerable to tuberculosis, typhus, typhoid, dysentery and respiratory infections.29 These were particularly acute problems in postwar Leningrad. Although the besieged city was miraculously spared wartime epidemics, it was left with a severely weakened population. Civilians, reduced to little more than

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walking skeletons during the worst days of the blockade, suffered from the after-­effects of starvation for the rest of their lives. The stunted physical development of a generation of children who had grown up during the siege remained a haunting reminder of the blockade.30 Re-­evacuees often returned to Leningrad in poor physical condition, their health weakened and in need of sustained medical attention. They were often feared as agents of contamination and disease.31 In the late 1940s Leningrad, like much of Soviet Russia, experienced significant increases in dysentery, gastroenteritis and influenza, in part a product of the widespread effects of the 1946–1947 famine.32 Increased demand for healthcare coincided with a reduced capacity to provide it. Medical infrastructure, like everything else, was heavily damaged in both the city and surrounding region. According to one estimate 78 per cent of Leningrad’s hospitals were ‘knocked out of commission’ during the siege.33 One hundred and ninety-three medical institutions were damaged or destroyed in the Leningrad oblast’.34 Approximately 90 per cent of the sanatoria network on the Baltic coast around Sestroretsk and Zelenogorsk was destroyed.35 The estimated cost of repairing the damage to medical institutions in Leningrad and its periphery exceeded one hundred million roubles.36 From 1944 onwards, rebuilding the healthcare system became a priority. According to Professor Mashanskii, the head of Leningrad’s health department, virtually all medical institutions which had not been totally destroyed were put in order by January 1946.37 In reality the reconstruction of clinics and hospitals, like the rebuilding of housing, factories and basic infrastructure, took significantly longer. It was not until 1950, for example, that the number of hospitals, beds and doctors per 10,000 citizens approached prewar levels.38 Reconstruction did not necessarily improve healthcare standards. Late Stalinist hospitals, polyclinics and medical points were poorly equipped and faced chronic shortages of drugs, medical supplies and trained staff. The lack of resources was crippling in rural areas, and the standard of care abysmal even in large cities.39 Between 1941 and 1945 the Soviet Union relied heavily upon American imports of basic medicines, such as aspirin, codeine and sulphanilamides. When intensifying Cold War tensions ended American support, the result was a national shortage of medical essentials, including: glucose, boric acid, castor oil and painkillers. Almost all basic materials and equipment, including soap, needles, syringes and surgical instruments were in short supply.40 Nor were many medical professionals highly trained specialists with years of medical training. Many surgeons, doctors and nurses acquired their training on the frontlines in a ‘hands-­on’ fashion following a crash course in basic medical training. Low levels of medical competence and a need for remedial training were revealed by a postwar programme which assessed doctors’ and surgeons’ qualifications.41 Dealing with large numbers of amputations and ballistic injuries gave many medics valuable experience, but hastily trained staff were not always equipped for civilian practice. There was a vast difference between patching up injured soldiers on the battlefield and diagnosing illness and disease in a civilian clinical setting. The reintegration of Leningrad’s disabled veterans took place in a far from promising medical context. Leningrad faced the prospect of reintegrating nearly 50,000 disabled soldiers to civilian life during a period of austerity and great impoverishment, and at a moment of enormous pressure on its scant resources and dilapidated infrastructure. This situation shaped disabled veterans’

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prospects. Acute competition for financial, material and medical resources was a recurring theme in the complicated process of turning disabled veterans into civilians. While all veterans faced bureaucratic barriers in readjusting to civilian life, the war-­ disabled faced a series of additional obstacles, which were even more frustrating to endure and which reflected social attitudes towards the disabled. The first and most significant obstacle was being formally recognized and registered as disabled. Invalidnost’, the official Soviet term for disability, was an assigned and constructed category, the boundaries of which shifted depending on economic, political and social realities. What constituted a disability, and how severe an impairment it represented, was neither obvious nor natural; it was the product of a combination of policy, guidelines and an evaluation of veterans’ bodies and minds. The key institution in determining disability was a Medical-Labour Expert Commission (vrachebno-trudovaia ekspertnaia komissiia – VTEK, plural VTEKi), branches of which existed across the city and region. Similar commissions had examined people with disabilities throughout the 1920s and 1930s. The Great Patriotic War’s enormous physical cost, however, increased the demand for medical examination, and changed the purpose and procedure of these panels.42 VTEKi were comprised of doctors, trade-­unionists and social security officials who were responsible for determining the severity of injuries, making suggestions for appropriate future employment and issuing disability certificates, a document essential for claiming a pension. The extent of disability was measured by three disability categories. Group I invalidity applied to individuals who had completely lost the capacity to work and required full time nursing care. Group II applied to individuals who had lost the ability to work, but did not require regular medical care. Group III invalidity applied to people considered fit for work in low level employment, possibly with special working conditions and shortened shifts. In keeping with Stalinism’s productionist goals, disability was based on the ability to work rather than on an individual’s state of health.43 Medical examination was the first step in the often lengthy and frustrating process of registering for a disability pension. Obtaining access to these commissions was difficult. Even in Leningrad, a city at the heart of the Soviet medical establishment, disabled veterans might have to wait over six weeks for an appointment, and then spend the best part of a day waiting to be seen.44 At times members of Leningrad’s VTEKi claim to have worked eleven-­hour days, rather than the statutory eight hours, to clear the backlog.45 In October 1945 there were approximately 170 doctors working for fifty VTEKi spread across Leningrad.46 Outside of the city there were fewer commissions; by 1948 there were just forty-­one VTEKi in the entire Leningrad oblast’.47 Until 1948 VTEKi were permitted to examine individuals in their homes, but most examinations were conducted at hospitals and polyclinics.48 This created additional difficulties for war invalids living in isolated settlements. Amputees, blind or paralysed veterans were probably deterred from making arduous and inconvenient journeys, something which prevented them from claiming a pension.49 Examinations were often perfunctory and humiliating, the result of doctors’ and officials’ lack of time. They were conducted in cold, unequipped and dilapidated buildings. Little attention was paid to the privacy or dignity of disabled veterans, who were likely to be uncomfortable baring their scars or stumps in public. It was not

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uncommon for several examinations to be conducted simultaneously in sight of each other.50 The pressure of work meant that VTEKi inevitably cut corners, made mistakes or treated the war-­disabled with distain. VTEKi often restricted their activity to ruling on the level of disability, and frequently ignored the requirement to suggest suitable forms of employment for the disabled. This had consequences for veterans’ future employability. Employers were reluctant to recruit potentially unproductive workers without documentary proof of their fitness for a specific role.51 Proud disabled frontoviki experienced the process of medical examination as a series of petty humiliations and insults that could poison their process of reintegration. VTEKi boards were unpopular; their members viewed as little better than the ‘rats’ distributing housing and employment. The anger and resentment prompted by medical examination could on occasion find expression in anti-­semitism. One group of war-­invalids wrote to the Leningrad party committee complaining that VTEKi chairmen and doctors were all Jews. The denunciation was taken seriously and investigated by officials.52 This was not unusual. Several scholars have noted that disabled veterans were key postwar promoters of anti-­ semitism.53 The workload under which Leningrad’s VTEKi were struggling was partly the product of a requirement that disabled people underwent regular re-­examinations, sometimes as often as every three months.54 Ministry of Social Security reports from June 1946 calculated that approximately 14 per cent of war invalids were reviewed four times a year. A further 44 per cent were re-­examined every six months, the remainder annually.55 Until a reform of the VTEK system in 1948 even the blind, some amputees and those with two or more paralysed limbs had to undergo annual re-­examination.56 Disabled veterans resented the inconvenience and intrusion of regular re-­assessment. They often joked about the absurdity of the situation, questioning whether officials thought their amputated limbs might grow back.57 Faced by a state which held disabled veterans in suspicion, regarding them as malingering and unproductive social elements, black humour offered a coping mechanism and a way of hiding the disappointment.58 Veterans’ hopes that wartime sacrifices had reconfigured their relationship with their government were quickly punctured by the state’s lack of trust. The process of examination and re-­examination was part of the late Stalinist state’s attempt to minimize the financial burden created by unproductive war invalids dependent on disability pensions. Many veterans were placed in a lower disability grouping than their injuries merited. Re-­examination often meant a downgrading in disability or complete declassification.59 This was particularly the case in Leningrad, where a higher proportion of disabled ex-­servicemen were categorized as group III compared to the national average. According to LIETTIN’s figures, 84.9 per cent of disabled veterans with an amputated arm, 83.7 per cent with an amputated leg and 57 per cent with both arms amputated or severely damaged were classified as group III war invalids.60 This was no coincidence. In postwar Leningrad the boundaries of what constituted disability were not only subject to the whim of VTEKi members, but were the subject of an intense policy debate. A number of Leningrad doctors and social security officials linked to LIETTIN advocated that disability classification be adapted to better reflect postwar circumstances. A. Ia. Averbakh, a leading expert at LIETTIN, argued that 85 per cent of disabled veterans who had lost mobility could be allocated

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group III invalidity and assigned work in normal conditions.61 In a lengthy article published in Vrachebnoe delo in 1945 N. A. Vigdorchik argued for a more ‘rational’ form of classification, particularly in relation to group II invalidity, which better reflected the ability of many group II invalids to work. Although the war had dramatically reshaped the nature of disability, the rules for disability classification dated back to 1932. The millions of disabled veterans created since 1941 called for changes in what constituted disability, and a reassessment of what disabled veterans were capable of achieving.62 These were not dry academic discussions thrashed out on the pages of learned journals, but responses to pressing problems which appealed to local decision makers and which influenced VTEKi members. An extended manuscript version of Vigdorchik’s article, for example, was forwarded by LIETTIN’s director N. M. Obodan to P. S. Popkov, Chairman of the Leningrad soviet, on 18 March 1946.63 LIETTIN’s research conveniently coincided with the priorities of local and national politicians and officials. Vigdorchik’s recommendation that disability classifications needed rethinking appealed to members of the ruling élite who seemed determined to lower the disability pensions bill. The challenge of providing financial support for the armies of men and women disabled by modern industrial warfare has been a constant thread throughout the twentieth century. The establishment of administrations to pay pensions to disabled former soldiers played an important part in the evolution of modern welfare states. These bureaucracies and their interaction with disabled veterans generated vast paper trails, which have enabled historians to study the postwar experiences of the war-­ disabled. Meeting the enormous cost of paying pensions to the war-­disabled proved to be a burden that many states and societies found themselves unable or unwilling to carry. After both the First and Second World Wars, governments in Europe, North America, and much of the rest of the globe, repeatedly sought to limit the massive disability pensions bill. The failure of successive governments to honour their commitments to the war-­disabled proved to be a source of enormous tension between disabled veterans and the states for which they had fought. The resentments that Soviet disabled veterans felt about the meagre support provided by the party-state were nothing unusual, and had much in common with those expressed by incapacitated veterans of other conflicts. Even in nation states which had relatively generous provisions for the war-­disabled, soldiers whose minds and bodies had been severely damaged demanded more. No compensation could ever be adequate for soldiers who lost limbs or sustained horrific injuries, wounds that would never truly heal. The injustices of the Soviet disability pensions system, if not entirely unfamiliar, were particularly sharply drawn in Leningrad and its rural hinterland. Amidst the poverty, destruction and chaos of postwar Leningrad, it proved impossible to provide the extraordinary influx of disabled veterans with the financial support they expected or were entitled to. In theory, disabled veterans were amongst the most privileged group of ex-­service personnel. While labels such as ‘frontovik’ or ‘veteran’ were largely symbolic, ‘Invalid of the Great Patriotic War’ was an official administrative category, which came with entitlements to financial and practical assistance. In addition to disability pensions, war invalids were theoretically beneficiaries of tax breaks, exemption from higher education tuition fees, and preferential access to housing, food, fuel and other essential goods.64 While most veterans lost the residual entitlements linked to demobilization in

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the course of 1947 and 1948, disabled veterans kept most of theirs. Propaganda campaigns, just as they had done during the war, continued to promote the message that war invalids were the best protected of Soviet citizens. Pronouncements of ‘care and attention’ (zabota) for disabled veterans made in politicians’ speeches and enshrined in legislation were quickly adopted as propaganda slogans. The press was full of articles detailing welfare payments, and praising the retraining schemes available for war invalids.65 The reality of fitting back into mainstream civilian society, however, was radically different from the propaganda campaign. The disparity between official commitments and the manner in which they were treated was not lost on veterans. In a letter intercepted by Leningrad’s military censor one war invalid expressed his feeling of being unwanted by society: ‘You hear by radio (that everything) is simply splendid, you think that everyone is pleased to see you, but as you begin (to settle in) you aren’t needed by anyone . . . A campaign of any kind is just a celebration, it’s all just agitation, in fact there isn’t anything; in general they are just blowing smoke in your eyes.’66 More form filling, queuing and red-­tape awaited disabled veterans once a disability certificate was obtained. The district social security offices responsible for administering disability pensions were, like most areas of local government, over-­worked, under-­ resourced and inefficient. According to a letter published in Leningradskaia pravda in October 1946 lengthy queues began forming outside the Dzerzhinskii social security office from 7.00 am.67 Once inside, disabled veterans often had to wait for hours in dark, dirty and crowded corridors, before finally being admitted to the officials responsible for their cases.68 Shortages of furniture meant that amputees might have to wait for hours standing on uncomfortable prosthetic limbs or crutches.69 These oversights reflected a general indifference towards the disabled, something that pervaded their treatment. Pensions officials could be particularly callous. Having hobbled into a district social security office in the Leningrad oblast’ to register for a pension, one veteran was told: ‘I see that your leg has been amputated, but we won’t pay benefits while you don’t have a certificate.’70 In October 1948 a procuracy investigation into Leningrad’s social security department revealed a catalogue of administrative problems. Pensions applications were processed slowly, decisions about eligibility were often wrong, and over and under payments were common. Pensioners arriving from, or leaving for, other regions experienced lengthy delays in transferring their personal records. Letters of complaint went unanswered for weeks or months. Several officials had been sacked because of their rudeness towards pensioners.71 Social security officials in the Leningrad oblast’ had an even worse appreciation of the complexities of pension legislation. Miscalculations and mistakes were an inevitable feature of their work.72 An internal oblast’ social security investigation conducted in November 1948 revealed that 50,312 roubles had been overpaid to war-­invalids.73 In the Pashskii, Kingiseppskii and Luzhskii districts the committees responsible for awarding pensions met only once or twice a month creating lengthy delays in the award and payment of individual pensions. There were also instances of social security funds being embezzled in both the city and oblast’.74 In 1947 a RSFSR Ministry of Social Security investigation revealed an unhealthy working culture of mistrust, gossip and intrigue amongst Leningrad’s officials. Twelve employees had awarded themselves 5,300 roubles from emergency funds intended to help war veterans. Other members of staff obtained

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clothing or sanatoria passes intended for the disabled.75 Corruption in Leningrad’s social security apparatus was a problem, although it had not reached the systematic levels uncovered in other areas of the Soviet Union.76 Once a veteran finally convinced officials of their eligibility for a pension, receiving the money presented a further obstacle. Viktorov, a disabled former officer, wrote to Leningradskaia pravda complaining about the difficulties in collecting his pension from the Central State Bank on Nevskii Prospekt. Standing in line for several hours in a jostling crush wasted the best part of a day, and would have been tiring for most Leningraders let alone a disabled veteran.77 Things were harder for pensioners resident in collective farms miles from the nearest banks or post offices, who faced difficult monthly journeys to collect their benefits. Even those war invalids fortunate enough to receive pensions by post sometimes experienced red-­tape and lengthy delays in receiving payments.78 The pensions available to the Great Patriotic War’s disabled veterans were far from generous. At best they were modest; at worst wholly inadequate. The amount a war invalid received was dependent upon: disability category, military rank and previous earnings, and determined by a complicated calculation. For simplicity the legislation can be reduced to several key principles. The most severely disabled veterans received significantly higher pensions than those who retained some work capacity. Officers and non-­commissioned officers received slightly higher pensions, and professional soldiers were administered under different rules. Urban workers received more than agricultural workers. Individuals who could prove they had earned more than 400 roubles a month before military service could expect higher pensions. Unfortunately, few disabled veterans had preserved documents that could prove their prewar earnings. Obtaining proof from former employers, especially when so many plants were still in evacuation or whilst personal records were in chaos, was far from straightforward. The multiple graduation in pensions helped establish what Beate Fieseler terms a ‘welfare hierarchy’, which eroded any sense of solidarity or collective identity amongst disabled comrades.79 Based on the provision of the 1940 pension regulations, monthly payments ranged from a maximum of 500 roubles for officers with group I invalidity and prewar salaries exceeding 400 roubles, to a minimum of 90 roubles for group III invalids from the ranks who had not worked, or those who had earned less than 150 roubles a month.80 In January 1946 the minimum sums paid to group I war invalids injured on the frontlines were raised to 300 roubles for urban workers and 250 roubles for agricultural workers, but such payments were not enough to drag the most seriously injured out of poverty.81 Even at their most generous, disability pensions could not secure a comfortable existence. Survival on a single invalid’s pension was very difficult, almost impossible, without additional income.82 Disability pensions barely covered essential expenditure on food, fuel and clothing and did little to alleviate postwar misery. Meagre pensions hardly seemed adequate compensation for disabled veterans’ sacrifices. Most war invalids were, as the historian Mark Edele writes, ‘in a situation where the symbolic affirmation of their status was coupled with poverty – a recipe for resentment’.83 The overriding priority for late Stalinist society, however, was not adequate pensions, but reintegrating injured veterans into the workforce as quickly and as smoothly as possible. Propaganda was a key component in achieving this objective. The local and

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national press celebrated the achievements of disabled veterans in the workplace, presenting their remobilization as a remarkable success story.84 This discourse shared much of the language of the wider campaign to remobilize demobilized veterans. War invalids, like their able-­bodied comrades, were exhorted to achieve spectacular feats of Stakhanovism. Yet the campaign to celebrate exemplary disabled veterans had an energy of its own. According to the literary scholar Vera Dunham, the press campaign encouraged ‘something like a movement of Voropaevism’, a form of disabled veterans’ Stakhanovism inspired by the boundless energy of Voropaev, the fictional hero of the postwar novel, Happiness.85 Equivalents to these heroic figures were singled out for praise in the local press. Mikhail Ivanov, a metal lathe operator at Elektrosila, was the epitome of this active community-­conscious war invalid. In the first half of March 1946 he fulfilled his production norm for machining precision components by 455 per cent. He was also head of the factory Osoaviakhim (Union of Societies for Assistance with Assistance with Defence and Aviation-Chemical Construction) branch, and an active candidate party member.86 A national policy discussion about the re-­employment of disabled veterans ran alongside the propaganda campaigns. Leningrad was at the centre of this debate. N. M. Obodan and A. Ia Averbakh, both prominent social security officials attached to LIETTIN, were important participants in shaping official thinking. They contributed to a book published by LIETTIN, which disseminated practical advice about re-­employing disabled veterans, and discussed the legislative and policy framework. The book became an important reference work and the RSFSR Ministry of Social Security ordered 5,000 copies, which were circulated to medical institutions in Soviet Russia.87 Public discussions of disabled veterans taking full part in production were intended to reassure war invalids of their place in society, and demonstrate that they were capable of a successful transition to civilian life. The reality of disabled veterans’ integration into the workforce, however, was often very different from the propaganda rhetoric or the national policy debate, both of which tended to over-­ simplify a complicated situation. Re-­employment, as it was for able-­bodied veterans, was envisaged as a pre-­condition for turning war invalids back into civilians. The Soviet Union, like other societies, stressed the therapeutic qualities of work, an idea which enjoyed widespread political, economic, social and medical currency during and after the First World War. In Britain ‘work therapy’, in the correct circumstances, could teach disabled veterans how to become productive citizens and to build their physical strength.88 Work and its redemptive qualities were valued in America after 1918, and were envisaged as a key component in allowing disabled veterans to reintegrate into society. ‘Rehabilitation’, within the workplace as Beth Linker writes, ‘was thus a way to restore social order after the chaos of war by (re)making men into producers of capital.’89 As wartime labour shortages began to bite in First World War Germany, there was a shift from viewing labour force reintegration from primarily about ensuring disabled veterans’ transition, towards ‘recycling’ them as part of the near total mobilization of society for waging war.90 Of course, in a socialist society where labour was considered to have an even stronger redemptive quality, work was especially important. Workplaces offered routine and membership of a collective, which could provide support, comradeship and help shape transitions. Reintegrating disabled veterans into the workforce, however, was

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also a response to the extraordinary challenge of postwar reconstruction that required the remobilization of every available source of labour. The determination to harness disabled veterans’ productive capacities, as elsewhere, was not solely motivated by the therapeutic needs of the individual. The Soviet state, like almost all other twentieth-century governments, also feared disabled veterans as potential malingerers. According to one historian, wartime press and radio broadcasts focused on the ‘nearly total integration into labour of the disabled’ for fear of promoting laziness amongst welfare recipients.91 As a result, far greater attention was focused on ensuring that war invalids were remobilized for labour than other disabled citizens. This perhaps explains why overall levels of employment were higher amongst the war-­disabled than other groups of disabled people.92 There were, however, more direct ways of persuading the war-­disabled of the necessity of work. In the Soviet system, the payment of disability pensions and employment were closely linked, not mutually exclusive. Over time, mobilizing the war-­disabled into the workforce became an important means of reducing the state’s financial liabilities. Group I and group II invalids received a full pension irrespective of income derived from work and agriculture. In contrast group III invalids, the bulk of disabled veterans, increasingly found their pensions tied to employment. In January 1943 incentives were created to encourage group III war invalids to work. Full pensions were paid regardless of additional income, but individuals avoiding work for more than two months could lose their pension.93 Legislation was tightened in October 1948, when group III invalids had their pensions cut if their combined income exceeded their prewar earnings. In the countryside pensions were cut for all group III invalids with an income other than from their wage.94 As Mark Edele summarizes: ‘If during and immediately after the war a third group invalid could choose between not receiving a pension, and working and receiving a full pension, after October 1948 the choice to work as a rule only guaranteed a reduced pension.’95 There is some evidence that these changes discouraged a small number of veterans resident in the Leningrad oblast’, usually those with agricultural plots and family support, from working.96 In purely statistical terms social security officials and employers in Leningrad and the Leningrad oblast’ were successful in remobilizing disabled veterans. Nationally, employment levels of war invalids increased steadily from 57.3 per cent in September 1942 to almost 80 per cent in January 1945, and reached 91.2 per cent in April 1948.97 Moscow closely monitored these figures, and ranked cities and regions accordingly. In October 1945 Leningrad was ranked joint 31st and the Leningrad oblast’ 48th out of 54 places. Of Leningrad’s war invalids, 84.3 per cent were in employment or education compared with 77.7 per cent in the Leningrad oblast’.98 Low rankings were disappointing for a major Soviet city and its rural hinterland, but perhaps understandable given its unique wartime experience. In future years the region’s employment rates were compared to average levels for the RSFSR. Falling below this benchmark prompted intense criticism.99 As postwar reconstruction gathered pace employment levels amongst disabled ex-­soldiers gradually improved. This was the product of greater administrative experience, the creation of new employment opportunities and the implementation of new initiatives. By January 1947 figures suggested that 87.3 per cent of Leningrad’s disabled veterans were working or studying. This rose to 91 per cent by January 1949, continuing to hover around this figure as late as July 1951.100 Improvements

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Table 2  Percentage of disabled veterans in employment or education by disability grouping. Percentage of disabled veterans in employment or education Date

Place

Group I

Group II

Group III

January 1945 June 1946 June 1948 January 1949 July 1951 July 1951

Leningrad oblast’ Leningrad Leningrad Leningrad oblast’ Leningrad Leningrad oblast’

 9 11.2 23.4

49 35.8 61.3 58.7 69.9 72.9

96101 75.8102 99.8103 98.4104 98.9105 96.3106

38.2 31.6

in employment rates were recorded in all disability groups (Table  2). Given official policy the economic mobilizations of group III war invalids was to be expected. More surprising, however, were the significant increases of group I and II war invalids in employment, groups who by definition had limited work capacity and needed regular medical attention. The work placement (trudoustroistvo) of disabled veterans was closely monitored in the Leningrad region, and was the subject of numerous city, oblast’ and district soviet resolutions. A number of institutions played an important role in improving employment rates amongst war invalids. The Ministry of Social Security, and its district offices, produced detailed plans for employing disabled veterans, the implementation of which was constantly evaluated. Work placement commissions were established by district soviets to monitor employment levels and direct individuals towards suitable work. Leningrad’s industrial employers had by June 1948 established a further 426 work placement commissions.107 Major employers played an important role in hiring disabled veterans. By January 1946 the Kirov works employed 442 disabled veterans out of a total workforce of 7,694.108 Of the 580 disabled veterans registered with the Kolpino district social security office in January 1946, 483 were employed at the massive Izhorskii factory.109 Employers across the city and oblast’ organized training courses to improve the skills and qualifications of disabled veterans.110 These schemes were particularly important in enabling group II veterans to enter the workplace.111 LIETTIN, in co-­operation with the Leningrad Department of the Scientific Engineering-Technical Society (Leningrad otdeleniia nauchnogo inzhenernotekhnicheskogo obshchestva – LONITO), undertook scientific studies of suitable jobs for disabled veterans on the railway network, in printing and publishing, in paper production and the textile industries.112 While the infrastructure for re-­employing most veterans had been dismantled by 1947, special assistance for reintegrating disabled veterans into the workplace was still in operation at the end of the decade. In October 1945 Leningrad’s social security administration forwarded a report to Moscow, which claimed that 12 per cent of the city’s war invalids were employed in managerial roles, 74.9 per cent in skilled positions and 13.1 per cent in non-­skilled positions, mainly in bakeries, canteens or chocolate factories.113 Statistics gathered in individual districts gave a similar impression.114 Yet aggregate statistics hid the

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complexities of matching veterans with a vast array of injuries and impairments to suitable employment. Different forms of disability presented very different challenges to resuming working lives. Even LIETTIN, who carefully researched appropriate jobs for disabled veterans, had difficulties matching the most seriously injured to appropriate employment. The best that could be expected for many group I and II veterans was home working, usually doing mundane and mind-­numbingly repetitive tasks.115 The results of studies investigating jobs suitable for amputees who had lost an arm, the most common wartime injury, were not promising. For example, in 1947 the suitability of 185 jobs was assessed on the October railway line. Just 16 were appropriate, and a further seven could have provided employment in the right circumstances. These were largely low skilled or semi-­skilled jobs with monthly salaries between 340 to 750 roubles.116 Of 240 jobs examined in the textile industry only 22 were suitable.117 In both industries the number of people required to fill these positions was relatively low; few veterans could hope for employment in these roles. Veterans with serious or multiple injuries found it harder still to find suitable work. Little provision was made for adapting workplaces to disabled people’s needs, or making reasonable adjustments to production processes. Given the shortage of materials and tools in workplaces it was hardly surprising that special adaptive technology was rarely installed. Even the acquisition of a swivel chair on a production line was celebrated as a special event. Universal provision of adaptive technology was little more than a utopian dream.118 Even industrial enterprises which took work placement seriously, such as the Kirov, Stalin and Karl Marx factories, did not consistently make the most of disabled veterans’ skills. A study conducted at the Kirov factory, for example, revealed that 28.7 per cent of disabled workers complained about the difficulties created by inappropriate work.119 Blind veterans, in particular, suffered from a lack of awareness about their particular needs, and experienced great difficulties achieving even a measure of social reintegration. Officials and wider society rarely understood their capabilities. In one oral history interview a veteran told me the story of a much-­loved family friend who had been blinded at the front. He found work in a co-­operative with other blind veterans doing tedious manual tasks in a workshop located in an unlit basement. Left alone in the dark with little mental stimulation, members of the co-­operative spent much of their work day playing chess in their heads. Imagining the board and pieces in their minds, a game could be begun or resumed at any moment, a situation that frustrated the co-­operative’s bosses.120 According to a report compiled by the Leningrad oblast’ branch of the AllRussia Society for the Blind there were 65 blind veterans registered in the oblast’ in June 1945. These included 58 group I invalids, and 7 group II invalids. 44 veterans were completely blind, 10 had 5 per cent or less vision and 11 between 5 and 10 per cent of their vision remaining. Several had other physical injuries. It appears that in order to be classified as disabled blind veterans required a very severe loss of vision. Only 22 blind veterans, approximately a third, were working or in education. Blind veterans largely did mundane manual labour at home far below the skill levels of their prewar work. For example seven veterans made boot laces, five produced shopping bags and one embossed metal items with stamps.121 Blinded veterans were frequently treated with indifference or disdain, and were capable of a great deal more. The notion that the war blind were capable of overcoming their disabilities, and achieving both fulfilment and

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social integration through labour’s transformative and integrative qualities, a key component of blind veterans’ autobiographies written after Stalin’s death in the late Soviet era, would have grated with the social reality experienced by late Stalinist Leningrad’s blind veterans. Neglect and impoverishment were a more typical experience. The minority of upwardly mobile, well-­educated and adaptable blind veterans who succeeded in fashioning disability into a positive experience by adopting official discourses of labour were far from representative.122 During the war Petr Karpovich Belov, a 21-year-­old junior sergeant and former forester, completely lost his sight. After the war his intention was to learn to play the accordion.123 This was not quite as unusual a plan to earn a living as it initially seems. Training blind veterans as musicians was envisaged as a solution to finding the war-­ blind stimulating employment.124 This was attempted across the Soviet Union, but with mixed success. Conditions in residential music colleges for blind veterans make it hard to understand their attraction.125 The situation appears to have been somewhat better in an institution established in Leningrad’s Dzershinskii district. At the beginning of 1946 it provided training to 63 blind veterans, rising to 113 veterans in 1947, and stabilizing around 100 in 1948 and 1949.126 The college, however, was unable to provide its students with sustainable musical careers. In November 1945 a delegate at a conference discussing the employment of blind veterans, with experience of working with blind people in prewar Leningrad, described musical retraining as ‘the crudest of mistakes’ and a ‘catastrophe’ waiting to happen. Few blind veterans, even after extensive training, were capable of becoming professional musicians.127 In the 1948/49 academic year 16 blind veterans graduated with good or excellent results, and six failed to qualify.128 Shortages of musical instruments threatened the whole scheme, even for successful graduates.129 In the spring of 1951 the Ministry of Social Security failed to make funds available for the purchase of accordions and clothing for graduating blind veterans. In Leningrad the city soviet intervened, purchasing the instruments and making a small one-­off payment to those concerned from the local budget.130 Training schemes for the war-­disabled routinely ignored veterans’ real needs and physical capabilities. Those who could not be employed in the regular economy were often trained in craft or artisan trades, and were employed in invalids’ co-­operatives.131 There were national schemes to retrain war invalids as photographers, cinema projectionists and accounts clerks. In Leningrad, disabled veterans were more commonly trained as cobblers, tailors or as mechanics repairing typewriters and adding machines.132 State-­funded training initiatives were poorly funded, resourced and planned. In April and May 1946 Leningradskaia pravda published collective letters from groups of disabled veterans, complaining that retraining of the war-­disabled was not taken seriously. Veterans enrolled on training courses were sometimes left to sit idle for want of materials, tools and proper work. A large group of trainee tailors had just two broken sewing machines to train on. Workshops were hidden away in cold, dark and damp basements.133 Another workshop was organized on the third floor of a building, making it inaccessible to veterans on crutches and prosthetic limbs. As the signatories put it: ‘One feels the inattention to our needs literally at every step.’134 A number of disabled veterans who had returned to Leningrad before either the end of the war or mass demobilization found work relatively easily, because of wartime

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labour shortages. But as time passed and ‘healthy’ veterans returned to the city many war invalids found that that they were muscled out of their jobs. As disabled veterans of the First World War had found across Europe, employers often preferred to hire ‘able-­bodied’ workers.135 Although the state could place employers under sustained pressure to employ the war-disabled, industrial managers still had to ensure the production plan was fulfilled. Nobody wanted to hire unproductive workers who posed a potential danger to themselves, their colleagues and valuable machinery. Instances of war invalids being dismissed from their jobs, with little justification, began in Leningrad as early as 1945. A report from the Dzerzhinskii district voenkomat revealed a tendency for managers to dismiss disabled people. Fadeev had worked as a fire-­watcher for a construction trust for approximately four months, before being replaced by an able-­bodied worker. Sudakov, a group II war invalid, was replaced in his job as a buffet manager. He was eventually reinstated after the intervention of the district social security office.136 In July 1946 another group II disabled veteran and his wife were expelled from a collective farm in the Volkhovskii district of the Leningrad oblast’. Thanks to the intervention of the district procuracy the couple were reinstated.137 Similar situations were common.138 In late 1947 the All-Union Ministry of Social Security observed numerous instances of war invalids being dismissed from their employment.139 Disabled veterans pushed out of the workplace only appear in the archival record when prosecutors, courts or social security officials intervened to reinstate them. How many veterans resigned themselves to their dismissal without coming into contact with state agencies is impossible to know. But a petition sent to the Council of Ministers on 3 February 1946 by a former engineer, Communist Party member and war invalid from Leningrad captured a sense of their bitterness and confusion these veterans must have felt. Released from the army as a group II invalid the petitioner held a number of positions of responsibility in industry and agriculture before returning to Leningrad in 1944. He was appointed director of a motor vehicle pool. In January 1946, after having been away from the city on business, he was informed that he had been demoted and replaced by a recently demobilized soldier. He sought an explanation for this injustice: ‘I am now asking for an explanation for what reason I have been removed from my position. Why have I been dismissed? Is a man in this country really worth so little that he can be mocked for no reason?’140 This was not a lone voice. Many disabled veterans would experience the gulf between official statements about the care and attention for disabled veterans and their own experience. All too often the war-disabled were pushed aside by heartless officials and a society and culture unable to meet their real needs. The unfeeling and unthinking attitudes of medical examination boards and social security officials added to war invalids’ sense of exclusion. Disabled veterans’ consciousness of their superfluity in a postwar world for which they had sacrificed their health and bodies was particularly poignant.141 As one war invalid living in the village of Olenino in Leningrad oblast’s Luzhskii district complained: ‘For what did we suffer? We came home, and they look upon us like they would a dog.’142 Nowhere was this indifference towards the war-disabled more apparent than in the provision of medical care. By August 1945 there were 19,486 disabled veterans registered with Leningrad’s polyclinics and 11,766 were actively receiving medical treatment. Over 15,000 were receiving special ration packs.143 Their number grew rapidly. By mid-June 1946 the

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social security officials had records of 48,667 war invalids in Leningrad: 33,511 of these were registered with polyclinics, 20,241 required surgery.144 They had a wide array of medical needs including: operations, hospitalization, physiotherapy, provision of prosthetics, and nursing at home. Many would require medical care for the rest of their lives. Between January and November 1946 war invalids made 145,887 visits to polyclinics. 22,055 physiotherapy consultations took place in polyclinics. 3,528 disabled veterans were hospitalized, spending on average between 30 and 90 days on the wards. Hospitals conducted 2,796 operations and 39,026 physiotherapy sessions with disabled veterans.145 Many amputees required further operations to neaten their stumps, or to stop the spread of infection. Shrapnel and bullet wounds had a tendency to reopen and required regular sterilization and redressing. Veterans paralysed by spinal or brain injuries required full-­time care for the rest of their lives. Tens of thousands of veterans needed prosthetic limbs, customized shoes, artificial eyes, hearing aids, crutches and walking sticks. Healing the war’s wounds represented a major drain on local medical resources, and a ‘burden’ that the city and oblast’ was ill prepared to meet. Detailed plans were drawn up to provide Leningrad’s war invalids with the best possible care. In theory every city district (raion) had a dedicated doctor responsible for registering war invalids and overseeing their treatment. District nurses were also made responsible for visiting war invalids at home, and acting as liaison between polyclinics, hospitals, social security offices and other organizations.146 At least 1,000 hospitals beds were earmarked for treating disabled veterans. Medical research institutes were to assist in treating difficult cases.147 Special surgeries were to be created exclusively serving the war-­disabled and each district was to establish a specially-­equipped polyclinic to offer treatment to disabled veterans. Health centres were to be organized at large workplaces where the war-­disabled would be given priority and specialist treatment.148 These plans to organize medical care for disabled veterans were created in a bureaucratic bubble detached from the realities of life in a war-­ravaged city. A network of privileged access to first-­rate care and facilities was largely the fantasy of health officials. Given the extensive damage to local medical infrastructure and the unprecedented demand for medical assistance, realizing this vision was always going to be exceptionally difficult. On 20 July 1946 a Council of Ministers resolution approved the Leningrad city soviet’s request to establish a new hospital for Great Patriotic War invalids.149 In August the local press celebrated the hospital’s imminent opening. The facility was envisaged as one of the largest institutions devoted to the care and treatment of disabled veterans in the Soviet Union. It was to boast the very latest technology, and to have brand new surgical, orthopaedic, neurosurgical, maxillofacial and tubercular wards.150 The hospital was to be located on the Fontanka, in the grand neo-­classical buildings of the former Catherine Institute. This placed the hospital at the very heart of the city, just a few hundred metres from the Anchikov Bridge and Nevskii Prospekt. Today the imposing building houses the National Library of Russia’s newspaper collection, and will be familiar to many scholars. In many ways this hospital’s history was a microcosm of the provision of medical services for Leningrad’s disabled veterans. The project was characterized by grand ambitions and lofty goals, as well as delays, inadequate funding, material shortages and disappointments; factors which characterized the treatment of Leningrad’s disabled veterans.

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A crumbling early nineteenth-­century palace was hardly a suitable place for a prestigious rehabilitative institution, providing the exemplary care described in the press. Prior to August 1946 the building housed evacuation hospital No.201, whose demobilized medics were recruited to work for the new hospital.151 Much of the building was in a state of disrepair. Parts had been shelled and bombed during the blockade.152 In mid-October 1946, six weeks after the building had been transferred to the new hospital, its new director Nikolai Shatalov submitted an angry report to the head of Leningrad’s health department, Professor Mashanskii. Shalatov described the condition of the building as ‘catastrophic’. The roof was so badly damaged that water was leaking through to the ground floor. Only half of the windows were glazed. Shortages of plywood meant that unglazed windows were not boarded up. The building’s plumbing and heating systems had not been repaired. The lack of running water was a serious problem for a building intended to house surgical wards and in which hygiene should have been a priority.153 Despite Shalatov’s demands for immediate improvements the hospital remained in a terrible condition for months, and took even longer to be fully operational. The 2,490,000 roubles earmarked for building repairs and 900,000 for furniture and equipment were not spent in 1946.154 Other organizations encroached upon the space earmarked for war invalids. In November 1946 a hospital for children with scarlet fever was temporarily organized in the building.155 In early April 1947 a Leningrad party report revealed that the hospital’s roof continued to leak. As a result the whole of the second floor was out of use and was going to ruin. Windows in part of the hospital were still not glazed, but covered up with mattresses. There were shortages of the most basic equipment, including beds and bedding. Physiotherapy, hydrotherapy and gymnastic facilities, important in building strength amongst amputees, had not been organized.156 One surviving patient and war invalid painted a depressing picture of care in the hospital. ‘Twenty to thirty people lay in the ward. Because of the lack of appropriate, effective and modern medicines for the treatment of tuberculosis young war participants (uchastniki voiny) died like flies.’ Although located in the very centre of Leningrad he was extremely isolated. ‘I looked with envy out of the hospital window at the happy people boating, while people like me, being ill, had neither chance of recovery, nor money, nor necessary medicine and food.’157 On 17 June 1949 the All Union Council of Ministers passed a resolution transferring control of Fontanka No.36 from the war invalids hospital to the State Public Library.158 In turn the hospital moved from its central location to a purpose-­built building on the edge of the city.159 The move does not appear to have been motivated by the shortcomings of the building as a hospital, but rather the necessity of finding a home for the library’s collections. Having spent nearly three years battling for resources for the hospital, and spending nearly three million roubles on reconstruction work, Shatalov was outraged by the decision.160 Several objections to the transfer were overruled.161 Over the next fifteen months Shatalov and the hospital fought a rear-­guard action to delay the move and ensure that recently installed equipment was transferred to the new hospital. The lengthy correspondence between the hospital and library revealed that the building still lacked windows and doors, and that there was still no reliable heating, lighting and water supply.162 As Shatalov wrote, ‘all of this leads to numerous accidents, paralysing the work of the hospital’.163 His frustrations must have been compounded by the apparent ease with which funds and materials could be found to

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preserve books and newspapers. Caring for the city’s cultural heritage seemed to take precedence over caring for the war’s casualties. The difficulties in establishing hospitals for disabled veterans in Leningrad were echoed in the Leningrad oblast’. In January 1946 the oblast’ health department took a decision to establish a network of four hospitals for war invalids in the Leningrad region. These hospitals were formed from four other medical institutions, previously equipped for very different types of patients. They had virtually no equipment or facilities for conducting surgery. Hospital buildings often required extensive reconstruction, and were unheated.164 Horrible living conditions in institutions supposedly caring for the war-­disabled were by no means untypical. The conditions of residential homes for seriously disabled veterans without families or friends to support them were particularly bad. Misery and despair were the order of the day in these institutions.165 According to official plans 1,275 residential places for disabled veterans should have been established in the Leningrad oblast’ by 1945. Yet by January 1946 only 657 places were available.166 A year later the number of places had barely increased.167 Conditions in these institutions fell far below an acceptable standard. In January 1946 a conference of directors of these institutions met to discuss the heartless treatment of disabled veterans in their care.168 Invalids’ homes were dirty, cold and dark, and in need of urgent repair. They resembled dumping grounds for vulnerable individuals on the margins of society, rather than therapeutic institutions. Bedding and clothing were rarely washed or changed. There were shortages of the most basic medical supplies, such as iodine and pain killers. Few had sufficient staff to care for residents.169 Soboleva, head of the oblast’ social security administration, described conditions as follows: ‘People don’t live in human conditions, but in cattle-­like (skotskii) conditions; and everyone an invalid of the Patriotic War. I assure you comrades that even in the most difficult times of the blockade troops living in dugouts on the Leningrad front didn’t live in such conditions as they now live, since they became invalids.’170 There were allegations that the directors of some of the region’s residential homes had been dismissed and prosecuted for embezzling funds intended for the care of disabled residents.171 Soboleva and other delegates repeatedly reminded directors of their responsibilities towards ‘living people’ in their care.172 The attitude of staff was shocking; a callous and uncaring attitude was endemic. War invalids were treated with suspicion, as little better than thieves rather than as people who spilt their blood defending the nation. Soboleva reminded delegates that just because a veteran had lost a leg did not mean that they were different from other people. Such attitudes only reinforced disabled veterans’ anxieties about their place in society. She counselled patience and understanding: ‘We must understand in them (war invalids) their feeling of worthlessness, in order that they may feel themselves to be useful members of society, rather than parasites.’173 Her enraged pleas were heartfelt, but had little impact in a society in which disability was stigmatized. Similar accusations of neglecting disabled veterans’ real needs were made against officials in the prosthetics industry. Inattentive members of staff were accused of making basic errors including producing limbs that were too short, issuing right arms instead of left, or glass eyes that did not match the other eye’s colour. Another veteran wrote to Leningradskaia pravda about inattentive technicians and medical staff.

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The employees of the factory have forgotten that they are dealing with living people, and are only concerned with somehow knocking together a prosthesis. Whether it is suitable for him, or whether the invalid is able to walk on it, little interests them. The limb prepared for me was significantly longer than it needed to be. The fitting is too wide. But it would have been easy to avoid it while I was being measured if the technician and doctor had paid the necessary attention.174

Such problems were not uniquely Soviet. In Britain in 1945 there were severe delays in supplying artificial limbs. It could take over three months for an artificial leg to be supplied.175 Medicine’s ability to treat veterans has rarely matched warfare’s capacity to injure. Soviet prosthetic limbs were heavy, lacked durability and required regular maintenance and replacement. Complaints about their quality and the failings of the prosthetics industry more widely were frequently printed in the national and local press.176 In June 1946, for example, the editorial office of Leningradskaia pravda, as part of a nationwide campaign, conducted a raid of the city’s prosthetics industry and invited proposals for improvements.177 Leningrad’s prosthetics research institute was accused by official investigators of failing to fit and balance limbs. ‘Because of the foolish use of prosthetics and bad fitting of prosthetics to stumps invalids often receive injuries and lose blood even within the institute’s clinic, which could lead to repeat operations, further shortening of limbs, lengthy periods of hospitalization and which arouse justified complaints about heartless treatment amongst patients.’178 Amputees found wearing artificial limbs extremely painful. Grimachev, a veteran employed at the Kirov factory, found the discomfort of his artificial legs more exhausting than his work.179 All disabled people suffered from the crude design of artificial limbs, but Leningrad’s veterans expected better. Prosthetics were not just about applying modern science and technology to damaged bodies to create the new Soviet person. Nor were they always in the best interests of the individual. Their purpose was to make the injuries of war invisible, to suppress the memories of the war prompted by empty sleeves, eye patches or crutches and protect late Stalinist society’s aesthetic sensibilities.180 According to Soviet prosthetists the ability to mask physical disability helped bolster veterans’ fragile confidence, assisting their recovery and social reintegration.181 Yet the illusion that disability could be made to disappear had wider social benefits. As the historian Beth Linker argues, ‘Nothing satisfies the human eye or quells the pangs of guilt from seeing a war-­torn body like seeing an amputee who has been made to appear whole by an artificial limb.’182 With postwar society retreating into a cosy domestic world of rubber plants, pink lampshades, waxed parquet floors and net curtains, there was little room for deformed and mutilated bodies.183 Leningrad’s war invalids could not rely on being at the front of the queue for medical care. Even when their needs were prioritized or were the product of special initiatives, treatment was inadequate. Official documents reveal that polyclinics, doctors’ surgeries and other clinics often failed to provide disabled veterans with basic care.184 Some housebound group I invalids were visited by social security officials or nurses less than once a month. Other disabled veterans were asked to pay for their medication.185 On 15 May 1946 members of the executive committee of the Leningrad soviet discussed

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progress in the treatment of war invalids. Approximately 850 beds had been earmarked for disabled veterans in ten different institutions. Delegates complained that this was inadequate for treating tens of thousands of war invalids. Bed turnover was extremely slow, since many patients required treatments lasting over three months. One delegate complained that patients refused to leave hospital. One hundred heavily injured group II and III war invalids, who were not native Leningraders, were transferred from military hospitals to civilian hospitals in the city. They refused to leave hospital, despite having finished their treatment, until they were issued with prosthetic limbs, crutches or walking sticks.186 Other delegates feared that the lifting of restrictions on entry to the city in the summer of 1946 would attract a further influx of disabled veterans, and increase the strain on medical services.187 In 1947 a meeting of the city soviet executive committee acknowledged that ‘(t)he influx of invalids into Leningrad is a serious problem’.188 Their fears may have been exaggerated. In 1946 hospitals in the Leningrad oblast’ treated 243 disabled veterans from outside the region (11 per cent of their total patients) and polyclinics treated 425 disabled veterans from other oblasts (10 per cent of their total patients) The overwhelming majority of these were from the neighbouring Novgorodskaia, Pskovskaia and Velikolukskaia oblasts, and also from Leningrad itself.189 It was easier to blame the problem on outsiders, a familiar trope in Soviet public culture, than heal the enormous physical and psychological cost of war. The demand for medical care would have been even higher if all those veterans requiring treatment had sought it. A report from June 1946 estimated that only 15 to 20 per cent of disabled veterans were actually receiving treatment.190 Propaganda and educational work was suggested as a means of encouraging disabled veterans to seek treatment. The executive committee of the Pargolovskii district soviet recommended that the district newspaper Leninskoe slovo reported on the treatment and retraining of disabled veterans.191 Vechernii Leningrad published several articles reporting remarkable improvement in surgery, and stories of veterans recovering their health after successful operations.192 These were intended to reassure veterans about the quality of care and the ways surgery could transform their lives. However, the brutality of wartime military medicine, when amputations were routinely conducted without anaesthetics, hardly reassured veterans about civilian medicine. The filth, endemic shortages and humiliations of hospital life were also a strong deterrent. Few patients with any choice opted to stay in hospital. There were reports of in-­patients fleeing the wards, and patients with head injuries refusing surgery.193 Some health officials, however, proffered alternative explanations. In May 1947 Professor Mashanskii expressed concern that disabled veterans were deliberately avoiding treatment because they feared that medical treatment might improve their condition sufficiently to endanger their pensions and other privileges.194 The view that war invalids were sponging off the state had penetrated as high as the chief official responsible for providing medical care for war invalids in Leningrad. Wartime and late Stalinist society tended to treat war’s injuries as purely physical, rather than psychological. The typical image of a Great Patriotic War invalid, familiar from both archival sources and official propaganda, was that of an amputee, not a shaken or mentally disturbed veteran. Demobilized veterans had survived one of the most violent and murderous conflicts in history. They had been exposed to years of hardship, privation, violence and killing; they had witnessed and participated in deeply traumatic

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events. If we accept that Red Army soldiers were neither faceless unthinking brutes lacking the emotional and moral makeup of western soldiers, an image peddled in the west during the Cold War, or the stereotypical positive hero immune to psychological stress celebrated in Soviet propaganda, then it seems obvious that there was a psychological cost to war.195 Many physically disabled veterans bore psychological wounds, but these, unlike their visible wounds, went untreated. In a medical and social environment that was at best sceptical of, and often hostile to, notions of war trauma it seems likely that its prevalence was masked by the deliberate misdiagnosis of psychological injuries as physical conditions. Several scholars have attempted to reconstruct the theoretical frameworks and administrative structures in which Soviet military psychiatry operated during the war.196 Fewer historians, with the exceptions of Catherine Merridale and Benjamin Zajicek, have questioned how far Soviet veterans were affected by horrific experiences, or how trauma shaped their postwar transitions.197 Elena Seniavskaia’s ground-­breaking research into the psychology of frontline soldiers (frontoviki), for example, has little to say about combat’s traumatic effects. In her analysis, the ‘frontline generation’ found the war a largely positive experience. Extreme situations apparently created strong characters capable of independent thought and action, rather than traumatized personalities.198 Mark Edele, Beate Fieseler and Elena Zubkova, in contrast, acknowledge psychological trauma but largely focus their attention on the social and economic effects of physical disability.199 Yet, as the experience of other nations and conflicts testifies, war’s psychological damage did not stop once the guns ceased firing. Veterans of modern warfare irrespective of nationality have experienced nightmares, flashbacks, guilt, anxiety, distress, emotional volatility, hyper-­arousal, insomnia, drug and alcohol problems, and unexplained physical symptoms for the rest of their lives. What differed were the cultural frameworks in which these symptoms were understood, diagnosed and treated. Russian society had a long history of having to deal with the psychological fallout of war. While western European interest in war trauma largely began with the First World War, Russian physicians and psychiatrists confronted soldiers’ nervous and psychological disorders a decade earlier during the Russo-Japanese War (1904– 1905).200 Although this was not the first war in which Russian psychologists identified psychiatric casualties, the Russo-Japanese War generated interest in trauma and brought it to the attention of the psychiatric profession as a whole.201 Russian physicians, like their counterparts in the West, were often uncertain about and at odds on how to diagnose the symptoms and explain the causes of the wide variety of neurological disorders recorded during wars. Some medical specialists hypothesized that the conditions they observed had a physical explanation, namely the mechanical damage to the brain or nervous system, caused by the sustained concussive physical impact inflicted by exposure to modern heavy artillery fire. New terms, contusion (kontuziia), military contusion (voennaia kontuziia) and air contusion (vozdushnaia kontuziia) were coined for these injuries, and became key terms in the diagnosis of ‘trauma’.202 ‘Very few’, as Merridale informs us, ‘had begun to suspect that there might be a purely psychological cause, independent of physical wounds.’203 Russian military psychiatrists were often keen to dismiss any idea that wartime psychiatric disorders were a new kind of disease.204 In the decade between the Russo-Japanese War and the First World War

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they continued to explore the origins of wartime psychiatric casualties, research which included exchanging their findings with western European psychiatrists. During the First World War the Russian Army, like the forces of all European powers, experienced a worrying surge in trauma cases, for which the Imperial Army was unprepared, despite the warnings offered by the Russo-Japanese War. Psychologists and psychiatrists continued to explain these mental illnesses as the product of physical damage to the brain or the central nervous system caused by ‘contusions’ from high explosives, rather than having psychological or emotional origins. Discussions about war trauma in the pages of learned journals, and sometimes more widely, were disrupted and overshadowed by the Revolutions of 1917 and the Russian Civil War. Trauma, however, never entirely disappeared from scholarly or public view. ‘Wounded or psychologically traumatized veterans’, as Karen Petrone writes, ‘were . . . commonly encountered in the social landscape of the Soviet Union in the 1920s as the living embodiment of war memory and a powerful and daily reminder of the costs of war.’205 Traumatized veterans, even if they were socially marginalized, remained a social reality. By the start of the Great Patriotic War, Soviet society had endured twenty-­five years of violence. War, revolution, civil war, famine, collectivization and political terror recalibrated attitudes and responses to trauma.206 These collective experiences, it has been argued, inured Soviet society to privation and suffering. However, Soviet society and culture resolutely refused to accept the notion that individuals were traumatized by these events. Indeed, the resilience of Soviet society in the face of these crises was remarkable. By the start of the Great Patriotic War, despite evidence to the contrary, the myth that Soviet soldiers, and Russian soldiers in particular, were immune from the war neuroses which plagued the decadent bourgeois West was firmly established. It was believed that Russian culture offered a superior framework for dealing with extreme events. The myth, almost universally propagated throughout the war, was that Russians survived the war without suffering crippling mental trauma.207 No doubt the fact that the Soviet Union was fighting what it perceived to be a war of survival and liberation against an invading enemy offered a measure of protection against doubts that violence and killing had not been justified, thereby minimizing trauma. But, the minds of Red Army soldiers were no more immune to psychiatric damage than their bodies were immune to shells and bullets. In serving the motherland Red Army soldiers had to be prepared to sacrifice not only life and limb, but also their nerves. The ordinary Soviet soldier was just as susceptible to psychological trauma as any other combatant; what varied was the Soviet Union’s response to these symptoms. Shock, battle stress, depression and other forms of mental illness were taboo in the hyper-­masculine world of the Soviet military. Despite the methodological problems presented by the silence that frequently surrounds trauma, some historians have attempted to reconstruct Soviet military psychiatric practice, largely through published psychiatric literature.208 The gulf between the theory and practice of military medicine, however, was enormous. Amidst the chaos and privations of the frontlines the treatment of psychiatric casualties bore little resemblance to the textbooks. Soviet military psychiatry never really established an organizational structure that could provide adequate psychiatric care for the army.209 Military medicine continued to pursue physiological explanations for psychiatric casualties. War neuroses continued to be

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explained as the product of contusions or functional damage to the brain caused by explosions, and/or the result of exhaustion and sustained privation. The best traumatized frontline soldiers could hope for was rest and better rations. The overriding priority was returning solders to active duty as quickly as possible. This was often achieved by chemical interventions, a liberal dose of alcohol, and sometimes hypnosis. These treatments had the benefit of being relatively cheap and quick and easy to administer close to the frontlines. Given the shortage of resources and the medical staff ’s basic level of training anything more advanced was unrealistic. Only a tiny fraction of those suffering from forms of war trauma ever received treatment. Many traumatized soldiers were killed in action, failing to survive long enough to reach treatment points. Others ran the risk of execution for desertion. Most never received any treatment, their symptoms either unrecognized or ignored. Only the most extreme cases of mental illness stood any chance of diagnosis and treatment in the Red Army. Only acute mental illnesses, such as psychoses or schizophrenia, were accepted as incapacitating. According to one estimate just 100,000 out of nearly 20 million active service soldiers were eventually recorded as permanent psychiatric casualties.210 This grossly underestimates the number of neuropsychiatric casualties. The disparity between this figure and the psychiatric casualties recorded by the Soviet Union’s allies is striking. In some theatres, for example, approximately a third of British soldiers evacuated from the frontlines were suffering from trauma.211 Other estimates suggest that between 20 to 50 per cent of British Second World War casualties were psychiatric.212 In America, where follow-up studies were at their most sophisticated, the Veterans Administration (VA) paid pensions to 475,397 patients with neuropsychiatric disabilities by 1947. A further 50,662 traumatized veterans were housed in VA hospitals.213 Although Red Army soldiers experienced war trauma, their conditions were viewed and handled very differently, explaining why the number of Soviet psychiatric casualties appeared so low.214 Although many veterans resolutely refused to identify themselves as victims, or acknowledge the psychological damage inflicted by war, traumatized veterans were nevertheless familiar figures in Soviet society after 1945. Nowhere were the complications created by trauma more apparent than Leningrad, where trauma was closer to the surface than in almost any other Soviet city. In postwar Leningrad the traumatic effects of the war and the siege were obvious; there were no shortages of triggers for traumatic memories amidst the rubble. Leningrad’s veterans were re-­ joining a community equally traumatized by the horrors of total warfare. Trauma also attracted the interest of the city’s medics and psychiatrists. Russia’s northern capital had a long track record of studying battlefield trauma, military psychology and psychiatry. Although Moscow had begun to compete with St. Petersburg as the centre of the psychiatric profession from the 1890s, Leningrad’s psychiatrists remained at the cutting edge of research into wartime nervous disorder.215 Two institutions led the way. The Military Medical Academy had been studying traumatic reactions to the battlefield since the late nineteenth century, which by the 1930s made it one of the Soviet Union’s leading centres of military psychiatry. Its work was complemented by the Bekhterev Institute. The institute was established in 1913 by Vladimir Mikhailovich Bekhterev, a pioneer in exploring external causes of mental illness, in order to study psychology,

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psychiatry and brain anatomy. Bekhterev had held the prestigious Chair of Psychiatry and Nervous Disorders at the Military Medical Academy from 1893 until 1913, when he resigned in protest over his evidence at the infamous Beillis Trial.216 Both institutions researched the psychological impact of the Great Patriotic War at the front and within the city. During the siege, for example, the Bekhterev Institute had studied and treated civilians suffering from mental breakdown linked to starvation. Its psychiatrists also worked beyond the institute’s walls regularly treating soldiers in military hospitals. This activity informed future research, and led to a number of important postwar studies of trauma.217 Although the archives of the Military Medical Academy remain closed to researchers, parts of the Bekhterev Institute’s archive have been preserved. These records provide evidence about wartime neuropsychiatric disturbances among soldiers and civilians, and an academic interest in trauma after the war. They provide a starting point for exploring instances of trauma amongst Leningrad’s veterans. The Bekhterev Institute invested enormous amounts of time and energy in studying wartime neuropsychiatric disturbances during and after the war. Its published proceedings contained numerous abstracts summarizing research projects studying the effects of head or brain damage, and their connection with depression and trauma.218 Unpublished internal research reports, preserved in the institute’s archive, provide a sharper insight into the sorts of traumatic reactions researchers in Leningrad were observing. Of particular interest are a series of research papers, written between 1944 and 1950, exploring the functional problems caused by voennaia kontuziia (military concussion). These documents present a complicated, sometimes contradictory, impression of what researchers thought they were observing. This, of course, was not the first time that the Bekhterev Institute and its researchers had studied war trauma. According to Anna Krylova, the ‘cohort of Soviet psychiatrists who came to dominate the profession in the 1940s was unfamiliar with psychological explanatory frameworks’, and as a result psychological factors were excluded from treatment.219 The Bekhterev Institute’s researchers, however, were aware that their predecessors had studied trauma, and occasionally acknowledged the role played by psychological factors in the post-­traumatic reactions. Having begun their careers before the Revolution, or soon after it, many researchers were familiar with past psychiatric research and alternative analytical frameworks, even if they did not always agree with them.220 In 1944 E. S. Averbukh, a senior researcher at the Bekhterev Institute, produced a manuscript for a pamphlet entitled What every doctor needs to know about psychiatric illness and treating psychiatric illnesses in wartime conditions. This booklet was intended as a primer for frontline hospitals, evacuation hospitals and civilian doctors encountering forms of mental disturbance. It aimed, as the title indicated, to familiarize medics with the kind of psychological disturbances they were likely to encounter, and give them basic guidelines, in a clear and concise format, for diagnosing, monitoring and treating psychiatric patients. While conceding that doctors should expect to encounter a greater number of nervous-­psychiatric cases the longer the war continued, Averbukh argued that war did not generate its own forms of mental illness. During past wars several psychiatrists thought that special ‘war hysteria’ existed. Now we know that in wartime special psychoses do not arise, rather those

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syndromes and forms which are common in peacetime continue to occur, but owing to wartime peculiarities the ratio of different illnesses changes, and what is more the manifestation of (mental) illness quite often takes on a specific nuance, significantly different from peacetime.221

Nonetheless, Averbukh informed doctors that they could expect to encounter patients experiencing memory loss, poor concentration, confused thinking, hallucinations, heightened emotions, paranoia, mania or dementia.222 During the war and the years that followed, his colleagues dug deeper into these symptoms and their causes. Several psychiatrists began to study forms of mental disorder which had started to be diagnosed following concussions, head injuries and other war injuries. Studies of delayed forms of psychoses, post-­traumatic memory loss, vision loss and depressive conditions that developed amongst patients who had sustained head injuries and contusions were all undertaken.223 At the Bekhterev’s March 1946 conference, for example, F. P. Maiorov presented research into instances of war hysteria, based on twenty-­five instances of hysterical reactions following concussion (vozdushnaia kontuziia).224 Research conducted at the Bekhterev Institute recorded a wide array of traumatic symptoms that in other societies might have been diagnosed as shell-­shock, battle-­fatigue or PTSD. While the explanatory framework and diagnosis were often different, the symptoms recorded by the Bekhterev Institute would have been familiar to psychiatrists and psychologists in other societies. Individual case histories, written up as part of particular research papers, explored the symptoms experienced by veterans, the circumstances in which they developed, the course of treatment prescribed and details about patients’ recovery. They provide much clearer evidence of the manifestations of trauma that Leningrad’s psychiatrists witnessed, treated and recorded. M. M. Mirskaia, for example, conducted research into delayed or long-term psychiatric disturbances amongst people who had suffered head or brain injuries, most commonly the result of physical concussions (kontuziia). The project sampled 120 cases, the majority of which were men aged between 25 and 40, and almost certainly soldiers.225 The case history of patient Sh-­ik, a 39-year-­old man, indicated the complexity of observed symptoms.226 Sh-­ik was concussed on 5 November 1943. Initially his emotions and physical state were heightened, and he experienced hearing loss. He was constantly hungry and thirsty. He would drink up to eight mugs of beer in rapid succession and smoke four or five cigarettes at the same time. This manic phase had passed by the time he was admitted to the institute on 15 November. He was sluggish, drowsy, suffering memory loss and his mental faculties had slowed. His speech could also be blocked by a tightening of his lips, teeth and tongue. He was emotionally withdrawn, remaining in bed for long periods of time, taking no interest in his personal hygiene. He became obsessed that ‘nobody loved him, that he was unwanted, and that he was a hindrance to everybody’.227 This was not an isolated case. Another research report described forms of trauma recorded amongst soldiers fighting in the Winter War against the Finns. Patient P-v, a 25-year-­old soldier, was admitted to hospital in January 1940. He had seen fierce fighting between 25 and 31 December 1939, not sleeping during this period of intense activity. After the battle he fell into a deep sleep in which he experienced nightmares about

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combat. When he awoke he began behaving strangely, and was unable to readjust.228 Kr-­ov, a 24-year-­old soldier, was wounded in the neck and admitted to hospital, where medics observed psychiatric disturbances. He began to confuse his dreams and reality, claiming that he had been awarded a medal by Stalin. At times during his hospitalization he would become agitated and confused and ask about his medal and other gifts from the vozhd’.229 Twenty-­three-year-­old T-v had been injured by a grenade exploding in a dugout. Although his physical scars healed well his mental scars were deeper. Obsessive fears of death and blood infection prevented him from sleeping. Deprived of sleep his behaviour became increasingly disturbed. He feared that he might be punished and was concerned that he was being poisoned.230 Several instances of traumatic reactions to the loss of extremities or amputations as a result of frostbite were noted; something which researchers recalled observing during the First World War.231 K-ov had lost one foot and several toes on the other to frostbite. The injury transformed his behaviour. He became withdrawn and slept badly. By the time he arrived at hospital he was depressed, suspicious and increasingly fearful that he would be shot for leaking military secrets in his letters home.232 Although many of these examples related to extreme examples of the traumatic effects of war recorded in wartime, it is significant that in the five years following the end of the Great Patriotic War researchers continued to be interested in and to research instances of mental breakdown amongst soldiers. In late Stalinist Russia scientific research was geared to current economic, social and political priorities even more than in our own day. The implication is that the aftershocks of war continued to generate sufficient concern in postwar Leningrad to justify more extensive research. Although mental illness was stigmatized in Soviet society there remained a small circle of psychiatrists and medical researchers interested in treating and writing about manifestations of trauma in soldiers and former soldiers. There were suggestions that fear played a role in stimulating traumatic reactions, but researchers at the Bekhterev Institute were restricted by a paradigm which sought only organic or materialist explanations for mental illness. Psychological breakdown was the product of either physical brain damage or the sustained weakening of the nervous system prompted by physical exhaustion. In his manual, Averbukh explained that kontuziia was the result of the explosive force of modern shells, bombs and mines, which through rapid changes in atmospheric pressure shocked the brain, and prompted functional changes in the central nervous system’s operation.233 Other researchers argued that prolonged periods of heightened anxiety, stress and exertion gradually weakened soldiers’ nervous systems making them more susceptible to breakdown or psychiatric disturbance.234 Soviet psychiatry’s fixation upon the physical origins of contusion was unusual for its ideological dimension, rather than for medical reasons. In Britain during and after the First World War, for example, there were heated debates about the aetiology of shell-­ shock. Respected psychiatrists such as Frederick Mott, who treated shell-­shock patients at the Maudsley Hospital in south London, argued that blindness, deafness, mutism, paralysis and other symptoms were the product of structural or pathological changes in the central nervous system.235 Soldiers and ex-­servicemen who fell ill without any clear physical explanation were unlikely to get much help. Frontline medical teams rarely had the resources, experience

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or expertise to successfully diagnose, let alone treat psychiatric casualties. Despite Averbukh’s efforts to provide the basic information for all doctors, the kind of research conducted by the Bekhterev Institute and other specialists rarely filtered down to frontline medics. There were specialists behind the frontlines with the expertise to help, but frontline medicine provided little or no care for mental casualties.236 Below the level of fronts or armies there were rarely any dedicated or specialist psychiatric staff. Most military hospitals were swamped with wounded and dying men, and had little time for mental casualties let alone keeping abreast of the latest psychological and psychiatric research. The priority for all wartime military medicine, including psychiatry, was to restore soldiers to fighting fitness as quickly as possible, not to minimize future long-­term mental health problems. The target was to return psychiatric casualties to active service within days, and certainly within three weeks.237 To this end soldiers exhibiting signs of mental exhaustion, disturbance or trauma were treated close to the frontlines. The organic explanation of mental disability suggested a straightforward course of treatment. If psychiatric disorders were the product of stress and run-­down nervous systems, they could be remedied by rest and proper nutrition.238 More extreme cases which did not respond to these treatments within prescribed timescales might receive more invasive or aggressive treatments. Patients might be drugged with insulin, alcohol, anaesthetics or barbiturates to induce sleep, and give the brain rest. In extreme cases surgical interventions were employed.239 There were instances of punitive tests, including simulated drowning, to detect cases of soldiers faking their symptoms.240 The disregard for psychological factors in the diagnosis of mental disorders inevitably resulted in their exclusion from treatment, and the failure to give soldiers the support and care that might have helped them.241 Things were little better once soldiers re-­entered civilian life. The Bekhterev Institute’s researchers recognized and documented the existence of traumatic reactions amongst both soldiers and civilians. But, it was hardly a guarantor of better psychiatric care for Leningrad’s veterans. The Bekhterev Institute’s researchers were simply not able to make a substantial contribution to treating the mental trauma which abounded in postwar Leningrad. They were primarily concerned with theoretical research, rather than offering practical clinical help. Of the 405 beds available in its clinic just 60 were reserved for treating disabled veterans with brain injuries or psychiatric problems.242 Presumably, only the most interesting cases were cherry picked for closer examination at the institute. The institute had an additional role in organizing lectures, discussions and meetings with war invalids and their families, which disseminated research findings, and suggested prophylactic psychiatric treatments for depression. Yet even these initiatives did little to address the deep underlying psychological problems affecting Leningraders, both civilians and ex-­servicemen.243 Nor was the city’s official network of psychiatric hospitals up to the task. In 1946 Leningrad’s psychiatric hospital No.2, located in the centre of the city on the Moika embankment, had 360 beds. In the course of that year the hospital treated just 110 war invalids, an almost infinitesimally small fraction of Leningrad’s 200,000 veterans.244 Only the most severe cases of mental illness amongst veterans or the wider population were treated in psychiatric institutions. Psychiatric patients were more likely to be treated as outpatients in dispensaries. As we have already seen, conditions in hospitals

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and residential homes for the war-disabled were entirely inadequate. Even flagship institutions located in the city occupied dilapidated buildings, had shortages of basic equipment, and only rudimentary sanitation.245 The condition of psychiatric institutions, which served the needs of the most neglected and stigmatized sub-­set of disabled veterans, was often even lower, and the forms of treatment even more draconian. In July 1946 the Leningrad city health department issued a series of instructions designed to counter an increase in the number of patients escaping from psychiatric institutions.246 The 1946 annual report for psychiatric hospital No.2 also noted escape attempts, but asserted that there were no serious accidents resulting from patients fleeing and all patients had been found.247 Euphemistic references to avoiding accidents and confiscating dangerous items stolen from work therapy workshops suggested that attempted suicide was a problem.248 Neither was Leningrad unique in the condition of its psychiatric institutions. A psychiatrist working at a psychiatric hospital for war veterans in Moscow wrote to the Russian Ministry of State Control in June 1945, complaining about sanitation, the lack of stimulation for patients, and their neglected condition.249 Leningrad’s veterans’ psychological wounds were real enough. They experienced the same responses to death, violence, killing and fear as all combatants; what varied was the response of the military and army medics. Although officially denied and frequently ignored, the psychological casualties of war never entirely disappeared. Since the medical profession failed to recognize all but the most debilitating forms of mental illness amongst ex-­servicemen, traumatized veterans were not segregated from wider society. Many thousands of veterans returned from the front shaken by their wartime experiences and countless others developed psychological problems weeks, months or years after their demobilization. By and large they lived amongst their fellow Leningraders, sharing the communal apartments, barracks and dormitories. The aftershocks of war trauma spread far beyond the medical profession. Trauma could manifest itself as anger, irritability and aggression in the face of the numerous obstacles they faced in rebuilding their lives. The Kafkaesque bureaucracy and corruption which many veterans faced in reclaiming housing or finding employment were enough to drive even the most loyal comrades to distraction. Other soldiers suffered from nightmares, flashbacks and the same sense of survivor guilt as soldiers elsewhere.250 The capacity of war to damage men’s minds and to transform their behaviour was there for the whole city to see. Disorientated, confused, disappointed and frustrated veterans could react in extreme ways to the challenge of readjusting to civilian life. The shock and disappointment of returning to civilian life was often compounded by the sense of isolation demobilization could create. Discharge from the army cut veterans adrift from their wartime comrades and support networks, returning them to places where their friends and families were often absent, and to jobs and circumstances at odds with their official status as returning heroes. Faced with set-­backs or problems some veterans took their own lives. Some suicides appear to have been spur of the moment acts, taken by former soldiers in a state of anguish or extreme stress.251 Those resorting to such drastic measures were not necessarily traumatized, but many were in states of extreme emotional turmoil or fragile mental health. Surviving archival evidence is often fragmentary. For example,

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K. I. Ozerov, a metalworker recently demobilized from the army, was discovered to have committed suicide on 2 November 1946.252 Six days later Mikhailov, a demobilized soldier working in a menial position in a construction team, left the hostel where he was living. Two days later he was found hanging in one of the buildings he was reconstructing.253 Unfortunately, these and other reports provide little analysis of these tragic events. Suicide, according to one veteran’s memoirs, was not uncommon amongst demobilized soldiers who had entered or re-­entered university. Many veterans turned students experienced material hardship, food shortages and financial difficulties, but some appear to have been particularly unstable. Amongst us were many former frontline soldiers (frontoviki) who having fought on the fronts of the Great Patriotic War had received serious wounds. Coming through bleak, tough and bloody battles at the front, many of them were psychologically broken, therefore it was suicides amongst student-frontoviki were not an uncommon occurrence, at that time many had trophy pistols in their possession.

In order to combat these troubling events the university rector, A. A. Voznesenskii, apparently carried out an inspection of university halls of residence and removed portraits of the famous poets Vladimir Mayakovskii and Sergei Esenin, both of whom had committed suicide, for fear they would offer inappropriate examples.254 It is difficult to establish how significant a problem suicide represented amongst ex-­servicemen or the wider population. Suicide was as taboo as trauma, if not more so, posing a similar threat to heroic memory of the war and Leningrad’s struggle. In the 1920s the Soviet military systematically studied all acts of suicide in the ranks and amongst officers, and attempted to reconstruct the circumstances of each suicide.255 Suicide in postwar Leningrad was a concern, but it was never on the same scale as the waves of mass suicide that swept Germany in the spring of 1945.256 The most detailed evidence about suicide is provided by a report compiled by General-Lieutenant Shiktorov, the head of the Leningrad police, which analyses suicides in Leningrad in the first four months of 1946. Although this may have been part of a series of regular reports examining suicide, the report appears to have been a reaction to an increase in ‘this amoral manifestation’ recorded at the beginning of the year. Between January and April 1946 a total of 77 suicides and 11 attempted suicides were recorded in the city. It is unclear whether these figures were comprehensive or accurate, but they formed the basis for a breakdown of suicide by social category, age and cause of suicide. Eleven of these cases were explored in greater depth as characteristic examples of suicide. The report was particularly concerned that over a quarter of suicides were amongst people under twenty-­five years of age. The main reasons for suicide were given as drunkenness, the breakup of families and relationships, something which was attributed to the results of war (particularly evacuation), the length of separation, and the formation of new relationships with different people. Three suicides, 3.4 per cent of the total, were serving soldiers, and 7, equivalent to 8 per cent, were amongst unemployed war invalids and demobilized soldiers, although other demobilized soldiers might have fallen into other social groups. The cases of A. P. Slonov and G. A. Zimin were cited as typical

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examples of suicide amongst these groups. Slonov was a 27-year-­old war invalid who was working as a metalworker, had been previously tried for hooliganism, and had been drinking heavily and regularly creating ‘scandals’ with his sisters. On 5 January 1946 after an argument and in a state of intoxication he hanged himself. Zimin was demobilized in November 1945, aged thirty-­nine. On his return he learnt that whilst he was at the front his wife had been having an affair, and had no desire to rebuild the marriage. On 2 March 1946 Zimin hanged himself in an attic, having left a note with a request for nobody to blame him for his death.257 Although the report did not acknowledge trauma as a factor in suicide, it seems likely that soldiers and veterans who resorted to such extreme actions were experiencing difficulties recovering from their wartime experiences and were struggling to adjust to civilian life. The state of psychiatric care was indicative of the increasing marginalization of traumatized veterans, and the war-disabled in general. Faced with such appalling conditions few veterans wished to pursue treatment if it identified them as victims or damaged goods. Most veterans had to get on with their lives, and find their own ways of coping. Much of this echoed the treatment of psychiatric casualties in other armies and conflicts. The history of European and North American armies in the twentieth century is littered with examples of traumatized ex-­servicemen being treated with suspicion, hostility and even callousness. The failure of ex-­servicemen to obtain the psychological support and treatment they so urgently required has been a recurring feature of the history of veterans’ postwar adjustment, and continues today. Yet in postwar Leningrad traumatized veterans were pushed to the margins. Outside of a small circle of psychiatrists, manifestations of war trauma were largely ignored, denied or met by a collective silence. As the bombastic patriotic cult of the Great Patriotic War gradually took shape it became almost impossible to find an acceptable language to discuss the fear, horror and trauma of wartime experience. Anything that had the capacity to tarnish the heroic narrative of the war was repressed. As Merridale summarizes: ‘After a few years of numb silence, the only acceptable account of one’s war was the one which could be shared in the singing of patriotic songs, the exchange of endurance stories, and the solemn commemoration of the heroic dead.’258 Any hint of the traumatic effects of war was gradually written out of the official history and edited out of the memory of the war. Although the official memory of the Great Patriotic War came to dominate public culture in Stalin’s last years, many aspects of the war could not be spoken of. The reality of bodies torn to shreds, broken minds, and the immense physical and psychological pain were strictly off limits. War had inflicted deep wounds on veterans that would never truly heal. All veterans had to live with their scars for their rest of their lives, but veterans who had lost limbs, their sight or hearing faced lifelong disabilities. Disabled veterans were caught in a curious position. In theory they were the most privileged and honoured group of veterans. In practice state help was rarely sufficient to allow them to rebuild their lives. All veterans understood that there was a gulf between official myths and the reality of demobilization. However, for the war-­disabled these disparities were especially apparent. After their demobilization Leningrad’s disabled veterans often found that their real needs were ignored. In both the city and the oblast’ representatives

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of the party-­state were concerned with disability as a barrier to entering the workforce, and a drain on the region’s economic resources, not an obstacle preventing former soldiers adapting to civilian life. War invalids were publicly heralded as heroes who had made enormous sacrifices on the battlefield. Yet when they came into contact with pensioning bodies, employers, social security and health officials, they were treated with suspicion and hostility. The prevailing attitude was that war invalids were malingerers inclined to cheat the system. Disabled veterans were quickly pushed to the social margins and many were forced into low status jobs at the bottom of the pay-­scale. They were often unable to obtain the medical treatment they needed or deserved; the help that was available often fell below acceptable standards. At best the war-­disabled were in competition with the rest of the population for very limited resources, at worst they were segregated into specialist institutions where conditions were horrific. Physical and psychological disabilities were compounded by the complexities, frustrations and injustices of medical assessment, claiming a pension, the demands of the workplace and the challenge of getting medical care. All veterans had to live with the scars of war, but for disabled veterans the war was never truly over. Their bodies would remain a constant reminder of the horrors of war, both to themselves and wider society. They had paid a terrible price for victory, and late Stalinist society failed to repay the debt. Disabled veterans would struggle for the rest of their lives to have their sacrifice acknowledged and compensated.

5

Disorderly Demobilization Veterans and Postwar Crime

Mikhail Klimov,1 a 32-year-­old frontovik, was demobilized in 1945. He found work as a driver for a construction trust responsible for building and maintaining Leningrad’s electrical supply system (Lenelektroset’stroi); appropriate work for a former tank driver. He settled down to life in Novaia Sergievka, a village in the Vsevolozhskii district, approximately fifteen kilometres from Leningrad’s city centre. The job was a good one. Not only did it enable Kilmov to use skills acquired in the army, it came with perks. Access to a Studebaker lorry, imported under lend-­lease, offered him the opportunity to earn additional income transporting private citizens and their property around the city and countryside. With the arrival of hundreds of thousands of demobilized veterans, re-­evacuees and migrants there was serious money to be earned by enterprising lorry drivers. On 31 July 1946 Kilmov ‘commandeered’ the lorry in order to make some cash. Things did not go according to plan. Part of a consignment of hay being transported somehow got into the engine, starting a fire which quickly engulfed the whole vehicle. Only a few parts were salvageable. When the accident came to light Klimov’s bosses turned a blind eye to him earning a private income from state property. He was not dismissed or prosecuted for breaking the law, but ordered to repair the vehicle out of his own pocket. Repairing an American lorry was an enormous expense; spare parts were difficult to obtain even on the black market. On 15 August 1946 Klimov discovered another Studebaker lorry parked in the side-­streets around the Mal’tsevskii market, a hot spot for postwar criminality, and recognized an opportunity. He befriended the vehicle’s driver, and arranged to be driven to woods on Leningrad’s outskirts two days later, on the pretext of collecting firewood. On the night of 17 August Klimov shot his fellow driver with a foreign pistol, kept as a wartime souvenir. Klimov stole the lorry and the driver’s papers, and drove to Mga. He spent several days there fitting parts from his fire-­damaged Studebaker to the stolen lorry. Lenelektroset’sroi was fooled, accepting that the vehicle had been repaired, and sent Klimov back to work. But, this was not the end of Klimov’s involvement in the shadow economy. On 9 September 1946 he was transporting passengers close to his home, whilst under the influence of alcohol. Approximately three kilometres from the village of Koltushi he collided with an oncoming lorry. Both vehicles were severely damaged, and the other driver was critically injured. Klimov fled, went into hiding and was not finally arrested until 13 December 1946, after which his crimes were uncovered.2

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This chapter examines what happened when Leningrad’s veterans failed to reintegrate into mainstream society in the ways that demobilization planners envisaged. Although demobilization was fraught with problems, complications, and injustices, previous chapters have largely focused on veterans who successfully navigated the transition to civilian life. Veterans’ behaviour, however, sometimes fell short of what was expected of exemplary citizens. Mass demobilization coincided with a postwar crime wave, which swept across Leningrad, its rural hinterland, and the Soviet Union. Demobilized veterans were victims of crime and complained about the rise in social disorder, but a minority of veterans were also responsible for crime. This chapter explores new archival evidence, much of it never previously seen by historians, which demonstrates that some veterans unable to fit into civilian society gravitated towards a semi-­criminal underworld, sometimes graduating to serious forms of criminality, and occasionally violent offences. This examination of postwar crime further punctures the patriotic myth that the transition between wartime military service and civilian normality was seamless. Mikhail Klimov’s tragic tale illustrates many of the key features of veterans’ failures to readjust to civilian life. Former soldiers’ involvement in the shadow economy (often centred on Leningrad’s markets), their heavy drinking, their movement between the city and its disorderly rural hinterland, are recurring features of this chapter. Although veterans’ disruptive behaviour was familiar to many Leningraders, the violence and calculation of Klimov’s crimes were exceptional. The rare veterans who committed violent crimes, however, were generally not cold-­hearted killers or violent psychopaths. In the overwhelming majority of cases they were unfortunate individuals, often traumatized by their experiences, who had failed to find a place in society. This chapter challenges the idea that veterans of total warfare were brutalized by their wartime experiences. The idea that wars create men proficient in and preconditioned to violence has been repeatedly asserted throughout the twentieth century. The ‘Violent Veterans Model’ or ‘Brutalization Thesis’ suggest that postwar crime waves were the product of men, trained to kill, armed with lethal weapons, returning to communities with which their bonds had been weakened. Exposure to extreme violence and mass death, according to this view, had diminished the value of human life in veterans’ minds. Ex-­servicemen, therefore, were more prone to criminality, disruptive behaviour and violence than non-­combatants.3 Some historians, most notably George Mosse, have argued that the Great War brutalized politics and society. Battlefield violence, according to Mosse, partially undid the ‘civilizing process’, rupturing prewar social norms across Europe. Industrialized killing cheapened the value of life, creating criminality and political militancy. Mindsets created by the Great War led to a growing indifference to mass death, and the normalization of violence.4 Failed, incomplete or chaotic demobilizations have often been blamed for the remarkable growth of paramilitary violence which affected much of Europe in the wake of the Great War.5 Historians of Russia have also debated whether the violence of the Great War, Revolution and Russian Civil War subsequently led to a brutalization of Russian and Soviet politics and society.6 Yet as Dietrich Beyrau has recently argued, ‘despite the apparently obvious connections between lost war, revolution and civil war in the Russian case, direct linkages between the fronts of an industrialized war and the revolution and civil war are hard to establish’.7

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Arguments about the impact of wartime violence on postwar societies also preoccupied contemporaries, not just historians. After both world wars, civilians expounded frightening prophecies about the violence that would be wreaked upon peaceable societies once combatants returned home. Sociologists, criminologists, psychiatrists and historians all suggested that combat developed violent habits amongst soldiers. In other words it brutalized them.8 Dark fears about postwar brutalization were particularly prominent in Britain after 1918. Accounts of riots in Luton, Swindon and Doncaster, for example, blamed brutalized soldiers and ex-­servicemen for sparking disturbances. Fears of violent veterans were central to the passing of Britain’s first general gun ownership controls, the 1920 Firearms Bill.9 Aggression, destructiveness and violence were believed to be inherent in the forms of masculinity fostered by war.10 In the United States of America after 1918 some commentators, as the historian Jennifer Keene writes, ‘feared that combat had conditioned men to kill without remorse’. As in Britain, newspapers rarely missed an opportunity to report the arrests of returning veterans for violent offences.11 Throughout the 1920s and into the 1930s parts of Russian and Soviet society shared much of this concern about the effects killing had upon combatants. Concerns about brutalization were complicated by issues of class, ethnicity and the circumstances of the Russian Civil War, and were voiced within certain limits, but nevertheless existed. As the historian Karen Petrone writes: ‘Most Soviet sources depicted killing during World War I as a senseless and illogical act that morally wounded or metaphorically killed the perpetrator as it actually killed the victim.’12 Fears of brutalization resurfaced in Britain and America as the Second World War drew to a close. In 1944 the American Sociologist Willard Waller warned that returning veterans presented one of the gravest social threats to postwar America. After all, the behaviour of many GIs in France after D-Day, as Mary Louise Roberts has revealed, frequently fell short of what polite American society might have expected. Newspapers and popular books expressed concern that veterans would have great difficulty readjusting to civilian life. As the social historian Dixon Wecter wrote in 1944: ‘A civilian can be licked into shape as a soldier by a manual of arms and a drillmaster, but no manual has ever been written for changing him back into a civilian.’13 Many British civilians also doubted how soldiers who had spilt so much blood could ever return to civilian life.14 Criminologists and sociologists predicted an upsurge in violent crime. One researcher questioned whether ex-­servicemen would be able to abandon the aggressive impulses essential on the battlefield.15 Even the Metropolitan Police were concerned about the threat from ex-­servicemen desensitized to violence.16 Wars in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan have only reinforced the image of disaffected violent veterans in the popular imagination. Returning veterans brutalized by war remain a stock character in popular films, television dramas and fiction. By the end of the 1930s Soviet attitudes towards violence and its effects on soldiers had hardened. Concerns that soldiers were damaged by war disappeared from public discourse as the nation was prepared for war. Unlike Britain or America, fears of brutalization did not resurface in the wake of the Second World War. Veterans returning to postwar Leningrad were not treated as if they had been corrupted by military life or habituated to violence. Veterans who committed violent crimes in postwar Leningrad, like Mikhail Klimov, did not provoke moral panics about the effects of war upon

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former soldiers. Similar crimes committed by ex-­servicemen in Britain and America attracted enormous attention, even notoriety. Murder and trial proceedings were not reported in the late Stalinist press, nor discussed publicly. The only surviving trace of this particular crime is a court file preserved in the archive of the Leningrad oblast’ court. Yet even top secret police investigations, procuracy reports and trial proceedings expressed no concern that veterans committing violent crimes had been brutalized by the war. Late Stalinist public culture treated veterans as model citizens, rather than potential criminals prone to drunkenness and aggression. When veterans were criticized by state propaganda it was to lampoon the ways in which they have been conditioned to military jargon and discipline, not violence.17 The control of information and limits of public expression in an authoritarian society partially explains the absence of fears about the brutalization. Social attitudes to violence were very different in a community with a deeply traumatic wartime past, and high background levels of violence. In Leningrad, furthermore, there were local reasons for this curious lack of discussion about brutalization. Leningraders’ unique experience of death, violence and criminality during the blockade shaped their responses to returning veterans, and the threat they posed to social stability. Multiple layers of myth have obscured the truth of demobilization and postwar readjustment of veterans in Leningrad. Collectively held notions about exemplary veterans, rapid reconstruction and the social solidarity between veterans and civilians obscured the darker realities about the Great Patriotic War’s impact on Leningrad and its veterans. Myths played an important role in shaping the discourse around postwar criminality. Soviet histories of Leningrad after 1945 reinforced propaganda myths about the indefatigable spirit of the ‘Hero City’ and the rapidity of its reconstruction and recovery. This ‘useable’ version of the past was preferable to confronting the darker realities of the war’s enormous social costs. The effects of rising crime upon both the city and its inhabitants have largely been hidden from official history. Although a number of important works about crime and policing in postwar Leningrad have been written in the past fifteen years by scholars with privileged access to closed FSB archives, their findings have not penetrated beyond a small circle of scholars.18 The myth that Leningrad was a relatively orderly and stable society, despite the war’s aftermath, persists. While the postwar crime wave and the black market are integral to any description of the history of, for example, the ruined cities of postwar Western Germany, they have been largely written out of the history of postwar Leningrad.19 The crime wave which swept Leningrad, the surrounding countryside, and much of the Soviet Union, was not easy to ignore at the time. Quarterly crime figures for Leningrad and the Leningrad oblast’ increased dramatically from the summer of 1945 (Table 3), coinciding with the arrival of tens of thousands of demobilized veterans. The number of crimes recorded between October and December 1946, for example, was approximately 30 per cent higher than the previous quarter and nearly double the level recorded between January and March 1945.20 The bulk of this crime, approximately 60–70 per cent, consisted of forms of theft and robbery, most commonly apartment burglaries and pickpocketing.21 Yet there were also dramatic increases in violent crimes, including murder and armed robberies, in 1945 and 1946 before gradual reductions in 1947 and 1948, as the local police steadily regained control.22 Leningrad’s experience of

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Table 3  Total number of crimes recorded in Leningrad and the Leningrad oblast’ between 1945 and 1946 by quarter.23 Total number of crimes January–March 1945 April–June 1945 July–September 1945 October–December 1945 January–March 1946 April–June 1946 July–September 1946 October–December 1946

5,331 5,680 6,106 8,503 8,346 7,732 7,273 10,423

postwar crime mirrored a national dynamic. Ministry of Interior figures recorded a 20 per cent increase in robbery between 1944 and 1945. Steady monthly rises in hooliganism were recorded between October 1945 and January 1946. Murder rates increased from 7,131 cases in 1944 to 10,218 in 1946.24 Armed robbery grew by 236 per cent and banditry by 547 per cent between 1940 and 1946, with the sharpest increases between 1944 and 1946.25 Crime statistics are a highly problematic source. In any society, rates of reported crime and convictions rarely reflect the full extent of criminality. Statistics are not a transparent window upon the social problems facing postwar Leningrad, but rather a ‘crooked mirror’ which reflects incomplete and contradictory data about the extent of crime.26 Given the difficulties faced by Leningrad’s under-­staffed, inexperienced, overworked and ill-­disciplined police force, a large proportion of low-­level criminality went unnoticed. Furthermore, in a political system in which the elimination of crime was an official goal, crime statistics were especially vulnerable to manipulation. In the light of Leningrad’s fraught postwar relationship with the political centre in Moscow it was unlikely that local officials wanted to highlight how chaotic, disorderly and dangerous daily life could be for ordinary Leningraders.27 The rise in crime and disorderly behaviour did not go unnoticed by Leningrad’s veterans. Anti-­social behaviour, hooliganism and crime had not been eliminated by the beginning of the war. But many soldiers, sustained by thoughts of home throughout the war, idealized the life they could expect once demobilized.28 Their visions of the postwar world rarely dwelled on crime and other social problems. However, it did not take long for veterans to realize that the community which they had left behind was very different from that to which they returned. In September 1946 a group of recently demobilized veterans living in a communal apartment in Leningrad’s city centre wrote a collective letter of complaint to Leningradskaia pravda’s editors. Rather than self-­ interested protests about the difficulty of finding employment or housing they attacked a perceived breakdown in social order. Before the war Labour Square (Ploshchad’ Truda) was the jewel in our district’s crown. Returning from the front we hardly recognize it. On the square there is a

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bar, a canteen which sells vodka, two beer-­stalls, but not one bakery. We have to go half a kilometre for bread. Neither is there a single repair workshop. One has to go into the city for every trifle.   In the evening it is frightening to go out onto the staircase. Here the drunks, and various shady characters, who act like hooligans, demand money from passers-­by and flog off stolen goods, have found themselves a refuge.   Not long ago, apartment 21 was burgled, and repeated attempts have been made to burgle apartment 22. Our whole life has been turned into a complete nightmare; there are drunks and hooligans everywhere and still the police don’t do anything.29

For these veterans the drunkenness and disorder which surrounded them was shocking, and provoked outrage. Having fought to defend their community, city and nation many veterans envisaged a very different postwar society. The sense of surprise that these veterans expressed when they realized that the utopia they had been fighting for did not exist should not be exaggerated. Many veterans learnt about changes to Leningrad’s social fabric before demobilization. In the months immediately following May 1945 rumours about a postwar crime wave gripped Soviet Russia. The fear of crime was so intense that it was comparable to the ‘Great Fear’ which seized France in 1789.30 Summary reports of unpublished letters (svodki) sent to Pravda’s editorial offices in November 1945 created the impression of a society terrified by the spread of theft, hooliganism and bandits. Correspondents from across the Soviet Union complained that a breakdown in law and order was making many cities no-­go areas after dark.31 Leningrad shared these fears. A party report from November 1946, which examined the implementation of measures to strengthen public order, noted that an increase in theft and robbery, particularly at night, had provoked fear amongst workers in the Volodarskii, Kalininskii and Vyborgskii districts.32 Another public opinion report, dated 20 November 1946, complained that armed attacks upon workers in outlying districts were increasing. Workers from factory No.522 were so concerned that they had begun to return from their shifts in organized groups.33 Party officials were more concerned, however, that the fear of crime during the dark nights might lower turnout for elections to the RSFSR Supreme Soviet.34 The Red Army could not be entirely insulated from these fears. Soldiers awaiting demobilization received news from friends and relatives about crime levels in Leningrad, in the same way they learned about the lack of jobs and housing. In 1947, for example, N. V. Iadrovskii wrote to his son, a serving soldier, describing crime in Leningrad. ‘The people are starving, and this is leading to a growth in crime. The level of crime has become insufferable. They (criminals) will tear things straight out of your hands, especially from children and the elderly.’35 Such correspondence was likely to be censored, but word of mouth was harder to constrain. Official responses to crime also provided veterans with information about the society they were returning to. On 17 October 1945 a meeting of the Leningrad city party executive committee heard a report from Lieutenant General Shiktorov, head of the Leningrad city and oblast’ NKVD. This report led to the passing of a city soviet resolution which formed the bedrock of the local fight against crime. ‘On measures for the strengthening of the social order and safety in the city of Leningrad’ proposed a

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series of actions to reduce crime. These included recruiting more police officers, forcing the legal system to respond more quickly, and mobilizing individuals not engaged in ‘socially useful’ labour for tree felling or turf cutting.36 Accompanying press reports made veiled references to combating increases in crime, especially theft and hooliganism.37 On 23 October 1945 Shiktorov gave a report to a meeting of NKVD and police employees outlining the tasks facing the police and local population. An edited version of the speech was published in Leningradskaia pravda, making it available to a wider audience.38 Occasionally, the Leningrad press provided a clear insight into Leningrad’s social problems, especially for veterans skilled at reading between the lines of public pronouncements. In July 1949 Shiktorov, for example, published an article in Leningradskaia pravda which was surprisingly open about crime and social disorder. Indeed, staff at the British Embassy in Moscow forwarded a translation of the letter to the Foreign Office in London suggesting that the article revealed ‘the emptiness of the often reiterated claims about the new Soviet morality’, and that the article might be useful for publicizing the Soviet Union’s failings.39 In general, however, newspaper articles mentioning crime, anti-­social behaviour and social problems did so in closely guarded language. The public were only informed about individual crimes once the police had arrested suspects, or the courts had passed sentence. Few details about crimes or the background of alleged criminals were mentioned in the press. Newspaper articles aimed to create an impression that crime was under control, although they inadvertently drew attention to it.40 Veterans did not have to read the newspapers to learn about the crime, many experienced it at firsthand. Their own experiences as victims of theft or violence were as important as rumours or published speeches. Part of the process of becoming an ordinary civilian after demobilization meant sharing the same social and economic conditions as the rest of the society. Veterans could not be protected from the social problems affecting postwar Leningrad, despite their theoretical privileges. Having been released from the Red Army’s protective auspices demobilized veterans were on their own, subject to the same threats and dangers as the rest of society. Veterans were the victims of Leningrad’s crime wave, as well as part of the explanation for rising crime. The risks of civilian life could become apparent within hours of demobilization. On 25 August 1945 Sergeant-Major Merzliakov was demobilized from the Local Air Defence Force, having previously served three years in the Red Army. He was awarded a discharge payment of 2,800 roubles, approximately three months’ salary for a manager, enough to cushion his return to civilian life. That same day the money was stolen. Merzliakov was extremely distressed. Being robbed of the only financial reward he was likely to derive from armed service weighed heavily on him. This was not the kind of homecoming that even the most pessimistic of veterans had envisaged. After a heavy bout of drinking he committed suicide.41 Such tragedies were rare. But the steady stream of demobilized soldiers arriving at Leningrad’s railway stations, with discharge payments in their pockets, many disorientated by their new found freedom, an unfamiliar environment, and an excess of cheap vodka presented an attractive target for the city’s small army of pickpockets. Returning veterans fortunate enough to find that their homes had not been destroyed or occupied by other people were particularly vulnerable to the theft of their personal

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possessions. Many veterans left their belongings in the care of family members who were subsequently evacuated, or who died during the blockade. Abandoned apartments made rich pickings. In the worst days of the blockade valuable items with no apparent owner were often sold or bartered for food. There were rumours that unscrupulous building administrators furnished their own apartments with antiques and luxury items stolen from unoccupied rooms. In August 1945 Engineer-Captain Avetikov wrote to the USSR Procuracy with an allegation that two people had broken into his apartment and stolen his property whilst he was at the front. Between 1942 and 1944 he had made repeated attempts to contact the building administrator in his apartment block, with whom he had left a key, with requests to check the contents of his room against an inventory. Arriving in Leningrad in January 1945 he found that the room was now being used as a store for building materials. Avetikov alleged that in April 1942 the room had been broken into and cleared of its contents by two officials.42 Avetikov’s protests, and his foresight in preparing an inventory, suggested that his property was worth preserving. However, few soldiers who volunteered in the summer of 1941, or who were subsequently conscripted, bothered to keep a detailed list of their property. In March 1943 a local party report bemoaned the failure of conscripted soldiers and the authorities to keep such records.43 For most veterans it was not the loss of a few modest items of furniture or a spare set of clothes which prompted consternation, but the loss of personal items. Photographs, letters, personal mementos, very often the last connection that many returning soldiers had with deceased relatives, had all disappeared. Corrupt officials and organized scams were responsible for much of this property theft. Fed by the volume of belongings left behind by conscripted, evacuated and deceased Leningraders, a thriving black market in stolen property developed. In theory the city soviet had a responsibility to preserve the property of dead or absent residents. Evacuated citizens’ and serving soldiers’ belongings were supposed to be removed from apartments and placed in warehouses controlled by district housing administrations. Property left in state hands was far from secure. In June 1946 a city soviet decision admitted that officials responsible for cataloguing the property of deceased Leningraders often failed to keep adequate records. As a result theft of valuable items by officials, particularly from warehouses, was rife.44 On 2 November 1945 a fire broke out in one such warehouse on Bolshoi Smolenskii Prospekt. A police investigation revealed that the fire had been started by two guards in order to cover up systematic theft.45 In facilities where property survived there was no guarantee that veterans would be reunited with their belongings. According to city soviet resolutions any property that remained in warehouses after 25 September 1946, before tens of thousands of younger veterans returned to Leningrad, was to be sold. Proceeds not reclaimed after three years reverted to the state.46 Demobilized veterans occasionally found themselves the victims of violent attacks. These tended to be concentrated in the disorderly quasi-­industrial hinterland surrounding Leningrad, rather than in the city centre.47 Having cheated death on the frontlines, a small number of veterans met tragic ends in prosaic everyday postwar settings. Unfortunately, the documents which describe these attacks give little indications of the motives behind them. The most common scenario, according to one historian, was an alcohol-­fuelled argument which escalated out of control. On 15 July

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1945, for example, Parshin was killed in a club in Luga, in the south of the Leningrad oblast’. He had been demobilized just days earlier, and was working as a driver at Luga’s hospital. Parshin’s attacker, a captain of the local garrison, arrived at the club and became embroiled in an argument with several civilians. Without any provocation the attacker started punching a Komsomol instructor in the face, and then shot Parshin with a revolver.48 Although many violent attacks upon veterans were seemingly random, other killings hinted at a complicated backstory. In the early hours of 4 March 1946, for example, a fire was discovered at the Novaia Zakhon collective farm in the Volosovskii district. The fire had been started in the home of Ivanov, a demobilized veteran and the collective farm’s chairman. When the fire was extinguished Ivanov’s decapitated body was found.49 The nature of this violent murder suggested a settling of scores, or the involvement of an organized criminal element. Unfortunately, the police report describing the incident provides no details of why Ivanov was killed in this way. For returning veterans the most obvious way in which society had changed was the enormous growth in the black market, speculation and corruption. An illegal second economy operated below the surface of Soviet society throughout its history, but during the Great Patriotic War and its aftermath the shadow economy was central to ordinary citizens’ survival strategies.50 During the blockade, economic crime became endemic as the imperative to survive the first siege winter legitimized previously unacceptable behaviour. By the time that mass demobilization began, speculation, corruption and other forms of economic crime had become a way of life for Leningraders, visible to and undertaken by all.51 In October 1946 alone the Leningrad police arrested 2,387 people for speculating in ration cards.52 Theft of food and manufactured items occurred at every level of the production and distribution process. In 1945 alone Leningrad’s restaurants and cafés lost over 958,000 roubles in wastage, embezzlement and theft.53 Losses in trade organizations in the Leningrad oblast’ were enormous totalling approximately 5,727,000 roubles in 1946 and 10,278,000 roubles in 1947.54 Although most Leningraders regarded speculation with a grudging acceptance, demobilized veterans were, in general, less willing to accept the growth in informal exchange mechanisms. Veterans who viewed themselves as socially conscious protectors of society often railed against speculators, accusing them of enriching themselves at society’s expense.55 These complaints also reflected ex-­servicemen and women’s sense of dislocation. With the death of so many of their peers, and the arrival of so many new residents, it was hardly surprising that many veterans felt detached from the informal networks which controlled the supply of goods and services. Veterans arriving in Leningrad after July 1945 were rejoining a society transformed almost beyond recognition. The city was ravaged by fighting, depopulated by conscription, evacuation and mass death, cut off from the Soviet ‘mainland’ and crippled by extreme shortages of food and basic goods. Crime flourished in these conditions. Leningrad was a more disorderly, dangerous and unstable community than it had been before the war. Many aspects of life in Leningrad and the surrounding region were unappealing and unsettling for returning veterans. The growth in hooliganism, petty theft, economic crime and violent crime were especially disorientating for ex-­servicemen who longed to return to a measure of normality.

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The postwar growth in crime had no simple explanation. The war prompted enormous social, economic, political and cultural changes, all of which contributed to rising crime. Leningrad’s political élite tended to over-­simplify the problem, blaming rising levels of crime, hooliganism, and indiscipline on newly-­arrived ‘outsiders’. Shiktorov attributed the growth in crime to criminal elements, which had infiltrated the returning population. He called for a strengthening of the passport regime to filter out undesirable elements and ‘methodically cleanse our city of thieves, hooligans, parasites and other people who had no place in Leningrad’.56 The authorities found it easy to establish a link between in-­migrants and rising criminality, especially given the widespread tendency to regard migrants as a source of contamination and to discriminate against them as civic identities were recreated.57 Despite Shiktorov’s demands, the passport regime and system of residence permits (designed to prevent certain types of people settling in Leningrad and its environs) was unable to cope with the expanding population. Tens of thousands of people succeeded in entering the city without official permission. Residence permits could be bought on the black market, or officials bribed to turn a blind eye. In the immediate aftermath of the war, as David R. Shearer argues, the system of identities based on passports was extremely ineffective. Lost and stolen passports, the destruction of registries, and the loss of documents necessary for applying for new passports undermined the entire system. ‘Authorities could not be certain that passports presented to them were genuine; nor, in many cases, could officials verify the identities of passport holders through other means.’58 Officials’ fears about the arrival of criminal elements in Leningrad were not entirely groundless. In July 1945 an amnesty of criminals to celebrate the Soviet victory released from the Gulag over a million prisoners, whose sentences had been revoked or reduced.59 Inevitably professional criminals found their way into the city. Between September and October 1945 Leningrad’s police force arrested 606 amnestied prisoners.60 The sense of independence and freedom from central control, which resulted from the city’s wartime experience, combined with an unstable and shifting social situation, may have made Leningrad an attractive destination for criminals. Something similar was observed in the postwar Donbas, where the image of the free steppe combined with the demand for manpower for reconstruction acted as a magnet for criminals and adventurers.61 The pull of the Soviet Union’s second city, cultural capital, birthplace of revolution, an industrial and scientific powerhouse, and hero city was almost certainly stronger. At an oblast’ procuracy conference convened in February 1947 several prosecutors blamed local surges in crime upon bands of touring criminals, who would suddenly arrive in an area and commit a spree of offences before moving on.62 Large numbers of homeless orphans (bezprizornye deti) and unsupervised youths (beznadzornye deti), many of them newcomers to Leningrad, were left to roam the streets and were also held responsible for rising crime. The number of minors arrested in the first postwar years was enormous, 76,787 in 1945 alone. Youths were often recruited to become members of organized criminal gangs. Approximately 25 per cent of individuals tried for banditry in the immediate postwar period were under 18 years of age.63 Youth crime levels continued to provoke consternation into the early 1950s.64 Rootless elements which had penetrated the city were a convenient scapegoat for Leningrad’s social problems. Only rarely did anybody suggest that ordinary people had

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been forced to turn to crime out of poverty or desperation.65 The link between outsiders and crime reflected anxieties about the arrival of an influx of uneducated and unskilled rural migrants. Rapid population expansion can be destabilizing for any society. But, following so closely upon the mass death and evacuation of Leningraders, the arrival of so many ‘new’ people was especially painful. Leningrad’s population more than doubled between 1945 and 1947, rising from 927,000 in 1945 to 1,920,000 in 1947.66 According to one historian approximately 1.3 million new migrants, many drawn from the Kalinin, Saratov and Sverdlovsk regions, settled in Leningrad in the first few postwar years.67 The city’s population grew rapidly in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and again in the 1930s, but the influx of migrants after the lifting of the blockade was almost unprecedented. Many migrants had no connections with the city, no knowledge of its history, and little appreciation of the blockade’s horrors. By 1948 barely an eighth of workers in textile mills, and a third in machine-­building plants had any connection with prewar Leningrad.68 For the nucleus of surviving Leningraders, both blokadniki and demobilized veterans, the arrival of so many new people was hard to accept. The speed with which their dead loved ones were replaced must have seemed almost obscene. Although the crime wave was blamed on the arrival of criminal and socially marginal elements there was no discussion or conjecture about the connection between delinquent ex-­servicemen and crime. This overwhelming collective silence is more interesting than the stilted public statements about the risks posed by socially marginal outsiders. Veterans and harmful social elements frequently overlapped. Not all demobilized veterans were native Leningraders with roots in the city, many were migrants from distant rural regions. Disabled veterans, particularly those drawn from neighbouring regions, were often perceived as an unwelcome presence in the city, and were frequently pushed to the margins. Yet, any link between veterans and crime was resolutely avoided. While European and North American societies expressed widespread fears about the return of brutalized veterans, there appears to have been almost no public or private concern in late Stalinist society that veterans might turn to crime. When veterans were treated with suspicion it was because they had been exposed to life beyond Soviet borders, not because they had been brutalized by combat. Leningrad’s political élite were more troubled by veterans’ potential to infect the local population with contagious ideas, attitudes and values from the capitalist West, rather than the prospect that they might exhibit violent, anti-­social or criminal tendencies.69 Demobilization officials, however, had every reason to be concerned about the potential threat crowds of soldiers passing through demobilization points presented to public order. Intoxicated by a long anticipated freedom from army discipline, as well as alcohol, soldiers in the process of demobilization could become unruly mobs. The dismantling of mass conscript armies after the First World War demonstrated this time after time.70 Troop echelons had the capacity to degenerate into drink-­fuelled disorder. According to one historian, demobilized veterans frequently vented the psychological pressures built up during years of highly regulated military life through outbursts of crime and violence.71 Yet these were more than a symbolic Bakhtinian inversion of the established order. There were reports from across the Soviet Union of returning soldiers beating up railway staff, raping women, and even becoming engaged in gunfights with

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local NKVD detachments.72 Leningrad, however, avoided mass uprisings amongst soldiers awaiting demobilization. The behaviour of veterans arriving in the city was closely monitored. On 29 July 1945 Major-General Rastorguev, head of the city voenkomat, wrote to the city soviet that: ‘On the whole demobilization in the city of Leningrad is progressing normally and in an organized way. The mood of demobilized (soldiers) is healthy; hitherto there hasn’t been a single case of immoral behaviour either at stations or at demobilization points.’73 Demobilization officials were principally concerned by the threats veterans posed to public order as they passed through checkpoints and formally became civilians. Once ex-­servicemen and women were cut adrift of their comrades, and the collective identity offered by military units, official concerns about their threat to public order subsided. It was one thing to deal with individual veterans, another to control disorderly bands of ‘demob-­happy’ soldiers. The absence of official or popular anxieties about the return of brutalized ex-­ servicemen was remarkable when the Red Army’s wartime experience is considered. In quantitative and qualitative terms the violence of the Eastern Front far surpassed anything seen on the Western.74 Unfettered violence was part of the war’s grammar, and the experience of extreme violence became part of the mental background to the Soviet war effort.75 The Great Patriotic War was a ‘meat-­grinder’, which drew soldiers in, chewed them up and spat them out. More than eight million soldiers were killed between 1941 and 1945. In contrast British and American losses between 1939 and 1945 amounted to less than a quarter of a million in each case.76 The entire war was characterized by extreme violence, but some of the most intense fighting came in the war’s final months. Some 450,000 Wehrmacht soldiers were killed in January 1945. This was amongst the most lethal periods of the war, far exceeding the 185,000 deaths recorded in January 1943, the month of Soviet victory at Stalingrad.77 The Red Army soldiers were killing and being killed at unprecedented rates. The offensive in East Prussia cost 584,000 Soviet casualties, the three week Battle for Berlin over 300,000.78 When soldiers began returning home in the summer of 1945 memories of combat were still fresh in their minds. The final stages of the war, fought on the basis of hatred and revenge, were an orgy of death and destruction. Encouraged by their officers, state propaganda, and their own memories of Nazi atrocities, the Red Army extracted a terrifying revenge on its enemies. There could be little doubt that demobilized veterans had witnessed and experienced the darker side of total warfare, and had done terrible things in the name of victory.79 Yet, a collective silence quickly enveloped the violent reality of combat, and the bacchanalia of looting, rape and murder which accompanied the Red Army’s conquest of Germany.80 Most veterans never spoke about the violence of modern warfare, or the violent acts they had witnessed or perpetrated. A small number of memoirists and diarists, usually officers from the intelligentsia, recorded the abhorrent behaviour of Soviet soldiers, including rape, and even tried to explain it. These, however, were isolated and untypical voices, which did not impinge on the collective memory.81 For many frontoviki, as one historian writes: ‘Pillaging and mass drunkenness ruined the aesthetic of victory.’82 Ex-­soldiers tried to protect their families from detailed knowledge about the realities of frontline warfare. A comprehensive study of soldiers’ letters written between January and April 1945 by one Russian historian failed to encounter a single

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reference to violent attacks on civilians.83 Soldiers’ correspondence, as in any conflict, was governed by unwritten rules designed to protect the civilian world from unpleasant information.84 The mass rape of women in Eastern Europe and Germany, the most shocking aspect of the war’s violent culmination, remains taboo, with many veterans refusing to acknowledge what happened in the war’s final months or during Soviet occupation.85 Soldiers concerned about how they might fit back into society and resume everyday family life were reluctant to broach the subject that military effectiveness required them to behave violently and to kill. The Red Army, the party-­state and wider society were reticent to confront the contradiction that returning veterans were simultaneously heroes who embodied the ideal characteristics of homo-­soveticus, and men who had behaved shamefully and shed blood. Other aspects of the Red Army’s marauding, albeit in a sanitized form, were common knowledge. While public discussion of violence was strictly off limits the appropriation of ‘trophy’ items, the official euphemism for looting, was common knowledge. Soldiers wrote home with details of things they had stolen without fear of judgement.86 Soldiers and civilians alike were well aware that their government was stripping Germany clean of its resources. The Stalinist state requisitioned huge volumes of industrial machinery, railway track, rolling-­stock, food and fuel. Burning hatred, the disparity in material wealth and a semi-­official licence to loot led to the requisitioning of goods from across Germany, Austria and Hungary on an almost monumental scale. Indeed, as Filip Slaveski argues, the Soviet Military Administration in Germany’s inability to regulate dismantling operations and its failure to control troop violence were interrelated.87 ‘Corruption and thievery’, according to a leading historian of the Russian occupation of Germany, ‘drinking and violence were prevalent in the ranks from the lowest private to the top generals.’88 High ranking officers found ways of looting extraordinary volumes of luxury goods, including cars, motorcycles, pianos, carpets, tapestries and furs. A number of officers overstepped the limits of what was considered legitimate reward for loyal service, and appeared to be running semi-­criminal rackets. The head of the financial administration of the Soviet Military Administration in Germany, for example, was accused of sending nine automobiles and two railway carriages full of furniture back to the Ministry of Finance in Moscow.89 While accusations of excessive looting were later used to discredit senior officers, including Zhukov, nobody much cared what ordinary infantrymen managed to loot.90 Indeed, ‘trophies’ were envisaged as a key component in motivating soldiers to keep fighting. Regulations drawn up in January 1945 made provisions for soldiers to send home monthly parcels of trophy goods, of no more than five kilograms, free of charge. The weight allowance for officers was more generous; ten kilograms for most officers, sixteen for generals.91 The lower ranks took the opportunity to acquire watches, jewellery, radios, bicycles, sewing machines and luxury clothing: all of which became important goods for exchange on the postwar market. Soldiers also sent back more mundane goods: foodstuffs (especially tea, coffee, chocolate and other deficit items), clothing, shoes, fabric, nails, panes of glass and tools.92 Families did not have to be protected from knowledge about looting, they were its main beneficiaries. Leningraders did not need to be closely acquainted with the conduct of troops serving beyond Soviet borders to be aware of soldiers’ violent behaviour. Soldiers serving in the Leningrad region rarely descended to the depths of their comrades in

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Germany, but locals frequently encountered thuggish behaviour. During the war there were many complaints about soldiers destroying buildings, stealing food and property, expropriating horses and carts, even blowing up fishponds with grenades. May 1945 did not end indiscipline, disorderly behaviour, or criminality amidst the ranks. In 1945 and 1946, according to procuracy officials, serving soldiers were responsible for approximately 17 per cent of total crime.93 Armies in the process of demobilization frequently experience a weakening in discipline. In the Soviet case, however, demobilization by age group deprived the Red Army of its oldest, most experienced soldiers, and one of the most important restraints on soldier violence.94 In December 1945, for example, 95 soldiers were arrested in Leningrad: 4 for murder, 8 for burglary, 9 for desertion, 33 for thefts, 15 for hooliganism, 4 for speculation and 22 for other offences.95 Discipline improved in the Leningrad garrison during 1946, largely a product of reducing the amount of time soldiers spent outside barracks, and by ensuring soldiers visiting public spaces were closely monitored by their officers.96 The same was true of soldiers stationed in isolated locations, where the chain of command was weaker. Hooliganism, drunken brawls, and serious violent crime continued to be a problem in the Leningrad oblast’. According to Iaklokov, a party secretary from Vartemiagi, a small town on Leningrad’s northern periphery, soldiers were routinely robbing trade points, shops and private apartments, assaulting civilians, and behaving indecently in cinemas, clubs and cafés.97 Residents in locations where policing was limited were often completely at the mercy of violent mobs of unruly soldiers. On 27 October 1946, for example, a group of fifteen soldiers went on the rampage in Kegsgolm, modern day Priozersk. Arriving in the town already drunk, they assaulted several customers in a café, demanded bread from a shop, and then stood in the town square firing their guns in the air.98 Violent incidents involving serving soldiers continued throughout the late Stalinist period. Given the extreme violence of war on the Eastern Front and the disorderly criminal conduct of Red Army soldiers during and after the war, it was surprising that there was no official concern about the potential dangers posed by returning ex-­servicemen. A connection between demobilized veterans and the postwar crime wave could have been drawn if Leningrad’s administrative and political élite had been so minded. Circumstantial indicators pointed to veterans’ contribution to rising crime. First, local peaks in crime often coincided with spikes in the number of demobilized veterans arriving in the city. The rise in crime between October and December 1945, for example, coincided with one of the most intensive phases of demobilization. Over 45,000 soldiers returned to Leningrad in November 1945 alone.99 With so many veterans competing for employment, housing, ration-­cards and access to bureaucrats allocating these resources it was predictable that veterans caught in the bottleneck might find other ways of occupying and supporting themselves. Secondly, demobilization by age group created inequalities which discriminated against the youngest veterans. By the autumn of 1946, the peak in Leningrad’s crime wave, the veterans demobilized in Leningrad were the youngest birth cohorts for whom readjustment was most difficult. They returned to find the best jobs and apartments had been taken by older and more experienced men. Young men, a group of sociologists suggest, are responsible for a large proportion of crime in any society, were deprived of

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opportunities for social advancement, were aggrieved that their wartime sacrifice had been insufficiently rewarded, and therefore presented a greater social threat. Finally, men and women from all walks of life and social background had been mobilized to fight, including ‘criminal elements’. The Red Army’s insatiable demand for manpower ensured that criminals found their way into uniform. By May 1945 the state had pressed 975,000 criminals, political prisoners and former kulaks into military service. Convicts were recruited from camps and prisons, sometimes under compulsion, to serve in penal companies, exchanging prison sentences for time in punishment battalions. Having served their tariff they were transferred to regular units, and provided they survived the war they found their was back into society.100 Solid evidence that not all veterans readjusted to civilian life and became law-­ abiding citizens soon began to accumulate. Before long, reports of thefts, armed robberies, violent murders, as well as a low-­level speculation and fraud, started to pile up on the desks of policemen and procuracy officials. For the Leningraders handling the investigation and prosecution of these crimes it must have seemed obvious that veterans were responsible for a significant proportion of crime. Statistics that shed light on the precise proportion of recorded crime committed by veterans do not appear to have been compiled at the time. Reconstructing such information is difficult. As Dan Healey writes: ‘Russia’s criminal records are dispersed and damaged and have been culled principally to save space.’101 One Russian historian who has attempted to reconstruct the social structure of individuals arrested for banditry in the Leningrad region, on the basis of an exhaustive study of court files, concluded that demobilized frontoviki were highly represented. In 1946 approximately 37 per cent of individuals arrested for banditry, rising to 50 per cent in 1947, were demobilized veterans or war invalids.102 To put this in perspective, at the beginning of 1947 demobilized veterans represented approximately 15 per cent of Leningrad’s total population.103 The most illuminating source of evidence about crime committed by veterans in the Leningrad region were the special summaries (spetssvodki) and special communications (spetssoobshchenie) examining crime levels forwarded to the chairman of the city and oblast’ soviets by General-Lieutenant Shiktorov. These reports are insufficiently detailed to reconstruct the circumstances of individual crimes, and provide little indication of the full picture of the extent of veterans’ criminality, but they give an indication of the range of offences committed by veterans. Disabled veterans were particularly well represented in these reports. Before the start of mass demobilization war invalids were amongst the least controlled groups in society. They enjoyed relative freedom of movement, irrespective of their impaired mobility, and privileged access to goods distributed by welfare organizations. Given the difficulties of finding suitable employment, and their rapid social marginalization, it was hardly surprising that many disabled veterans retreated into the shadow economy of trade and speculation. In August 1945, for example, a police report examining Leningraders not engaged in social useful work noted that unemployed war invalids were regularly visiting the city’s markets where they bought up goods in order to sell them at a profit.104 In January 1946 there were reports of five unemployed war invalids in the Tikhvinskii district making a living from speculation and spending the profits on alcohol.105 In April 1947 two unemployed disabled veterans were arrested for

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speculating in ration cards.106 Others living in the Leningrad oblast’ regularly visited the city’s markets to sell small wooden craft items or produce grown on their private plots.107 Eradicating private trade amongst the war-­disabled was far from easy. Since speculation enjoyed a measure of acceptance, if not outright support, it was not always seen as overly criminal. In January 1945 N. N. Gromov, a disabled veteran living in the Volkovskii district, was apprehended with a large quantity of goods. When arrested he was defiant: ‘All the same I am going to trade. Now, I’m going to gather fifteen people and then try and arrest me! If you touch me you will have to call the whole police department out.’108 Speculation may have offered disabled veterans like Gromov a social standing that they would have been unable to find in other walks of life. Disabled veterans were also closely involved in apartment burglaries. Between December 1944 and January 1945, for example, V. M. Khlebnikov, a 26-year-­old unemployed veteran, and another unemployed man committed nine apartment burglaries, netting an estimated 60,000 roubles. Another two disabled veterans, aged 22 and 25, operating at the same time, committed a string of burglaries, stealing approximately 47,000 roubles worth of property.109 P. Y. Feldman, another unemployed disabled veteran, was arrested at a market trying to sell a five carat diamond and a diamond ring. When his apartment was searched, gold coins, 13,000 roubles in cash, five diamonds, three gold watches and a variety of other valuables were discovered.110 These were most probably items stolen from Leningraders, although they may have also been ‘trophy’ items accumulated during the war. Police reports tended to privilege the most audacious examples of criminal activity, focusing upon sensational cases involving large sums of money or valuable items. The bulk of crime, however, was more prosaic. Most crime was committed by people driven to desperate measures by extreme poverty, rather than a desire for personal enrichment or because of involvement with organized criminal groups. The marginalization of vulnerable disabled veterans in part explains the frequency with which some turned to crime. The tragic personal circumstances that pushed unfortunate disabled veterans towards crime are rarely recorded in the archival record. On 31 December 1947, G. A. Svirina was excluded from the Leningrad communist party because she had been given a two-­year suspended sentence for fraud. Her heart-­rending story provides a unique example of the pressures which drove desperate individuals towards criminality. During the war Svirina had been awarded the Red Star medal for rescuing fifty-­seven soldiers from the battlefield. She had been injured and disabled in the process of one of these heroic acts. By 1947 she was a single mother with two young children, receiving a monthly pension of just 300 roubles. Demobilization had not been kind to her. As a disabled female veteran she appears to have faced discrimination. She attempted to explain her position in a letter to the local party: At the moment I am in a difficult material situation: I am bringing up two children – a daughter of four and half years and a three month old son. I live alone I don’t have any relatives. Also, I don’t have any help from anybody. I live very poorly. My home, where I lived before the war, was occupied by the Germans, where they shot my brother. I don’t even have my own bed or table. At the moment I’m standing in a room with the things of a dead person, soon the district finance department are

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coming to take them away. I and the children even have to sleep on the floor. I don’t have any money to buy anything. Everywhere I have turned for help I have been refused, it’s insulting – why did I have children?

In order to send her daughter, who was recovering from scarlet fever, to a summer camp where she would receive better rations and an opportunity to regain her strength, Svirina fraudulently attempted to claim money from a bank against a coupon in a medal book. Svirina and the person from whom the medal book was obtained were both arrested.111 It is much harder to have sympathy with veterans like Mikhail Klimov, whom we encountered at the beginning of the chapter, who were accused of committing crimes of exceptional violence. Although the murder of civilians by veterans was not a common event, the frequency of these crimes would have attracted official concern and public outrage, in most societies. Court files contain the record of a number of crimes of extreme violence. On 18 March 1947 in Aleksandrovka, a village thirty kilometres south of Leningrad, Alexandra Novikova, who was nine months pregnant, and her 10-­year-­old daughter were murdered. The killing was one of exceptional brutality. The scene of crime photographs preserved in the court record are not for the faint-­hearted. According to the investigation Andrei Akimov, a 25-year-­old disabled veteran had hacked Novikova and her daughter to death with an axe, in order to steal the 1,260 roubles he knew to be in her possession.112 Another violent murder was committed on 20 September 1945 by Viktor Kuzmin, a 21-year-­old disabled veteran. He had stabbed Larissa Domashnikova nineteen times with a knife, and struck her mother around the head with a hatchet and stabbed her four times. Viktor and Larissa had been engaged, and Larissa was six months pregnant.113 These were precisely the kind of frenzied attacks that provoked moral panic about brutalized veterans in Britain and America. The archival record contains a number of scenarios in which Leningrad’s veterans committed murder. First, drunken arguments between ex-­servicemen and their acquaintances could escalate out of control. What began as a drunken brawl could rapidly become a murder scene. In January 1945, for example, P. A. Demidovich, an 18-year-­old war invalid was drawn into a fight at a factory social club. Subsequently stabbed and killed a 17-year-­old youth.114 Revenge was another possible motive. Police reports, occasionally, provide evidence of crimes of passion. Vladimir Chernov was demobilized in early 1946. He returned to learn that his wife had been having an affair with a certain Kurakov for the past four years. At 1.00 am on 15 January 1946 Chernov extracted his revenge on Kurakov by repeatedly stabbing him in the face and arm.115 In all probability the number of such crimes was small. Even in Britain where the News of the World hyped up the threat of returning veterans killing or assaulting errant wives or their lovers, such incidents were extremely rare.116 Murder was more commonly the result of interrupted or bungled robberies. On 26 August 1945, for example, the body of a security guard was found at a workshop at the Obovshchik shoe factory. Footwear and leather valuing approximately 20,000 roubles had been stolen. The police arrested A. A. Petushkov, a 38-year-­old disabled veteran, who confessed to murdering the guard when he discovered the theft in progress.117

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In an echo of the brutalization thesis, several historians of Leningrad have suggested that the value of human life was diminished in the eyes of veterans exposed to mass death and extreme violence. They argue that frontline service generated an uncompromising attitude amongst veterans, and a tendency to resolve personal conflict by intimidation or violence. Men accustomed to risking their lives and channelling their aggressive impulses, in this analysis, readily overstepped the acceptable use of force.118 There is, however, no firm evidence on which to base this supposition. Although isolated veterans committed brutal murders, this did not mean that they had been brutalized by the war. Police records, for example, are insufficiently detailed to draw conclusions about the impact of combat or extreme violence upon veterans. Only a tiny minority of Leningrad’s veterans were involved in serious crime, let alone violent attacks. Indeed, veterans were more likely to become committed pacifists than violent offenders.119 All too often the non-­violent trajectories pursued by returning veterans are obscured by high profile cases of disorderly demobilization.120 What was remarkable about veterans as a group,was the manner in which they succeeded in compartmentalizing their wartime past and rebuilding their lives, not their brutalization. A close examination of the court files of veterans prosecuted for violent crimes does not support the brutalization thesis. Court files represent perhaps the best source of evidence about the reality of crime in postwar Leningrad. They examine individual crimes in enormous detail. In addition to the stenographic records of the trial, they contain charge sheets, scene of crime reports, witness statements, interrogation reports, psychiatric assessments, forensic evidence and appeals against sentences. They provide relatively detailed biographical information about the defendant, including details about their military career, demobilization, and their progress in readjusting to civilian life. From these documents a detailed picture of individual crimes, and the people who committed them, can be assembled, something almost impossible from any other source. The war prompted significant changes in the nature of crime, policing and the judicial system. Policing policies began to shift away from the techniques of mass repression of the 1930s towards policing and repression increasingly based on judicial process. Prosecutors and legal officials were more professional, better educated and increasingly concerned with the efficiency of the justice system and eliminating procedural mistakes.121 The reliability of court and investigation files as evidence, however, has to be constantly questioned. These were ideological documents created by a highly ideological state. Given the standards of Soviet police investigations and judicial process it would be unwise to immediately assume the guilt of the defendant, whatever the trial outcome. But at the time guilt was presumed even before investigations began. Investigations aimed to collect incriminating evidence that would underline the presumption of guilt.122 It is conceivable that violent attacks were sometimes pinned on disabled veterans unable to find work and already engaged in the criminal sub-­culture of petty theft and speculation. Court files, despite these reservations, provide a remarkable insight into the circumstances surrounding crime. On the morning of 15 December 1945, 63-year-old Olena Stepanova was killed in the village of Aleksandrovka. Vasilli Budogoskii, Semen Mashkov and Pavel Maksimov, all veterans demobilized in October and November 1945, were prosecuted for this crime. All three failed to find work or permanent housing following their demobilization.

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Pavel Maksimov, the only native Leningrader, had even neglected to make contact with his family in the city.123 This represented the nightmare scenario for demobilization planners. Avoiding the moderating influence of families and the socializing effect of the workplace all three drifted towards a criminal sub-­culture centred on private trade at the city’s markets. Mashkov and Maksimov earned a living speculating in tokens for wine and tobacco, and selling other items. On 10 December, according to the prosecution case, they met Budogoskii at the Mal’tsevskii market and the three arranged to meet the following day at Maksimov’s flat in order to discuss ‘a little business’. At this meeting Mashkov proposed robbing a woman, with whom he was intimately acquainted, who lived with her mother in Aleksandrovka. Knowing that his girlfriend would be working on the night of 14 and 15 December and that only her elderly mother would be at home Martinov proposed exploiting this opportunity to rob the property. On the evening of 14 December the three veterans arrived in Aleksandrovka. Knowing Mashkov from his relationship with her daughter, Stepanova let the three men in. Thinking that they wanted to wait for her daughter she offered them something to eat and a bottle of vodka to wash it down. The finger prints of all three men were left behind on the glasses and the bottle, and they absentmindedly left their train tickets behind. They were invited to stay the night. In the early hours of the morning they awoke and struck Stepanova a fatal blow with an axe to the back of the head. The gang then collected up valuable items from the property in a suitcase and returned to Leningrad.124 The investigation revealed that this was not a one-­off crime. Later in December 1945 Budogoskii befriended a woman living on Zagorodnii Prospekt and obtained a key from her. On 3 January 1946 he stole 157 roubles worth of clothing from her wardrobe whilst she was out.125 Mashkov, Maksimov and Budogoskii were not bloodthirsty trained killers unable to escape violent and murderous habits acquired in wartime. Although they set out with the intention of committing robbery, it was by no means certain that murder was premeditated. The trio were not criminal masterminds who had hatched a watertight plan, but rather incompetent petty thieves. For proponents of the brutalization thesis the fear of returning veterans was intensified by the knowledge that handguns, rifles, hand-­grenades and bombs were finding their way back into civilian society.126 As a result, fears of brutalization frequently led to tighter gun control. Postwar Leningrad was awash with lethal weapons. Between 1946 and 1949 the Leningrad police seized approximately 5,500 guns, 2,000 grenades, more than 160,000 rounds of ammunition, 1,500 knives, 2,000 artillery shells, 12 landmines and 17 kilograms of high-­explosive.127 Returning veterans often stashed pistols or knives in their kitbags as mementos. Sometimes soldiers falling on hard times would hawk their weapons at Leningrad’s markets to make ready cash. Despite efforts to clear the region of mines and ordnance, rural areas were littered with discarded military hardware. The Leningrad police reported that groups of children travelled out of the city by suburban trains, and were returning with live shells and ammunition.128 Weapons were relatively easy to obtain. But, Leningrad’s veterans were by and large not running amok with weaponry brought back from the frontlines or purchased on the black market. According to one historian, police and party officials ‘expressed little concern’ about the weapons of war falling into criminal hands.129 Klimov’s calculated shooting of a lorry driver to steal his Studebaker was the exception rather than the rule.

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Veterans committing murder tended to use what came to hand. Stepanova, for example, was killed with a household object which came to the hand of her assailants, an axe used for chopping firewood. As the distinguished historian of urban homicide, Eric Monkkonen, writes: ‘Most murderers used whatever was handy, including hands, feet, sticks, rocks, chairs, and combinations of all of them.’130 This held just as true for Leningrad as New York. Other court files confirm that many veterans turned to crime out of necessity rather than blood-­lust or a desire for riches. David Sokolov was demobilized on the grounds of invalidity in December 1944; he was aged thirty-­three. On his return to Leningrad he lived temporarily with his mother in a communal apartment. Officially he was registered as having no employment and no fixed abode. He supported himself by robbing apartments in Leningrad and the Leningrad oblast’.131 In an official appeal to his sentence Sokolov claimed that he had been forced into crime by his inability to work, his disability, and poverty. In the hope of reducing his sentence he pleaded: ‘I am not a depraved person, I can still be a useful person in the grand project of building socialist society.’ He listed his employment history, details of his military career, and the medals he had been awarded in hope of clemency.132 Veterans were very often victims of a cruel set of circumstances which pushed them towards desperate actions. One of the most interesting aspects of court files are the glimpses they offer into the psychological and psychiatric states of the accused. In a small number of cases defendants were referred to psychiatrists for examination because they had suffered some form of head injury or had been diagnosed with concussion (voennia kontuziia) during frontline military service. The primary function of the courtroom psychiatrist was to assess whether defendants could be held criminally responsible (vmeniaemyi) for their actions, and whether they were fit to stand trial. Leningrad was at the cutting edge of efforts to introduce psychiatric assessment into Soviet legal practice. In the 1920s Leningrad established its own institute devoted solely to the study of legal psychiatry, the Lenin Diagnostic Institute of Forensic Neurology and Psychiatry.133 It was staffed from the successor bodies to this institute that assessed the criminal responsibility (vmeniaemost’) of veterans committing violent crimes in the 1940s. Veterans who underwent psychiatric examination were often suffering from mental health problems in one form or another. Many had spent time in evacuation hospitals with head injuries during the war, or in psychiatric clinics after the war.134 They were evidently in very fragile mental states. After having been shelled in July 1944 Gerasimov began to suffer convulsive fits. According to his description of these attacks it became difficult to breathe, his emotions became heightened, and he became easily upset and would often break down in tears. These problems persisted after his demobilization in October 1945.135 Other psychological assessments alluded to the after-effects of concussion or contusion (kontuziia) and the influence of alcohol. One veteran who regularly consumed excessive quantities of alcohol required half a litre of vodka before he was drunk.136 Psychiatrists considered that Mikhail Klimov, the veteran with whom we started the chapter, had a problem with alcohol. Although he often drank just 100 ml of vodka, he often consumed several glasses. Tellingly the word used for a glass was a tumbler (stakan), rather than a shot-­glass (riumka). The consumption of excessive quantities of alcohol and ex-­servicemen disappearing on binges for days were a feature

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of these reports. This heavy drinking culture had deep roots in Russian culture, and was bound up with notions of masculinity and male sociability. Nostalgia-­filled drinking sessions conducted in cafés, bars and so-­called ‘Blue Danubes’ also served important social functions.137 In the absence of official veterans’ organizations, relaxing over a bottle, sharing the frustrations of civilian life, reminiscing over the war, and temporarily recreating the comradeship of the ‘frontline brotherhood’ was an important support mechanism. Vodka was not just a means of relaxation; it was also a way of numbing physical, emotional and psychological pain, a form of self-­medication. This is best illustrated by Alexei Kravchenko’s court file. In October 1945 he became embroiled in a fight with a fellow disabled veteran killing him in the process. For our purposes the circumstances of the crime are of secondary importance to the discussion of Kravchenko’s mental health during the trial. He had been called up for military service at the start of the war. Although he miraculously survived the carnage for four years, he suffered a catalogue of injuries. In 1941 he lost four toes on his right foot to frostbite. In 1943 he was wounded in the shoulder, and in both 1944 and 1945 he had suffered contusions. After the first instance he began to suffer fits and to occasionally lose consciousness. He also began to experience heightened emotions. He often reacted aggressively, and found relating to other people increasingly difficult. During the trial it was revealed that he spent a month in a psychiatric hospital in Moscow after his second instance of concussion (kontuziia). Before his medical discharge from the army he was disciplined several times for provoking fights. He also began to drink heavily as a means of self-­medication. He described how every day he drank at least 200 ml of vodka, estimating that he needed 300–400 ml before he started to feel intoxicated. On the day he killed his victim he estimated that he had drunk 800 ml of vodka. He explained that alcohol helped relieve the pain he felt in his head, but that when drunk he became aggressive and hot-­tempered. He also described how drinking prompted self-­harming. On two separate occasions he cut his own chest. There was no indication in the court record how serious these lacerations were, or whether Kravchenko was suicidal.138 Psychiatric examination described increased arousal, hyper-­vigilance, irritability, angry outbursts, difficulty concentrating and alcohol abuse; all typical manifestations of trauma. Yet, all of the psychiatric examinations, despite acknowledging psychiatric problems, concluded that the accused was sufficiently fit to stand trial and had been in control of his actions at the time of the crime. Doctors were unwilling to exculpate ex-­ servicemen for their crimes on the basis of mental illness or trauma. In the course of the 1930s attitudes towards forensic psychiatry hardened. The discipline came under criticism for offering a soft option to criminals. Patients in the 1920s allegedly knew enough about psychiatric discourse to make articulate appeals for psychiatric assessment, in the hope of obtaining specialists’ sympathy.139 If veterans drew attention to trauma in the hope of leniency they were to be disappointed. Mental trauma was given short shrift in Leningrad generally, but the notion that criminals may have been traumatized was given even less sympathy. The experience of killing, wholesale destruction and mass death had a profound impact on the lives of Leningrad’s veterans, but not in the ways the ‘Brutalization Thesis’ or ‘Violent Veteran Model’ predicts. During the war soldiers were required to kill, behave

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violently and to channel their aggressive impulses. The behaviour of the Red Army within and beyond Soviet borders, before and after May 1945, was often violent, destructive and murderous. Yet, even in one of the most extreme examples of modern warfare there was no wholesale brutalization of combatants. Of course some ex-­ servicemen contributed to the crime wave which swept postwar Leningrad. Many were closely involved in the shadow economy speculating in deficit goods and selling stolen goods. A small minority became involved in bandit gangs, others committed violent crimes. Yet, even returning veterans’ most brutal crimes were rarely the actions of bloodthirsty trained killers caught in a downwards spiral of violence. Crime, even violent crime, was more often the product of failed demobilization. Impoverishment, post-­traumatic reactions to wartime experiences, and the failure of veterans, especially the war-­disabled, to reintegrate into mainstream civilian life all played their part in pushing veterans towards crime. Most ex-­servicemen, however, did as propaganda encouraged, drew a line under the wartime chapter of their lives. In this instance at least, ideology and propaganda appear to have had the desired effect. The message that the war was a struggle to death between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union had been continually drummed into the minds of both soldiers and civilians. Throughout the war Leningrad’s veterans were repeatedly exhorted to avenge the destruction of their city and the murder of its inhabitants. Soldiers were encouraged to kill the enemy as their patriotic duty. Almost anything could be justified in the effort to defend their families, the nation and Soviet power. Violence deployed in the name of defeating the fascist invaders was entirely legitimate. Soldiers’ conviction that they were fighting for a noble cause absolved them from any guilt about their actions, or fears that they had been damaged by extreme wartime violence. Clearly, Leningrad’s veterans experienced many of the same difficulties readjusting to civilian life as their counterparts in other countries. Sometimes they drank, fought, created public disturbances, they speculated, organized scams, stole and occasionally they killed. Yet, Leningraders and wider Soviet society seemed untroubled by the arrival of ex-­servicemen skilled in killing and accustomed to violence. The absence of either popular or official fears about the brutalization of ex-­servicemen clearly distinguished Leningrad, and wider Soviet society, from Europe or North America after 1945. A number of factors help explain why Leningrad departed from the experience of other postwar societies. Prevailing social and cultural attitudes towards violence in late Stalinist society are part of the explanation. Discussions about the conduct of war and soldiers’ behaviour create highly charged moral, political and emotional debates in any society. But, confronting these issues within the constraints of a highly authoritarian society, like Stalinism, was particularly difficult. Public expression was highly regulated through a complex interaction of state and social forces, which placed highly sensitive issues off limits. Soviet society had no public forum, or private back channels, through which the effects of wartime violence could be discussed. Brutalization was unthinkable against the all-­pervasive propaganda rhetoric of victory, heroism and liberation. Propaganda, combined with the ossifying memory of the war, prevented any speculation about the long-­term effects of violence on either individual soldiers or wider society. A collective silence quickly enveloped the violent reality of frontline service. These heroic

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myths were not simply imposed from above. The language of the official cult of the Great Patriotic War enabled ex-­servicemen and civilians to elide uncomfortable aspects of wartime service and repress darker memories of the war.140 Violent crime in Leningrad after 1945 could only be discussed in public within the narrowest limits. The shocking crimes committed by veterans were not dissected in local newspapers or journals for evidence of brutalization. A reticence to discuss crime in the public arena had not always been a feature of the local press. In September 1926, for example, Soviet newspapers reported details of a horrific crime committed in Leningrad’s backstreets. A gang of drunken youths returning from a funeral, including Komsomol members, gang raped a woman near an empty building near Chubarov Alley. This case received an astonishing level of national and local press coverage. The reporting of the so called Chubarov Alley affair was not exclusively about the violence of rape. The story came to prominence because it coincided with a national campaign against hooliganism. Against the backdrop of internecine party warfare between Moscow- and Leningrad-­based groups this incident became a political weapon used to discredit the Leningrad party and Komsomol. The image of the northern capital as a corrupting social force, long established in Russian public culture, was repeatedly called upon to bolster ideas of the degeneracy of the Leningrad party.141 The parallel with the 1920s is an important one. Although there was nothing comparable to the public outrage provoked by the Chubarov Alley affair in the late 1940s, both periods marked high points in the strained relationship between Moscow and Leningrad. In Stalin’s last years these tension manifested themselves in an attack on the city’s cultural élite in 1946, and a political purge of the party in 1949. Although Moscow was searching for ways to rein in Leningrad’s sense of independence, and the local identities forged by the blockade, it did not exploit the violent crime committed by veterans, including party members, to discredit the city and its political leaders. Any public discussion of the reality of postwar crime, even when tightly constrained as part of a political campaign, was too explosive for a community attempting to repress its traumatic wartime past. The limits of public expression in Stalinist society provide only part of the explanation for Leningraders’ lack of fears about the brutalization of veterans. Late Stalinist society had very different social, cultural and political attitudes towards violence from postwar Britain or America. First, Stalinism was a more militaristic society with strong pre-­ established notions about the redemptive qualities of military service. In late Tsarist Russia and early Soviet society the army was an important institution in the teachings of masculine virtues, such as courage, selflessness and discipline, as well as qualities like loyalty and obedience which were, in one historian’s phrase, crucial in ‘drafting the nation’.142 From the Red Army’s creation during the Revolution and Civil War it played an important socio-­political role as a ‘school of socialism’, particularly in the ongoing process to bring Soviet power to the village.143 The idea that military service offered a unique form of martial and moral training was neither new nor specifically Russian or Soviet, but in a highly militarized society it had a particularly strong resonance. Secondly, Stalinist society was no stranger to extreme violence. It was the product of war, revolution, civil war, famine, forced collectivization, breakneck industrialization and successive waves of political violence. Violence was not confined to crisis periods,

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but was integral to the functioning of the entire system. Bolshevism openly gloried in the rhetoric of revolutionary violence, depicting it as a force capable of cleansing, renewing and remodelling revolutionary society.144 ‘Both during the Civil War and afterward, violence played a central role in propelling the Soviet population along its forced path to modernity.’145 Stalinism was a classic example of what Christian Gerlach terms ‘extremely violent societies’. Not only did it exhibit a general culture of and massive levels of physical violence, violence was directed at a number of different victim groups and was often participatory in nature. Violence in Stalinist society was the interrelated product of entrenched social attitudes, economic factors, deeply rooted social conflicts, class war, external conflicts, ethnic violence and divisive social policies.146 The Soviet regime was more violent to its own population in peacetime than perhaps any other European state.147 Soviet society’s previous experience of violence may have allowed it to develop more durable frameworks for dealing with wartime violence and its painful legacies. Even so, the unfettered violence of the Great Patriotic War represented an escalation in Soviet experiences of violence. Local factors also help explain the absence of fears about brutalization in Leningrad. The blockade was a unique wartime experience that shaped the city and its inhabitants in ways which did not always apply to other parts of the Soviet Union. Leningraders caught up in the besieged city were forced to confront the social threat of crime long before demobilized veterans began arriving in the region. Official propaganda celebrated the heroic stoicism of besieged Leningraders. Ravaged by fighting, depopulated by mobilization, evacuation and mass death, cut off from central control from the Soviet ‘mainland’ and crippled by extreme shortages of food, fuel and everyday commodities, crime flourished. Heroism and criminality co-­existed. As the celebrated scholar and blockade survivor Dmitrii Likhachev wrote: ‘At every step one encounters villainy and nobility, extreme selfishness and self-­sacrifice, thieving and honesty.’148 The blockade stripped people’s characters bare revealing their true selves. ‘Some turned out to be marvellous, incomparable heroes, others – scoundrels, villains, murderers, cannibals.’149 Driven out of their minds by hunger, especially during the winter of 1941–1942, the theft of a loaf of bread or a ration card became a means of survival for many Leningraders. Extreme shortages of food, clothing and everyday necessities combined with weak points in their supply and distribution also created opportunities for organized theft and speculation. Robberies of shops, warehouses and supply vehicles by organized criminal gangs were common. In 1942 alone NKVD troops responsible for protecting goods in transit detained 10,170 thieves, preventing 5,094 thefts and recovering 105,584 kilograms of stolen goods.150 The desperation of starvation combined with the profits that could be obtained from the sale of stolen goods or ration cards could lead to violent crime. Murder for food became a regular occurrence. In the first half of 1942 a total of 1,216 people were arrested for killing or planning to kill individuals for their ration cards.151 Worse still were the reports of cannibalism. Between October 1941 and February 1943 approximately 1,979 people were arrested for cannibalism with 494 further cases recorded in the first half of February 1942.152 For outsiders these crimes have become symbolic of the hunger, poverty and violence of the blockade. On the whole these crimes were not committed by hardened criminals but by ordinary people driven to robbery and murder by hunger. These crimes

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remained strictly taboo. Leningraders preferred to cling to the collective myths about Leningrad as an undefeated city united by the experience of extreme suffering.153 Those Leningraders who had remained in the besieged city throughout the blockade and even those who were evacuated from the city had also been on the frontlines in the struggle against Nazi Germany. Their struggle for survival in defiance of threats to wipe Leningrad from the face of the earth was heroic, but required many to make similar moral choices and compromises as frontoviki. Leningraders did not question whether soldiers had been brutalized by what they had seen and done on the frontlines, because any such speculation would prompt an additional question; how far had Leningraders themselves been brutalized by the blockade? After all, many people resorted to desperate measures to survive. The reality of life in the blockaded city was far too painful to be raked over in public. The blockade and its true effects on Leningraders’ lives were buried deep in the recesses of survivors’ minds. Leningraders did not question whether soldiers had been brutalized on the frontlines, because they did not believe that they had been brutalized by the blockade. Leningrad’s veterans faced a series of additional complexities in readjusting to civilian life. They often returned to find their homes destroyed, their families dead or in evacuation, and their communities having changed beyond all recognition. Veterans’ sense of entitlement was forced to compete with that of blockade survivors, who could lay equal claim to housing, healthcare and other municipal services. In many ways demobilization in Leningrad was more difficult than in regions where veterans were more privileged. Yet there were compensating factors. Ex-­servicemen settling in Leningrad returned to a community that understood the horrors, traumas and pain of modern warfare better than most. Leningraders were less willing to judge veterans for their conduct during war, because they intimately understood what modern warfare entailed. Leningrad’s ex-­servicemen were not treated with the suspicion that faced ex-­ servicemen in Britain or America. They were spared a public culture that expected them to return as broken men with violent and criminal tendencies. This may ultimately have eased their transition to civilian life, helping them reintegrate into wider society. The process of mass demobilization was poisoned by bureaucracy, corruption and material shortage, not by public fears that soldiers had been brutalized by war. Nowhere were the changes unleashed by the Great Patriotic War more apparent than amongst Leningrad’s ruins or the burnt-­out abandoned villages in the surrounding countryside. The impact of the war was not only measured in terms of buildings destroyed, lives lost and bodies shattered but also a partial breakdown in the social order. Returning veterans were disorientated by rising crime and the emergence of a less stable and socially cohesive postwar society. Yet the behaviour of Leningrad’s veterans was not beyond reproach. Veterans unable to find their place in civilian society were responsible for a measure of Leningrad’s problems with crime, hooliganism, vagrancy and other socially disruptive behaviour. Veterans’ role in the postwar crime wave, however, was not discussed by contemporaries and was hidden from the official public narrative of demobilization. Criminality was not the same as brutalization. War was capable of damaging veterans’ minds, bodies and future prospects, but it generally did not drive them towards violent crime. Despite the exceptional violence of war on

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the Eastern Front most veterans were able to resume relatively normal lives, without the need to continue robbing, raping or killing once demobilized. Veterans who broke the law were often mentally traumatized by their experiences, in the grip of grinding poverty, or the unwitting victim of circumstances. In the light of the postwar crime wave, and veterans’ involvement in it, the lack of concerns about violent veterans was surprising. While other twentieth-­century postwar societies exaggerated fears of the return of brutalized veterans, postwar Leningrad seemed untroubled by the demobilization of soldiers who had survived the most violent conflict in history. This remarkable absence not only reveals something about social and cultural attitudes to violence in late Stalinist society, but also the fault lines running through post-­blockade Leningrad.

6

Demobilizing the Mind Veterans, Politics and Memory

Demobilization was about more than transporting soldiers back from the front, and providing veterans with housing, employment and welfare. It was a complicated military, economic, social, political and cultural process which involved representatives of the central party-­state, local politicians, officials, planners, bureaucrats, civilians and above all veterans themselves. Demobilization did not simply end when veterans passed through demobilization checkpoints, or when they secured regular employment, were fitted with a prosthetic limb, or reclaimed an apartment. For veterans to fully reintegrate into society and become ‘ordinary’ civilians they had to be prepared to demobilize their minds. Civilian life placed new demands and expectations upon veterans. Values, attitudes and mentalities developed in the army had to be adjusted to fit new postwar realities. Veterans were required to think, behave and feel in different, sometimes unaccustomed ways. Emotions also had to be demobilized. Hatred, fear and anger, all central to the ordinary soldier’s emotional experience of the war, had to be constrained and recast. As the initial joy, hope and relief of demobilization faded, veterans had to learn to cope with the disappointment, confusion, helplessness, frustration, and resentment that often accompanied demobilization.1 Whilst the state controlled how and when soldiers were discharged from the army, and the social, economic and political context to demobilization, veterans were active participants in their mental, emotional and cultural demobilization. Veterans, as we have seen, could not always rely on the state to resolve their problems. Very often it was veterans’ initiative, creativity and contacts which proved decisive in rebuilding their civilian lives. The party-­state tried to shape veterans’ minds through propaganda, and even punished some ex-­servicemen who failed to adjust to postwar mental landscapes. But, demobilizing the mind was a deeply personal process, controlled as much by the individual as the state. There was no set timetable or blueprint for readjusting to life outside the military. Veterans undertook it at their own pace, with different outcomes, and varying measures of success.2 This chapter focuses on two inter-­related aspects of the complicated process of veterans’ mental demobilization, namely their relationship with Soviet politics, and their ability to constrain personal wartime memories at odds with the emerging official war cult. Veterans’ attitudes to postwar politics, particularly their responses to late Stalinist political attacks on Leningrad, provide a unique opportunity to evaluate the progress of attempts to demobilize the mind. Many generalizations have been made

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about the political opinions of demobilized veterans. They have often been caricatured as either convinced Stalinists loyal to the regime, or stout critics of the regime. In practice, veterans’ political views were remarkably diverse. Most held political views somewhere in between the polarized positions of support and opposition, including indifference to formal party politics. Once again the experience of Leningrad’s veterans was of wider significance. Leningrad was at the centre of late Stalinist politics, and therefore offers a unique vantage point from which to study veterans’ political opinions. Two of the most important political crises of the late Stalinist period had their roots in Leningrad. In August 1946 Leningrad played an important part in the beginnings of the Zhdanovshchina, a campaign to strengthen ideological and cultural orthodoxy in the face of pragmatic wartime relaxations. In 1949 Leningrad was the location for the so called Leningrad Affair, late Stalinism’s single most murderous political purge and the first blood purge of the political élite since 1939. Both of these key episodes in the period’s political history had a close connection with local memories of the war and blockade. Moscow was deeply concerned about the public expression of local war memory, and therefore attempted to shape and constrain how Leningraders, including Red Army veterans, remembered their war experiences. Demobilizing the mind, therefore, took on a special importance in Leningrad. The city’s veterans were returning to a community not only devastated by war, but also convulsed by political instability and turmoil. A climate of cultural crackdown and political repression was a constant backdrop to veterans’ attempts to resume ordinary lives. Tension between the ‘northern capital’ and Moscow was nothing new: it dated back as far as St. Petersburg’s foundation in the summer of 1703. For over 300 years the two cities have been presented as mirror images of each other, locked in rivalry. The Bolshevik seizure of power in October 1917, the decision to transfer the capital back to Moscow in March 1918, the political rivalries of the 1920s, and the purges of the 1930s all reconfigured the relationship between the two cities. The tense relationship between Leningrad and Moscow was recalibrated once again as the result of the Great Patriotic War. Similar shifts in the balance of power between capitals and regional cities with a strong tradition of particularism were a common product of war in twentieth-­century Europe. Manchester or Munich, for example, which like Leningrad defined themselves against capital cities, discovered that during war the political and legal reach of the centre grew exponentially at the perceived expense of local interests.3 In Leningrad, however, the unique circumstances of the blockade shifted power in the opposite direction; from the capital to local decision makers. Isolation from the Soviet ‘mainland’ thrust Leningraders and their local political leaders back on their own resources and initiative. As a consequence Leningrad’s political, economic and cultural élite were presented with an unusual degree of autonomy, unfamiliar within a highly centralized and authoritarian political system. Leningrad’s important industrial sector, for example, which was tightly regulated by Moscow, came almost exclusively under the control of the local party hierarchy. Leningraders’ wartime sacrifices and suffering left them exhausted, but also imbued in them a sense of civic pride and local patriotism. This wartime spirit of freedom, as the historian Elena Zubkova reminds us, did not immediately evaporate, but remained a counterweight to attempts to re-­establish the prewar political order.4

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From Moscow’s perspective this sense of local identity, strengthened in the adversity of the blockade, was a direct affront to centralized political control. Leningrad, at least in Stalin’s imagination, had long been the source of political threats. The city had been the political base for his political opponents throughout the 1920s and 1930s. The rapid advancement of the city’s wartime leaders after 1945 once again raised the threat, at least in Stalin’s mind, of a new generation of potential rivals.5 Stalin had not forgotten that portraits of Zhdanov had been almost as plentiful as his own in the blockaded city, and that popular Leningrad leaders had caused him problems in the past.6 This situation could not be allowed to persist for long. Although wartime propaganda harnessed local loyalties as a means of mobilizing and motivating soldiers and citizens, Leningrad’s spirit of independence soon came under attack.7 The first steps in bringing Leningrad back into line came in August 1946 with the public castigation of the journals Zvezda and Leningrad. This marked the end of a transitional period when wartime cultural relaxations went virtually unchallenged. On 14 August 1946 the Party Central Committee in Moscow published a resolution which criticized Zvezda and Leningrad for serious ideological irregularities. Two days later, at a meeting of the Leningrad branch of the Soviet Union of Writers, Andrei Zhdanov (Leningrad party secretary between 1934 and 1944) launched a vitriolic attack on Anna Akhmatova and Mikhail Zoshchenko, Leningrad writers with strong links to both journals. The speech became notorious for humiliating two of Russia’s most gifted writers, both embodiments of the ‘Petersburg spirit’, in the crudest and most intolerant manner. This marked the beginning of the Zhdanovshchina (literally time of Zhdanov), a campaign which forever linked Zhdanov’s name with intolerance and cultural persecution.8 The Zhdanovshchina is usually understood as a xenophobic anti-Western campaign, targeting the intelligentsia’s hopes for a more liberal form of government and freer expression. In fact its causes were more complicated. Factional infighting in Stalin’s inner circle played its part. As Yoram Gorlizki and Oleg Khlevniuk have argued, the choice of Leningrad targets was almost certainly Stalin’s, and was designed to place Zhdanov in an awkward position. ‘Attacking his old bailiwick was an embarrassment for Zhdanov and ran against his personal interests.’9 The denunciation of Akhmatova and Zoshchenko damaged the credibility of the Leningrad party, which had played a part in authorizing publication of the journals.10 The Zhdanovshchina was also designed as a challenge to local identities and war memories. Literature had played an important part in creating the myth of Leningrad’s heroic defence and fostering local patriotism.11 It was no coincidence that writers and journals that played an important part in portraying Leningrad and the blockade outside of the language of sterile official propaganda were singled out for criticism. Cultural politics became a mechanism for enforcing the official narrative of the war. A challenge to local particularities was not unique to Leningrad: the Zhdanovshchina also targeted non-Russian and Central Asian historical narratives.12 However, an attack on what could and could not be said about wartime experience was particularly painful for proud Leningraders. The origins of the Leningrad Affair are more complicated. Historians continue to disagree about precisely what prompted the purge. The Leningrad Affair, one scholar notes, remains ‘one of the greatest enduring mysteries of Soviet high politics of the post-World War II era’.13 In total, approximately 2,000 people lost their jobs as a result

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of the purge, the majority of whom had close links to Leningrad, although patronage politics had taken some Leningraders to Novgorod, Stalingrad and even the Crimea.14 It has been argued that the affair was an attempt to break up a patronage network centred on Leningrad-­based officials, who having established themselves as able administrators during the war, quickly consolidated their postwar political power. Malenkov and Beria, it has been argued, engineered and exploited the purge as a means of eliminating upstart rivals from Leningrad, who had been protected by Zhdanov until his death in August 1948. Alternatively, the Leningrad Affair has been interpreted as the result of an ideological rather than factional rift within the party. According to this interpretation the purge was Stalin’s response to rumours of a proposal to form a Russian Communist Party, and elevate Leningrad to the capital of the Russian Republic (RSFSR). Such a prospect created the possibility of Leningrad becoming an institutional base for Russian nationalism.15 Whatever the precise weighting of factional and ideological reasons, the Leningrad Affair also merged political purge with cultural crackdown. It extended beyond Leningrad party functionaries with patronage links to Zhdanov, Kuznestov or Voznesenskii, to engulf cultural figures. Expression in the visual arts, music, poetry and prose were all restricted as a result of the Leningrad Affair. For example, the output of Lenfilm, the city’s celebrated film studios, was restricted, and the dean of Leningrad State University was removed from office.16 The Leningrad Affair simultaneously removed the perceived threat of political opposition, and attacked wartime myths and memories which ran counter to official propaganda. The link between local memory and a perceived political threat is best illustrated by the manner in which the Museum of The Heroic Defence of Leningrad was drawn into the purge. Established during the blockade the museum evolved from a small exhibition to a major focal point for Leningraders’ memorialization of their city’s tragic wartime story. By May 1949 it had received approximately 1,565,300 visitors. This was an astonishing number given Leningrad’s depopulation, and the fact that the museum had been closed for significant periods of time to allow for the reconstruction of the exhibits and the halls which housed them.17 Soon after the Leningrad Affair the Museum was ‘temporarily’ closed for a further renovation. S. I. Abbakumov, the head of the wartime exhibition from which the museum grew, and Lev Rakov, the museum’s first director, were both arrested. They were accused, along with other members of staff, of distorting Leningrad’s contribution to the war effort and creating a special myth around Leningrad’s fate during the blockade. When Malenkov visited the museum in February 1949, according to one former museum worker, he waved his museum guidebook and shouted that the museum was full of anti-Soviet exhibits, and that it emphasized only Leningraders’ suffering, thereby perverting Stalin’s and the Central Committee’s role in the defence of Leningrad. On 18 February 1953, after over three years of work to transform the museum into an ideologically acceptable version of Leningrad’s wartime past, the city soviet ordered that its collections were either destroyed or redistributed to other institutions.18 In the wake of the Leningrad Affair virtually all forms of local public memory or commemoration of Leningrad’s wartime experience were repressed. Books about the blockade published during and after the event were removed from shops and libraries across the Soviet Union. Aside from stilted propaganda pieces on or around anniversaries of the lifting of the blockade,

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discussion of the suffering of Leningraders disappeared from the national and local press.19 In the words of Richard Bidlack: ‘To some extent the Kremlin succeeded in silencing what the cold, hunger, and enemy bombardment of the blockade had not been able to suppress.’20 Leningrad’s veterans were not returning to an irrelevant provincial backwater, but a city at the heart of postwar political intrigue. The attack on local wartime memories and identities was more explicit in Leningrad than any other Soviet city, and was apparent to demobilized veterans as well as blockade survivors. While most veterans were not directly touched by the attacks on the city’s literary establishment or the purge of the upper levels of the party, most learnt the lessons of the cultural crackdown. The signals that the relative political freedom of the war has ended, and that wartime memories had to be reconfigured to fit the patriotic cult of the Great Patriotic War, had to be internalized as part of demobilizing the mind. Red Army veterans, as we have seen, were an extraordinarily diverse social constituency drawn from all walks of life. They included men and women from their teens to their mid-­sixties, from all social backgrounds, and with a range of previous experiences of the Soviet regime. In subsequent years and decades veterans talked nostalgically about the ‘frontline brotherhood’ and how war had united soldiers behind a common purpose. Although frontoviki have been referred to as a new social layer (novyi sotsium) specific to late Stalinist society, veterans did not always react as a cohesive social group.21 The shared experience of military service, and the sense of community forged in the crucible of war, did not entirely supplant generational, gender, ethnic, regional or class differences. Demobilized veterans did not share a common philosophy or a common attitude towards the Communist Party. Without veterans’ organizations to represent their interests and mould their corporate identity it was hard for veterans to act collectively.22 Leningrad’s veterans inhabited a rich cultural universe which contained an array of competing influences. Veterans’ postwar political outlook was influenced by a combination of official propaganda, individual and collective memories, rumour and word-­of-mouth, visions of the good life abroad and even foreign propaganda. As the historian Mark Edele writes, veterans’ political ideas ranged from ‘an embrace of an idealized version of Western liberal democracy and capitalism to “Stalinism” – with all possible shades of grey between’.23 Veterans were much more than the hardline Stalinists or fervent de-Stalinizers they have often been presented as. The image of demobilized veterans as loyal servants of the Stalinist state owes much to contemporary propaganda, which equated frontoviki with politically loyal and highly committed party activists. Newspapers celebrated the contribution that veterans made to local party organizations and campaigns. Postwar novels told the stories of ex-­servicemen who returned to mobilize the apathetic communities in the name of the party.24 The image of the politically committed veteran who returned to remodel society had deep roots. After the Russian Civil War, for example, the party-­state used demobilized veterans to bring revolution to the country and spread Bolshevik ideology.25 In the 1930s, stylized versions of civil war heroes dominated fiction and film, and provided a model for veterans of the Great Patriotic War. By the end of the Great Patriotic War a public discourse which presented veterans as exemplars of party

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discipline and ideological orthodoxy was already well established. So for historians writing in the 1960s or 1970s the manner in which the Brezhnev government co-­opted veterans to enforce the official memory and patriotic cult of the war made veterans appear natural supporters of the regime. However, this was not an automatic response in the late 1940s. Furthermore, the image of veterans as loyal communists reflected the targeted recruitment of serving soldiers into the Communist Party during the war. Decrees passed in August and December 1941 lowered entry criteria and swept aside formalities for obtaining party membership for soldiers who had proved themselves in battle.26 By May 1945 more than three million soldiers, approximately a quarter of the entire army, belonged to the party, most having been recruited during the war.27 During mass demobilization more than 2.6 million party members left the armed forces and joined local party organizations; over 1.8 million of these between mid-1946 and mid1947 alone.28 Veterans, according to the very first studies of demobilization, came to play a prominent part in local party institutions, where they accounted for more than 50 per cent of the membership.29 Former soldiers, especially officers with command experience, were often appointed to positions of authority within the party. According to Amir Weiner’s study of postwar Vinnitsa, the local party contained so many veterans that it almost became a substitute for an official veterans’ organization. Dominated by a group of assertive veterans, who controlled local patronage networks, the party became a clique. Advancement in this tight circle of former comrades depended as much on wartime service records as personal merit or ideological orthodoxy.30 Of course, many veterans joined the party because they were idealistic true believers, rather than opportunists keen to exploit the advantages and connections party membership conferred. For some veterans the remarkable turnaround in Soviet military fortunes was proof of the superiority of Soviet socialism and Stalin’s personal wisdom. Victory could be intoxicating for many young men. As the veteran Fedor Abramov wrote in 1990: ‘Drunk with the conceit of victory . . . we decided that our system was ideal.’ Viktor Nekrasov, whose postwar novel In the Hometown (V rodnom gorode) gave voice to some of the difficulties and frustrations of demobilization, recalled how victory reinforced soldiers’ faith in Stalin’s personality cult. ‘We excused Stalin for everything! Collectivization, the purges, the execution of his colleagues, the defeats of 1941.’31 For many veterans Soviet victory could not be disentangled from Stalin’s leadership. Inevitably, the Red Army contained its fair share of committed Stalinists. As the decades passed these war veterans increasingly became bastions of the existing political, social and cultural order.32 Yet not all soldiers found their faith in the Stalinist system reinforced by their wartime experiences. For many veterans the Great Patriotic War opened new perspectives, awakened critical faculties and unaccustomed ways of thinking, taught them to challenge official propaganda truths, and therefore reconfigured their relationship with the state.33 At a moment of national emergency and great personal danger Soviet citizens came to appreciate their own individual strength. In subsequent years many people remembered the war as a release from the all-­pervasive repressive tensions of the 1930s.34 Boris Pasternak, for example, wrote in Doctor Zhivago of the palpable sense of relief and common purpose created by the outbreak of the war.35 Although writers, poets, composers and journalists were more likely to document this

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feeling of personal liberation, ordinary soldiers shared similar emotions. Many soldiers experienced the war as a form of ‘spiritual purification’. As they fought for their survival, and that of their country, many felt freer, less inhibited and more independent of the Stalinist system than ever before. Often soldiers felt that they held the fate of the nation, sometimes even world civilization, in their hands. They discovered untapped reserves of strength, courage and initiative in combat. Paradoxically, the extreme violence of the Eastern Front did not always produce broken men and women with damaged personalities, but often awoke in them positive qualities. Members of the so called ‘frontline generation’ felt freer and more confident in their dealings with the state than their parents’ generation.36 In the words of the historian Amir Weiner the war bred a new kind of citizen, ‘an assertive Soviet individual who held tight to his (and it was mostly his and not her) new right, earned in blood, to define his identity and status based on wartime exploits’.37 Others have suggested that the emergence of confident and assertive veterans prefigured the post-Stalin thaw. The veteran and historian Mikhail Gefter, for example, described the feeling of independence generated in 1941 and 1942 as a spontaneous de-Stalinization: ‘People were suddenly forced to make their own decisions, to take responsibility for themselves. Events pressed us into becoming truly independent human beings.’38 It was not surprising that some of the most prominent critics of the party in the 1960s and 1970s, such as Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Roy Medvedev or Lev Kopelev, were young veterans in 1945.39 Soviet propaganda also made the claim that the Red Army had created new Soviet men. But ‘assertive Ivan’ and the exemplary veterans celebrated in the press were very different creatures. The values and ideas that war fostered in Soviet soldiers were not always welcome in peacetime.40 Bravery, decisiveness, independence and risk-­taking were invaluable on the battlefield, but often dysfunctional in postwar civilian life.41 As Merridale expresses it, frontoviki were fine for winning wars, but Stalinism required ‘people with the souls of bureaucrats’.42 Demobilizing the mind required veterans to surrender the wartime sense of liberation, and adopt more familiar Stalinist thought patterns. Veterans’ feelings of personal freedom and their outlook on the postwar world were strongly influenced by exposure to life outside of Soviet borders. Their encounters with societies which were politically, economically, socially, materially and culturally alien provided them with an alternative frame of reference against which to evaluate their own lives and Stalinism.43 For the overwhelming majority of soldiers this was their first, and often only, experience of foreign travel, a prospect almost unimaginable in the 1930s. The wrecked cities and countryside of Central and Eastern Europe were about as far away from the Grand Tour of Europe as could be imagined. But contact with the sights, sounds and smells of capitalist society nevertheless broadened soldiers’ minds. Fraternization with foreign civilians, close contact with American and British servicemen and exposure to Allied propaganda gave the ordinary Red Army soldier alternative information about life in the West. Soldiers were often shocked by these encounters. In particular the relative material prosperity and a perceived ‘good life’ they found amidst the rubble of destroyed Germany came as a surprise.44 Years later the veteran and famous writer Konstantin Simonov would write of: ‘The contrast between living standards in Europe and among us, which millions of fighting people encountered

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was a moral and psychological blow that was not easy for people to bear despite the fact that they were victors in the war.’45 Letters home expressed surprise about the abundance of things, the richness and elegance of the built environment, the sophistication of German agriculture, particularly its level of mechanization, and the quality of livestock.46 Many soldiers could not help concluding that capitalism was not as inefficient and dangerous as Marxist theory and Bolshevik propaganda claimed. Rumours of the abolishment of collective farms and the swell of anti-­kolkhoz feeling amongst veterans were almost certainly linked to this encounter with western agricultural prosperity. The reaction of serving and demobilized soldiers to life beyond Soviet borders prompted concern from the Red Army’s political administration and civilian party structures. From the start of mass demobilization in July 1945 soldiers and former POWs awaiting demobilization were the target of additional political work. But as the pace of demobilization quickened contact with the West increasingly came to be seen as a detrimental, even dangerous, influence. Contact between soldiers and German civilians was progressively restricted and then forbidden. But, even so it was unlikely that all contact was severed. It soon became clear that frontoviki could not be allowed to remain abroad for long. Political reports continued to monitor what the influence of life beyond Soviet borders was upon soldiers. Top secret central party reports expressed particular concern that young party members who had served abroad were being influenced by Allied propaganda publications such as Amerika and Britanskii soiuznik (British Ally) and western radio broadcasts. In the spring of 1947 the Soviet Military Administration in Germany ordered that all soldiers with two or more years’ service in Germany, or who had worked closely with repatriates were reposted to the Soviet Union.47 Yet it was not just veterans who had to be re-­educated; civilians had to be prepared to receive veterans who made unexpected claims about life beyond Soviet borders. In Moscow, according to the American diplomat Walter Bedell Smith, posters appeared warning civilians that the judgement of many veterans was ‘lopsided, that they were nervous and dazed, and that some would even try to claim that the cities and villages of capitalistic countries provided everyone with a mansion filled with luxuries’.48 The prospect of disaffected veterans exposed to the pernicious influenced of western political, economic, social and cultural freedoms raised the spectre of a form of neoDecembrism.49 Political leaders did not have to look back as far as 1825 to realize the threat posed by discontented soldiers and politically disaffected veterans. The revolutions of 1905, 1917 and the 1921 Kronstadt uprising, all key moments in Bolshevik consciousness with their roots in the northern capital, and the chaotic demobilizations of the First World War and Civil War served as examples of the potential risks. Yet, a new Decembrist threat did not appear. The months and years immediately following the war were not the most auspicious moment for challenging a victorious authoritarian state. As Viascheslav Kondratiev framed veterans’ predicament: ‘There was much in the system that we did not accept, but we could not imagine any other kind.’50 It was one thing to grumble about the behaviour of rear-­line rats, the perceived injustices of demobilization, or marvel at western material wealth, quite another to voice open dissent about the political system. While angry complaints about the

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inequalities of job and housing distribution were tolerated, discussions about the wider failings of the Soviet political system were off limits. The reality that war and their experiences of demobilization prompted some veterans to privately question the foundations of Stalinism could not be given public voice until decades later. Like trauma, criminality and the effects of violence, the only appropriate response to the experience of life in the West was collective silence. Demobilizing the mind required veterans to put large parts of their war experience behind them, not just the horrors of modern warfare but also the memory of contact with foreigners, different societies, cultures and political systems. From the summer of 1945 Leningrad’s civilian party organization faced a rapid influx of returning and new party members. The challenge of integrating demobilized party members into civilian party structures occurred across the Soviet Union, but was especially apparent in Leningrad where the death of so many party members in the besieged city and on the frontlines had dramatically depleted the party’s ranks. On 1 July 1945, days before the first demobilized veterans began arriving in the city, the Leningrad party totalled 81,563 full and candidate members. At the beginning of January 1947, just eighteen months later, party membership had more than doubled, reaching 179,147 members. This rapid growth was largely the result of the return or arrival of approximately 92,400 demobilized party members from the army and navy.51 This meant that approximately 44 per cent of veterans demobilized in Leningrad by January 1947 were full or candidate members. Veterans also represented just over half of the city’s entire party membership. Veterans were therefore a highly prominent presence in Leningrad’s postwar party, far better represented in this institution than in the population at large. According to published statistics approximately 58 per cent of the city’s party membership in January 1946 and January 1947 had joined the party during the war (a total of 54,915 members in 1946 and 89,763 in 1947).52 The arrival of so many demobilized party members, the majority of whom were wartime recruits to the party, had a dramatic impact on the nature and character of party life. Veterans who joined the party during the war often had only the most rudimentary knowledge of Bolshevik ideology and little understanding of the conventions which governed life in civilian party institutions. The brand of communism which soldiers acquired at the front was their own political philosophy, and far from a carbon copy of the ideas espoused by their political officers. As Merridale writes, ‘Front-­line ideology was strong and deep rooted, but it was also so distinct from that of the civilian élite that it might have been evolving in another universe.’53 When veterans, released from party cells in the army, joined civilian party organizations two very different forms of communism came face to face. The polite world of civilian party meetings was often alien to veterans used to meetings conducted on or near the frontlines. To many frontoviki, civilian party cells appeared to contain many people who knew little and understood even less about soldiers’ wartime experiences and the difficulties of demobilization. In other words, the party was a nest for the rear-­line rats that veterans so despised. Civilians viewed veterans with equal trepidation, fearing the version of communism practised by soldiers represented a potentially dangerous ideological deviation.

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Nor did the large number of demobilized veterans integrated into the party prove that party structures were functioning well. The inexperience of many party members created internal administrative problems, a weakening of ideological standards and a deterioration in the quality of party activism. On 27 August 1946 a joint plenum of the city and oblast’ party executive committees heard a report from the first secretary of both committees, P. S. Popkov, which painted a bleak picture of party life in the region. According to Popkov approximately two-­thirds of local party members had joined the party during the war, to the detriment of the local party. He criticized local party organizations for failing to draw wartime party recruits into internal mechanisms or active involvement in community work. Grass roots party activism had stagnated. The 350 members of the October railway’s party organization, for example, had failed to hold a single meeting in the last three months. Where meetings were being held party protocol and convention was often ignored. Worse still little was being done to raise the ideological levels of new party members. Party education classes were poorly attended, thereby weakening propaganda which assumed a certain level of ideological understanding. Popkov claimed that the rush to increase party membership had been made at the expense of the quality of candidates. The abandonment of individual selection policies, and the approval of almost every wartime application, had allowed unsuitable candidates to enter the party. If there was any doubt that Popkov was primarily talking about veterans, the report concluded by stressing the importance of conducting political work with demobilized communists: ‘It is necessary to ensure that they (demobilized party members) are quickly registered, that they are involved in community political work, and all means are taken to help them raise their ideological levels.’54 This report came less than two weeks after Zhdanov’s attack on Akhmatova and Zoshchenko, and should be read, in part, as a demonstration that the Leningrad party was putting its house in order. But Popkov’s report also reflected the concerns of an older generation of political administrators for whom veterans’ political attitudes and lack of political engagement seemed alien. Anxieties about whether the future of the Communist Party could be entrusted to a younger generation of party members were hardly new. Popkov’s criticisms about the failings of local party life and the inadequacy of ideological education of new party members could have come from almost any era of Soviet history. The party’s vision of itself as a highly motivated political instrument represented an impossible dream, as unrealizable in the late 1940s as it was in the 1920s, 1930s or 1950s.55 Far from being the solution to Leningrad’s postwar cadres problem, Popkov’s report indicated that veterans were part of the problem. Despite bombastic propaganda claims to the contrary, veterans were no better material from which to mould party organizations than other members of society. The lowest rungs of Leningrad’s party ladder were populated by veterans with little interest in contributing to party life, not committed ideologues. For many, joining the party was not a conscious choice, but the result of the wholesale conscription of their unit. Others joined as a route to social advancement, in the hope of bettering their personal circumstances or their family’s chances. For them party membership was part of what the literary scholar and historian Vera Dunham termed the ‘Big Deal’, in other words the postwar accommodation between the Stalinist regime and a burgeoning middle

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class.56 Time-­serving party members, even if they were demobilized veterans, could not be left unchallenged. Communists who failed to engage with the party and their comrades ran the risk of exclusion or expulsion from the party. For example, of the 2,511 individuals excluded in 1946 approximately a third, 747 in total, were recent party recruits. Most of these were demobilized soldiers or re-­evacuees who had lost contact with their local party cell, a situation partly attributed to the failure to address the problems highlighted by Popkov in August 1946.57 These, however, were deeply rooted problems, with no quick or easy solution, which plagued the Leningrad party throughout the late Stalinist period. One of the most valuable insights into veterans’ political engagement, and therefore their attitudes, comes in the form of party investigations into veterans purged from the party. In mid-1949, in the wake of the Leningrad Affair, the Central Commission for Party Control reviewed the files of over 8,000 party members excluded from the party in 1948 and the first three months of 1949. The review was particularly concerned about the 1,654 party members, approximately a fifth of legitimate exclusions, who were released from the party because of a lack of involvement in party life. Details about why certain individuals detached themselves from the party provide an important insight into a culture of apathy and indiscipline amongst some veterans. This is not to argue that veterans did not believe in the socialist system, in Stalinist goals, or were completely uninterested in political issues, but rather that participation in the regimented political culture of the Leningrad party was anathema. The detailed explanations of individual veterans’ reasons for distancing themselves from the party or being excluded from it further challenge the notion that party membership was a source of upward social mobility. Of course, the stated reasons for why an individual was forced to leave the party may well have been a front for more systematic political purges. Personal enmities, false denunciations and outright fabrications all played a role in the decision to purge party members.58 However, the cases cited in this report all appear to have been genuine examples of veterans’ indifference to the party, are consistent with veterans’ voices, and echo many of the difficulties veterans encountered following demobilization. The report established a firm connection between war veterans and individuals excluded from the party. Between the beginning of January 1948 and the end of March 1949 the Andre Marti shipbuilding yard’s party organization dismissed twenty-­five party members. Of the sixteen men excluded for alienating themselves from the party, fifteen were Red Army veterans.59 Similarly, in May 1949 the Central Control Commission found forty-­one personnel files of party members in the Oktiabrskii district party offices awaiting decisions on expulsions. Twenty-­seven belonged to Red Army veterans.60 The report writer also noted that many of the party members submitting requests to leave the party were workers who had distinguished themselves in both the struggle to protect the motherland and the subsequent battle for production.61 A. P. Makarov joined the party as a candidate member in 1943 while fighting at Stalingrad. In many ways he was the archetypal veteran-­hero. He was highly decorated, had endured great physical hardship and after demobilization found work as a driver, a typical occupation for ex-­servicemen. Party membership did not open doors for Makarov. In March 1948 he wrote to the party committee at Factory No.272

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asking to be allowed to leave the party: ‘I ask you to exclude me from (the list of) candidate members of the VKP(b) [Communist Party], because I am semi-­literate. I can’t raise my level of political consciousness and I think that I can’t get to grips with the duties required of a member of the VKP(b).’62 Many veterans, like Makarov, found political education dull or tiresome. Attendance at meetings, on top of long working hours, the struggles of daily life and voluntary work, represented an unwelcome commitment. For veterans with only the rudiments of an education, political education was also an intellectual burden. Makarov, however, may have been cleverly imitating the language of Bolshevik self-­criticism (samo-­kritika) to escape the onerous duties of party membership. Former soldiers, as we have seen, were remarkably adept at circumventing official frameworks. They were no doubt capable of the same flexibility in their dealings with the party. Makarov was far from unusual in failing to derive practical advantage from party membership. During the war and blockade, candidate party members frequently let their candidacies lapse and full party members neglected to pay their dues.63 After the war many demobilized veterans found that paying party dues proved beyond their limited means. F. I. Ivanov, for example, was demobilized from the Soviet Army in 1947. On his return to Leningrad he found work at the Andrei Marti shipbuilding yard. He had been a Komsomol member since 1943, and joined the party in 1945. He had been living with friends and relatives for nearly two years while waiting for permanent housing, and was fined several times for not having a valid residence permit (propiska). His requests for help from the factory party committee had been ignored, and he had been forced to send his daughter to live with his parents in the countryside. In order to improve his living arrangements Ivanov struck a bargain with a construction trust to provide 360 hours of voluntary labour in exchange for a room in a communal apartment. Although Ivanov expressed a desire to remain a party member, his personal circumstances made it difficult to pay party dues.64 Other documents testified to the resentments that the requirement to pay membership dues generated. Even long-­ standing party members with relatively good salaries complained about having to pay for the privilege of party membership. In September 1948 a demobilized LieutenantColonel who had been a party member since 1930 was called to a party interview to explain his failure to pay his dues. He complained about the difficulties of having to survive on a monthly salary of 1,000 roubles, a sum most veterans would have found generous.65 Another veteran complained about the declining purchasing power of his salary, the difficulty of paying his party membership fees, and described having to live on a diet of vegetables. As a result of expressing these grumbles he was sent to a party instructor to have his views ‘corrected’.66 Postwar party membership was not quite what soldiers joining the party on the eve of battle in the euphoria of victory anticipated. In comparison with the firebrand speeches delivered by frontline orators, civilian party life was stupefying. It was characterized by long meetings dominated by protocol and procedure. Actively contributing to party life required time and a financial commitment that many veterans were not prepared to give, especially when there was so much else to do. Veterans who appeared to derive little personal advantage from party membership, which had often been presented as a reward for loyal military service, were especially likely to question

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why they remained party members. Finding the money for party dues was more than an inconvenience when veterans were still living in temporary accommodation and working in menial jobs. Party dues may also have been a pretext for avoiding onerous party responsibilities and a convenient excuse for leaving the party. Veterans may have cited economic hardship as a shrewd way of avoiding the irritations of party life and distancing themselves from the party in the build-­up and aftermath of the Leningrad Affair. A reminder of the volatility and dangers of party life, combined with veterans’ general sense of disenchantment, may have added to their decision to leave. Although veterans were excluded from the Leningrad party for many reasons, they do not appear to have been the primary targets of postwar political purges. Although an awareness of the Leningrad Affair may have influenced some veterans’ decisions to leave the party, most were not directly affected by it. As far as can be discerned from the limited available evidence, few if any veterans were caught up in the bloodletting. A collection of biographies of victims of the Leningrad Affair contains no description of veteran victims.67 The Leningrad Affair, if anything, created opportunities for veterans to advance within the party. The lack of veterans amongst the victims is significant for two reasons. First, in the five years between the start of mass demobilization and the Leningrad Affair veterans of the Great Patriotic War did not penetrate the upper reaches of the Leningrad party en masse. Leningrad’s veterans, unlike their comrades in Vinnitsa, did not come to dominate local positions of political authority.68 Here frontoviki failed to convert their status as postwar heroes into political capital. Secondly, the relationship between veterans and the Leningrad Affair reveals something about the progress of turning soldiers into civilians. By 1949 and 1950 veterans were almost indistinguishable from civilians, which provided indication of veterans’ remarkable success in readjusting to civilian life. Former soldiers had to live alongside civilians, do the same jobs, and share similar entitlements. However, the Leningrad Affair reveals one potential exception. While the crackdown on Leningraders’ sense of identity and independence eroded blockade memories, veterans’ memories were, in this instance, left untouched. Indeed, the official narrative of the Soviet war effort privileged soldiers’ experience above that of blockade survivors. The patriotic myths about Soviet victory were only a partial reflection of veterans’ memories. But at least soldiers, unlike blockade survivors, had these myths to draw on. In terms of historical memory veterans and civilians were separate entities. This in part explains why ex-­servicemen seemed largely untroubled by the Leningrad Affair and the attacks on Akhmatova and Zoshchenko. These moments of high political drama hardly impinged on veterans’ everyday lives. Against the background of grinding hardship and broken promises many veterans felt that their wartime sacrifices had been insufficiently rewarded and all too easily forgotten. Housing shortages, perceived inequalities in the distribution of employment and the shameful treatment of disabled veterans generated enormous disappointment.69 Widespread dissatisfaction amongst Leningrad’s veterans was rarely insurrectionary, despite the fears of a neo-Decembrist revolt. Complaints about the handling of demobilization and the failures of re-­assimilating veterans were not signs of political opposition, but rather evidence of ordinary grumbling. Disenchantment with civilian life was not automatically anti-Soviet in outlook, just as party membership was not the

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same as loyal Stalinism. Veterans were far from unusual in complaining about the failings of municipal government, and the local implementation of policy. Low-­level grousing about the frustrations and hardships of daily life were ubiquitous in postwar Leningrad and its rural hinterland. Grumbling amongst veterans was part of coming to terms with civilian life. It demonstrated that former soldiers were adapting to the standard modes of behaviour expected of civilian Leningraders. Nevertheless, in the years following their demobilization, as the regime gradually regained control of the levers of power, particularly from 1947 onwards, a small number of veterans were arrested, imprisoned and sentenced to terms in the camp system for anti-Soviet agitation. Numerous prosecutions were brought under the notorious Clause 58–10 of the criminal codex. It aimed to root out: ‘Propaganda or agitation containing a call to overthrow undermine or weaken Soviet power or to perpetuate counter revolutionary crimes’, as well as the preparation, distribution and/or possession of counter-­ revolutionary literature.70 As a significant number of veterans were about to discover, this was an extremely broad definition that could be applied to a wide range of behaviour and actions. Most of which were not anti-Soviet in intention or outlook in any objective sense. On 7 November 1948 Stepan Ivanovich Kuznetsov was arrested in his apartment in Kronstadt for alleged anti-Soviet agitation. His story illustrates many of the key features of 58–10 cases, particularly the dubious nature of the charges and the role these prosecutions played in suppressing wartime memories. Kuznetsov has served in the Red Army from July 1941 until his demobilization on 5 November 1945. The charges levelled against him hardly made him a convinced opponent of the regime or a dangerous free thinking western-­facing liberal. In 1948 he returned to the village where he had grown up for a holiday. On returning to his job in the Baltic Fleet’s dockyards he discussed the condition of the collective farms that he had seen with his colleagues. Neglected villages and hungry kolkhozniki reminded him of previous famines. Kuznetsov’s colleagues evidently included informers prepared to bring his ‘unacceptable’ thoughts to the attention of the security services. The most damning evidence of Kuznetsov’s anti-Soviet activities came in the form of a wartime diary discovered in a search of his home at the time of his arrest. The diary contained descriptions of the suffering of Leningrad’s starving population. He recorded his dislike of army life, describing his hunger, fear of combat and the petty tyranny of his officers. He also wrote about the war’s terrible impact on his family, including his wife’s suicidal thoughts and the manner of his brother’s frontline death after having been repeatedly patched up to continue fighting. On 3 March 1949, under the provision of Clause 58– 10, Kuznetsov was sentenced to ten years in the Gulag, of which he served six.71 The most important source of information about veterans prosecuted for antiSoviet agitation are a large body of ‘review files’ compiled by state prosecutors in the mid-1950s. These files were the product of a special commission, established on 4 May 1954 by the central USSR Communist Party, to re-­examine the files of people prosecuted for ‘counter-­revolutionary’ crimes. On the initiative of the commission, or in response to letters of complaint from victims of repression and their families, the circumstances of individual prosecutions were re-­examined. Between May 1945 and March 1956 procuracy and state security officials re-­examined the files of 337,183 people. Some

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14,338 people, a mere 4.2 per cent were rehabilitated; 153,502 people had their sentences reduced, while the cases against 183,681 people were upheld.72 The files created by this process placed original investigations, prosecutions and trial proceedings alongside the results of reinvestigations, and a wealth of accompanying correspondence. They represent a remarkably rich resource, which historians have used to explore a variety of subjects.73 A sample of twenty files relating to veterans from in and around Leningrad reveal a range of alleged attitudes and behaviours which could result in their repression. Some veterans appear to have voiced complaints about the nature of Soviet democracy. Boris Pleskhov, for example, was a highly decorated war veteran, who found work after demobilization in the town of Sestroretsk as the director of a factory club. In December 1945 he was arrested for making anti-Soviet remarks about the conduct of Soviet elections. An informer reported that Pleskhov complained that: The election of the USSR Supreme Soviet deputies are just a formal campaign, in fact the deputies were already chosen by the government long ago, all that remains for us is to formally cast our vote and that’s it. Whether you want to vote or don’t want to vote for these deputies they have long been elected without you. With us deputies aren’t elected by the people, but the government itself.74

Other files reveal veterans complaining about press freedom and freedom of expression. In July 1950 Stepan Fedotov was found guilty of slandering Soviet power and praising Marshall Tito’s politics. He had also questioned the veracity of the Soviet press, allegedly complaining that: ‘In our country it is forbidden to tell the truth, and if you do tell the truth they put you in prison.’ Fedotov also equated Soviet bureaucracy with Tsarist tyranny, reportedly saying that, ‘before the bosses could hit you with a stick, but now they beat you with their pencils’. . .75 More commonly, veterans made critical remarks about the collective farm system and Soviet standards of living. In 1950 Sergei Gavrikov was arrested for ‘systematically conducting anti-Soviet propaganda’ amongst his colleagues in a metalworks. The accusations against him hardly made him a dangerous counter-­revolutionary. In 1947, for example, he was overheard complaining that, ‘the war finished and life was supposed to get better, but in fact it wasn’t like that, the state is taking away collective farmers’ last bread and they are left hungry although they work from dawn till dusk’. Similarly in the summer of 1949 he grumbled to colleagues that life in America was better for the ordinary manual worker, while Soviet salaries were insufficient to live on.76 These sources contain vivid details about veterans’ lives and attitudes, but they are not a transparent window on the mentalities of former soldiers. Other sources corroborate that veterans praised American democracy, cursed the hated collective farms and complained about Soviet living standards. All of these ideas were part of the rich palette of political ideas open to veterans. However, as objective evidence of veterans’ anti-Soviet political ideas these files are flawed. It was possible for veterans to think and even say many of the things recorded in these files, but in most cases there is doubt that the accused were guilty of the full charges levelled against them, or any antiSoviet intent. Anti-Soviet agitation prosecutions depended heavily upon denunciation

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and the testimony of informants, evidence that was often unreliable or motivated by personal interest. In February 1949, for example, the veteran Boris Lianda-Geller was arrested, and in April 1949 tried, for being a member of an anti-Soviet organization, which supposedly conducted Jewish counter-­revolutionary agitation amongst students. The case against him was based on allegedly anti-Soviet stories he had told to his co-­ conspirators. The eight members of the group were all Jewish, three were veterans, and four of them had at different times lived in the same dormitory room. As he became more familiar with the case against him Lianda-Geller became convinced that this room was under surveillance; the conversations, rumours, jokes and poems which supposedly proved the group’s anti-Soviet politics had all been voiced there.77 The letters of appeal that veterans wrote about their sentences, preserved in the review files, often claimed that they were the victims of hostile witnesses, who had invented or misrepresented the cases against them. In February 1951 Aleksandr Popov, an unemployed veteran, was prosecuted for slandering the Soviet state and its leader in the presence of the residents of his communal apartment, and having kept counter-­ revolutionary literature. Popkov denied these charges. He claimed that his neighbours were hostile to him, and had vested interests in getting him removed from the apartment. The review of the case conducted in 1955 confirmed this version of events.78 A more striking example concerned Matvei Stepanov, a veteran demobilized in 1945 who found work in the Vsevolozhskii district as a driver for the Morozov chemical factory. In 1950 Stepanov was prosecuted for conducting anti-Soviet activity at his workplace. The case depended upon the testimony of his fellow workers, and was re-­ examined in response to a letter from Stepanov’s brother alleging that the accusations were false. According to his brother, an employee of the same factory, the witnesses who testified against Matvei were a circle of drinkers. When Matvei refused to participate in an illegal vodka distillation racket, the group determined to have him dismissed from his job. The fact that many of the witnesses were subsequently arrested for acquiring large sums of money at the factory’s expense lent some credence to this allegation.79 Although prosecuting authorities were aware of the possibilities that accusations could be invented by witnesses, they often seemed uninterested in uncovering potentially false, exaggerated or embellished allegations. Indeed, the security services often instigated allegations and even devised the supposed anti-Soviet ‘slanders’ allegedly uttered by the accused. Parts of the cases assembled against veterans were formulaic, and therefore often read as fabrications. A common feature of many files, for example, were accusations that veterans, alongside other members of Soviet society, were listening to American and British radio broadcasts, which provided alternative information that framed their anti-Soviet views. Voice of America began Russian language broadcast on 17 February 1947, with the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) beginning slightly earlier, with the intention of influencing Russian public opinion. Although the Soviet state invested enormous effort in jamming these transmissions it never succeeded in completely eliminating private listening.80 Accusations that veterans were listening to foreign radio broadcasts were often the least convincing parts of anti-Soviet agitation cases, seemingly tacked onto other accusations to bolster flimsy crimes. Veterans may well have been listening to Voice of

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America and the BBC, but it is unlikely that they became enthralled by either American or British propaganda. Most veterans probably displayed the same scepticism as that expressed by an architect who the journalist and historian Harrison Salisbury met at the Kirov opera in 1949. When the press began denouncing Voice of America and broadcasts began to be jammed, the architect had started to listen, thinking that, ‘there must be something to hear, an American truth that was important’. But he was disappointed and disillusioned by the experience. The American truth turned out to be as illusory as the Soviet:‘It wasn’t a truth at all. It was propaganda, American propaganda.’81 Anti-Soviet agitation cases reveal much more about the attitude of the state and wider society towards veterans than about veterans’ mentalities. In the vast majority of cases the threat of genuine anti-Soviet activity was imagined by prosecutors, secret policemen or informants, rather than a transparent window into veterans’ mental world. Occasionally anti-Soviet agitation accusations were exploited as a means of removing veterans who had failed to reintegrate into society. Disorderly veterans behaving disruptively in public, often under the influence of alcohol, could easily find themselves accused of anti-Soviet agitation. Alcoholics, the mentally ill and traumatized veterans were often an unwelcome and unpleasant presence in urban public spaces and susceptible to accusations of anti-Soviet agitation. Approximately a quarter of my sample of review files involved incidents when veterans had made loud drunken protests against the Soviet state and its leaders in markets, bread queues and railway station buffets. Accusations that veterans had voiced anti-Soviet thoughts in public may well have proved the most effective means of getting rid of veterans whose minds and bodies prompted uncomfortable reminders of the war. The most vivid example concerned a series of anti-Soviet protests made by Iosif Martynov in 1952 and 1953. Martynov, a middle-­aged war invalid, had been demobilized in September 1945. He had been injured and ‘concussed’ a number of times. He had lost two fingers on his left hand, sustained nerve damage to his right arm and injured the base of his spine. He was unable to find employment. He claimed that managers refused to hire him because they needed strong and healthy workers. The case revolved around a series of drunken outbursts Martynov made in public spaces. On 21 April 1952 Martynov caused a scandal begging on the platforms of Leningrad’s Vitebsk Station and in the station buffet. A variety of witnesses alleged that he had cried out phrases such as ‘Stalin is a skinflint’, ‘Soviet power loves me’, and had been slandering Stalin. In his version of events Martynov claimed to be so drunk that he was hardly conscious. On 5 March 1953, the date of Stalin’s death, although the public announcement was not made until 6 March, Martynov launched an anti-Soviet tirade in a housing administration office. On the morning of 5 March he had given blood. With his fee he bought vodka. Already lightheaded from the blood donation it was not long before he was blind drunk.82 Martynov did not present a serious threat to Soviet power. In his case anti-Soviet agitation amounted to little more than the ravings of an alcoholic beggar. Other cases followed a similar pattern. In November 1949 Konstantin Polenov was arrested for a drunken rant in Leningrad’s Troitskii market. According to witnesses, Polenov had approached a queue of between 250 and 300 people and expressed a series of anti-Soviet sentiments. These included the phrase, ‘Why are you standing here, we

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don’t have any bread and we will never have any under this government.’ This kind of grumbling was characteristic of bread queues, but as an outsider Polenov was especially vulnerable to denunciation. In his letter of appeal Polenov claimed to be suffering from alcoholism related to wartime trauma. He had periodically undergone treatment in psychiatric hospitals. The reviewing prosecutor, however, was unconvinced by his claim to have been either too drunk or too unwell to have been conscious of what he was saying.83 In August 1952 a drunken Vladimir Krymov was alleged to have spread anti-Soviet ideas amongst staff and customers in a central Leningrad shop. He supposedly made anti-Soviet remarks, slandered Soviet politics, party leaders and spread rumours of a forthcoming war. The case file characterized Krymov as an alcoholic who periodically disappeared from work on binges. A letter of appeal written by Krymov’s mother in August 1953 attempted to explain that her son was mentally ill and had been receiving psychiatric help. She claimed that her son had suffered a nervous breakdown as a result of wartime kontuziia (concussion) and the pain of his wife leaving him and taking the children with her. In her words Vladimir was no longer a normal person.84 Anti-Soviet agitation cases served one final function. They represented a final stage in the demobilization of the mind. During the war, with the threat of death ever present, soldiers had enjoyed a comparative freedom to talk openly and honestly with their comrades. This freedom had limitations, and should not be over-­estimated. Soldiers knew that their ranks continued to include informers and that denunciation for antiSoviet crimes remained a risk.85 However, in comparison with civilian life the opportunities for relatively open discussion were greater. In addition, there were many things that Soviet soldiers had seen and done which they needed to discuss and make sense of with trusted comrades. Furthermore, the experience of armed service, as we have seen, generated a new sense of confidence and status amongst soldiers, which allowed soldier to voice their ideas more freely. Anti-Soviet agitation prosecutions were part of the process of tightening the limits of public expression in postwar Soviet society. Veterans who were prosecuted for talking too frankly about their wartime experiences, for telling stories about the comparative wealth of Germany or the technological advancement of the American army were not expressing anti-Soviet ideas, but merely struggling with the shifting limits of public expression in postwar society. Anti-Soviet agitation cases were an important instrument in mapping the boundaries of what could and could not be said in Leningrad. They served the same function as both the Zhdanovshchina and the Leningrad Affair. They were intended as an attack on wartime memory, the strong identities forged by the war and freer public expression. If veterans were in any doubt, anti-Soviet agitation cases served to remind them that any special status they might have enjoyed as a result of the war no longer existed. Veterans like blockade survivors and other Leningraders learnt that certain wartime memories and narratives could not be expressed publicly. Reacting to subtle shifts in official policy and language most veterans came to understand where the boundaries of public expression lay. Combat, fear, killing, panic, death, bloodshed, psychological trauma and early Soviet defeats were all things that Leningrad’s soldiers understood were not to be spoken of in public. With the passing of time the memory of the war

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ossified into a narrative which closely resembled state propaganda. Medals were dusted down annually for victory parades and celebrations, wistful war songs could be sung with old comrades over a bottle of vodka and veterans were asked into schools and colleges to reinforce official myths. But many aspects of wartime memory could not be discussed. Most veterans were, like Alevtina Ivanova, the central character of Veteran, a short story published by Boris Vasil’ev in 1984, unable to speak about the enormous physical and emotional cost of the war. Years after her demobilization Alevtina is asked to give a public speech to a meeting talking about her wartime memories. Her husband advises her to read histories of the war and wartime memoirs in preparation. She finds the stale language and dry topics in these books at odds with her own wartime memories: It was altogether a different war, not her war. Alevtina Ivanova remembered tiredness, which weakened one to sleep, lice on the dead and on the living, the heavy smell of overfilled communal graves, she remembered the charred body of a tank driver in a burnt out tank, a twenty-­year old lieutenant with seven strands of hair in a neat hairstyle . . . young broken bodies: male and female. Stumps turn to shreds, shot through by bullets, broken by bayonets, cut off by knives.86

She resolves to tell her version of the war to the meeting and to do justice to her memories. Yet as she is called to the platform and hears the applause she is unable to express her version of the war. Instead she structures her speech around the bombastic language of the patriotic cult of war. Most veterans succeeded in perfecting this Janus-­faced relationship with the state and its official narrative of the war. In public, veterans repeated the official myths about the war and their demobilization. In private they knew that there was an alternative version of the war and its costs, which could not be spoken of. Veterans, then, were like the rest of late Stalinist society constantly negotiating and balancing their relationship with the state with their wartime memories. Most veterans, regardless of their attitudes towards the Stalinist party-­state, gradually began to appreciate the dangers of expressing their war memories publicly. Here then was the essence of the ‘Stolen Victory’, an idea frequently expressed by veterans in the years and decades after 1945 and developed most fully by Elena Zubkova.87 Veterans’ hopes and expectations for a better world gradually melted away in the face of extraordinary challenges of postwar life. Vasily Grossman wrote in Life and Fate that: ‘Freedom engendered the Russian victory. Freedom was the apparent aim of the war. But the sly fingers of History changed this: freedom became simply a way of winning the war, a means to an end.’88 Veterans were exhausted by their experience at the front. Their reserves of physical resistance had already been weakened by years of physical stress and psychological strain. But there was to be no respite. Demobilized veterans were rapidly remobilized often into physically demanding jobs. The anxieties of the scramble for jobs, housing and the limited handouts which the state made available, combined with grinding hardship took their toll. Then there were the difficulties of rebuilding family life and learning to live with physical and/or psychological disabilities. Most veterans were simply too exhausted and too preoccupied

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with rebuilding their personal lives to have either the energy or the inclination to convert their postwar status into political capital. As the veteran and writer Viktor Astafyev wrote, ‘The most painful thing was the realization that, because of the strain of the postwar years, we were not going to be able to maintain the high level of moral development which we had achieved during the war, and which we had created for ourselves, in spite of the soullessness and obstructiveness of our own immoral and criminal leadership.’89 The values which veterans thought they were fighting for, such as freedom, justice and fairness, never materialized. In retrospect many veterans would come to feel that their victory and their right to define the war’s meaning had been stolen from them. Yet former soldiers were also complicit in the process. The all-­pervasive postwar patriotism created a conundrum. ‘War veterans,’ as the historian Catherine Merridale writes, ‘many of them still intoxicated with the original idealistic brew and still breathing the old pietism were trapped. They could not be unpatriotic and they could not stand against the government.’90 The official wartime myths succeeded in binding former soldiers to the regime. In time many veterans found it convenient to pay lip-­service to the bombastic war cult even when they questioned this version of the past. It was better to keep quiet, accept the better pensions, free travel and collective praise than speak the dark truth about the Great Patriotic War.91 In Amir Weiner’s analysis ‘assertive Ivan’, ‘displayed uncompromising reluctance to let others – the regime included – articulate the defining moment of their lives’.92 Yet in the years following their demobilization Leningrad’s veterans found that this is precisely what happened; they had been robbed of their right to construct their wartime experience on their own terms. There is, however, a less pessimistic way of looking at the re-­adaptation of Leningrad’s veterans. In many ways, local officials, civilian Leningraders and above all veterans themselves had achieved the impossible. By 1950 veterans in this most challenging of environments for demobilization had succeeded in becoming ordinary Stalinists. As the limited prestige and privilege that existed for ex-­servicemen was dismantled veterans gradually blended back into the community. The notion that frontoviki, or veterans more generally, represented a special category was shelved. Demobilization, in the fullest meaning of the term, had created a levelling in society. At the start of mass demobilization the prospect that the men and women physically and mentally scarred by the war could become ordinary citizens must have seemed unlikely. Although they were crammed into unsuitable housing, forced into unfamiliar or unpleasant jobs and deprived of healthcare many veterans coped with the transition from military to civilian life surprisingly well. Despite the challenging material circumstances and the background of political turmoil, demobilized Leningraders had succeeded against all the odds in rebuilding their lives. The process had been far from easy. It had created numerous disappointments, generated deep-seated resentment and produced many victims. The vast majority of veterans derived little material reward from their service, but the conviction that the war had been just and that they had played a part in a remarkable victory offset the inevitable personal disappointments. Just as Moscow had succeeded in putting Leningrad in its place and restricting the development of local expressions of identity, the Soviet state managed to draw the

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overwhelming majority of veterans back into mainstream society. Even in Leningrad, where the suspicion of political opposition was stronger than elsewhere, veterans were no more likely to be critical of the regime than other members of late Stalinist society. Similarly, Leningrad’s veterans were not the ideological die-­hards that many ex-­ servicemen are sometimes presented as. Instead of becoming fierce critics or convinced supporters of the regime, the disenchantment that often followed demobilization led to a declining interest in formal politics. Many ex-­soldiers, like other ordinary Stalinists, retreated into their own personal interests, directing their energies towards making small improvements in their personal circumstances. From talking to veterans, admittedly an unrepresentative group of the youngest and fittest soldiers, I was surprised how uninterested many were in ideology or high politics. For many the lessons of war were deeply personal. Survival had taught some to value education opportunities, some the value of family and friends, and others the simple pleasure of a good meal. With the passing of time veterans became ordinary members of society. Aside from the ritualized moments of commemoration when soldiers donned medals and old uniforms and gathered at cemeteries, monuments and memorials to remember their fallen comrades, they were indistinguishable from other members of society. Soldiers had become civilians with remarkable success.

Conclusion Only a small fraction of Leningrad’s Great Patriotic War veterans are still alive, their ranks thinned by the hardships of postwar Soviet life and the passing of time. Those that survive, the youngest and fittest of Red Army veterans, now mark Victory Day in very different ways to the immediate postwar period. Gone are the boisterous singing, dancing and drinking binges of May 1945, and the muted celebrations which followed the downgrading of Victory Day from December 1947. In subsequent decades Victory Day took on a new importance as the official cult of the Great Patriotic War took shape. The emergence of an organized veterans’ movement throughout the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, as Mark Edele has demonstrated, resulted in veterans becoming a well-organized community with a strong sense of their personal entitlement.1 Veterans acquired a new social and political importance, and were once again at the centre of the public commemoration of Victory Day. Veterans remain at the very heart of the city’s postSoviet Victory Day celebrations. As their numbers dwindle veterans have become increasingly important to the public remembrance of the war and the Soviet Union’s victory. The city’s brave defenders continue to be honoured as heroes, often imitating many features of the bombastic late Soviet war cult. Military parades continue to pass through the city centre, albeit now with young recruits doing their patriotic duty in replica uniforms. Military salutes bring crowds out onto the city’s embankments, large commemorative concerts of wartime songs are held in the Soviet era concert halls, and are televised on local channels. Veterans’ organizations arrange celebratory receptions for their members, following the familiar formula of speeches, bouquets, gifts, and sometimes sit-­down meals. Coaches are laid on to allow veterans to visit cemeteries, monuments and battlefield sites. The successors to the city’s large Soviet industrial plants often have outreach departments which organize similar celebrations for veterans amongst their former employees. Other aspects of the attention lavished on veterans are less familiar. In May 2007 a chain of supermarkets ran a promotion in St. Petersburg where a rouble was donated to veterans’ charities every time a customer bought one of ten products marked with red stars. One wonders if veterans really benefitted from sales of caffeine energy drinks, lemon scented surface cleaner and spreadable cheese, and what they made of this and other similar promotions. In May 2011 one local newspaper listed the ‘pleasant surprises’ that veterans could expect in honour of Victory Day: completely free public transport on 8 and 9 May; free national and international telephone calls on 7, 8 and 9 May; free use of the business lounges at Pulkovo Airport between 4 and 12 May; and free flights (excluding tax and booking fee) with Rossiia Airlines (presumably intended to help veterans visit and keep in touch with each other, attend reunions and visit battlefields). However, few of the veterans interviewed in the course of my research were sprightly enough or sufficiently wealthy to take advantage of some of these offers.2

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Surviving veterans, the youngest generation of soldiers for whom the transition to civilian life was often the most difficult, often remember the unwelcoming attitude of fellow Leningraders and the difficulties of demobilization. For them much of the contemporary celebration of Victory Day must seem surreal. While many veterans enthusiastically participate in Victory Day commemorations, others are conscious of the dissonance between the lack of respect and attention with which they were treated in the late Stalinist period, and praise and attention they receive today. The city to which veterans returned after their demobilization was in another world from that which now lavishes gifts, concert tickets and attention on veterans around Victory Day. Leningrad’s veterans rarely felt like heroes in the months and years following their demobilization. In the immediate wake of war even a knapsack of tinned food represented almost unimaginable riches. One veteran interviewed as part of my research recalled giving his mother such a gift, only for her to be reduced to tears by the apparent ease with which this food had been obtained. The images from July 1945 of veterans being greeted by bouquets and cheering crowds were more palatable than the reality that former soldiers were often an uncomfortable and unwelcome reminder of the horrors of modern warfare. Although the social costs of war in Leningrad were obscured by popular and official myths, with the passing of time these myths came to fulfil important social functions. Patriotic narratives helped many veterans to make sense of horrific wartime experiences. As the decades passed the frustrations and disappointments of demobilization gradually faded from memory. By the time that veterans finally received the recognition they deserved they had already entered old age. Their support for the official version of demobilization was secured by improving pensions, welfare payments, and the enhanced social status that the cult of the Great Patriotic War offered. This had not always been the case. Things had seemed very different in the late 1940s. But the battle lines had been redrawn. The propaganda and myth-­making, which rankled in the wake of war, eventually began to offer renewed comfort and pride. Late Stalinist society was marked by the transition from war to peace. The experience of Leningrad’s demobilized veterans demonstrates that normality was not restored in the immediate aftermath of war, but continued to be recreated throughout Stalin’s last years. Mass demobilization was not an endpoint, but the beginning of an extended period of postwar transition, during which the aftershocks of industrialized warfare continued to be felt in almost every aspect of public life. Successfully turning soldiers into civilians mattered for the whole of Leningrad and the Leningrad region. Everybody had a stake in ensuring demobilized veterans were reintegrated into the home, family and workplace. The social, economic and political stakes for individuals, families and wider communities were high. The transition to postwar normality was not played out on the desks of military and economic planners, or amidst the wreckage of apartments and factories, but in the daily lives of those who had fought the war. The postwar readjustment of Leningrad’s veterans, how they coped with the physical, emotional and social costs of war, shaped an entire society. Every level of municipal life, including housing policy, economic planning, healthcare and policing, was affected. Demobilization raised issues of psychological trauma, physical disability, criminality and cultural memory; all important issues in postwar Leningrad.

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Leningrad was far from an ideal environment in which to demobilize veterans. The city’s military and civilian planners were often overwhelmed by the problems of re-­ assimilating such a large and rapid influx of veterans. Yet, even within the constraints of a highly authoritarian society, Leningrad pursued its own solutions to the challenges of demobilization, which were often more radical than legislation demanded. Despite the rapid influx of former soldiers, and the problems this created, the overwhelming majority of veterans settled down to civilian life with surprising ease. Most managed to pick up the threads of their prewar lives relatively quickly. Even after the violence and destruction of war, most veterans were not brutalized or traumatized by their experiences. Grumbling about the injustices of demobilization was inevitable, but veterans who had experienced life outside of the Soviet Union did not pose a genuine threat of political opposition. On the whole veterans were remarkable for their ability to compartmentalize their wartime experiences. Of course, even when veterans successfully negotiated the transition from soldier to civilian the war continued to have a profound impact upon their future lives. Knowing that they had come through the Great Patriotic War, perhaps the ultimate test, gave many veterans the confidence and resilience to overcome the difficulties and frustrations of demobilization. Wartime armed service was not automatically an agent of social mobility. In the immediate wake of war Leningrad’s veterans were by and large not the beneficiaries of enhanced postwar opportunities. Chapters 2 and 3 challenge the notion that veterans were a privileged social group united by a shared sense of entitlement. The postwar housing crisis affected all members of society. In Leningrad theoretical privileges and entitlements did not necessarily distinguish veterans from civilians. Blockade survivors, re-­evacuees and veterans enjoyed similar entitlements, which often placed them in direct competition for limited resources. Veterans’ legal entitlements were often indistinguishable from civilians’, and many veterans were remarkably uncertain about their theoretical entitlements. For members of a supposedly privileged élite Leningrad’s veterans were remarkably unclear about their entitlements. The slow pace of reconstruction ensured that housing shortages persisted for decades. In the interim former soldiers lived in communal apartments or dormitories in conditions indistinguishable from other members of society. Many were placed on housing waiting lists, others embroiled in legal battles to reclaim homes. Veterans were not immediately privileged in decisions about housing allocation, but the prospects of finding employment were somewhat better. There was ample reconstruction work to keep veterans occupied. However, many former soldiers were unable to secure work which matched their skills, experiences and expectations. Good jobs were hard to come by. Officers, in particular, resented work assignments inconsistent with their hard-­won social status. Nor was party membership an automatic route to social advancement. Demobilized communists were not protected from the scramble for work or housing. As revealed in Chapter  6, few of Leningrad’s veterans who had joined the party during the war were catapulted into positions of authority within the local party. Indeed, many demobilized party members were disengaged from and disenchanted with civilian party life, prompting them to leave. Finding permanent housing and a rewarding job was difficult and frustrating, and inefficiencies and corruption in official distribution mechanisms generated enormous

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resentment. Entitlement and theoretical privilege did not create loyal or grateful clients of the party-­state, but rather aggrieved veterans resentful of their meagre benefits and treatment by officials. Hope of a more responsive and flexible form of Stalinism quickly turned to cynicism. These short-­term disappointments, however, were easier to cope with than the long-­term physical and psychological effects of war. As argued in Chapter 4, the war’s costs were not simply measured on the balance sheet of lives lost, money spent and infrastructure destroyed. Veterans paid an enormous physical and emotional price for victory. Their minds as well as bodies were sacrificed in the name of victory. Although local social security officials imposed a restrictive understanding of disability, almost all veterans found the war disabling in some respect. Few veterans escaped the war without damaging their health or well-­being. Most demobilized soldiers were exhausted and were given little or no time to rest or recuperate. Within days they were back at workbenches, construction sites or desks. Any intervening period was usually spent standing in queues or arguing with housing, employment or social security officials. Disabled veterans were often forced into low-­paid jobs, or at worse pushed towards the social margins. They were often unable to obtain the medical treatment they required and had been promised: medical care frequently fell below standards that returning heroes deserved. Demobilization in Leningrad and its rural periphery represented an extreme example of the challenges faced by ex-­servicemen and ex-­servicewomen in readjusting to civilian life. Local conditions, including infrastructure destruction, depopulation and civilian Leningraders’ unique wartime experience, shaped the course of demobilization and veterans’ prospects of reintegration. The presence in Leningrad of psychiatrists and psychologists with research expertise in war trauma meant that traumatized veterans were recognized. As explored in Chapter  4, psychiatrists at the Bekhterev Institute studied and wrote about manifestations of psychological trauma, albeit within ideological and explanatory frameworks which stressed Soviet psychological resilience. Even so, veterans were unlikely to receive treatment for psychological problems, and trauma was given short shrift in the postwar city. Nevertheless, traumatized veterans were a social reality in late Stalinist Leningrad. As explored in Chapters 5 and 6, many of the veterans who committed violent crimes or who were prosecuted for anti-Soviet agitation were not brutalized individuals or dangerous political dissidents but traumatized veterans who had sustained head injuries. On the whole veterans were not brutalized by exposure to mass death and extreme violence. Indeed many were themselves victims of crime, whilst others complained about the breakdown of social order. Nor were veterans prosecuted for political crimes convinced opponents of the regime, but disorientated individuals unable to adjust to tightening limits of public expression. As Chapter 6 argues, antiSoviet agitation cases often served to map out the boundaries of postwar memories of the conflict, and what could and could not be said about war experiences. The city and its rural periphery was anything but a typical return to normality, it was rather an extreme example of the difficulties facing ex-­servicemen and ex-­servicewomen. The city and its inhabitants had a unique wartime experience, which profoundly influenced the course of demobilization. The legacy of extreme violence was closer to the surface in Leningrad than in many other locations. This

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had important implications. First, there were additional difficulties readjusting to civilian life amidst the rubble of a region which had been on the frontline for so long. Despite the postwar housing crisis veterans settled in Leningrad in their hundreds of thousands, a remarkable number of ex-­service personnel for a devastated region. Second, veterans returned to a community which also laid claim to special recognition and reward in return for their enormous wartime sacrifices and suffering. In Leningrad veterans’ theoretical entitlements co-­existed and competed with the rights of blockade survivors and re-­evacuees. Third, and counter-­intuitively, Leningrad’s extreme wartime experience facilitated certain aspects of readjustment. Depopulation and destruction created employment opportunities, although not necessarily in high status positions. Although ex-­servicemen and women were often in competition for limited resources, an accommodation between them was more easily brokered in Leningrad than many other places. Blockade survivors understood much more about the nature of modern warfare and mass killing than civilians elsewhere, which in part explains their lack of fears about the return of veterans potentially brutalized by combat. How can the relative success of postwar readjustment in Leningrad and the Leningrad oblast’ be explained? This was not the product of attempts to ensure that veterans were greeted as returning heroes. The majority of veterans were not welcomed home by brass-­bands and military parades. Those that were often saw through the propaganda apparatus. Neither can success be attributed to official policy and state welfare. Compared to the American G.I. Bill’s generous provisions, Leningrad’s veterans were given only the most meagre support. Yet even generous welfare payments were not a guarantor that veterans would return as well-adjusted people. Veterans could never be adequately rewarded for their sacrifices and achievements. Nor can the fact that Red Army soldiers returned as victors explain their successful reintegration. Defeat and victory created different challenges for demobilizing armies and societies. If anything, victory enhanced veterans’ expectations of reward and reform, which in turn intensified their disappointment when their hopes were cruelly dashed. Part of the explanation lies in those factors which motivated soldiers to continue to fight. The universal belief that the Soviet Union was engaged in a just war against an irredeemable enemy protected veterans from concerns that they had been damaged by extreme violence. Since they were fighting to protect their homes, families and the Soviet motherland anything could be justified. The decision to rapidly remobilize veterans also contributed to the outcome. Veterans were given no time to dwell upon the darker aspects of their war experience. From the moment they returned they were encouraged to focus on the socialist-­realist future, rather than the past. The hardships of everyday life meant that former soldiers had little alternative but to reintegrate into the home, family and workplace. Ultimately, veterans themselves deserve some credit for the manner in which they re-­adapted to normal life after extraordinary events. The Soviet party-­state and its local representatives were not the sole agents influencing demobilization’s outcomes. Leningrad’s veterans demonstrated remarkable creativity and initiative in circumventing the difficulties of postwar readjustment. Reluctant to work within the official framework, veterans found and exploited whatever opportunities they could to ease their transition.

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Although there is much about the celebration of Victory Day that obscures the darker reality of veterans’ difficult postwar readjustment, there is little doubt that they succeed in drawing attention to the achievements and resilience of a remarkable generation, a generation that is rapidly passing. Across the globe the notion that the Second World War was fought by the ‘greatest generation’ has often been co-­opted by nationalists, in order to demonstrate national superiority. This is unfortunate because pain and suffering, like glory and heroism, transcend national boundaries. Although veterans’ achievements have been distorted by memory politics, veterans were still special people. Those interviewed as part of the project were reluctant to accept that there was anything unique about their generation. With their characteristic humility and self-­deprecation they pointed to the achievements of subsequent generations. Several explained that they had no choice but to fight. They argued that if total war waged by mass conscript armies erupted once more subsequent generations would have to do the same and would demonstrate similar qualities. As international tensions continue to escalate over the Ukraine crisis let us hope that this is a hypothesis that will never have to be tested.

Notes Introduction   1 A. N. Boldyrev, Osadnaia zapis’ Blokadnyi dnevnik (Dnevniki i vospominaniia Peterburgskikh uchenykh) (St. Petersburg: Evropeiskii dom, 1998), pp. 346–7; A. Z. Vakser, Leningrad poslevoennyi 1945–1982 (St. Petersburg: Izdatel’stvo Ostrov, 2005), p. 5.   2 Nikita Lomagin, Neizvestnaia blokada (Dokumenty, prilozheniia). Kniga Vtoraia 2-e izdanie (St. Petersburg, Izdatel’svkii Dom Neva, 2004), pp. 423–4.   3 Irina Dunaevskaia, Ot Leningrada do Kenigsberga. Dnevnik voennoi perevodchitsy (1942–1945) (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2010), p. 397.   4 Tsentral’nyi gosudarstvennyi arkhiv istoriko-­politicheshikh dokumentov SanktPeterburga [hereafter TsGAIPD-SPb] f.24/op.48/d.89/l.14.   5 TsGAIPD-SPb/f.24/op.48/d.89/ll.8–15.   6 ‘Slavam voinam – bogatyriam. Slava Staliny,’ Krasnaia zvezda, 11 May 1945, p. 2.   7 Lomagin, Neizvestnaia blokada, pp. 425–6.   8 Dunaevskaia, Ot Leningrada do Kenigsberga, p. 398.   9 John Barber and Mark Harrison, The Soviet Home Front 1941–1945: A Social and Economic History of the USSR in World War II (London: Longman, 1991), p. 206. 10 Nina Tumarkin, The Living and the Dead: The Rise and Fall of the Cult of World War II in Russia (New York: Basic Books, 1994), p. 96; Sheila Fitzpatrick, ‘Post-­war Soviet Society: The “Return to Normalcy”, 1945–53’, in Susan J. Linz (ed.), The Impact of World War II on the Soviet Union (Totowa, NJ: Rowman & Allenheld, 1985), pp. 29–56. 11 Tsentral’nyi gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Sankt-Peterburga [hereafter TsGA-SPb] f.8557/ op.6/d.1108/ll.46–7, reprinted in A. Z. Dzeniskevich (ed.), Leningrad v osade: sbornik dokumentov o geroicheskoi oborone Leningrada v gody Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny, 1941–1944 (St. Petersburg: Liki Rossii, 1995), pp. 573–4; Ann Reid, Leningrad: Tragedy of a City under Siege, 1941–44 (London: Bloomsbury, 2011), pp. 417–19; Harrison E. Salisbury, The 900 Days: The Siege of Leningrad (London: Pan Macmillan, 2000), p. 514; Richard Bidlack and Nikita Lomagin, The Leningrad Blockade, 1941–1944: A New Documentary History from the Soviet Archives, trans. Marian Schwartz (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2012), pp. 4, 38. 12 Nadezhda Cherepina estimates that around 700,000 people died during the Blockade, ‘Assessing the Scale of Famine and Death in the Besieged City’, in John Barber and Andreii Dzeniskevich (eds), Life and Death in Besieged Leningrad, 1941–44 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), pp. 28–70 (p. 64). Anna Reid estimates the siege’s civilian deaths at between 650,000 and 800,000, Reid, Leningrad, p. 418. Harrison Salisbury suggests that ‘(a) total for Leningrad and vicinity of something over 1,000,000 deaths attributable to hunger, and an over-­all total of deaths, civilian and military, on the order of 1,300,000 to 1,500,000 seems reasonable.’ Salisbury, The 900 Days, p. 516.

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13 Salisbury, The 900 Days, p. 513 (note 30). 14 D. S. Tsygankov, Otets: dnevnik maiora Krasnoi Armii: 7 oktiabria 1941g.–12 sentiabria 1945g. (Moscow: Sinteg, 2000), p. 15. 15 Catherine Merridale, Ivan’s War: The Red Army 1939–1945 (London: Faber and Faber, 2006), pp. 288–9. 16 Boris Mikhailov, Zhivye stranitsy voiny i blokady (St. Petersburg: Izdatel’stvo GIPTSPb, 2005), pp. 394–5. 17 Richard Overy. Russia’s War: A History of the Soviet War Effort: 1941–1945 (London: Penguin, 1998), p. 286. 18 Elena Zubkova, Pribaltika i Kreml’, 1940–1953 (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2008), pp. 191– 256; Alexander Statiev, The Soviet Counterinsurgency in the Western Borderlands (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010). 19 Aleksei Vladimirovich Vinogradov and Albert Jan Pleysier (eds), Bitva za Leningrad v sud’bakh zhitelei goroda i oblasti vospominaniia zashchitnikov i zhitelei blokadnogo goroda i okkupirovannykh territorii (St. Petersburg: Izdatel’stvo Saint-Peterburgskogo Universiteta, 2005), pp. 97–110. 20 On definitions of demobilization see Adam R. Seipp, The Ordeal of Peace: Demobilization and the Urban Experience in Britain and Germany, 1917–1921 (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009), pp. 7–8. 21 V. N. Donchenko, ‘Demobilizatsiya Sovetskoi Armii i reshenie problemy kadrov v pervye poslevoennye gody’, Istoriia SSSR, No.3 (1970), pp. 96–102; V. A. Ezhov, ‘Izmeneniia v chislennosti i sostave rabochikh Leningrada v poslevoennyi period (1945–1950gg.)’, Vestnik Leningradskogo Universiteta, Seriia istorii, yazyka i literatury No.2 (1966), pp. 15–21. 22 Fitzpatrick, ‘Postwar Soviet Society’, pp. 136–7; Sheila Fitzpatrick, ‘War and Society in Soviet Context: Soviet Labour before, during and after World War II’, International Labour and Working Class History, 35 (1989), pp. 37–52. 23 Kees Boterbloem, Life and Death under Stalin: Kalinin Province, 1945–1953 (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1999); Eric J. Duskin, Stalinist Reconstruction and the Confirmation of a New Elite, 1945–1953 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001), pp. 17–21. 24 For eyewitness accounts see: John Steinbeck, A Russian Journal (London: Heinemann, 1949); Walter Bedell Smith, Moscow Mission, 1946–1949 (London: Heinemann, 1950); Harrison E. Salisbury, American in Russia (New York: Harper and Brothen, 1955); and Alexander Werth, Russia: The Post-­war Years (London: Hale, 1971). On the political history of the period see: Robert Pethybridge, A History of Post-­war Russia (London: Allen and Unwin, 1966); W. O. McCagg, Stalin Embattled (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1978); Werner Hahn, Postwar Soviet Politics: The Fall of Zhdanov and the Defeat of Moderation 1946–1953 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1982); and T. Dunmore, Soviet Politics 1945–53 (London: Macmillan, 1984). See also Christopher Ward, ‘What is History? The Case of Late Stalinism’, Rethinking History, 8:3 (2004), pp. 439–58 (pp. 439–41). 25 Chris Ward, Stalin’s Russia (London: Arnold, 1993), p. 186. 26 On high politics see Yoram Gorlizki and Oleg Khlevniuk, Cold Peace: Stalin and the Soviet Ruling Circle, 1945–1953 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), and Moshe Lewin, ‘Rebuilding the Soviet Nomenklatura, 1945–1948’, Cahiers du Monde Russe, 44:2–3 (2003), pp. 219–51. On the challenges faced by ordinary citizens see: Donald Filtzer, Soviet Workers and Late Stalinism: Labour and the Restoration of the Stalinist System after World War II (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002); V. F. Zima,

Notes

27

28

29 30

31

32

33

34

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Golod v SSSR 1946–1947 godov: proiskhozhdenie i posledstviia (Moscow: IRI-RAN, 1996), and O. M. Verbitskaia, Naselenie Rossiskoi derevni v 1939–1959 gg. Problemy demografichogo razvitiia (Moscow: IRI-RAN, 2002). For an indication of the quality and vibrancy of recent scholarship see Juliane Fürst (ed.), Late Stalinist Russia: Society Between Reconstruction and Reinvention (London: Routledge, 2006). On the issues of youth, housing, health and corruption, see: Juliane Fürst, Stalin’s Last Generation: Soviet Post-­war Youth and the Emergence of Mature Socialism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010); Mark B. Smith, Property of Communists: The Urban Housing Program from Stalin to Khrushchev (Dekalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press, 2010); Donald Filtzer, The Hazards of Urban Life in Late Stalinist Russia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009); James Heinzen, ‘The Art of the Bribe: Corruption and Everyday Practice in the Late Stalinist USSR’, Slavic Review, 66:3 (2007), pp. 389–412, and Heinzen, ‘Thirty Kilos of Pork: Cultural Brokers, Corruption, and the “Bribe Trail” in the Postwar Stalinist Soviet Union’, Journal of Social History, 46:4 (2013), pp. 931–52. Elena Zubkova, Russia After the War: Hopes, Illusions and Disappointments, pp. 23–39; Zubkova, Poslevoennoe sovetskoe obshchestvo: politika i posvednevnost, 1945–1953 (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2000), pp. 28–35; E. Iu. Zubkova (ed.), Sovetskaia zhizn’, 1945–1953 (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2003), pp. 308–32. Amir Weiner, Making Sense of War: The Second World War and the Fate of the Bolshevik Revolution (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001). Merridale, Ivan’s War, pp. 290–320. See also Merridale, ‘The Collective Mind: Trauma and Shell-­shock in Twentieth-­century Russia’, Journal of Contemporary History, 35:1 (2000), pp. 39–55; Merridale, ‘Culture, Ideology and Combat in the Red Army, 1939–45’, Journal of Contemporary History, 41:2 (2006), pp. 305–24. Beate Fieseler, ‘The Bitter Legacy of the “Great Patriotic War”: Red Army Disabled Soldiers under Late Stalinism’, in Fürst (ed.), Late Stalinist Russia, pp. 46–61; Fieseler, ‘ “La Protection Social Totale”: Les hospices pour grands mutilés de guerre dans l’Union sovetétique des années 1940’, Cahiers du Monde Russe 49:2–3 (2008), pp. 438–9; Fieseler, ‘Soviet-­style welfare. The disabled soldiers of the “Great Patriotic War” ’, in Michael Rasell and Elena Iarskaia-Smirnova (eds), Disability in Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union: History, policy and everyday life (London: Routledge, 2014), pp. 18–41. On the demobilization of partisans see Kenneth Slepyan, Stalin’s Guerrillas: Soviet Partisans in World War II (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2006), pp. 271–87; on young veterans see Fürst, Stalin’s Last Generation, pp. 56–61; and on women veterans, Roger D. Markwick and Euridice Charon Cardona, Soviet Women on the Frontline in the Second World War (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), pp. 231–48. Mark Edele, Soviet Veterans of the Second World War: A Popular Movement in an Authoritarian Society, 1941–1991 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008); Edele, ‘More than just Stalinists. The political sentiments of victors 1945–1953’ in Fürst (ed.), Stalin’s Last Generation, pp. 167–92; Edele, ‘Soviet Veterans as an Entitlement Group, 1945–1955’, Slavic Review, 65:1 (2006), pp. 111–37; Edele, ‘Veterans and the Village: The Impact of Red Army Demobilization on Soviet Urbanization, 1945–1955’, Russian History, 36:2 (2009), pp. 159–82. On the memory of the blockade see Lisa A. Kirschenbaum, The Legacy of the Siege of Leningrad, 1941–1995: Myth, Memories, and Monuments (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006); Marina Loskutova (ed.), Pamiat’ o blokade: Svidetel’stva ochevidtsev i istoricheskoe soznanie obshchestva (Moscow: Novoe izdatel’stvo, 2006);

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37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45

Notes Steven Maddox, ‘These Monuments Must Be Protected! The Stalinist Turn to the Past and Historic Preservation During the Blockade of Leningrad’, Russian Review, 70:4 (2011), pp. 608–26; Maddox, ‘Healing the Wounds: Commemorations, Myths, and the Restoration of Leningrad’s Imperial Heritage, 1941–1950’ (Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Toronto, 2008); and James Clapperton, ‘The Siege of Leningrad as Sacred Narrative: Conversations with Survivors’, Oral History 35:1 (2007), pp. 49–60. On Leningrad’s reconstruction see V. A. Kutuzov and E. G. Levina (eds), Vozrozhdenie: Vospominaniia ocherki i dokumenty o vosstanovlenii Leningrada (Leningrad: Lenizdat, 1977), and V. A. Kutuzov, Vozrozhdenie zemli leningradskoi kommunisty v avangarde vosstanovleniya narodnogo khozyaistva Leningradskoi oblasti v gody Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny (Leningrad: Lenizdat, 1985). On the fate of re-­evacuees see Elizabeth White, ‘After the War was Over: The Civilian Return to Leningrad’, Europe– Asia Studies, 59:7 (2007), pp. 1145–61; Siobhan Peeling, ‘ “Out of Place” in the Postwar City: Practices, Experiences and Representations of Displacement during the Resettlement of Leningrad at the End of the Blockade’ (Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Nottingham, 2010), pp. 185–244; and Peeling, ‘Dirt, Disease and Disorder: Population Re-Placement in Postwar Leningrad and the “Danger” of Social Contamination’, in Peter Gatrell and Nick Baron (eds), Warlands: Population Resettlement and State Reconstruction in the Soviet-East European Borderlands, 1945–50 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), pp. 117–39. Vakser, Leningrad poslevoennyi. Karl D. Qualls, ‘Local-Outsider Negotiations in Postwar Sevastopol’s Reconstruction, 1944–1953’, in Donald J. Raleigh (ed.), Provincial Landscapes: Local Dimensions of Soviet Power, 1917–1953 (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2001), pp. 276–98; Qualls, ‘Imagining Sevastopol: History and Postwar Community Construction, 1942–1953’, National Identities, 5:2 (2003), pp. 123–39; Qualls, From Ruins to Reconstruction: Urban Identity in Soviet Sevastopol after World War II (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2009); Jeffrey W. Jones, ‘ “People Without a Definite Occupation”. The Illegal Economy and “Speculators” in Rostov-­on-the-Don, 1943–48’, in Raleigh (ed.), Provincial Landscapes, pp. 236–54; Jones, Everyday Life and the ‘Reconstruction’ of Soviet Russia During and After the Great Patriotic War, 1943–1948 (Bloomington, IN: Slavica, 2008). Blair A. Ruble, ‘The Leningrad Affair and the Provincialization of Leningrad’, Russian Review, 42:2 (1983), pp. 301–20. TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.36/d.226/l.201. TsGAIPD-SPb/f.24/op.2v/d.8230/l.1. Vakser, Leningrad poslevoennyi, p. 10. Fürst, Stalin’s Last Generation, p. 6. Seipp, The Ordeal of Peace; Deborah Cohen, The War Come Home: Disabled Veterans in Britain and Germany, 1914–1939 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2001). A full list of the archives used in this study, and the archival fonds consulted, is given in the bibliography. Sheila Fitzpatrick, ‘Conclusion: Late Stalinism in Historical Perspective’, in Fürst (ed.), Late Stalinist Russia, pp. 269–82 (p. 270). On debates surrounding new archival sources, particularly public opinion sources see: Andrea Graziosi, ‘The New Soviet Archival Sources, Hypotheses for a Critical Assessment’, Cahiers du Monde Russe, 40:1-2 (1999), pp. 13–63; Lynne Viola, ‘Popular Resistance in the Stalinist 1930s: Soliloquy of a Devil’s Advocate’, Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, 1:1 (2000), pp. 45–69.

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46 Filtzer, Soviet Workers and Late Stalinism. 47 Peter Kenez, The Birth of the Propaganda State: Soviet Methods of Mass Mobilization, 1917–1929 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), pp. 224–35. 48 Duskin, Stalinist Reconstruction, p. 3. 49 Jeffrey Brooks, Thank You, Comrade Stalin! Soviet Public Culture from Revolution to Cold War (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000), p. xiv. 50 Biulleten’ Ispolnitel’nogo Komiteta Leningradskogo Gorodskogo Soveta Deputatov Trudiashchikhsia [hereafter abbreviated to Biulleten’ Lengorispolkoma] and Biulleten’ Ispolnitel’nogo Komiteta Leningradskogo Oblastnogo Soveta Deputatov Trudiashchikhsia [hereafter abbreviated to Biulleten’ Lenoblispolkoma]. 51 Merridale, ‘Culture, Ideology and Combat’, p. 208. 52 On approaches to oral history interviews with veterans see: Nigel Hunt and Ian Robbins, ‘Telling Stories of the War: Ageing Veterans Coping with their Memories Through Narrative’, Oral History, 26:2 (1998), pp. 57–64; Alison Parr, ‘Breaking the Silence: Traumatised War Veterans and Oral History’, Oral History, 35:1 (2007), pp. 61–70. See also Alistair Thompson, Anzac Memories: Living with the Legend (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994) and Merridale, Ivan’s War.

1  The Troops Come Home   1 Jörg Echternkamp and Stefan Martens, ‘The Meanings of the Second World War in Contemporary European History’, in Jörg Echternkamp and Stefan Martens (eds), Experience and Memory: The Second World War in Europe (New York and Oxford: Berghahn, 2010), pp. 245–69 (p. 246).   2 Boris Suris, Frontovoi dnevnik: dnevnik, rasskazy (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Tsentrpoligraf, 2010), p. 265.   3 Suris, Frontovoi dnevnik, p. 7.   4 Nikolai Nikulin, Vospominaniia o voine (Moscow: AST, 2014), pp. 276–83.   5 ‘Pervye dni posle voiny’, Krasnaia zvezda, 17 May 1945, p. 3; ‘Sovetskie garnizony v zarubezhnykh stolytsakh’, Krasnaia zvezda, 23 May 1945, p. 1; ‘Krasnoarmeiskaia pesnia za rubezhom’, Krasnaia zvezda, 22 May 1945, p. 3.   6 On the problems of discipline and morale of occupation forces see: Filip Slaveski, The Soviet Occupation in Germany: Hunger, Mass Violence, and the Struggle for Peace, 1945–1947 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), pp. 12–84; Norman M. Naimark, The Russians in Germany: A History of the Soviet Zone of Occupation, 1945–1949 (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1995), pp. 32–140; Catherine Merridale, Ivan’s War: The Red Army 1939–1945 (London: Faber and Faber, 2005), pp. 264–75.   7 Slaveski, The Soviet Occupation of Germany, p. 28.   8 On war rumours see Timothy Johnston, ‘Subversive Tales? War rumours in the Soviet Union 1945–1947’, in Juliane Fürst (ed.), Late Stalinist Russia: Society between Reconstruction and Reinvention (London: Routledge, 2006), pp. 62–78.   9 Samuel A. Stouffer, The American Soldier: Combat and its Aftermath, Vol.2 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1949), pp. 520–48; Suzanne Mettler, Soldiers to Citizens: The G.I. Bill and the Making of the Greatest Generation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), pp. 15–24. 10 Alan Allport, Demobbed: Coming Home After the Second World War (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009), p. 23; Rex Pope, ‘British Demobilisation after the Second World War’, Journal of Contemporary History, 30:1 (1995), pp. 65–81.

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11 The classic study of the breakdown of the Russian Army in the First World War remains Alan K. Wildman, The End of the Russian Imperial Army. Vol.1 The Old Army and the Soldiers’ Revolt (March–April 1917) (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980), Vol.2 The Road to Soviet Power and Peace (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987). 12 Mark Von Hagen, Soldiers in the Proletarian Dictatorship: The Red Army and the Soviet Socialist State, 1917–1930 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1990), pp. 127–58; Joshua A. Sanborn, Drafting the Russian Nation: Military Conscription, Total War and Mass Politics, 1905–1924 (Dekalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press, 2003), pp. 56–61. 13 The term epoch of violence is borrowed from Peter Holquist, ‘Violent Russia, Deadly Marxism? Russia in the Epoch of Violence, 1905–1921’, Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, 4:3 (2003), pp. 27–52; Holquist, Making War, Forging Revolution: Russia’s Continuum of Crisis, 1914–1921 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002). 14 Karen Petrone, The Great War in Russian Memory (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2011). 15 Rebecca Manley, To the Tashkent Station: Evacuation and Survival in the Soviet Union at War (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2009), p. 12. 16 Manley, To the Tashkent Station, pp. 12–17. See also Rebecca Manley, ‘The Perils of Displacement: The Soviet Evacuee Between Refugee and Deportee’, Contemporary European History, 16:4 (2007), pp. 495–509. 17 Roger R. Reese, The Soviet Military Experience: A History of the Soviet Army 1917–1991 (London: Routledge, 2001), p. 57. On the interwar army see also Roger R. Reese, Stalin’s Reluctant Soldiers: A Social History of the Red Army 1925–1941 (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 1996) and Von Hagen, Soldiers in the Proletarian Dictatorship. 18 For example ‘Zakon o demobilizatsii starshikh vozrastov lichnogo sostava deistvuiushchei armii’, Leningradskaia pravda, 26 June 1945, p. 1; ‘Zakon o demobilizatsii starshikh vozrastov lichnogo sostava deistvuiushchei armii’, Vedomosti Verkhovnogo Soveta, 30 June 1945, p. 1; ‘Zakon o demobilizatsii starshikh vozrastov lichnogo sostava deistvuiushchei armii’, Biulleten’ Lengorispolkoma, 15 July 1945, p. 1. 19 See the front cover of Krokodil, 30 June 1945, p. 1. 20 Slaveski, The Soviet Occupation of Germany, pp. 19–20. 21 Merridale, Ivan’s War, p. 306. 22 ‘Na voine spasal iumor’, Argumenty i fakty – Petersburg, No.19 (2007), p. 4. 23 Slaveski, The Soviet Occupation of Germany, pp. 35–6. 24 Interview conducted in St. Petersburg, 21 March 2008, Disc Number 10. 25 Richard Bessel, ‘The Great War in German Memory: The Soldiers of the First World War, Demobilization and Weimar Politics Culture’, German History, 6:1 (1988), pp. 57–69 (pp. 25–7); Scott Stephenson, The Final Battle: Soldiers of the Western Front and the German Revolution of 1918 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009). 26 Dennis Winter, Death’s Men: Soldiers of the Great War (London: Penguin, 1978), p. 240. 27 Allport, Demobbed, pp. 33–6; Pope, ‘British Demobilization’, pp. 71–2. 28 Stouffer, The American Soldier, Vol.2, pp. 538–48 (p. 546). 29 Michael D. Gambone, The Greatest Generation Comes Home: The Veteran in American Society (College Station, TX: Texas A&M University Press, 2005), pp. 20–1; Allport, Demobbed, pp. 41–7.

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30 For an indication of levels of indiscipline in the Red Army between July and September 1945 see Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv sotsial’no-­politicheskoi istorii/ [hereafter RGASPI] f.17/op.121/d.427/ll.130–42. On violent disturbances amongst returning soldiers see: Mark Edele, Soviet Veterans of the Second World War: A Popular Movement in an Authoritarian Society, 1941–1991 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), p. 27; V. A. Kozlov, Massovye besporyadki v SSSR pri Khrushcheve i Brezhneve (1953 Nachalo 1980-kh gg.) (Novosibirsk: Sibirskii khronograf, 1999), pp. 60–1; Vladimir Kozlov, Neizvestnyi SSSR: Protivostoyanie naroda i vlasti 1953–1985 gg (Moscow: OLMA Press, 2006), p. 152. 31 Kozlov, Massovye besporyadki, pp. 60–1; Kozlov, Neizvestnyi SSSR, p. 152. 32 For an example from September 1949 see ‘Prikaz o nedisiplinirovannosti demobilizovannykh soldat vo vladivostoke 25 sentiabriia 1949g. i o poriadka otnavki v dalneishem eshelonov s demobilizovannyni i poplneniem’, RGVA/f.4/op.11/d.93/ ll.156–9. Published in P. N. Bobylev et al. (eds), Prikazy Narodnogo komissara oborony SSSR i Ministra Vooryzhennukh Sil SSSR. 12 Oktiabria 1945g.–1949g. (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2011), pp. 456–8. 33 M. Snetkova, Pis’ma very, nadezhdy, lyubvi: pis’ma s fronta (Moscow: Bilingva, 1999), pp. 48–51. For a local example see Leningradskii oblastnoi gosudarstvennyi arkhiv v gorode Vyborge [hereafter LOGAV] f.R-4581/op.2/d.25/l. 92. 34 Muzei istorii Sankt-Peterburgskogo Gosudarstvennogo Universiteta op.VOV/d.85/ ll.2–31. 35 Boris Mikhailov, Na dne blokady i voiny (St. Petersburg: VSEGEI, 2000), p. 442. 36 Evgenii D. Moniushko, From Leningrad to Hungary: Notes of a Red Army Soldier, 1941–1946, ed. David M. Glantz, trans. Oleg Moniushko (New York: Frank Cass, 2005), pp. 220–1. 37 ‘O demobilizatsii vtoroi ocherdi lichnogo sostava Krasnoi Armii’, Trud, 26 September 1945, p. 1. 38 ‘Ukaz Prezidiuma verkhovnogo Soveta SSSR – O demobilizatsii tret’ei ocheredi lichnogo sostava sukhoputnykh voisk i voenno-­vozdushnykh sil’, RGVA/f. 4/ op.12/d.114/ll.111–2 in P. N. Bobylev et al. (eds), Prikazy Narodnogo komissara oborony SSSR, p. 45. 39 For a full list of demobilization waves and legislation see Edele, Soviet Veterans, p. 23 and Edele, ‘A Generation of Victors’, pp. 62–72. 40 ‘Prikaz o sverkhsrochnoi slyzhbe serzhantskogo i riadovogo sostava krasnoi armii’, RGVA/f.4/op.11/d.80/ll.346–56. Published in Bobylev et al. (eds), Prikazy Narodnogo komissara oborony SSSR, pp. 15–18. 41 Moniushko, From Leningrad to Hungary, p. 221. 42 TsGA-SPb/f.9260/op.1/d.27/l.122, 137 and TsGA-SPb/f.9260/op.1/d.30/ll.76–7. 43 Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Rossiiskoi Federatsii [hereafter GARF] f.R-8131/ op.37/d.2266/ll.61–9. 44 TsGAIPD-SPb/f.24/op.2v/d.7023/ll.92–5. 45 Edele, ‘Soviet Veterans as an Entitlement Group’, pp. 121–5. 46 Edele, Soviet Veterans, p. 21. 47 Merridale, Ivan’s War, p. 309. 48 TsGAIPD-SPb/f.25/op.12/d.435/ll.8–10. 49 Edele, Soviet Veterans, pp. 23–7; Merridale, Ivan’s War, pp. 308–9. 50 Tsentral’nyi gosudarstvennyi arkhiv literatury i iskusstva Sankt-Peterburga [hereafter TsGALI-SPb] f.390/op.1/d.97/ll.1–9 (l.7) 51 TsGAIPD-SPb/f.24/op.2v/d.7003/ll.94–100.

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52 Lisa A. Kirschenbaum, The Legacy of the Siege of Leningrad, 1941–1995: Myth, Memories and Monuments (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 113–14. 53 Kirschenbaum, The Legacy of the Siege of Leningrad, p. 113. 54 A. N. Boldyrev, Osadnaia zapis’ Blokadnyi dnevnik (Dnevniki i vospominaniia Peterburgskikh uchenykh) (St. Petersburg: Evropeiskii dom, 1998), p. 347. 55 On 10 July 1945 Leningradskaia pravda devoted three of its four pages to coverage of the parade. See also ‘Leningrad vstrechaet geroev-­gvadeitsev’, Krasnaia zvezda, 10 July 1945, p. 2; ‘Leningrad vstrechaet geroicheskikh voinov’, Trud, 10 July 1945, p. 2; ‘Nezabyvaemyi den’, Leningradksii universitet, 13 July 1945. 56 TsGAIPD-SPb/f.24/op.2/d.7003/ll.94–100; Boldyrev, Osadnaia Zapis’, p. 347. For examples of D. M. Trakhtenberg’s photographs see TsGAKFFD-SPb Ar100313, Ar100315, Ar100499, Ar109278, Ar178053, Ar99473, Ar99962, Br33971. 57 Karen Petrone, Life has Become more Joyous, Comrades: Celebrations in the Time of Stalin (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2000), pp. 23–45; Christel Lane, The Rites of Rulers: Ritual in Industrial Society – The Soviet Case (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), pp. 222–8. 58 Kenneth Slepyan, Stalin’s Guerrillas: Soviet Partisans in World War II (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2006), p. 273. 59 Petrone, Life has Become more Joyous, p. 31. 60 ‘Voiny protivovozdushnoi oborony vozvratilis’ v rodnoi Leningrad’, Krasnaia zvezda, 17 July 1945, p. 1; ‘Eshelon prishel iz Berlina . . . Leningradtsy vstrechaiut voinov pobediteli’, Smena, 1 August 1945, p. 1. 61 TsGAIPD-SPb/f.24/op.2v/d.7023/l.75. 62 TsGAKFFD-SPb Ap27072 and Ar36709. 63 TsGAIPD-SPb/f.24/op.2v/d.7023/l.75. 64 TsGAKFFD-SPb Ar27071, Ar27073, Ar36711 and Ar37081. 65 TsGAIPD-SPb/f.K-598/op.5/d.232/ll.16–17; ‘Vstrechaem dorogykh voinov,’ Smena, 16 July 1945, p. 2. 66 TsGAIPD-SPb/f.24/op.2v/d.7023/l.88. 67 RGASPI/f.17/op.88/d.471/l.88; TsGAIPD-SPb/f.25/d.388/l.35. 68 RGASPI/f.17/op.122/d.147/ll.181–2. 69 TsGAKFFD-SPb Ar110406, RGAKFD 0-106426. 70 TsGAKFFD-SPb, Ar99074, Gr64654. 71 TsGAIPD-SPb/f.24/op.2v/d.7023/l.88ob. 72 TsGAIPD-SPb/f.24/op.2v/d.7003/l.103. 73 RGASPI/f.17/op.88/d.650/ll.6–9 published in E. Iu. Zubkova (ed.), Sovetskaia zhizn’ 1945–1953 (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2003), pp. 271–3; E. Iu. Zubkova, Poslevoennoe sovetskoe obshchestvo: politika i povsednevnost’, 1945–1953 (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2000), p. 43; Lennart Samuelson, Tankograd: Sekrety russkogo tyla, 1917–1953 (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2010), p. 260; Manley, To the Tashkent Station, pp. 238–54. 74 TsGAKFFD-SPb, Ar27075, Ar27068. 75 Sheila Fitzpatrick, ‘Postwar Soviet Society: The “Return to Normalcy” 1945–53’, in Susan J. Linz (ed.), The Impact of World War II on the Soviet Union (Totowa, NJ: Rowman & Allanheld, 1985), pp. 129–52 (pp. 135–6). 76 Mark Edele, ‘Veterans and the Village: The Impact of Red Army Demobilization on Soviet Urbanization, 1945–1955’, Russian History, 36:2 (2009), pp. 159–82. 77 Edele, Soviet Veterans, pp. 22–4. 78 Roger R. Reese, Why Stalin’s Soldiers Fought: The Red Army’s Military Effectiveness in World War II (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2011), p. 303.

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  79 Roger D. Markwick and Euridice Charon Cardona, Soviet Women on the Frontline: Second World War (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), p. 171.   80 Irina Dunaevskaia, Ot Leningrada do Kenigsberga: Dnevik voennoi perevodchitsy (1942–1945) (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2010), p. 360.   81 Dunaevskaia, Ot Leningrada do Kenigsberga, pp. 405, 408–9.   82 Markwick and Cardona, Soviet Women on the Frontline, p. 232.   83 ‘Voiny protivovozhdushnoi oborony vozvratilis’ v rodnoi Leningrad’, Krasnaia zvezda 17 July 1945, p. 1.   84 TsGA-SPb/f.7179/op.53a/d.90/l.59 reprinted in Dzeniskevich (ed.), Iz rainov oblasti soobshchaiut . . ., pp. 503–4.   85 On the long-­term prospects of women with technical skills, such as aviators, for remaining in the military see Markwick and Cardona, Soviet Women on the Frontline, p. 234; and Reina Pennington, Wings, Women and War: Soviet Airwomen in World War II Combat (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2001), pp. 143–59.   86 Reese, Why Stalin’s Soldiers Fought, pp. 291–5; Edele, Soviet Veterans, pp. 73–8; Merridale, Ivan’s War, pp. 206–8; Markwick and Cardona, Soviet Women on the Frontline, pp. 239–41. On shifting gender relations within the wartime army see Anna Krylova, Soviet Women in Combat: A History of Violence on the Eastern Front (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010).   87 TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.17/d.1245/ll.26–32.   88 TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.17/d.1245/ll.35–6.   89 TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.17/d.1519/l.87, 88, 156, 175, 197. On the reconstruction of Leningrad’s historic and architectural monuments see Stephen Maddox, ‘Healing the Wounds: Commemorations, Myths, and the Restoration of Leningrad’s Imperial Heritage, 1941–1950’ (Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Toronto, 2008).   90 TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.17/d.1245.   91 Pope, ‘British Demobilization’, pp. 68–71; Allport, Demobbed, pp. 23–4.   92 On child soldiers see Olga Kucherenko, Little Soldiers: How Soviet Children Went to War, 1941–1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011).   93 Bob Moore and Barbara Hately-Broad (eds), Prisoners of War, Prisoners of Peace Captivity: Homecoming and Memory in World War II (Oxford: Berg, 2005); Frank Biess, Homecomings: Returning POWs and the Legacies of Defeat in Postwar Germany (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006).   94 N. I. Sokolov, ‘Iz dnevnika voennoplennogo krasnoarmeitsa’, in Iu. V. Krivosheeva (ed.), Leningradskaia oblast’ v Velikoi Otechestvennoi voine. K 65-letiu Pobedy (St. Petersburg: 2012), pp. 412–39 (pp. 425–8).   95 Reese, Why Stalin’s Soldiers Fought, pp. 57–100.   96 Pavel Polian, ‘The Internment of Returning Soviet Prisoners of War after 1945’, in Moore and Hately-Broad (eds), Prisoners of War, Prisoners of Peace, 123–39 (pp. 124–8).   97 Edele, Soviet Veterans, p. 115; Merridale, Ivan’s War, pp. 98, 134–5; Reese, Why Stalin’s Soldiers Fought, pp. 60–3, 162–5.   98 Polian, ‘The Internment of Returning Soviet Prisoners of War’, 129; Vanessa Voisin, ‘Retribution or Reintegrate? The Ambiguity of Soviet Policies Towards Repatriates: the Case of Kalinin Province, 1943–1950’, Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas, Neue Folge, 55:1 (2007), pp. 34–55.   99 Edele, Soviet Veterans, p. 102. 100 GARF-SSSR/f.R-9401/op.2/d.92/ll.6–8 published in V. N. Khastov, V. P. Naumov, and N. S. Plotnikova (eds), Lubianka. Stalin i NKVD-RKGB-GUKP-“SMERSH”. 1939-Mart 1946 (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo materik, 2006), pp. 485–6.

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101 I. V. Govorov, ‘Proverochno-­fil’tratsionnie organy v sisteme NKVD 1944–1946 gg. (po materialam Leningradskoi oblasti)’, in Viktor Petrovich Sal’nokov (ed.), Ministerstvo vnutrennykh del: stranitsy istorri [1802-2002 gg.] (St. Petersburg: Saint-Peterburgskii Universitet MVD Rossii, 2001), pp. 474–95 (p. 482). 102 Govorov, ‘Proverochno-­fil’tratsionnie organy’, pp. 480, 484; V. A. Ivanov, Missiia ordena: Mekhanizm massovykh repressii v Sovetskoi Rossii v kontse 20-kh-40-kh gg. (na materialakh Severo-Zapada RSFSR) (St. Petersburg: LISS, 1997), p. 301. Ivanov, however, suggests that filtration Camp 316 was also based in the Leningrad region, in fact it was located near Tallinn, and he suggests that Camp 323 was located in Bereven’ka near to the town of Slantsy. 103 Edele, Soviet Veterans, p. 103. 104 Govorov, ‘Proverochno-­fil’tratsionnie organy’, p. 485. 105 Govorov, ‘Proverochno-­fil’tratsionnie organy’, p. 486; Ivanov, Missiia ordena, p. 302, p. 454. 106 Anne Applebaum, GULAG: A History of the Soviet Camps (London: Allen Lane, 2003), p. 395; Galina Ivanova, Labour Camp Socialism: The Gulag in the Soviet Totalitarian System (Armonk, NY and London: M. E. Sharpe, 2000), p. 43. 107 Govorov, ‘Proverochno-­fil’tratsionnie organy’, p. 489. 108 Edele, Soviet Veterans, p. 103. 109 Kees Boterbloem, ‘Soviet GIs or Decembrists? The Reintegration into Postwar Soviet Society of Russian Soldiers, POWS, Partisans, and Civilians Who Lived under German Occupation’, War and Society, 25:1 (2006), pp. 77–88 (p. 84). 110 Nick Baron, ‘Remaking Soviet Society: the Filtration of Returnees from Nazi Germany, 1944–49’, in Peter Gatrell and Nick Baron (eds), Warlands: Population Resettlement and State Reconstruction in the Soviet-East European Borderlands, 1945–50 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), pp. 89–116 (p. 100). 111 Edele, Soviet Veterans, pp. 102–28; Govorov, ‘Proverochno-­fil’tratsionnie organy’, pp. 491–5; Voisin, ‘Retribution or Reintegrate?’, p. 43. 112 Polian, ‘The Internment of Returning Soviet Prisoners of War’, p. 133. 113 Nicolas Werth, Cannibal Island: Death in a Siberian Gulag, trans. Steven Rendall (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007), p. 20. On passportization see David Shearer, ‘Elements Near and Alien: Passportization, Policing, and Identity in the Stalinist State, 1932–1952’, Journal of Modern History, 76:4 (2004), pp. 835–81. 114 Edele, Soviet Veterans, p. 128; Mark Edele, ‘Collective Action in Soviet Society: The Case of War Veterans’, in Alexopoulos, Hessler and Tomoff (eds), Writing the Stalin Era, pp. 117–32. 115 Pavel Polian, ‘The Internment of Returning Soviet Prisoners of War after 1945’, p. 137. 116 TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.36/d.226/l.208. 117 TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.36/d.226/l.104; Edele, ‘A Generation of Victors’, pp. 585–6. 118 TsGAIPD-SPb/f.24/op.12/d.135/l.113. Edele’s figures indicate that by 1 January 1947 47,618 veterans had been demobilized in the Leningrad oblast’. 119 TsGA-SPb/f.9156/op.4/d.420/l.43. 120 TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.36/d.226/l.136. 121 TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.36/d.201/l.3; TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.36/d.2261/l.104, l.136. 122 TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.36/d.226/l.208. 123 TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.36/d.201/l.75. 124 V. N. Donchenko, ‘Demobilizatsiia sovetskoi armii i reshenie problem kadrov v pervye poslevoennye gody’, Istoriia SSSR, No.3 (1970), 96–102 (p. 98). 125 TsGAIPD-SPb/f.24/op.12/d.135/ll.141–3. 126 TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.36/d.226/l.104; TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.36/d.226/l.208.

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2  ‘Homes for Heroes’   1 V. A. Aleksandov, ‘S polia boia – na sel’skyiu niva’, in V. P. Cherepov (ed.), Veterany sela vspominaiut . . ., (Leningrad: Izdatel’stvo Leningradskim pravleniem rossiskogo ITO sel’skogo khoziaistva, 1990), pp. 24–33 (p. 24); Aleksandrov, ‘Vyborg–Berlin– Moshkovye Poliany’, in V. P. Cherepov (ed.), Veterany sela vspominaiut o voine (St. Petersburg: 1995), pp. 6–17.   2 Stephen Lovell, The Shadow of War: Russia and the USSR, 1941 to the Present (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), p. 146.   3 Rebecca Manley, ‘ “Where should we settle the comrades next?” The adjudication of housing claims and the construction of the postwar order’, in Juliane Fürst (ed.), Late Stalinist Russia: Society between Reconstruction and Reinvention (London: Routledge, 2006), pp. 233–46 (p. 234).   4 David Englander, ‘Soldiers and Social Reform in the First and Second World Wars’, Historical Research, 67 (1994), pp. 318–26; Adam R. Seipp, The Ordeal of Peace: Demobilization and the Urban Experience in Britain and Germany, 1917–1921 (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009), pp. 15–18. This approach is particularly strong in studies of American Second World War veterans: Suzanne Mettler, Soldiers to Citizens: The G.I. Bill and the Making of the Greatest Generation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005); Michael J. Bennett, When Dreams Came True: The G.I. Bill and the Making of Modern America (Washington: Brassey’s, 2000); Michael D. Gambone, The Greatest Generation Comes Home: The Veteran in American Society (College Station, TX: Texas A&M University Press, 2005).   5 Mark Edele, Soviet Veterans of the Second World War: A Popular Movement in an Authoritarian Society, 1941–1991 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), pp. 185–214; Edele, ‘Soviet Veterans as an Entitlement Group, 1945–1955’, Slavic Review, 65:1 (2006), pp. 111–37.   6 Edele, ‘Soviet Veterans as an Entitlement Group’, p. 112.   7 Edele, Soviet Veterans, p. 185.   8 For examples from demobilizations after the First World War see Seipp, The Ordeal of Peace and Richard Bessel, Germany After the First World War (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995). For examples after 1945 see; Alan Allport, Demobbed: Coming Home After the Second World War (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010); James M. Diehl, The Thanks of the Fatherland: German Veterans After the Second World War (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1993); Neil J. Diamant, Embattled Glory: Veterans, Military Families, and the Politics of Patriotism in China, 1949–2007 (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2009).   9 John Steinbeck, A Russian Journal (London: William Heinemann, 1949), p. 12. See also Alexander Werth, Leningrad (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1944), pp. 186–7. 10 TsGAIPD-SPb/f.24/op.2v/d.7186/l.2. Official reports estimated the population of the Leningrad oblast’ in January 1941 as 1,505,000 TsGAIPD-SPb/f.24/op.2/d.7177/l.2. 11 GARF-RSFSR/f.A-259/op.6/d.3805/l.197. From this it can be extrapolated that the document estimated that the prewar population of the Leningrad oblast’ was 1,587,269 people. 12 TsGAIPD-SPb/f.24/op.2v/d.7555/ll.18–21. 13 TsGAIPD-SPb/f.24/op.12/d.111/ll.43–8 (l.45). 14 Elena Zubkova, Poslevoennoe sovetskoe obshchestvo: politika i povsednevnost’, 1945– 1953 (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2000), p. 55. 15 TsGA-SPb/f.7179/op.53/d.142/ll.83–5.

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16 GARF-RSFSR/f.A-259/op.6/d.4077/ll.41–5 (l.41); GARF-RSFSR/f.A-259/op.6/ d.3805/l.46. 17 TsGAIPD-SPb/f.24/op.13/d.1601/l.68. 18 TsGAIPD-SPb/f.24/op.12/d.111/ll.63–64. 19 TsGAIPD-SPb/f.24/op.13/d.1601/ll.7–7ob; TsGAIPD-SPb/f.24/op.12/d.111/l.45. 20 Mark B. Smith, Property of Communists: The Urban Housing Program from Stalin to Khrushchev (DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press, 2010), p. 26. 21 On levels of destruction in other Soviet cities see Karl D. Qualls, From Ruins to Reconstruction: Urban Identity in Soviet Sevastopol after World War II (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2009), pp. 1–45; Jeffrey W. Jones, Everyday Life and the ‘Reconstruction’ of Soviet Russia During and After the Great Patriotic War, 1943–1948 (Bloomington, IN: Slavica, 2008); Kees Boterbloem, Life and Death under Stalin: Kalinin Province, 1945–1953 (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1999), pp. 43–53; Smith, Property of Communists, pp. 26–8. For a comparison with German cities see Jeffrey M. Dieffendorf, In the Wake of War: The Reconstruction of German Cities after World War II (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993). On Leningrad see V. A. Kamenskii and A. I. Naumov, Leningrad: gradostroitel’nye problemy razvitiia (Leningrad: Stroizdat leningradskoe otdelenie, 1973), p. 104 and V. I. Piliavskii, ‘Arkhitektura i stroitel’stvo’, in Ocherki istorii Leningrada: Tom.6 Leningrad v period zaversheniia stroitel’stva sotsializma i postepennogo perekhoda k kommunizmy, 1946–1965gg (Leningrad: Nauka, 1970), pp. 207–30 (p. 207). The figure of 20 per cent of housing stock being destroyed is cited in TsGAIPD-SPb/f.24/ op.2v/d.6687/ll.204–6, reprinted in A. Z. Dzeniskevich (ed.), Leningrad v osade: sbornik dokumentov o geroicheskoi oborone Leningrada v gody Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny, 1941–1944 (St. Petersburg: Liki Rossii, 1995), pp. 559–61 (p. 559). 22 Steinbeck, A Russian Journal, p. 12; Werth, Leningrad, p. 185; Alexander Clifford and Jenny Nicholson, The Sickle and the Stars (London: Peter Davies, 1948), pp. 114–15. 23 Steven Maddox, ‘These Monuments Must Be Protected! The Stalinist Turn to the Past and Historic Preservation During the Blockade of Leningrad’, Russian Review, 70:4 (2011), pp. 608–26; Maddox, ‘Healing the Wounds: Commemorations, Myths, and the Restoration of Leningrad’s Imperial Heritage, 1941–1950’ (Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Toronto, 2008). On wartime reconstruction see TsGA-SPb/f.7384/ op.36/d.133/ll.80–1 and TsGAIPD-SPb/f.25/op.2/d.5139/ll.80–6 both reprinted in N. B. Lebedeva (ed.), Ot voiny k miry: Leningrad. 1944–1945. Sbornik dokumentov (St. Petersburg: Liki Rossii, 2013), pp. 45–50. 24 Bidlack and Lomagin, The Leningrad Blockade, p. 38. For alternative but broadly consistent figures see TsGA-SPb/f.9156/op.4/d.197/ll.128–34, reprinted in Dzeniskevich (ed.), Leningrad v osade, pp. 562–72 (p. 562). 25 Bidlack and Lomagin, The Leningrad Blockade, p. 295; Anna Reid, Leningrad: Tragedy of a City Under Siege, 1941–44 (London: Bloomsbury, 2011), p. 215. 26 TsGAIPD-SPb, f. 4000, op. 10, d. 810, l. 42. 27 Piliavskii, ‘Arkhitektura i stroitel’stvo’, p. 207, and A. Z. Vakser, Leningrad poslevoennyi 1945–1982 gody (St. Petersburg: Izdatel’stvo Ostrov, 2005), p. 71. For marginally lower figures see O. N. Arstiutkina, ‘Leningradskaia partiinaia organizatsiia v bor’be za vosstanovlenie zhilogo fonda (1944–1945gg.)’, Vestnik Leningradskogo Universiteta No.20 (1964), pp. 17–28 (p. 17), Blair A. Ruble, ‘The Leningrad Affair and the Provincialization of Leningrad’, Russian Review, 42:3 (1983), pp. 301–20 (pp. 304–5); ‘Za dal’neishii rastsvet nashego liubimogo goroda’, Leningradskaia pravda, 18 January 1947, p. 1, ‘O sostoianii eksploatatsii zhilogo fonda goroda Leningrada i podgotovke

Notes

28 29 30 31 32

33 34 35 36

37 38 39

40 41 42

43 44 45

46

197

ego k zime’, Leningradskaia pravda, 2 September 1947, p. 2, ‘Vo Slavy Rodnogo Goroda’, Leningradskaia pravda, 7 November 1947, p. 3. Arstiutkina, ‘Leningradskaia partiinaia organizatsiia’, p. 17. Donald Filtzer, The Hazards of Urban Life in Late Stalinist Russia: Health, hygiene and living standards, 1943–1953 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010); Smith, Property of Communists, pp. 27–8. Arstiutkina, ‘Leningradskaia partiinaia organizatsiia’, p. 17; S. N. Semanov, ‘Gorodskoe khoziaistvo’, in Ocherki istorii Leningrad, Vol.6, pp. 251–71 (p. 251). TsGAIPD-SPb/f.25/op.2/d.5358/ll.125–6, reprinted in N. B. Lebedeva (ed.), Ot voiny k miry, pp. 206–7. Siobhan Peeling, ‘Dirt, Disease and Disorder: Population Re-­placement in Postwar Leningrad and the “Danger” of Social Contamination’, in Peter Gatrell and Nick Baron (eds), Warlands: Population Resettlement and State Reconstruction in the Soviet-East European Borderlands, 1945–50 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), pp. 117–39 (pp. 117–24). Biulleten’ Lengorispolkoma, 15 June 1946, p. 3. TsGAIPD-SPb/f.25/op.19/d.3/ll.27–30. Smith, Property of Communists, p. 32. I. Lazutin, ‘Boevye Pomoshchniki sovetov Leningrada’, in A. Bubnov (ed.), Opyt raboty obshchestvennykh komissii sodeistviia vosstanovlenie i ekspluatatsii domokhoziaistv goroda Leningrada (Leningrad: Lenizdat, 1948), pp. 11–23 (p. 13); Arsiutkina, ‘Leningradskaia partiinaia organizatsiia’, pp. 26–8. A. A. Amosova, Predannyi zabveniiu: politicheskaia biografiia Petra Popkova. 1937–1950 (St. Petersburg: Aleteiia, 2014), p. 134. Semanov, ‘Gorodskoe khoziaistvo’, p. 251. Vakser, Leningrad poslevoennyi, p. 76; V. A. Ezhov, ‘Vosstanovlenie Leningrada (1943–1950)’, in V. A. Kutuzov and E. G. Levina (eds), Vozrozhdenie: Vospominaniia, ocherki i dokumenty o vosstanovlenii Leningrada (Leningrad: Lenizdat, 1977), p. 15; Amosova, Predannyi zabveniiu, pp. 155–9. Smith, Property of Communists, p. 31. Vakser, Leningrad poslevoennyi, p. 76. Cattell argues for 1948, Semanov 1949 and Ruble July 1950. See David T. Cattell, Leningrad: A Case Study of Soviet Urban Government (New York, Washington and London: Praeger, 1968), p. 7; Semanov, ‘Gorodskoe khoziaistvo’, p. 251; and Ruble, ‘The Leningrad Affair’, pp. 301–2. Smith, Property of Communists, p. 37. E. Iu. Zubkova (ed.), Sovetskaia zhizn’ 1945–1953 (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2003), p. 176. On communal apartments see Katerina Gerasimova, ‘Public Privacy in the Soviet Communal Apartment’, in David Crowley and Susan E. Reid (eds), Socialist Spaces: Sites of Everyday Life in the Eastern Bloc (Oxford: Berg, 2002), pp. 207–30; Crowley and Reid, ‘Public Space in the Communal Apartment’, in Gabor T. Rittersporn, Rolfe Malte and Jan C. Behrends (eds), Public Spheres in Soviet Type Societies: Between the Great Show of the Party State and Religious Counter Cultures (Frankfurt am Main and Oxford: Peter Lang, 2003), pp. 165–95; Il’ia Utekhin, Ocherki kommunal’nogo byta. Izdanie vtoroe, dopolnennoe (Moscow: OGI, 2004). Sheila Fitzpatrick, Everyday Stalinism: Ordinary Life in Extraordinary Times: Soviet Russia in the 1930s (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 47; Smith, Property of Communists, pp. 43–5.

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47 See for example TsGAIPD-SPb/f.K-598/op.6/d.113/ll.1–4; TsGA-SPb/f.7179/ op.53/d.150/ll.61–4; TsGA-SPb/f.7179/op.53/d.173/ll.7–8, ll.19–19ob. 48 Quoted in Svetlana Alexiyevich, War’s Unwomanly Face (Moscow: Progress, 1985), p. 137. 49 TsGAIPD-SPb/f.4000/op.18/d.334/ll.34–6. On Gonchukov’s idiosyncratic memoirs see Catriona Kelly, St Petersburg: Shadows of the Past (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2014), pp. 129–32. 50 Lynne Attwood, Gender and Housing in Soviet Russia: Private Life in a Public Sphere (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2010), p. 150. 51 Elena Seniavskaia, Frontovoe pokolenie, 1941–1945: Istoriko-­psikhologicheskoe issledovanie (Moscow: IRI-RAN, 1995); Roger D. Markwick and Euridice Charon Cardona, Soviet Women on the Frontline in the Second World War (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), pp. 230–1. These ideas are explored further in Chapter 6. 52 Elena Zubkova, Russia After the War: Hopes, Illusions, and Disappointments, 1945–1957, ed. and trans. Hugh Ragsdale (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1998), pp. 11–19. 53 Jerry F. Hough, ‘Debates About the Postwar World’, in Linz (ed.), The Impact of World War II, pp. 253–81 (p. 255). 54 For a similar assessment of current historiographical trends see Dan Healey, ‘Comrades, Queers, and “Oddballs”: Sodomy, Masculinity, and Gendered Violence in Leningrad Province of the 1950s’, Journal of the History of Sexuality, 21:3 (2012), pp. 496–522 (p. 497). Important examples include: Zubkova, Poslevoennoe sovetskoe obshchestvo; Edele, Soviet Veterans; Juliane Fürst, Stalin’s Last Generation: Soviet Post-War Youth and the Emergence of Mature Socialism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010); Shaun Morcom, ‘Social Workings of Soviet Power: State-Society Relations in Postwar Russia 1945–1953’ (D.Phil. Thesis, University of Oxford, 2006); Smith, Property of Communists, p. 25. 55 Roger R. Reese, Why Stalin’s Soldiers Fought: The Red Army’s Military Effectiveness in World War II (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2011), p. 307; Orlando Figes, The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin’s Russia (London: Allen Lane, 2008), pp. 459–63. 56 I. A. Osipov (ed.), Sbornik: ukazov, postanovlenii, reshenii, rasporiazhenii i prikazov voennogo vremeni, 1941–1942 (Leningrad: Leningradskoe gazetnoe zhurnal’noe i knizhnoe izdatel’stvo, 1942), pp. 180–1. 57 Trudovoe ustroistvo invalidov v SSSR. Sbornik normativnykh aktov i metodicheskikh materialov (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stve iuridcheskoi literatury, 1963), p. 39. 58 ‘Zakon o demobilizatsii starshikh vozrastov lichnogo sosatava deistvuiushchei armii’, Leningradskaia pravda, 24 June 1945, p. 1. 59 ‘O merropriiatiakh po okazaniiu pomoshchi demobilizovannym sem’iam pogibshikh voinov, invalidam otechestvennoi voiny i sem’iam voennoslyzhashchikh’, Postanovlenie SNK SSSR ot 21 Sentiabria 1945 g, No.2436, published in Trudovoe ustroistvo invalidov v SSSR, p. 314; Smith, Property of Communists, p. 28. 60 Christine Varga-Harris, ‘Forging Citizenship on the Home Front. Reviving the Socialist Contract and Constructing Soviet Identity during the Thaw’, in Polly Jones (ed.), The Dilemmas of De-Stalinization. Negotiating Cultural and Social Change in the Khrushchev Era (London: Routledge, 2006), pp. 101–16 (p. 106). 61 Amir Weiner, Making Sense of War: The Second World War and the Fate of the Bolshevik Revolution (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001), p. 68. 62 See for example Nina Vatolina’s poster Ty khrabro voeval s vragom – voidi, khoziain, v novyi dom! (1945) reproduced in P. A. Snopkov et al., Plakaty voiny i pobedy, 1941–1945 (Moscow: Kontakt-Kul’tura, 2005), p. 217.

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63 For example, ‘Dopolnitel’nye l’goty sem’iam uchastnikov otechestvennoi voiny’, Leningradskaia pravda, 6 October 1945, p. 1; ‘Pomosh’ semiam zashchitnikov rodiny’, Leningradskaia pravda, 16 October 1945, p. 1; ‘Leningradtsy zabotiatsia o sem’iakh zashchitnikov rodiny’, Leningradskaia pravda, 26 February 1946, p. 2; ‘L’goty zashchitnikov rodiny’, Vechernii Leningrad, 26 July 1946, p. 2; ‘V sanatoriiakh i zdravnitsakh. Zabota ob uchastnikov otechestvennoi voiny’, Vechernii Leningrad, 21 August 1946, p. 1. 64 Pamiatka demobilizovannym soldatami i serzhantam sovetskoi armii, sostavlena glavnoi voennoi prokuraturoi vooruzhennykh sil SSSR, 3-e dopolnennoe izdanie (Moscow: Voennoe Izdatel’stvo, Ministerstva Vooryzhennykh Sil SSSR, 1947). 65 K. Ivanov, ‘Politicheskaia rabota s demobilizyemymi’, Krasnaia zvevda, 13 July 1945, p. 3. 66 Mark Edele, ‘A “Generation of Victors?” Soviet Second World War Veterans From Demobilization to Organization, 1941–1956’ (Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Chicago, 2004) pp. 193–7. On the interaction between rumour and propaganda see Timothy Johnston, Being Soviet: Identity, Rumour and Everyday Life under Stalin. 1939–1953 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011); Johnston, ‘Subversive Tales? War Rumours in the Soviet Union, 1945–1947’, in Fürst (ed.), Late Stalinist Russia, pp. 62–78 (pp. 64–9). I outline my position on rumour in Robert Dale, ‘The Valaam Myth and the Fate of Leningrad’s Disabled Veterans’, Russian Review, 72:2 (2013), pp. 260–84 (pp. 264–6). 67 V. L. Piankevich, ‘Liudi zhili slukhami’: Neformal’noe kommunikativnoe prostranstvo blokadnogo Leningrada (St. Petersburg: Vladimir Dal’, 2014). 68 TsGAIPD-SPb/f.25/op.5/d.388/l.35. 69 TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.36/d.148/ll.154–5. 70 TsGAIPD-SPb/f.24/op.2v/d.7003/l.104. 71 LOGAV/f.R-3672/op.1/d.4/l.9ob and d.6/ll.27–9. 72 Biulleten’ Lengorispolkoma, 15 May 1946, pp. 10–11; see also ‘Lektsii, besedy, konsul’tatsii. V agitpunkte na Kolomenskoi ulitsa’, Vechernii Leningrad, 5 August 1946, p. 1. 73 LOGAV/f.R-3672/op.1/d.6/l.10. 74 Biulleten’ Lengorispolkoma, 15 May 1946, pp. 10–11; LOGAV/f.R-3672/op.1/d.9/ ll.7ob–8. 75 Biulleten’ Lenoblispolkoma, No.13, 1945, pp. 3–4. 76 Biulleten’ Lengorispolkoma, No.13, 1945, pp. 5–6 (p. 5). 77 TsGAIPD-SPb/f.25/op.5/d.388/l.36. 78 TsGAIPD-SPb/f.25/op.12/d.434/l.3. 79 TsGAIPD-SPb/f.25/op.5/d.388/l.36. 80 TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.17/d.1519/l.83. 81 TsGAIPD-SPb/f.4000/op.18/d.471/l.133. 82 Housing department statistics cover the period between January and September 1946 and the planning department statistics the period between November 1945 and October 1946. TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.17/d.1520/ll.19, 16, 28 and op.29/d.216/ll.8, 6 , 12, 28, 26, 33, 34, 36, 35, 32; TsGA-SPb/f. 7384/op.29/d.114/ll.1–5ob. Discrepancies between different data gathering bodies were a common feature of Soviet statistics; Filtzer, The Hazards of Urban Life, pp. 17–18. 83 TsGAIPD-SPb/f.25/op.5/d.388/ll.7ob–8. 84 TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.29/d.144/l.5ob. 85 TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.25/d.241/l.1. 86 TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.25/d.241/l.7. 87 TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.25/d.241/l.1. 88 TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.29/d.216/l.32.

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  89 Author’s calculation TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.17/d.1520/ll.19, 16, 28; TsGA-SPb/f.7384/ op.29/d.216/ll.8, 6, 10, 12, 28, 26, 33, 34, 36, 35, 32.   90 TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.29/d.216/l.35.   91 TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.29/d.216/ll.6–8.   92 TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.17/d.1519/l.83.   93 TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.36/d.214/ll.64–6 (l.65).   94 LOGAV/f.R-4380/op.1/d.131/ll.2, 6.   95 LOGAV/f.R-4380/op.1/d.1312/ll.2, 6, 10, 11.   96 LOGAV/f.R-4380/op.1/d.131/ll.6, 11.   97 LOGAV/f.R-4380/op.1/d.1312/ll.6, 11, 27.   98 Elizabeth White, ‘After the War Was Over: The Civilian Return to Leningrad’, Europe-Asia Studies, 59:7 (2007), pp. 1145–61 (p. 1154).   99 Bidlack and Lomagin, The Leningrad Blockade, p. 48. 100 Bidlack and Lomagin, The Leningrad Blockade, p. 295. On factory enclaves see pp. 291–9. 101 Manley, ‘Where should we settle the comrades next?’, p. 234. 102 Osipov (ed.), Sbornik, pp. 187–9. 103 TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.25/d.241/l.1. 104 Biulleten’ Lengorispolkoma, No.3, 1947, pp. 13–14. 105 TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.25/d.241/l.5. 106 Bidlack and Lomagin, The Leningrad Blockade, p. 213. 107 TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.25/d.241/l.5. 108 Biulleten’ Lengorispolkoma, No.15, 1947, pp. 1–2; ‘V Ispolkome Lengorsoveta’, Leningradskaia pravda, 16 July 1947, p. 4. 109 Biulleten’ Lenoblispolkoma, No.18, 1946, pp. 12–13. 110 Manley, ‘Where should we settle the comrades next?’, p. 234. 111 Zubkova, Poslevoennoe sovetskoe obshchestvo, p. 56. 112 Osipov (ed.), Sbornik, pp. 189–90, 228–30. 113 Bidlack and Lomagin, The Leningrad Blockade, p. 295. 114 ‘Zatianuvsheesia delo’, Smena, 25 October 1945, p. 3; ‘Tri mesiatsa volokity’, Leningrasdskaia pravda, 15 August 1945, p. 3. 115 TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.29/d.110/l.23. 116 TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.25/d.241/l.7. 117 TsGAIPD-SPb/f.24/op.2v/d.7482/ll.39–40. 118 On letter writing see Sheila Fitzpatrick, ‘Supplicants and Citizens: Public Letter-Writing in Soviet Russia in the 1930s’, Slavic Review, 55:1 (1996), pp. 78–105, Fitzpatrick, ‘Signals from Below: Soviet Letters of Denunciation of the 1930s’, Journal of Modern History, 68:4 (1996), pp. 831–66 and Matthew E. Lenoe, ‘Letter Writing and the State. Reader Correspondence with Newspapers as a Source for Early Soviet History’, Cahiers du Monde Russe, 40:1–2 (1999), pp. 139–70. 119 TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.25/d.241/l.5; TsGAIPD-SPb/f.24/op.2v/d.7003/l.104. 120 TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.29/d.110/l.5, ll.8–12. 121 TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.29/d.110/ll.8–25. 122 LOGAV/f.R-4380/op.1/d.1150/ll.1–1ob, 3, 5, 9, 22, 45, 105–7, 108–9, 116–17, 120–2. 123 LOGAV/f.R-4380/op.1/d.1305/l.24, 2, 1, 3. 124 LOGAV/f.R-4380/op.1/d.1305/ll.5–5ob. 125 LOGAV/f.R-4380/op.1/d.1305/l.4. 126 LOGAV/f.R-4380/op.1/d.1305/l.8, 10. 127 LOGAV/f.R-4380/op.1/d.1305/l.12, 15.

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128 LOGAV/f.R-4380/op.1/d.1305/l.16. 129 LOGAV/f.R-4380/op.1/d.1305/l.17. 130 LOGAV/f.R-4380/op.1/d.1306/l.1, 16. 131 LOGAV/f.R-4380/op.1/d.1144/l.32. 132 LOGAV/f.R-4380/op.1/d.1144/l.1. 133 Rebecca Manley, To the Tashkent Station: Evacuation and Survival in the Soviet Union at War (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2009), p. 248. 134 Manley, To the Tashkent Station, pp. 256–8; TsGAIPD-SPb/f.24/op.2v/d.6687/ ll.204–6 reprinted in Dzeniskevich (ed.), Leningrad v osade, pp. 559–61. 135 Manley, To the Tashkent Station, p. 261. 136 Manley, ‘Where should we settle the comrades next?’, pp. 235–6, TsGAIPD-SPb/f.24/ op.2v/d.7481/ll. 38–9; TsGAIPD-SPb/f.25/op.19/d.3/l.6. 137 Rebecca Manley, ‘The Perils of Displacement: The Soviet Evacuee Between Refugee and Deportee’, Contemporary European History, 16:4 (2007), pp. 495–509 (p. 505). 138 TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.29/d.110/l.49. 139 TsGAIPD-SPb/f.24/op.12/d.135/ll.37–8. 140 LOGAV/f.R-4380/op.1/d.1300/ll.1–1ob/7–7ob. 141 LOGAV/f.R-4380/op.1/d.1311/l.1, 11, 12. 142 LOGAV/f.R-4380/op.1/d.1312/l.6, 11, 27. 143 LOGAV/f.R-4380/op.1/d.1312/l.28. 144 LOGAV/f.R-4380/op.1/d.1312/l.44. 145 Fitzpatrick, Everyday Stalinism, pp. 47–8. 146 Fitzpatrick, ‘Signals from Below’. 147 ‘Na Moskovskom vokzale’, Leningradskaia pravda, 14 July 1945, p. 3; ‘Leningrad gotovit’sia k vstreche demobilizuemykh’, Smena, 5 July 1945, p. 1; ‘Frunzentsy gotoviatsia k vstreche demobilizovannykh’, Smena, 4 July 1945, p. 1; ‘Dlia demobilzovannykh voinov’, Smena, 2 August 1945, p. 2. 148 TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.17/d.1519/ll.80–1. 149 TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.17/d.1520/l.19. 150 TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.29/d.216/l.19–19ob. 151 TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.17/d.1520/l.19, 16. 152 TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.29/d.216/l. 28. 153 TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.29/d.216/l.6, 8. 154 TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.29/d.216/l.28. 155 TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.17/d.1519/l.207; TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.29/d.216/l.19. 156 TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.17/d.1520/l.19. 157 TsGAIPD-SPb/f.24/op.2v/d.7023/l.219. 158 TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.36/d.148/l.150. 159 I. V. Govorov, Prestupnost’ i bor’ba s nei v poslevoennom Leningrade (1945–1955): opyt istoricheskogo analiza (St. Petersburg: Izdatal’stvo Sankt-Peterburgskogo Universiteta, 2004), p. 105. 160 TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.36/d.149/l.46ob, 47ob, 82ob; TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.36/d.187/l.193. 161 GARF-SSSR/f.R-7525/op.55/d.10/ll.158, 151–53. 162 White, ‘After the War’, p. 1156. 163 TsGAIPD-SPb/f.24/op.2v/d.7023/l.219; TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.17/d.1520/l.13. 164 TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.17/d.1520/ll.13–13ob. 165 TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.17/d.1519/l.81; TsGAIPD-SPb/f.24/op.2v/d.7023/ll.218–9, TsGAIPD-SPb/f.24/op.12/d.111/l.55ob; TsGAIPD-SPb/f.24/op.12/d.135/ll.120– 23ob (l.122).

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166 TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.17/d.1519/l.207. 167 TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.29/d.216/ll.19–19ob. 168 Biulleten’ Lengorispolkoma, No.20, 1947, pp. 16–17. 169 TsGAIPD-SPb/f.24/op.2v/d.7023/l.81. 170 TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.36/d.201/l.77. 171 TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.29/d.216/l.28; TsGAIPD-SPb/f.25/op.12/d.434/ll.58–64. 172 Edele, ‘A “Generation of Victors”?’, p. 191. 173 Smith, Property of Communists, p. 26. 174 Donald Filtzer, Soviet Workers and Late Stalinism: Labour and the Restoration of the Stalinist System after World War II (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), p. 97. 175 TsGAIPD-SPb/f.25/op.19/d.1/l.19. 176 Fitzpatrick, Everyday Stalinism, p. 65. 177 TsGAIPD-SPb/f.4000/op.18/d.491/l.27, 30ob. 178 TsGAIPD-SPb/f.4000/op.18/d.491/l.32, 35. 179 TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.25/d.241/l.3. 180 Bidlack and Lomagin, The Leningrad Blockade, p. 71. 181 N. N. Baranov and V. T. Isachenko, Glavnyi arkhitektor Leningrada: Nikolai Baranov tvorcheskii put’ i sud’ba (St. Petersburg: Stroiizdat, 2001). 182 Kirschenbaum, The Legacy of the Siege, pp. 113–50. 183 Maddox, ‘Healing the Wounds’. 184 Biulleten’ Lengorispolkoma, 28 September 1948, No.20, 1948, pp. 1–6; Biulleten’ Lengorispolkoma, No.8, 1949, pp.1–6. 185 TsGAIPD-SPb/f.25/op.5/d.388/l.4. 186 Trudovoe ustroistvo invalidov v SSSR, p. 314. 187 ‘Dom dlia demobilizovannykh’, Leningradskaia pravda, 28 August 1945, p. 3; ‘Iz zemlianok v doma’, Smena, 22 October 1945, p. 1; ‘Dlia voinov Krasnoi Armii. Remont kvartir vo Fruzenskom raione’, Vechernii Leningrad, 2 March 1946, p. 2; ‘Kvartiry demobilizovannym’, Vechernii Leningrad, 8 March 1946, p. 4. 188 TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.1/d.231/l.3. 189 For typical examples see, ‘Boevye zadachi Leningradskikh stroitelei’, Leningradskaia pravda, 17 June 1947, p. 1; ‘Reshitel’no usilit’ tempy zhilishchnogo stroitel’stva’, Leningradskaia pravda, 3 December 1947, p. 1. 190 Filtzer, Soviet Workers and Late Stalinism, p. 97; Smith, Property of Communists, pp. 51–2. 191 Biulleten’ Lenoblispolkoma, No.8, 1947, pp. 8–9. 192 Biulleten’ Lengorispolkoma, No.13, 15 July 1945, pp. 8–9. 193 Filtzer, Soviet Workers and Late Stalinism, pp. 97–8. 194 Smith, Property of Communists, p. 53. 195 TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.36/d.149/ll.50–1; TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.17/d.1519/l.81. 196 Biulleten’ Lengorispolkoma, No.14, 31 July 1949, p. 5. 197 Smith, Property of Communists, p. 52. 198 TsGAIPD-SPb/f.4000/op.10/d.1376/ll.13–14; TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.3/d.58/ll.253–4, reprinted in A. R. Dzeniskevich (ed.), O blokade Leningrada v Rossii i za rubezhom, Nestor, No.8 (2005, No.2) (St. Petersburg: Nestor Istoriia, 2005), pp. 36–7; Bidlack and Lomagin, The Leningrad Blockade, pp. 282–3; Reid, Leningrad, p. 230. 199 Kirschenbaum, The Legacy of the Siege, pp. 134–8. 200 GARF-RSFSR/f.A-259/op.6/d.3404/ll.298–301 (l.299) 201 Filip Slaveski, The Soviet Occupation of Germany: Hunger, Mass Violence, and the Struggle for Peace, 1945–1947 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), p. 6. For a discussion of looting see Chapter 5.

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202 Bubnov (ed.), Opyt raboty obshchestvennykh komissii sodeistviia vosstanovlenie, pp. 7–10. Also Biulleten’ Lengorispolkoma, No.13, 31 July 1948, pp. 1–2; ‘Enthuziasty – Komissii sodeistviia vosstanovleniiu i ekspluatatsii zhilogo fonda’, Vechernii Leningrad, 3 April 1946, p. 1. 203 On collective activism see Smith, Property of Communists, p. 47 and Bidlack and Lomagin, The Leningrad Blockade, p. 95. 204 ‘Individual’nye doma dlia rabochikh i sluzhashchikh’, Leningradskaia pravda, 17 May 1945, p. 1 and ‘Kredity demobilizovannym iz deistvuiushchei armii’, Leningradskaia pravda, 8 July 1945, p. 1; TsGAIPD-SPb/f.24/op.12/d.135/ll.77–8 (l.77); Mark B. Smith, ‘Individual Forms of Ownership in the Urban Housing Fund of the USSR’, Slavonic and East European Review, 86:2 (2008), pp. 283–305 (pp. 287–8). 205 Filtzer, Soviet Workers and Late Stalinism, p. 96. 206 Smith, Property of Communists, p. 34. 207 TsGAIPD-SPb/f.24/op.12/d.135/l.60; TsGAIPD-SPb/f.24/op.12/d.135, ll.77–8. 208 Kirschenbaum, The Legacy of the Siege, pp. 124–9, 133. 209 Filtzer, Soviet Workers and Late Stalinism, p. 96, note 74. 210 ‘V Svoem Dome – Individual’noe stroitel’stvo v prigorodakh Leningrad’, Vechernii Leningrad, 22 April 1946, p. 2. 211 Biulleten’ Lengorispolkoma, 31 March 1949, pp. 6–12. Given that these districts were in Leningrad’s dacha zone, it is possible that some of the individual construction encouraged here was dacha construction. On postwar dacha construction see Stephen Lovell, ‘Soviet Exurbia: Dachas in Postwar Russia’, in Crowley and Reid (eds), Socialist Spaces, pp. 105–21. 212 Biulleten’ Lenoblispolkoma, No.7, 1946, p. 11. 213 Biulleten’ Lenoblispolkoma, No.23–4, 1946, p. 20. 214 TsGAIPD-SPb/f.24/op.12/d.135/ll.77–8. 215 Biulleten’ Lenoblispolkoma, No.16, 1945, pp. 13–15; TsGAIPD-SPb/f.24/op.11/ d.111/l.32; Kutuzov, Vozrozhdenie zemli Leningradskoi, pp. 88–90. 216 Smith, ‘Individual Forms of Ownership’, p. 289. 217 TsGA-SPb/f.7179/op.53/d.132/ll.231–231ob. 218 TsGA-SPb/f.7179/op.53/d.132/ll 231–231ob. 219 Bidlack and Lomagin, The Leningrad Blockade, pp. 304–5, 352. 220 Catherine Merridale, Ivan’s War: The Red Army 1939–45 (London: Faber and Faber, 2006), p. 309. 221 V. S. Izmozik, ‘Perluistratsiya v pervye gody sovetskoi vlasti’, Voprosy Istorii, No.8 (1995), pp. 26–35; V. S. Izmozik, Glaza i ushi rezhima gosudarstvennyi politicheski kontrol’ za naseleniem Sovetskoi Rossii v 1918–1928 godakh (St. Petersburg: Izdatel’stvo Sankt-Peterburgskogo universiteta ekonomiki i finansov, 1995); Peter Holquist, ‘ “Information is the Alpha and Omega of Our Work”: Bolshevik Surveillance in its Pan-European Context’, Journal of Modern History, 69:3 (1997), pp. 415–50. 222 Sarah Davies, Popular Opinion in Stalin’s Russia: Terror, Propaganda and Dissent, 1934–1991 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). 223 Bidlack and Lomagin, The Leningrad Blockade, p. 225. 224 Bidlack and Lomagin, The Leningrad Blockade, pp. 216–49; see also Richard Bidlack, ‘The Political Mood in Leningrad During the First Year of the Soviet-German War’, Russian Review, 59:1 (2000), pp. 96–113; Nikita Lomagin, Neizvestnaia blokada: Kniga vtoraia (St. Petersburg: Neva, 2004), pp. 359–427. 225 A. Z. Vakser, ‘Nastroeniia Leningradtsev poslevoennogo vremeni. 1945–1953 gody’, Nestor, 5:1 (2001), pp. 303–26.

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226 For a fuller study of the expressions of resentment in these sources see Robert Dale, ‘Rats and Resentment: The Demobilization of the Red Army in Postwar Leningrad 1945–50’, Journal of Contemporary History, 45:1 (2010), pp. 113–33. 227 For clues about the work of the military censors, see Leopol’d Avzereg, ‘Ia vskryval vashi pis’ma . . . Iz vospominanii byvshego tainogo tsenzora MGB’, Vremia i my, No. 55 (1980), pp. 224–53, No.56 (1980), pp. 254–78. 228 V. A. Ivanov, Missiia ordena: Mekhanizm massovykh repressii v Sovetskoi Rossii v kontse 20-kh-40-kh gg. (na materialakh Severo-Zapada RSFSR) (St. Petersburg: LISS, 1997); V. A. Ivanov, ‘Voina i tsenzura (fil’tratsiia lozunga “o nerazryvnoi svyazi” leningradskogo fronta i tyla v period velikoi otechestvennoi voiny 1941–1945 gg.)’, in R. Sh. Ganelii (ed.), Otechestvennaia istoriia i istoricheskaia mysl’ v Rossii XIX–XX vekov (St. Petersburg: Nestor Istoriia, 2006), pp. 474–81. 229 Ivanov, Missiia ordena, pp. 283–4. 230 Zubkova, Poslevoennoe sovetskoe obshchestvo, p. 11. 231 Jochen Hellbeck, ‘Speaking Out: Languages of Affirmation and Dissent in Stalinist Russia’, Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, 1:1 (2000), pp. 71–96. 232 Lynne Viola, ‘Popular Resistance in the Stalinist 1930s: Soliloquy of a Devil’s Advocate’, Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, 1:1 (2000), pp. 45–69; Andrea Graziosi, ‘The New Soviet Archival Sources, Hypotheses for a Critical Assessment’, Cahiers du Monde Russe, 40:1–2 (1999), pp. 13–63 (pp. 54–6); Bidlack and Lomagin, The Leningrad Blockade, pp. 227–9. 233 Davies, Popular Opinion in Stalin’s Russia, pp. 10–17 (pp. 13–14). 234 Lesley A. Rimmel, ‘Svodki and Popular Opinion in Stalinist Leningrad’, Cahiers du Monde Russe, 20:1–2 (1999), pp. 217–34 (p. 233). 235 TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.36/d.187/l.194. 236 TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.36/d.149/l.48. 237 TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.36/d.149/l.83ob. 238 TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.36/d.187/l.168. 239 TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.36/d.149/l.82ob. 240 TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.36/d.149/l.82. 241 TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.36/d.149/ll.85–8 (l.87). 242 TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.36/d.149/l.83ob. 243 TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.36/d.149/l.83. 244 TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.36/d.149/l.85. 245 TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.36/d.149/l.82ob. 246 TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.36/d.187/l.193. 247 TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.36/d.149/l.47ob. 248 TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.36/d.149/ll.46–46ob. 249 TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.36/d.149/l.47ob. 250 Here I borrow and adapt the term ‘speaking Bolshevik’ from Stephen Kotkin, Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as a Civilization (London and Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1995), pp. 198–237. 251 TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.36/d.149/l.47. 252 TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.36/d.186/l.89. 253 TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.36/d.186/l.90 and TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.36/d.149/l.46ob. 254 White, ‘After the War’, p. 1155. 255 ‘Proischestviia. Upravkhoz – Vziatnik’, Vechernii Leningrad, 16 May 1946, p. 4. 256 ‘Sud – Prestuplenia upravkhoza’, Vechernii Leningrad, 3 October 1946, p. 4. 257 Dale, ‘Rats and Resentment’.

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3  ‘As in battle – as in labour’   1 Geoffrey Parker, The Military Revolution: Military Innovation and the Rise of the West, 1500–1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988); Jeremy Black, A Military Revolution? Military Change and European Society 1550–1800 (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1991).   2 Elise Kimerling Wirtschafter, ‘Social Misfits: Veterans and Soldiers’ Families in Servile Russia’, Journal of Military History, 59:2 (1995), pp. 215–35.   3 John L. H. Keep, Soldiers of the Tsar: Army and Society in Russia, 1462–1874 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985), pp. 197–9.   4 Andrew A. Gentes, ‘Vagabondage and Siberia. Disciplinary Modernism in Tsarist Russia’, in A. L. Beier and Paul Ocobock (eds), Cast Out: Vagrancy and Homelessness in Global and Historical Perspective (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2008), pp. 184– 208; Gentes, ‘ “Completely Useless”: Exiling the Disabled to Tsarist Siberia’, Sibirica, 10:2 (2011), pp. 26–49.   5 Neil J. Diamant, Embattled Glory: Veterans, Military Families, and the Politics of Patriotism in China, 1949–2007 (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2009), p. 153.   6 Dennis Winter, Death’s Men: Soldiers of the Great War (London: Penguin, 1978), p. 241.   7 Richard Bessel, ‘Unemployment and Demobilisation in Germany after the First World War’, in Richard J. Evans and Dick Geary (eds), The German Unemployed: Experiences of Mass Unemployment from the Weimar Republic to the Third Reich (London: Croom Helm, 1987), pp. 23–43 (p. 26); Bessel, ‘The Great War in German Memory: The Soldiers of the First World War, Demobilization and Weimar Political Culture’, German History, 6:1 (1988), pp. 20–34.   8 David Kynaston, Austerity Britain, 1945–51 (London: Bloomsbury, 2007), p. 45.   9 Samuel Andrew Stouffer, The American Soldier, Vol.2 (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1949), p. 598. 10 D. Englander, ‘Soldiers and Social Reform in the First and Second World Wars’, Historical Research, 57 (1994), pp. 318–26. 11 Stouffer, The American Soldier, p. 598. 12 Alan Allport, Demobbed: Coming Home After the Second World War (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009), p. 135; Michael D. Gambone, The Greatest Generation Comes Home: The Veteran in American Society (College Station, TX: Texas A&M University Press, 2005), pp. 73–5. 13 Englander, ‘Soldiers and Social Reform’, p. 319; Allport, Demobbed, p. 134. 14 V. N. Donchenko, ‘Demobilizatsiia sovetskoi armii i reshenie problemy kadrov v pervyye poslevoennye gody’, Istoriia SSSR, No.3 (1970), pp. 96–102. 15 Sheila Fitzpatrick, ‘Postwar Soviet Society: The “Return to Normalcy”, 1945–53’, in Susan J. Linz (ed.), The Impact of World War II on the Soviet Union (Totowa, NJ: Rowman & Allenheld, 1985), pp. 129–56 (pp. 136–7); Jerry Hough, ‘The Changing Nature of the Kolkhoz Chairman’, in James R. Millar (ed.), The Soviet Rural Community (Urbana, Chicago, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1971), pp. 103–20 (p. 106). 16 Mark Edele, Soviet Veterans of the Second World War: A Popular Movement in an Authoritarian Society, 1941–1991 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), pp. 29–49. 17 On the cadres exchange of the 1920s and 1930s see Sheila Fitzpatrick, Education and Social Mobility in the Soviet Union 1921–1934 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979). 18 Edele, Soviet Veterans, pp. 148–9. 19 Allport, Demobbed, pp. 136–7.

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20 Suzanne Mettler, Soldiers to Citizens: The G.I. Bill and the Making of the Greatest Generation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 6; Gambone, The Greatest Generation Comes Home, pp. 31–2; Richard Severo and Lewis Milford, The Wages of War: When America’s Soldiers Came Home – From Valley Forge to Vietnam (New York: Touchstone, 1989), p. 289. 21 ‘Demobilizovannym voinom dostoinyiu vstrechy’, Trud, 6 July 1945, p. 1; Edele, Soviet Veterans, p. 34. 22 ‘Vsenarodnaia zabota o demobilizovannykh voinakh’, Krasnaia zvezda, 10 July 1945, p. 1. 23 A. Falin, ‘Okhranit’ prava demobilizovannykh’, Leningradskaia pravda, 14 October 1945, p. 2. 24 ‘Vsenarodnaia zabota o demobilizovannykh voinakh’, Krasnaia zvezda, 10 July 1945, p. 1. 25 ‘Ni voiny, ni raboty’, Krokodil, 30 October 1945, p. 12; ‘Polnoe Ravenstvo’, Krokodil, 30 April 1947, p. 8 and ‘Iz biografii razvedchika Dzhona Garrisa’, Krokodil, OctoberNovember 1946, p. 16. 26 Leningradskaia pravda, 24 June 1945, p. 1. 27 Catherine Merridale, Ivan’s War: The Red Army 1939–45 (London: Faber and Faber, 2006), p. 307. 28 Jeffrey Brooks, Thank You, Comrade Stalin! Soviet Public Culture from Revolution to Cold War (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000), p. 199. 29 Demobilizovannomy voiny Krasnoi Armii (Tbilisi: Izdanie politicheskogo upravleniia Tbivo, 1946), p. 18. 30 N. N. Glushko et al., Velikaia pobeda i vozrozhdenie Moskvy (Moscow: Kontakt-­ kul’tura, 2005), pp. 44, 62, 79; Erica Wolf, Koretsky: The Soviet Photo Poster: 1930–1984 (New York: The New Press, 2012), pp. 174–7. 31 ‘Snova na rodnom zavod’, Trud, 23 February 1946, p. 2. 32 A. Emel’ianova, ‘1944–1947’, published in Leningradskaia pravda, 26 January 1947, p. 1. 33 See for example ‘Moskva gotovitsia k priemy demobilizovannykh vtoroi ocheredi’, Trud, 27 September 1945, p. 1; ‘Demobilizovannye voini na predpriiatiiakh’, Trud, 25 December 1945, p. 2; and ‘Byvshie frontoviki na rukovodiashchei rabote’, Trud, 20 December 1945, p. 2. 34 Peter Kenez, The Birth of the Propaganda State: Soviet Methods of Mass Mobilisation, 1917–1929 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), pp. 224–34; Eric J. Duskin, Stalinist Reconstruction and the Confirmation of a New Elite, 1945–53 (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001), pp. 3–7. 35 TsGAIPD-SPb/f.24/op.12/d.181/l.23. 36 RGASPI/f.17/op.122/d.147/ll.180–6 (l.182). 37 ‘Demobilizovannye na rukovodiashchei rabote’, Leningradskaia pravda, 24 November 1945, p. 2. 38 Lynne Atwood, Creating the New Soviet Woman: Women’s Magazines as Engineers of Female Identity 1922–1953 (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1999), pp. 155–8; Vera Dunham, In Stalin’s Time: Middleclass Values in Soviet Fiction, enlarged and updated edition (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1990), pp. 214–24; Anna Krylova, ‘ “Healers of Wounded Souls”, The Crisis of Private Life in Soviet Literature, 1944–1946’, Journal of Modern History, 71:2 (2001), pp. 307–31; Susan M. Hartmann, ‘Prescriptions for Penelope: Literature on women’s obligations to returning World War II veterans’, Women’s Studies, 5:3 (1978), pp. 223–39. 39 Edele, Soviet Veterans, p. 36.

Notes 40 41 42 43 44 45 46

47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62

63 64 65 66 67 68

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Edele, Soviet Veterans, p. 12. ‘Nezabyvamoe’, Leningradskaia pravda, 26 January 1947, p. 3. Merridale, Ivan’s War, p. 307. Y. Yakolev, ‘Frontovaia shapka’, Znamia, No.6 (1947), p. 80 quoted in Dunham, In Stalin’s Time, p. 9. ‘Zolotoi fond zavodi’, Vechernii Leningrad, 4 March 1946, p. 1. Demobilizovannomy voiny Krasnoi Armii, pp. 17–18. S.P. Babayevsky, Cavalier of the Gold Star, trans. Ruth Kirsch (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1956); P. A. Pavlenko, Happiness, trans. J. Fineberg (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1950); Amir Weiner, Making Sense of War: The Second World War and the Fate of the Bolshevik Revolution (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001), pp. 49–50, 314–17. On positive heroes see Katerina Clark, The Soviet Novel: History as Ritual, 3rd Edition (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2000), pp. 46–89. Demobilizovannomy voiny Krasnoi Armii, pp. 7–8. Quoted in Weiner, Making Sense of War, p. 316. Weiner, Making Sense of War, p. 50, Edele, Soviet Veterans, p. 96. Joanna Bourke, An Intimate History of Killing: Face-­to-Face Killing in TwentiethCentury Warfare (London: Granta, 2000), pp. 25–9. Edele, Soviet Veterans, p. 35. ‘Iz poslednei pochti – “frontovik prishel domoi” ’, Leningradskaia pravda, 16 October 1945, p. 3. For example ‘Trudit’sia tak, kak srazhalis’ v boiu’, Krestianskaia pravda, 19 August 1945, p. 2. ‘Tri normy’, Elektrosila, 5 January 1946, p. 4; ‘V trude, kak v boiu’, Elektrosila, 2 April 1946, p. 1; ‘Primer dlia mnogikh’, Elektrosila, 30 April 1946, p. 1. ‘Zasuchit’ rukava, da rabotat’, rabotat”, Elektrosila, 12 November 1945, p. 1. TsGAIPD-SPb/f.25/op.5/d.388/l.36; RGASPI/f.17/op.88/d.471/l.98; RGASPI/f.17/ op.88/d.471/l.89; TsGAIPD-SPb/f.24/op.2v/d.111/l.55. Elena Zubkova, Russia After the War: Hopes, Illusions, and Disappointments, 1945–1957, ed. and trans. Hugh Ragsdale (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1998), p. 34. Frank Biess, ‘Feelings in the Aftermath: Towards a History of Postwar Emotions’, in Frank Biess and Robert G. Moeller (eds), Histories of the Aftermath: Towards a History of Postwar Emotions (New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2010), pp. 3048. Diamant, Embattled Glory, pp. 153–4. TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.36/d.187/l.169. For a detailed list of factories’ prewar and wartime production see Richard Bidlack and Nikita Lomagin, The Leningrad Blockade, 1941–1944: A New Documentary History from the Soviet Archives, trans. Marian Schwartz (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2012), pp. 190–2. A. Z. Vakser, Leningrad poslevoennyi 1945–1982 gody (St. Petersburg: Izdatel’stvo Ostrov, 2005), p. 21; A. A. Amosova, Predannyi zabveniiu: politicheskaia biografiia Petra Popkova. 1937–1950 (St. Petersburg: Aleteiia, 2014), p. 146. TsGAIPD-SPb/f.4000/op.18/d.333/l.162. ‘Novoe Kolpino, Vozrozhdenie goroda’, Vechernii Leningrad, 16 February 1946, p. 2; Bidlack and Lomagin, The Leningrad Blockade, pp. 62, 196. Vakser, Leningrad poslevoennyi, p. 92. TsGAIPD-SPb/f.24/op.2v/d.7480/l.59. TsGAIPD-SPb/f.24/op.2v/d.7480/l.59.

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69 TsGAIPD-SPb/f.24/op.2v/d.7484/ll.72–5 (l.73). 70 TsGAIPD-SPb/f.24/op.2v/d.7430/ll.11617, reprinted in N. B. Lebedeva (ed.), Ot voiny k miry: Leningrad 1944–1945. Sbornik dokumentov (St. Petersburg: Liki Rossii, 2013), pp. 255–6. 71 V. A. Ezhov, ‘Izmeneniia v chislennosti i sostave rabochikh Leningrada v poslevoennyi period (1945–1950gg.)’, Vestnik Leningradskogo Universiteta, Seriia istorii, iazyka i literatury, No.2 (1966), pp. 15–21 (p. 19). 72 Vakser, Leningrad poslevoennyi, p. 28. 73 Adam R. Seipp, The Ordeal of Peace: Demobilization and the Urban Experience in Britain and Germany, 1917–1921 (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009), p. 147, p. 151, pp. 189–90; Gerard J. DeGroot, Blighty: British Society in the Era of the Great War (London: Longman, 1996), pp. 262–5; Gail Braybon, Women Workers in the First World War (London: Routledge, 1981), pp. 179–85. 74 Ezhov, ‘Izmeneniia v chislennosti i sostave rabochikh Leningrada’, p. 19. 75 Amosova, Predannyi zabveniiu, p. 149. 76 Blair A. Ruble, ‘The Leningrad Affair and the Provincialization of Leningrad’, Russian Review, 42:3 (1983), pp. 301–20 (p. 304). See also Siobhan Peeling, ‘Displacement, Deviance and Civic Identity: Migrants into Leningrad at the End of the Second World War’, Forum for Anthropology and Culture, No.6 (2010), pp. 201–14. 77 N. Sirev, ‘Vosstanovlenie zavoda i praktika partiinogo kontrolia’, Propaganda i agitatsiia, No.10, 1945, pp. 41–5 (p. 41). 78 Biulleten’ Lengorispolkoma, 31 January 1946, p. 3; Biulleten’ Lengorispolkoma, 3 October 1946, p. 8; Biulleten’ Lengorispolkoma, 15 July 1947, p. 4. TsGAIPD-SPb/f.24/op.2v/ d.7666/ll.17–20. 79 Juliane Fürst, Stalin’s Last Generation: Soviet Postwar Youth and the Emergence of Mature Socialism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), pp. 56–61. 80 RGASPI/f.17/op.122/d.88/ll.180–3. 81 ‘Pis’ma v redaktsiiu – Vynuzhdennoe bezdeistvie’, Leningradskaia pravda, 8 April 1946, p. 3. 82 ‘Pis’ma v redaktsiiu – O distsipline na proizvodstve’, Leningradskaia pravda, 29 September 1946, p. 3. 83 TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.17/d.1520/l.23; TsGAIPD-SPb/f.24/op.2v/d.7188/l.5. 84 TsGAIPD-SPb/f.25/op.12/d.384/l.69. 85 TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.36/d.226/l.208. 86 RGASPI/f.17/op.122/d.145/l.193. 87 TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.36/d.187/l.194. 88 TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.36/d.186/l.82. 89 TsGAIPD-SPb/f.24/op.2v/d.7702/l.61. 90 Christopher Burton, ‘The Labour Region in Late Stalinist Population Dynamics’, Russian History, 36:1 (2009), pp. 117–40 (p. 134). 91 Burton, ‘The Labour Region in Late Stalinist Population Dynamics’, pp. 117–40. 92 TsGAIPD-SPb/f.25/op.5/d.388/l.35. 93 ‘Kak my vstrechaem demobilizovannykh’, Elektrosila, 14 July 1945, p. 1. 94 TsGA-SPb/f.327/op.1/d.70/ll.36–36ob. 95 TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.17/d.1520/l.2. 96 TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.36/d.201. 97 Edele, Soviet Veterans, pp. 55–6. 98 TsGAIPD-SPb/f.24/op.2v/d.7758/l.43. 99 ‘Zasuchit’ rukava, da rabotat’, rabotat”, Elektrosila, 12 November 1945, p. 1.

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100 Vechernii Leningrad, 17, 20 and 22 December 1945, p. 3 and 3 January 1946, p. 4. 101 Vechernii Leningrad, 17 and 22 December 1945, p. 4. 102 Vechernii Leningrad, 2 January 1946, p. 4. 103 Vakser, Leningrad poslevoennyi, p. 16. 104 TsGAIPD-SPb/f.24/op.2v/d.111/ll.61–4. 105 TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.17/d.1520/l.24. 106 TsGAIPD-SPb/f.25/op.12/d.346/l.56. 107 Vakser, Leningrad poslevoennyi, p. 16. 108 TsGAIPD-SPb/f.25/op.12/d.346/l.125. 109 TsGAIPD-SPb/f.25/op.12/d.346/l.89. 110 Ezhov, ‘Izmeneniia v chislennosti’, p. 19. For similar figures see GARF-SSSR/ f.R-8131/op.37/d.3175/l.224. 111 TsGAIPD-SPb/f.25/op.12/d.346/ll.138–9. 112 TsGAIPD-SPb/f.24/op.2v/d.7753/l.39ob. 113 GARF-SSSR/f.R-8131/op.37/d.3175/l.218. 114 TsGAIPD-SPb/f.25/op.12/d.384/l.14. 115 Duskin, Stalinist Reconstruction, p. 19. 116 Ezhov, ‘Izmeneniia v chislennosti’, pp. 15–21. 117 TsGAIPD-SPb/f.24/op.2v/d.7702/ll.23–4; TsGA-SPb/f.327/op.1/d.49/ll.20–3. 118 TsGAIPD-SPb/f.24/op.2v/d.7702/l.51. 119 TsGAIPD-SPb/f.25/op.12/d.346/l.90. 120 TsGA-SPb/f.327/op.1/d.49/ll.31–31ob. 121 TsGAIPD-SPb/f.25/op.5/d.386/ll.16–17ob. 122 TsGAIPD-SPb/f.24/op.2v/d.7702/l.10; Vakser, Leningrad poslevoennyi, pp. 16–17. 123 TsGA-SPb/f.25/op.12/d.342/l.39; TsGAIPD-SPb/f.24/op.12/d.111/l.61. 124 TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.17/d.1520/l.2. 125 TsGAIPD-SPb/f.25/op.12/d.342/l.40. 126 TsGAIPD-SPb/f.25/op.12/d.342/l.67. 127 TsGAIPD-SPb/f.25/op.12/d.342/l.40. 128 A. Falin, ‘Okhranit’ prava demobilizovannykh’, Leningradskaia pravda, 14 October 1945, p. 2; RGASPI/f.17/op.122/d.145/l.194. 129 TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.36/d.187/l.168. 130 RGASPI/f.17/op.88/d.691/l.169. 131 TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.26/d.187/l.147. 132 TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.36/d.187/l.195. 133 TsGAIPD-SPb/f.4000/op.10/d.745/l.11ob. 134 TsGAIPD-SPb/f.25/op.12/d.342/l.39. 135 TsGAIPD-SPb/f.4000/op.18/d.333/l.159. 136 TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.36/d.186/l.81. 137 TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.36/d.186/l.78. 138 On veterans’ attitudes towards Leningrad’s demobilization officials see Robert Dale, ‘Rats and Resentment: The Demobilization of the Red Army in Postwar Leningrad, 1945–50’, Journal of Contemporary History, 45:1 (2010), pp. 113–33. 139 Biulleten’ Lengorispolkoma, 30 October 1946, p. 4. 140 TsGAIPD-SPb/f.25/op.12/d.346/l.88. 141 M. E. Zharkoi, Militsiia Leningrada v mekhanizme realizatsii karatel’noi politiki poselvoennykh let (1945–1957 gg.) Istoricheskie uroki deiatel’nosti (St. Petersburg: Izdatel’stvo Politekhnicheski universiteta, 2004), p. 54. 142 LOGAV/f.R-3672/op.1/d.6/l.4.

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143 ‘Vozvrashchenie k sporty. Demobilizovennye iz armii sportsmen vozobnovliaiut prezhnogo raboty’, Smena, 22 November 1945, p. 2. 144 TsGA-SPb/f.327/op.1/d.70/l.48. 145 TsGAIPD-SPb/f.25/op.5/d.386/ll.46–52. 146 GARF-SSSR/f.R-5446/op.48/d.3063/l. 1. 147 GARF-SSSR/f.R-7523/op.55/d.10/l.17. 148 TsGA-SPb/f.1788/op.27/d.440/l.1, 6. 149 Bidlack and Lomagin, The Leningrad Blockade, p. 51. 150 RGASPI/f.17/op.88/d.471/l.98. 151 TsGAIPD-SPb/f.25/op.12/d.246/l.177. 152 Edele, Soviet Veterans, p. 64. 153 Govorov, Prestupnost’ i borba s nei v poslevoennom Leningrade, p. 151. 154 Edele, Soviet Veterans, p. 65. 155 TsGAIPD-SPb/f.24/op.12/d.111/l. 59. 156 Allport, Demobbed, pp. 141–9. 157 TsGAIPD-SPb/f.25/op.12/d.346/l.126. 158 RGASPI/f.17/op.132/d.569/l.198. 159 TsGAIPD-SPb/f.24/op.2v/d.7027/l.179. 160 Weiner, Making Sense of War, p. 312. Edele, Soviet Veterans, pp. 65–70. 161 Seniavskaia, Frontovoe pokolenie, pp. 35–6. 162 Edele, ‘Soviet Veterans as an Entitlement Group’, p. 113. 163 Interview, 21 March 2008, Disc No.10. 164 Boris Mikhailov, Na dne blokady i voiny (St. Petersburg: VSEGEI, 2000), pp. 445–8; Zubkova, Russia After the War, p. 34. Interview 29 February 2008, Disc No.6. 165 Edele, Soviet Veterans, p. 133. 166 ‘Pomoshch’ demobilizovannym pri postuplenii v vuzy’, Vechernii Leningrad, 23 March 1946, p. 1; ‘Pered priemom v vuzy i tekhnikumy’, Vechernii Leningrad, 26 May 1946, p. 1. 167 TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.36/d.201/l.110. 168 Mettler, Soldiers to Citizens, pp. 7–8; Allport, Demobbed, pp. 157–8. 169 Edele, Soviet Veterans, p. 134. 170 A. F. Berezhnoi et al., Leningradskii universitet v Velikoi Otechestvennoi. Ocherki (Leningrad: Izdatelstvo Leningradskogo Universiteta, 1990), pp. 288–95. 171 Edele, Soviet Veterans, pp. 133–5. 172 ‘V uchenii kak v boiu’, Leningradskii universitet, 31 August 1946, p. 1; ‘Vnov’ v rodnom universitete’, Leningradskii universitet, 28 August, 1945, p. 2; ‘Student Orlov v dni voiny i v dni mira’, Leningradskii universitet, 28 January 1946, p. 1. 173 ‘Oni zashchishchali rodiny’, Leningradskii universitet, 23 February 1946, p. 1; ‘Otvazhnye voin student –otlichnik’, Leningradskii universitet, 7 November 1946, p. 3; ‘Sovetskii molodoi chelovek’, Leningradskii universitet, 12 May 1948, p. 4. 174 ‘Ludi nashego universiteta. Student Ivan Kotov, Geroi Sovetskogo soiuza’, Leningradskii universitet, 28 September 1946, p. 4; Berezhnoi et al., Leningradskii universitet, p. 293. 175 See, for example, the portraits of university alumni and veteran students in A. F. Berezhnoi, Oni srazhalis’ za Rodiny: Universanty v gody voiny i v poslevonnye gody. Dokumental’nye ocherki (Leningrad: Izdatel’stvo Leningradskogo Universiteta, 1995). 176 Edele, Soviet Veterans, p. 135. ‘Komsomol’tsy universitata v Velikoi Otechestvenooi voiny’, Leningradskii universitet, 12 October 1946, pp. 2–3. For examples see ‘Molodoi

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Kommunist Maslov’, Leningradskii universitet, 18 May 1946, p. 2; ‘Partorg Vasilii Grigorovskii’, Leningradskii universitet, 23 April 1947, p. 2; ‘Druzhnaia Gruppa’, Leningradskii universitet, 30 June 1948, p. 4. 177 On additional support for veterans see ‘Zabota o voinakh Krasnoi Armii’, Leningradskii universiteta, 23 February 1946, p. 1; ‘Zabota o byvshikh voinakh’, Leningradskii universiteta, 22 February 1947, p. 1. Fürst makes a similar point in Stalin’s Last Generation, p. 60. 178 Krokodil, 30 January 1946, p. 21. 179 Reprinted in V. N. Khustov, V. P. Naumov and N. S. Plotnikova (eds), Lubianka. Stalin i MGB SSSR Mart 1946 – mart 1953 (Moscow: Materik, 2007), pp. 41–2. 180 U. Zh. Sh. Dondukov, ‘Moia ucheba na vostochnom fakul’tete i moi uchitelia’, in O. I. Aleksandrova et al. (eds), Vospominaniia vypusknikov Vostochnogo Fakul’teta Leningradskogo (Sankt-Peterburgskogo) universiteta poslevoennykh let (1948–1952) (St. Peterburg: Sankt-Peterburgskii gosudarstvennyi universitet, Vostochnyi fakul’tet, 2001), pp. 91–102 (pp. 91–2). 181 RGASPI/f.88/op.1/d.1055/ll.1–6; Roger D. Marwick and Euridice Charon Cardona, Soviet Women on the Frontline in the Second World War (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), pp. 232–3. 182 RGASPI/f.78/op.1/d.1055/l.5. 183 TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.36/d.226/l.136. 184 TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.36/d.201/l.3. 185 TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.36/d.226/l.48, 54, 71, 116, 136. 186 TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.36/d.226/l.208, 201. 187 Markwick and Charon Cardona, Soviet Women on the Frontline. 188 TsGAIPD-SPb/f.K-598/op.5/d.232/l.16; TsGAIPD-SPb/f.K-598/op.5/d.238/l.117; TsGAIPD-SPb/f.K-598/op.11/d.322/l.42. 189 TsGAIPD-SPb/f.K-598/op.6/d.113,ll.149–149ob; ‘Okruzhim zabotoi nashie slavnykh voinov’, Smena, 2 September 1945, p. 1. 190 TsGA-SPb/f.7179/op.53a/d.90/l.59. 191 ‘Novye kadry trebuiut zaboty i vnimaniia’, Krasnoe Znamiia, 13 September 1945, p. 1. 192 Reina Pennington, Wings, Women and War: Soviet Airwomen in World War II Combat (Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas Press, 2001), pp. 143–59. 193 Markwick and Charon Cardona, Soviet Women on the Frontlines, p. 234. 194 Edele, Soviet Veterans, p. 144. 195 TsGA-SPb/f.327/op.1/d.81/ll.95–6. 196 Merridale, Ivan’s War, pp. 134, 206. 197 Anna Krylova, Soviet Women in Combat: A History of Violence on the Eastern Front (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp. 185–7. 198 Krylova, Soviet Women in Combat, pp. 236–88. 199 Merridale, Ivan’s War, p. 208; Edele, Soviet Veterans, p. 144. 200 Svetlana Alexiyevich, War’s Unwomanly Face (Moscow: Progress, 1985), p. 189; Markwick and Charon Cardona, Soviet Women on the Frontlines, pp. 239–40. 201 ‘Shel soldat s fronta’, Krokodil, 30 October 1945, p. 5. See also Galina Iankovskaia, ‘ “Shel soldat s fronta”. Poslevoennye realii i gendernye obrazy sovetskikh illiustrairovannykh zhurnalov’, in B. Fieseler and H. Muan (eds), Pobediteli i pobezhdennye. Ot voiny k miry: SSSR, Frantsiia, Velikobritania, Germaniia, SShA (1941–1950) (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2010), pp. 284–96. 202 TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.36/d.226/l.201. 203 TsGAIPD-SPb/f.25/op.12/d.384/l.79.

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204 Roger R. Reese, Red Commanders: A Social History of the Soviet Army Officer Corps, 1918–1991 (Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas Press, 2005), p. 181. 205 TsGAIPD-SPb/f.25/op.12/d.346/l.178. 206 TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.36/d.226/l.75; TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op. 36/d.201/l 3. 207 TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.36/d.201/l.108; TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.36/d.201/l.104. 208 TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.36/d.226/l.201; TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.36/d.201/l.104. 209 TsGA-SPb, f.7384/op.36/d.201/l.134; TsGAIPD-SPb/f.25/op.12/d.384/l.78. 210 TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.36/d.201/l.136. 211 TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.36/d.201/l.134; TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.36/d.226/l.71. 212 TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.36/d.201/l.137. 213 TsGAIPD-SPb/f.25/op.12/d.384/l.75. 214 TsGAIPD-SPb/f.25/op.12/d.384/ll.75–7. 215 TsGAIPD-SPb/f.25/op.12/d.435/ll.1–1ob. 216 TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.36/d.201/l.139. 217 TsGAIPD-SPb/f.25/op.12/d.445/ll.21–21ob. 218 TsGAIPD-SPb/f.24/op.12/d.135/ll.32–9. 219 TsGAIPD-SPb/f.25/op.12/d.445/ll.28–28ob, ll.71–2. 220 Weiner, Making Sense of War, pp. 314, 330–1; Hough, ‘The Changing Nature of the Kolkhoz Chairman’, pp. 106–7. 221 TsGAIPD-SPb/f.24/op.7/d.8322/l.5, 18, 24. 222 TsGAIPD-SPb/f.24/op.2v/d.11/ll.54ob–55. 223 TsGAIPD-SPb/f.24/op.12/d.181/l.2. 224 For typical examples see ‘Demobilizovannye voiny – predsedateli sel’sovetov i kolkhozov’, Leningradskaia pravda, 23 October 1945, p. 2; ‘Demobilizovannye na rukovodiashchei rabote’, Leningradskaia pravda, 24 November 1945, p. 2; M. Zhestev, ‘Derevenskaia khronika’, Leningradsksia pravda, 9 May 1946, p. 3. 225 TsGAIPD-SPb/f.24/op.7/d.822/l.1. 226 Biulleten’ Lenoblispolkoma, No.16, 1945, pp. 13–15. Kutuzov, Vozrozhdenie zemli Leningradskoi, pp. 88–90. 227 Mark Edele, ‘Veterans and the Village: The Impact of Red Army Demobilization on Soviet Urbanization, 1945–1955’, Russian History, 36:2 (2009), pp. 159–82 (p. 170). 228 ‘Khoziaeva’, Leningradksia pravda, 26 December 1946, p. 3. 229 LOGAV/f.R-300/op.29/d.653/l.10ob; LOGAV/f.R-300/op.29/d.653/l.1; LOGAV/ f.R-300/op.29/d.655/l.1. 230 LOGAV/f.R-300/op.29/d.651/l.10; LOGAV/f.R-300/op.29/d.652/l.2. 231 The Chairman/Predsedatel’ directed by A. A. Saltykov, based on the scenario written by Iu. M. Nagibin 1964. On the film, and its reception see Josephine Woll, Real Images: Soviet Cinema and the Thaw (London: I. B. Tauris, 2000), pp. 177–83; T. M. Dimoni, ‘ “Predsedatel”: Sud’by poslevoennoi derevni i kinokartine pervoi poloviny 1960-kh godov’, Otechestvennaia istoriia, No.6 (2003), pp. 91–101; Birgit Beumers, A History of Russian Cinema (Oxford: Berg, 2009), pp. 131–2. 232 LOGAV/f.R-300/op.29/d.65/ll.18ob–20 (l.19ob). 233 LOGAV/f.R-300/op.29/d.65/ll.16ob–17. 234 TsGAIPD-SPb/f.24/op.2v/d.7027/l.40. 235 Edele, Soviet Veterans, pp. 7, 39. 236 Donald Filtzer, Soviet Workers and Late Stalinism: Labour and the Restoration of the Stalinist System after World War II (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 19–20; Duskin, Stalinist Reconstruction, p. 18; Zubkova, Russia After the War. 237 Edele, ‘Veterans and the Village’.

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4  Wounds that Would not Heal   1 Anna Krylova, ‘ “Healers of Wounded Souls”: The Crisis of Private Life in Soviet Literature, 1944–1946’, Journal of Modern History, 73:2 (2001), pp. 307–31 (p. 316).   2 See Elise Kimerling Wirtschafter, ‘Social Misfits: Veterans and Soldiers’ Families in Servile Russia’, Journal of Military History, 59:2 (1995), pp. 215–35; Andrew A. Gentes, ‘ “Completely Useless”: Exiling the Disabled to Tsarist Siberia’, Sibirica, 10:2 (2011), pp. 26–49.   3 David A. Gerber, ‘Introduction: Finding Disabled Veterans in History’, in David A. Gerber (ed.), Disabled Veterans in History (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2000), pp. 1–51 (p. 2).   4 Deborah Cohen, ‘Civil Society in the Aftermath of the Great War. The Care of Disabled Veterans in Britain and Germany’, in Frank Trentmann (ed.), Paradoxes of Civil Society: New Perspectives on Modern German and British History (New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2003), pp. 352–68 (p. 352).   5 Gerber, ‘Introduction: Finding Disabled Veterans in History’, p. 2.   6 Cohen, ‘Civil Society in the Aftermath of the Great War’, pp. 354–5; Antoine Prost, In the Wake of War: Les Anciens Combattants and French Society. The Legacy of the Great War, trans. Helen McPhail (New York: Berg, 1992), pp. 29–30; Joanna Bourke, Dismembering the Male: Men’s Bodies, Britain and the Great War (London: Reaktion, 1996), pp. 60–70.   7 Gerber, ‘Introduction: Finding Disabled Veterans in History’, pp. 21–2.   8 Tsentral’nyi gosudarstvennyi arkhiv nauchno-­teknicheskoi dokumentatsii SanktPeterburga [hereafter TsGANTD-SPb] f.368/op.1-1/d.46/l.1.   9 Andrei Dzeniskevich, ‘Medical Research Institutes During the Siege’, in John Barber and Andrei Dzeniskevich (eds), Life and Death in Besieged Leningrad, 1941–44 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), pp. 86–122 (p. 111); A. Z. Vakser, Leningrad poslevoennyi 1945–1982 gody (St. Petersburg: Izdatel’stvo Ostrov, 2005), p. 104. 10 TsGA-SPb/f.9156/op.4/d.420/l.40, 43; V. P. Biakina, Vosstanovlenie i razvitie zdravookhranenie v poslevoennyi period: 1945 – seredina 50-kh godov (na materialakh severo-­zapade SSSR) (St. Petersburg: Izdatel’estvo SPbGMU, 1999), p. 150. 11 In May 1946 there were 1,046,000 soldiers still receiving treatment in and awaiting discharge from military hospitals across the Soviet Union, see G. F. Kirvosheev (ed.), Soviet Casualties and Combat Losses in the Twentieth Century (London: Greenhill Books, 1997), pp. 91–2. 12 TsGAIPD-SPb/f.24/op.2v/d.8230/l.1. 13 Author’s own calculation based on 246,218 veterans in Leningrad at the beginning of 1947. TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.36/d.226/l.104. 14 Joanne Bourke, ‘ “Going Home” The Personal Adjustment of British and American Servicemen after the War’, in Richard Bessel and Dirk Schumann (eds), Life After Death: Approaches to a Cultural and Social History of Europe During the 1940s and 1950s (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 149–60 (p. 150). 15 Mark Edele, Soviet Veterans of the Second World War: A Popular Movement in an Authoritarian Society, 1941–1991 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), pp. 93, 62. 16 LOGAV/f.R-2798/op.1/d.75/l.1. 17 Dan Healey, ‘Comrades, Queers and “Oddballs”: Sodomy, Masculinity, and Gendered Violence in Leningrad Province of the 1950s’, Journal of the History of Sexuality, 21:3 (2012), pp. 496–522 (p. 505).

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18 Mark Edele, ‘A “Generation of Victors?” Soviet Second World War Veterans From Demobilization to Organization, 1941–1956’ (Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Chicago, 2004) pp. 138–9. 19 Beate Fieseler, ‘The bitter legacy of the “Great Patriotic War”. Red Army disabled soldiers under late Stalinism’, in Juliane Fürst (ed.), Late Stalinist Russia: Society Between Reconstruction and Reinvention (London: Routledge, 2006), pp. 46–61 (p. 47). 20 Kirvosheev (ed.), Soviet Casualties, pp. 87–8. 21 TsGANTD-SPb/f.368/op.1-1/d.46/l.4. 22 Christine Varga-Harris, ‘Forging Citizenship on the Home Front. Reviving the Socialist Contract and Constructing Soviet Identity during the Thaw’, in Polly Jones (ed.), The Dilemmas of De-Stalinization: Negotiating Cultural and Social Change in the Khrushchev Era (London: Routledge, 2006), pp. 101–16 (p. 106). 23 TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.36/d.201/ll.41–2, 75–6. 24 B. Shnaider, ‘Neizvestnaia voina’, Voprosy istorii, No.1 (1995), pp. 104–13 (p. 109). 25 Catherine Merridale, ‘Culture, Ideology and Combat in the Red Army, 1939–45’, Journal of Contemporary History, 41:2 (2006), pp. 305–24 (pp. 322–3); Merridale, Ivan’s War: The Red Army 1939–45 (London: Faber and Faber, 2006), p. 315. 26 For a British comparison on the link between psychosomatic disorders and trauma see Edgar Jones, ‘ “The Gut War” Functional Somatic Disorders in the UK During the Second World War’, History of the Human Sciences, 25:5 (2012), pp. 30–48. 27 This point was made to me by a number of veterans in an oral history interview with a group of veterans from the Petrogradskii district, 27 November 2007, Disc 3. See also Lisa A. Kirschenbaum, ‘ “The Alienated Body”: Gender Identity and the Memory of the Siege of Leningrad’, in Nancy M. Wingfield and Marcia Bucur (eds), Gender and War in Twentieth-Century Eastern Europe (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2006), pp. 220–34. 28 Donald Filtzer, Soviet Workers and Late Stalinism: Labour and the Restoration of the Stalinist System after World War II (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), p. 100. 29 Donald Filtzer, ‘Standard of Living Versus Quality of Life. Struggling with the Urban Environment During the Early Years of Post-War Reconstruction’, in Fürst (ed.), Late Stalinist Russia, pp. 81–102 (p. 95). 30 Igor Kozlov and Alla Samsonova, ‘The Impact of the Siege on the Physical Development of Children’, in Barber and Dzeniskevich (eds), Life and Death, pp. 174–98, and Lidiya Khoroshinina, ‘Long-Term Effects of Lengthy Starvation in Childhood among Survivors of the Siege,’ in Barber and Dzeniskevich (eds), Life and Death, pp. 197–212. 31 Siobhan Peeling, ‘Dirt, Disease and Disorder: Population Re-­placement in Postwar Leningrad and the “Danger” of Social Contamination’, in Peter Gatrell and Nick Baron (eds), Warlands: Population Resettlement and State Reconstruction in the Soviet-East European Borderlands, 1945–50 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), pp. 117–39. 32 For a detailed examination of postwar illness and disease see V. B. Zhiromskaia, Zhiznennyi potential poslevoennykh pokolenii v Rossii. Istoriko-­demograficheskii aspect 1946–1960 (Moscow: Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi gumanitarnykh universitet, 2009), pp. 193–237. 33 Lisa A. Kirschenbaum, The Legacy of the Siege of Leningrad, 1941–1995: Myth, Memories, and Monuments (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), p. 122. 34 TsGAIPD-SPb/f.24/op.2v/d.7177/l.3. 35 TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.25/d.36/l.15. 36 Biakina, Vosstanovlenie i razvitie zdravookhraneniia, pp. 81–2.

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37 ‘Zabota o zdorovye Leningradstev’, Vechernii Leningrad, 7 January 1946, p. 2. 38 Vakser, Leningrad poslevoennyi, pp. 103–4. On prewar medical provision see Nadezhda Cherepenina, ‘The Demographic Situation and Healthcare on the Eve of the War’, in Barber and Dzeniskevich (eds), Life and Death, pp. 13–27 (p. 18). 39 For a comparison with Moscow see Greta Bucher, Women, the Bureaucracy and Daily Life in Postwar Moscow, 1945–1953 (Boulder, CO: East European Monographs, 2006), pp. 137–73; Bucher ‘ “Free and Worth Every Kopeck”: Soviet Medicine and Women in Postwar Russia’, in William B. Husband (ed.), The Human Tradition in Modern Russia (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 2000), pp. 175–85. 40 Filtzer, Soviet Workers and Late Stalinism, pp. 100–15 (p. 108); Mary Schaeffer Conroy, ‘The Soviet Pharmaceutical Industry and Dispensing, 1945–1953’, Europe-Asia Studies, 56:7 (2004), pp. 963–91 (pp. 965–6). 41 Christopher Burton, ‘Soviet Medical Attestation and the Problems of Professionalization under Late Stalinism, 1945–1953’, Europe-Asia Studies, 57:8 (2005), pp. 1211–29 (pp. 1216–18). 42 Christopher Burton, ‘Medical Welfare During Late-Stalinism. A Study of Doctors and the Soviet Health System, 1945–53’ (Ph.D. Thesis, University of Chicago, 2000), pp. 264–9. 43 Invalidy v Rossii: prichiny i dinamika invalidnosti protivorechiia i perspekitvy sotsial’noi politiki (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 1999), pp. 32–42; Fieseler, ‘The Bitter Legacy’, p. 47. 44 TsGA-SPb/f.2554/op.2/d.502/l.3; ‘Zashchitnikam rodiny – zaboty i vnimanie – obzor pisem’, Vechernii Leningrad, 25 May 1946, p. 2. 45 TsGA-SPb/f.2554/op.2/d.502/ll.3–4, 8. 46 TsGAIPD-SPb/f.25/op.12/d.342/ll.57–8. 47 LOGAV/f.R–2798/op.1/d.104/l.25. 48 Burton, ‘Medical Welfare’, p. 279. 49 Merridale, Ivan’s War, p. 314. 50 ‘Na gorodskie temy. Na priem k vrachy’, Leningradskaia pravda, 22 October 1946, p. 3. Similar conditions were reported for neighbouring Pskov and Vologda oblasts. TsGANTD-SPb/f.368/op.1-1/d.56/l.1, 1-5, 26-7ob; TsGANTD-SPb/f.368/op.1-1/d.57/ ll.5–6, 25–7. For reports from other regions see Edele, ‘A Generation of Victors’, p. 371. 51 TsGA-SPb/f.2554/op.2/d.2508/ll.5–8; Biulleten’ Lengorispolkoma, No.4, 1948, pp. 1–4 (l. 2). 52 TsGAIPD-SPb/f.25/op.12/d.342/ll.57–8. 53 David Brandenberger, National Bolshevism: Stalinist Mass Culture and the Formation of Modern Russian National Identity, 1931–1956 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002), p. 179; Karel C. Berkhoff, Motherland in Danger: Soviet Propaganda During World War II (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012), p. 165. 54 Fieseler, ‘The Bitter Legacy’, p. 47; Edele, ‘A Generation of Victors’, p. 370. 55 TsGAIPD-SPb/f.2554/op.2/d.502/l.4. 56 Burton, ‘Medical Welfare’, p. 279. 57 Elena Zubkova, Russia After the War: Hopes, Illusions, and Disappointments, 1945–1957, ed. and trans. Hugh Ragsdale (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1998), p. 24. 58 On this black or gallows humour see Jonathan Waterlow, ‘Intimating Trust: Popular Humour in Stalin’s 1930s’, Cultural and Social History, 10:2 (2013), pp. 211–29 (pp. 214–18). 59 Burton, ‘Medical Welfare’, p. 270’; Averbakh, ‘Sostoianie vrachebnoe-­trudovoi ekspertizy v RSFSR’, p. 270.

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60 TsGANTD-SPb/f.368/op.1-1/d.46/ll.5–6. Beate Fieseler, ‘Soviet-­style welfare. The disabled soldiers of the “Great Patriotic War”, in Michael Rasell and Elena IarskaiaSmirnova (eds), Disability in Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union: History, policy and everyday life (London: Routledge, 2012), pp. 18–41 (pp. 24–5). 61 A. Ia. Averbakh, ‘Sostoianie vrachebnoe-­trudovoi ekspertizy v RSFSR’, in N. M. Obodan (ed.), Vozvrashchenie k trudovoi deiatel’nosti invalidov otechestvennoi voiny i invalidov truda. Sbornik spravochnykh materialov (Leningrad: 1945), pp. 22–31 (p. 27). 62 N. A. Vigdorchik, ‘K voprosy o peresmotre deistvuiushchei klassifkatsii invalidnosti’, Vrachebnoe delo, No.11–12 (1945), pp. 602–6. 63 TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.2/d.194/ll.1–31. 64 Edele, Soviet Veterans, p. 84. 65 ‘Zabota ob invalidakh otechestevennoi voiny’, Vechernii Leningrad, 17 December 1945, p. 1; ‘Zabota ob invalidakh’, Vechernii Leningrad, 16 February 1946, p. 1; ‘Zabota ob invalidakh otechestvennoi voiny’, Vechernii Leningrad, 20 April 1946, p. 1; ‘Bol’shaia zabota. Invalidy otechestevnnoi voiny na proizvodstve’, Vechernii Leningrad, 24 August 1946, p. 1; ‘Zabota o sem’iakh voennoslyzhashchikh i invalidakh voiny’, Elektrosila, 4 August 1945, p. 2; ‘Zabota ob invalidakh otechestvennoi voiny i semi’iakh frontovikov’, Leningradskii Universitet, 21 July 1946, p. 2; ‘Zabota ob invalidakh otechestvennoi voiny’, Trud, 2 April 1946, p. 4. 66 TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.36/d.149/l.4. 67 ‘Pis’ma v redaktsiiu – Malo poraiadka v Dzerzhinskom raisobese’, Leningradskaia pravda, 30 October 1946, p. 3. 68 For published examples of disabled veterans’ letters of complaint see: ‘Zashchitnikam rodiny – zaboty i vnimanie – obzor pisem’, Vechernii Leningrad, 25 May 1946, p. 2; ‘Inspektor naznachaet na priem (Pis’ma v redaktsiiu)’, Leningradskaia pravda, 9 April 1946, p. 3. 69 Biulleten’ Lengorispolkoma, No.12, 1949, pp. 2–4 (p. 2). 70 LOGAV/f.R-3824/op.4/d.53/l.4. 71 LOGAV/f.4380/op.2/d.290/ll.1–3. 72 Biulleten’ Lenoblispolkoma, No.2, 1949, pp. 11–13. 73 TsGA-SPb/f.7179/op.53/d.173/ll.127–38 (l.130). 74 Biulleten’ Lenoblispolkoma, No.2, 1949, p. 11. 75 GARF-RSFSR/f.A-413/op.1/d.1190/ll.23–30. 76 RGASPI/f.17/op.122/d.213/ll.37–40. 77 ‘Pis’ma v redaktsiiu – Uporiadochit’ vydachy pensii v Gosbanke’, Leningradskaia pravda, 13 August 1946, p. 2. 78 ‘Putaniki iz raisobesa’, Leningradskaia pravda, 17 April 1946, p. 3. 79 Fieseler, ‘Soviet-­style welfare’, p. 27. 80 Edele, Soviet Veterans, p. 87; Edele, ‘A Generation of Victors’, pp. 365–7. 81 Biulleten’ Lenobispolkoma, No.4, 1946, pp. 1–2; Edele, Soviet Veterans, p. 88. 82 Zubkova, Russia After the War, p. 24; Fieseler, ‘Soviet-­style welfare’, p. 26. 83 Edele, Soviet Veterans, p. 88. 84 Edele, Soviet Veterans, p. 96; Burton, ‘Medical Welfare’, pp. 272–3. 85 Petr Andreevich Pavlenko, Happiness, trans. J. Fineberg (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1950); Vera Dunham, ‘Images of the Disabled. Especially the War Wounded in Soviet Literature’, in William O. McCagg and Lewis H. Siegelbaum (eds), The Disabled in the Soviet Union (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1989), pp. 151–64 (p. 153).

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  86 ‘V trude, kak v boiu’, Elektrosila, 2 April 1946, p. 1: ‘Trudovoe ustroistvo invalidov’, Leningradskaia pravda, 19 June 1946, p. 2.   87 Obodan (ed.), Vozvrashchenie k trudovoi deiatel’nosti; GARF-RSFSR/f.A-413/ op.1/d.974/ll.277–9, l.289.   88 Jeffrey S. Reznick, ‘Work-Therapy and the Disabled British Soldier in Great Britain in the First World War: The Case of Shepherd’s Bush Military Hospital, London’, in Gerber (ed.), Disabled Veterans in History, pp. 185–203.   89 Beth Linker, War’s Waste: Rehabilitation in World War I America (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2011), p. 4.   90 Heather R. Perry, Recycling the Disabled: Army, Medicine, and Modernity in WWI Germany (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2014), pp. 158–96.   91 Berkhoff, Motherland in Danger, pp. 112, 115.   92 LOGAV/f.R–2798/op.1/d.104/l.9.   93 ‘Trudovoe ustroistvo invalidov otechestvennoi voiny’, in Obodan (ed.), Vozvrashenie k trudovoi deiatel’nosti, pp. 5–7; Edele, ‘A ‘Generation of Victors?’, p. 136.   94 Biulleten’ Lengorispolkoma, No.16, 1948, p. 2; Biulleten’ Lenoblispolkoma, No.22, 1948, pp. 22–3; Edele, Soviet Veterans, p. 92.   95 Edele, ‘A “Generation of Victors?” ’, p. 136.   96 GARF-RSFSR/f.A-413/op.1/d.1472/l.6; GARF-RSFSR/f.A-413/op.1/d.1190/l.4.   97 Fieseler, ‘The Bitter Legacy’, p. 49.   98 TsGAIPD-SPb/f.24/op.2v/d.7243/ll.1–3 (l.3).   99 GARF-RSFSR/f.A-413/op.1/d.1472/ll.1–2 (l.1). 100 TsGAIPD-SPb/f.24/op.2v/d.8230/ll.1–5(l.1), ll.6–8(l.6); GARF-RSFSR/f.A-431/ op.1/d.1190/l.4; TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.29/d.645/l.25. 101 Biulleten’ Lenoblispolkoma, No.2, 1945, p. 6; Biulleten’ Lenoblispolkoma, No.4, 1945, pp. 16–17. 102 TsGANTD-SPb/f.368/op.1-1/d.46/l.7. 103 Biulleten’ Lengorispolkoma, No.14, 1948, pp. 1–4 (p. 1). 104 Biulleten’ Lenoblispolkoma, No.11, 1949, pp. 16–17 (p. 16). 105 TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.29/d.645/l.25. 106 TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.29/d.645/l.26. 107 Biulleten’ Lengorispolkoma, No.14, 1948, pp. 1–4 (p. 1). 108 TsGAIPD-SPb/f.24/op.2v/d.7753/l.39ob, 104ob. Two years later there were approximately the same number of disabled veterans working at the Kirov factory, 444 in total. TsGA-SPb/f.1788/op.34/d.128/ll.1–6 (l.1). 109 TsGAIPD-SPb/f.25/op.12/d.346/l.147. 110 TsGAIPD-SPb/f.25/op.12/d.346/ll.129–129ob, l.147, l.160; GARF-RSFSR/f.A-413/ op.1/d.1190/l.11; GARF-RSFSR/f.A-413/op.1/d.974/ll.211–211ob. 111 TsGAIPD-SPb/f.25/op.12/d.346/l.117. 112 TsGANTD-SPb, f. 368, op. 2-2, d. 24, d. 54, d. 58 and d. 59. 113 GARF-RSFSR, f. A-413, op. 1, d. 650, ll. 31–54 (l. 43). Edele, Soviet Veterans, pp. 96, 99. 114 TsGAIPD-SPb, f. 25, op. 12, d. 346, l. 160. 115 TsGA-SPb, f. 2554, op. 2, d. 487, l. 1ob. 116 TsGANTD-SPb, f. 368, op. 2-2, d. 54, ll. 1–5, 87, 89, 91-93, 95–116. 117 TsGANTD-SPb, f. 368, op. 2-2, d. 59, l. 3. 118 Fieseler, ‘The Bitter Legacy’, pp. 54–5. 119 TsGAIPD-SPb/f.24/op.2v/d.8230/ll.1–2. 120 Interview, 21 March 2008, Disc No.10. 121 TsGAIPD-SPb/f.24/op.12/d.140/ll.95–6, 97–102.

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122 Maria Cristina Galmarini, ‘Turning Defects to Advantages: The Discourse of Labour in the Autobiographies of Soviet Blinded Second World War Veterans’, European History Quarterly, 44:4 (2014), pp. 651–77. 123 TsGAIPD-SPb/f.24/op.12/d.140/l.97. 124 Merridale, Ivan’s War, p. 314. 125 See for example the reports about institutions based in Ivanovo and Zagorsk: GARFRSFSR/f.A-259/op.6/d.1416/l.10 and GARF-SSSR/f.R-7523/op.55/d.20/ll.97–8. 126 TsGAIPD-SPb/f.25/op.12/d.384/l.22; GARF-RSFSR/f.A-413/op.1/d.974/l.210, GARF-RSFSR/f.A-413/op.1/d.1190/l.12. 127 GARF-SSSR/f.R-8009/op.35/d.20/ll.1–6 (l.3). 128 GARF-RSFSR/f.A-413/op.1/d.1190/ll.12–13. 129 GARF-SSSR/f.R-7523/op.55/d.13/l.4. 130 TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.29/d.645/l.22. 131 TsGAIPD-SPb/f.24/op.2v/d.8230/l.4. 132 GARF-RSFSR/f.A-413/op.1/d.974/l.210; TsGAIPD-SPb/f.K.-598/op.6/d.113/ll.87–8 (l.87). 133 ‘Pomosh’ invalidam voiny ovladet’ novoi spetsial’nost’iu (po pis’mam redaktsiiu)’, Leningradskaia pravda, 16 April 1946, p. 3; ‘Pis’ma v redaktsiiu – Navesti poriadok v skole invalidov’, Leningradskaia pravda, 23 May 1946, p. 3. 134 ‘Pis’ma v redaktsiiu – Tak li nado obuchat’ invalidov’, Leningradsksaia pravda, 19 September 1946, p. 3. 135 Deborah Cohen, ‘Will to Work: Disabled Veterans in Britain and Germany after the First World War’, in Gerber (ed.), Disabled Veterans in History, pp. 295–321 (pp. 302–3). 136 TsGAIPD-SPb/f.25/op.12/d.346/l.117. 137 LOGAV/f.R-3824/op.3/d.67/l.276; LOGAV/f R-2798/op.1/d.104/l.15. 138 See for example GARF-RSFSR/f.A-413/op.1/d.1190/l.9; GARF-RSFSR/f.A-413/ op.1/d.1472/ll.7–8. 139 Fieseler, ‘The Bitter Legacy’, p. 52. 140 Quoted in Fieseler, ‘The Bitter Legacy’, p. 52. 141 Zubkova, Russia after the War, p. 24; E. S. Seniavskaia, Frontovoe Pokolenie 1941–1945: istoriko-­psikhologicheskoe issledovanie (Moscow: IRI-RAN, 1995), p. 32. 142 TsGA-SPb/f.7179/op.53/d.110/l.20ob. 143 TsGA-SPb/f.9156/op.4/d.420/l.19. 144 TsGA-SPb/f.9156/op.4/d.420/l.44. 145 TsGA-SPb/f.9156/op.4/d.488/ll.94–5. 146 TsGA-SPb/f.9156/op.4/d.488/l.91. 147 TsGA-SPb/f.9156/op.4/d.420/l.18. 148 TsGA-SPb/f.9156/op.4/d.420/l.35. Biulleten’ Lengorispolkoma No.18, 1948, p. 18. 149 TsGA-SPb/f.9156/op.4/d.488/l.75, 96. 150 ‘Novyi gospital’ dlia invalidov voini’, Leningradskaia pravda, 11 August 1946, p. 3. 151 E. M. Ageenko (ed.), Sankt-Peterburgskii gospital’ veteranov voin k 55 letiiu so dnia osnovaniia (1946–2001) (St. Petersburg: Izdatel’stvo RGPU imeni A. I. Gertsena, 2001), pp. 7, 41. 152 TsGALI-SPb/f.97/op.4/d.137/ll.2–4 (l.3). 153 TsGA-SPb/f.9156/op.4/d.488/l.73. 154 TsGAIPD-SPb/f.25/op.12/d.435/ll.30–3 (l.31). 155 TsGA-SPb/f.9156/op.4/d.488/l.97; TsGAIPD-SPb/f.25/op.12/d.435/l.11. 156 TsGAIPD-SPb/f.25/op.12/d.435/ll.11–13 (ll.11–11ob).

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157 Y. Zh. Sh. Dondukov, ‘Moia ucheba na vostochnom fakyl’tete i moi uchitelia’, in O. I. Aleksandrova et al. (eds), Vospominaniia vypusknikov Vostochnogo fakul’teta Leningradskogo (Sankt-Peterburskogo) universiteta poslevoennykh let (1948-1952) (St. Petersburg: Sankt-Peterburgskii gosudarstvennyi universitet vostochni fakul’tet, 2001), pp. 91–102 (p. 100). 158 TsGALI-SPb, f. 97, op. 4, d. 262, l. 1, 4, 21. 159 Ageenko (ed.), Sankt-­peterburgskii gospital’ dlia veteranov voin, p. 7. 160 TsGALI-SPb/f.97/op.4/d.262/ll.138–138ob. 161 TsGALI-SPb/f.97/op.4/d.137/ll.59 (l.7). 162 TsGALI-SPb/f.97/op.4/d.137/ll.59, 16, 21, 38; TsGALI-SPb/f.97/op.4/d.262/l.4, 134–7, 138–138ob, 141, 148. 163 TsGALI/f.97/op.4/d.262/l.4. 164 TsGAIPD-SPb/f.24/op.12/d.195/ll.1–17 (ll.1–2). 165 Edele, Soviet Veterans, p. 89. 166 LOGAV/f R-2798/op.1/d.65/l.5ob. 167 GARF-RSFSR/f.A-413/op.1/d.1001/l.45. 168 LOGAV/f.R-2798/op.1/d.65/ll.2–75. 169 LOGAV/f.R-2798/op.1/d.65/l.6ob. 170 LOGAV/f.R-2798/op.1/d.65/l.42. 171 LOGAV/f.R-2798/op.1/d.65/ll.7ob–9. 172 LOGAV/f.R-2798/op.1/d.65/l. 7ob. 173 LOGAV/f.R-2798/op.1/d.65/ll.41–44ob (l.44). 174 ‘Spravedlivye trebovaniia (obzor pisem)’, Leningradskaia pravda, 18 July 1946, p. 3. 175 Bourke, ‘Going Home’, p. 150. 176 Frances Bernstein, ‘Prosthetic promise and Potemkin limbs in late-Stalinist Russia’, in Ransell and Iarskaia-Smirnova (eds), Disability in Eastern Europe, pp. 42–66; Fieseler, ‘The Bitter Legacy’, p. 54; ‘Vsemerno pomogat proivodstvu protezov’, Trud, 19 April 1946, p. 3; ‘Ob’edinit’ delo protezirovaniya’, Literaturnaia gazeta, 21 August 1948, p. 2; ‘Eshche raz o protezirovanii’, Literaturnaia gazeta, 11 September 1948, p. 2. 177 ‘Soveshchanie po voprosy o protezirovanii’, Leningradskaia pravda, 18 June 1946, p. 4; Bernstein, ‘Prosthetic promise’, p. 59. 178 TsGA-SPb/f.24/op.2v/d.7017/ll.12–14 (l.12ob). 179 TsGANTD-SPb/f.368/op.1-1/d.53/l.1ob; ‘Spravedlivye trebovaniia (obzor pisem)’, Leningradskaia pravda, 18 July 1946, p. 3. 180 Seth Koven, ‘Remembering and Dismemberment: Crippled Children, Wounded Soldiers, and the Great War in Great Britain’, American Historical Review, 99:4 (1994), pp. 1167–2002 (p. 1195). On the role of aesthetics in the Stalinist project see Boris Groys, The Total Art of Stalinism: Avant-Garde, Aesthetic Dictatorship and Beyond, trans. Charles Rougle (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992); David Hoffmann, Stalinist Values: The Cultural Norms of Soviet Modernity, 1917–1941 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2003), p. 11; and Katerina Clark, Moscow, The Fourth Rome: Stalinism, Cosmopolitanism, and the Evolution of Soviet Culture, 1931–1941 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011), pp. 105–35. 181 Bernstein, ‘Prosthetic promise’, p. 50. 182 Linker, War’s Waste, p. 181. 183 Dunham, In Stalin’s Time. 184 TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.25/d.36/l.1; TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.25/d.242/ll.1–2. 185 Biulleten’ Lengorispolkoma, No.18, 1948, p. 18; TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.25/d.242/l.2. 186 TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.25/d.36/l.2, 3, 5, 11.

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187 TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.25/d.36/l.18. 188 TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.25/d.242/l.4. 189 TsGAIPD-SPb/f.24/op.12/d.195/ll.1–17 (ll.3–4). 190 TsGA-SPb/f.9156/op.4/d.420/l.44. 191 LOGAV/f.R-407/op.1/d.246/ll.85ob–86. 192 ‘Chelovek vstal na nogi’, Vechernii Leningrad, 1 February 1946, p. 2; ‘Vozrashchenie k trudu. Vidaiushchiesiauspeckhi khirurgov’, Vechernii Leningrad, 2 October 1946, p. 2. 193 Catherine Merridale, Night of Stone: Death and Memory in Russia (London: Granta, 2000), p. 305. 194 TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.25/d.242/l.12. 195 Paul Wanke, Russian/Soviet Military Psychiatry, 1904–1945 (London and New York: Frank Cass, 2005), p. 109. 196 Albert R. Gilgen, Soviet and American Psychology During World War II (Wesport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1997); R. Gabriel, Soviet Military Psychiatry: The Theory and Practice of Coping with Battle Stress (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1986); Wanke, Russian/Soviet Military Psychiatry. 197 Catherine Merridale, ‘The Collective Mind: Trauma and Shell-­shock in Twentieth-­ century Russia’, Journal of Contemporary History, 35:1 (2000), pp. 39–55; Benjamin Zajicek, ‘Scientific Psychiatric in Stalin’s Soviet Union: The Politics of Modern Medicine and the Struggle to Define “Pavlovian” Psychiatry, 1939–1953’ (Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Chicago, 2009). 198 Seniavskaia, Frontovoe Pokolenie. 199 Edele, Soviet Veterans; Fieseler, ‘The Bitter Legacy’; Zubkova, Russia After the War; Zubkova Poslevoennaia sovetskoe obschestvo. 200 Laura L. Phillips, ‘Gendered Dis/ability: Perspectives from the Treatment of Psychiatric Casualties in Russia’s Early Twentieth Century Wars’, Social History of Medicine, 20:2 (2007), pp. 333–50 (p. 334). 201 Jan Plamper, ‘Fear: Soldiers and Emotion in Early Twentieth-Century Russian Military Psychology’, Slavic Review, 68:2 (2009), pp. 259–83. 202 Wanke, Russian/Soviet Military Psychiatry, pp. 17–29; Phillips, ‘Gendered Dis/ability’, p. 335; Catherine Merridale, ‘The Collective Mind’, pp. 40–1. 203 Merridale, ‘The Collective Mind’, p. 41. 204 Wanke, Russian/Soviet Military Psychiatry, p. 28. 205 Karen Petrone, The Great War in Russian Memory (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2011), p. 121. 206 Merridale, ‘The Collective Mind’, pp. 39–40; Peter Holquist, Making War, Forging Revolution: Russia’s Continuum of Crisis, 1914-1921 (London: Harvard University Press, 2002); Holquist ‘Violent Russia, Deadly Marxism? Russia in the Epoch of Violence, 1905–1921’, Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, 4:3 (2003), pp. 627–52. 207 Merridale, ‘The Collective Mind’, pp. 47–8. 208 Gilgen, Soviet and American Psychology; Gabriel, Soviet Military Psychiatry; Wanke, Russian/Soviet Military Psychiatry. 209 Wanke, Russian/Soviet Military Psychiatry, p. 80. 210 Merridale, Ivan’s War, p. 232. 211 Alan Allport, Demobbed: Coming Home After the Second World War (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009), p. 193. 212 Bourke, ‘Going Home’, p. 151.

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213 Ben Shephard, A War of Nerves: Soldiers and Psychiatrists in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001), p. 330. 214 Merridale, Ivan’s War, p. 15. 215 For further details see Robert Dale, ‘ “No Longer Normal” Traumatized Red Army Veterans in Postwar Leningrad’, in Peter Leese and Jason Crouthamel (eds), Traumatic Cultures: World War Two and After (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, forthcoming). 216 Wanke, Russian-Soviet Military Psychiatry, pp. 12, 15, 46, 66. 217 E. S. Averbukh and V. N. Miasishchev, ‘Kratkii ocherk nauchnoi deiatel’nosti psikho-­ nevrologicheskogo institute im V.M. Bekhterev’, in Naucho-­issledovatel’skaia deiatel’nost instituta za 50 let (Leningrad: 1958), pp. 10–11; Wanke, Russian/Soviet Military Psychiatry, p. 66. 218 V. N. Miasishchev (ed.), Nauchnaia deiatel’nost psikhonevrologicheskogo instituta imeni V. M. Bekhtereva za 1946 god. Avtoreferaty nauchnykh rabot (Leningrad: Uchebno-­ proizvodstvennye masterskie Lenpoligraftekhnikuma, 1947); E. S. Averbukh and V. N. Miasishchev (eds), Organizatsionno-­methodicheskie voprosy sovremennoi neiropsikhiatrii (Leningrad: 1948). 219 Krylova, ‘Healers of Wounded Souls’, p. 318. 220 Dale, ‘No Longer Normal’. 221 TsGANTD-SPb/f.313/op.2-1/d.17/l.2. 222 TsGANTD-SPb/f.313/op.2-1/d.17/l.2. 223 For an indication of the variety of projects and conditions see V. N. Miasishchev (ed.), Nauchnaia deiatel’nost psikhonevrologicheskogo instituta imeni V. M. Bekhtereva za 1946 god and V. N. Miasishchev (ed.), Nauchnaia Deiatel’nost’ psikhonevrologicheskogo instituta im. V. M. Bekhtereva za 1947 god. Avtoreferaty nauchnykh rabot (Leningrad: 1948). 224 F. P. Maiorov, ‘Ob isterii u sil’nogo tipa nervnoi sistemy (po materialam voennoi travmy)’, in E. S. Averbukh (ed.), Konferentsiia, posviashchennaia voprosam psikhogenie, psikhoterapii i psikogigeny. 23–24 Marta 1946g. Tezisy dokladov (Leningrad: 1946), pp. 15–17. 225 TsGANTD-SPb/f.313/op.2-1/d.186/ll.6–8. 226 The names of the patients in the original documents were abbreviated to offer a modicum of anonymity. 227 TsGANTD–SPb/f.313/op.2-1/d.186/ll.6–8. 228 TsGANTD-SPb/f.313/op.2-1/d.115/ll.2–4. 229 TsGANTD-SPb/f.313/op. 2-1/d.115/ll. 7–8. 230 TsGANTD-SPb/f.313/op.2-1/d.115/ll.8–10. 231 TsGANTD-SPb/f.313/op.2-1/d.115/l.12. 232 TsGANTD-SPb/f.313/op.2-1/d.115/ll.15–16. 233 TsGANTD-SPb/f.313/op.2-1/d.17/l.3. 234 Miasishchev (ed.), Nauchnaia deiatel’nost psikhonevrologicheskogo instituta imeni V. M. Bekhtereva za 1946 god, p. 7. 235 Shephard, A War of Nerves, pp. 28–30. 236 Merridale, Ivan’s War, p. 233. 237 Merridale, Night of Stone, p. 305. 238 Wanke, Russian-Soviet Military Psychiatry, pp. 54, 68. 239 Wanke, Russian-Soviet Military Psychiatry, p. 71; ‘Khirugicheskoe lechenie dushevnykh boleznei’, Vechernii Leningrad, 15 August 1946, p. 2. 240 Merridale, ‘Culture, Ideology and Combat in the Red Army’, p. 323; TsGANTD-SPb/ f.313/op.2-1/d.17/l.9.

222

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241 Krylova, ‘Healers of Wounded Souls’, p. 318. 242 Miasishchev (ed.), Nauchnaia deiatel’nost psikhonevrologicheskogo instituta imeni V. M. Bekhtereva za 1946 god, p. 7. 243 Miasishchev (ed.), Nauchnaia deiatel’nost pp. 16–20. 244 TsGA-SPb/f.9156/op.4/d.508/l.1, 10. 245 Robert Dale, ‘The Valaam Myth and the Fate of Leningrad’s Disabled Veterans’, Russian Review, 72:2 (2013), pp. 260–84 (pp. 281–2). 246 TsGA-SPb/f.9156/op.4/d.491/ll.1–1ob. 247 TsGA-SPb/f.9156/op.4/d.508/l.10. 248 TsGA-SPb/f.9156/op.4/d.491/ll.1–1ob. 249 GARF-RSFSR/f.A-339/op.1/d.1821/ll.1–3ob; for the investigation’s results see GARF-RSFSR/f.A-339/op.1/d.1821/ll.8–13. 250 Merridale, Ivan’s War, p. 315; Merridale, Night of Stone, p. 315. 251 TsGA-SPb/f.9260/op.1/d.27/ll.151–2. 252 TsGAIPD-SPb/f.24/op.2v/d.7480/l.18ob. 253 TsGAIPD-SPb/f.24/op.2v/d.7480/l.60. 254 Dondukov, ‘Moia ucheba na vostochnom fakul’tete i moi uchitelia’, p. 92. 255 Kenneth Pinnow, ‘Lives Out of Balance: The “Possible World” of Soviet Suicide during the 1920s’, in Angela Brintlinger and Ilya Vinitsky (eds), Madness and the Mad in Russian Culture (Toronto: Toronto University Press, 2007), pp. 130–49. 256 On this wave of suicides see Richard Bessel, ‘Hatred after War: Emotion and the Postwar History of East Germany’, History & Memory, 17:1/2 (2005), pp. 195–216 (pp. 199–203); Christian Goeschel, Suicide in Nazi Germany (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), pp. 149–66. 257 TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.36/d.276/ll.30–4. 258 Merridale, ‘The Collective Mind’, p. 50.

5  Disorderly Demobilization   1 Throughout this chapter the names of criminals and victims contained in court files preserved in LOGAV/f.R-3820 and TsGA-SPb/f.813 have been changed to protect the identities of those concerned.   2 LOGAV/f.R-3820/op.2/d.2406/ll.108–10.   3 On these theories see Eric H. Monkkonen, Murder in New York City (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2001), pp. 8, 18–19 and Dane Archer and Rosemary Gartner (eds), Violence and Crime in Cross-National Perspective (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1984), pp. 74–5.   4 George L. Mosse, Fallen Soldiers: Reshaping the Memory of the World Wars (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), pp. 159–81.   5 For an excellent collection of essays re-­examining paramilitary violence and the case for brutalization see Robert Gewarth and John Horne (eds), War in Peace: Paramilitary Violence in Europe After the Great War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012).   6 Sheila Fitzpatrick, ‘The Legacy of the Civil War’, in Diane P. Koenker, William G. Rosenberg and Ronald G. Suny (eds), Party, State and Society in the Russian Civil War: Explorations in Social History (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1989), pp. 385–98; Peter Holquist, Making War, Forging Revolution: Russia’s Continuum of Crisis, 1914–1921 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002); Holquist, ‘Violent Russia, Deadly Marxism? Russia in the Epoch of Violence, 1905–21’, Kritika:

Notes

  7   8   9 10 11 12 13

14

15 16 17 18

19

20

223

Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, 4:3 (2003), pp. 627–52; Joshua A. Sanborn, Drafting the Russian Nation: Military Conscription, Total War and Mass Politics, 1905–1925 (Dekalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press, 2003). Dietrich Beyrau, ‘Brutalization Revisited: The Case of Russia’, Journal of Contemporary History, 50:1 (2015), pp. 15–37 (p. 16). Joanna Bourke, An Intimate History of Killing (London: Granta, 2000), pp. 245–63 (p. 250). Winter, Death’s Men, p. 247; Jon Lawrence, ‘Forging a Peaceable Kingdom: War, Violence and the Fear of Brutalization in Post-First World War Britain’, Journal of Modern History, 75:3 (2003), pp. 557–89 (pp. 557, 560, 563, 567, 571). Susan Kingsley Kent, Making Peace: The Reconstruction of Gender in Interwar Britain (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993), pp. 97–9. Jennifer Keene, ‘A “Brutalizing” War? The USA after the First World War’, Journal of Contemporary History, 50:1 (2015), pp. 78–99 (p. 80). Karen Petrone, The Great War in Russian Memory (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2011), pp. 125–64 (p. 139). Richard Severo and Lewis Milford, The Wages of War: When America’s Soldiers Came Home – From Valley Forge to Vietnam (New York: Touchstone, 1989), pp. 291–2; Michael D. Gambone, The Greatest Generation Comes Home: The Veteran in American Society (College Station, TX: Texas A&M University Press, 2005), p. 29; Mary Louise Roberts, What Soldiers Do: Sex and the American GI in World War II France (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2013). Joanna Bourke, ‘ “Going Home”: The Personal Adjustment of British and American Servicemen after the War’, in Richard Bessel and Dirk Schumann (eds), Life After Death: Approaches to a Cultural and Social History of Europe During the 1940s and 1950s (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 149–60 (p. 152). For example, John C. Spencer, Crime and the Services (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1954), p. 83. Mark Roodhouse, ‘The “Ghost Squad”: Undercover Policing in London, 1945–49’, in Gerard Oram (ed.), Policing in Mid-Twentieth Century Europe (London: Francis Bootle, 2003), pp. 171–91 (p. 176). See for example the cartoons ‘Na privychnom iazyke’, Krokodil, 10 August 1945, p. 3; ‘Sluchai s demobilizovannym’, Krokodil, 20 December 1945, p. 8. See V. A. Ivanov, ‘ “Skorpiony”: Korruptsiia v poslevoennom Leningrade’, in V. S. Izmozik (ed.), Politicheskii sysk v Rossii: Istoriia i sovremennost’ (St. Petersburg: Izdatel’stvo Sankt-Peterburgskogo Universiteta Ekonomika i Finansov, 1996), pp. 238–50; M. E. Zharkoi, Militsiia Leningrada v mekhanizme realizatsii karatel’noi politiki poslevoennykh let (1945–1957gg.). Istoricheskie uroki deiatel’nosti (St. Petersburg: Izdatel’stvo Politekhn, un-­ta, 2004); I. V. Govorov, ‘Razgul prestupnosti v poslevoennom Leningrade i oblasti’, Voprosy Istorii, No.4 (2003), pp. 139–44; I. V. Govorov, Prestupnost’ i bor’ba s nei v poslevoennom Leningrade, 1945–1955: Opyt istoricheskogo analiza (St. Petersburg: Izdatel’stvo Sankt-Peterburgskogo Universiteta, 2004); Vladimir Alexandrovich Samarin, ‘Bor’ba s banditizmom v Leningrade vo votoroi polovine 40-kh gg. Istoricheskii aspekt’ (Dissertatsiia kand. ist. nayk., MVD Rossii Saint-Peterburgskii universitet, 2001). Alan Kramer makes this point in ‘ “Law-­abiding Germans”? Social Disintegration, Crime and the Reimposition of Order in Post-­war Western Germany, 1945–9’, in Richard J. Evans (ed.), The German Underworld: Deviants and Outcasts in German History (London: Routledge, 1988), pp. 238–61. Govorov, Prestupnost’ i bor’ba s nei v poslevoennom Leningrade, p. 14. See Table 3.

224 21 22 23 24 25 26

27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40

41 42 43 44 45 46 47

Notes Govorov, Prestupnost’ i bor’ba s nei v poslevoennom Leningrade, pp. 32–5. Govorov, Prestupnost’ i bor’ba s nei v poslevoennom Leningrade, pp. 19–20, 28. Evans, The German Underworld, p. 14. Govorov, Prestupnost’ i bor’ba s nei v poslevoennom Leningrade, pp. 13–14. Jeffrey Burds, ‘Bor’ba s banditismom v SSSR v 1944–1953 gg.’, Sotsial’naia Istoriia, Ezhegodnik 2000 (Moscow: IRI-RAN, 2000), pp. 169–90 (pp. 170–2). The phrase ‘crooked-­mirror’ is borrowed from S. G. Wheatcroft and R. W. Davies, ‘The Crooked Mirror of Soviet Economic Statistics’, in R. W. Davies, Mark Harrison and S. G. Wheatcroft (eds), The Economic Transformation of the Soviet Union, 1913–1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 24–37. Govorov, Prestupnost’ i bor’ba s nei v poslevoennom Leningrade, p. 103. Lisa A. Kirschenbaum, ‘ “Our City, Our Hearths, Our Families”: Local Loyalties and Private Life in Soviet World War II Propaganda’, Slavic Review, 59:4 (2000), pp. 825–47. TsGAIPD-SPb/f.24/op.2v/d.7702/l.52. Burds, ‘Bor’ba s banditism’, pp. 169–70. E. Iu. Zubkova (ed.), Sovetskaia zhizn’, 1945–1953 (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2003), pp. 189–93; Elena Zubkova, Russia After the War: Hopes, Illusions and Disappointment, 1945–1957, trans. Hugh Ragsdale (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1998), pp. 38–9. TsGAIPD-SPb/f.25/op.5/d.798/ll.31–2. TsGAIPD-SPb/f.24/op.2v/d.7480/l.59ob. TsGAIPD-SPb/f.25/op.5/d.798/l.32. Quoted in Ivanov, ‘ “Skorpiony”: korruptsiia v poslevoennom Leningrade’, p. 240. Biulleten’ Lengorispolkoma, No.21, 1945, pp. 8–9; Samarin, ‘Bor’ba s banditizmom v Leningrade’, pp. 142–8. ‘V Ispolkom Lengorsoveta – O meropriiatiiakh po ukrepleniiu obshchestvennogo poriadka i bezopastnosti v g. Leningrade’, Leningradskaia pravda, 21 October 1945, p. 2. Leningradskaia pravda, 23 October 1945, p. 2, Samarin, ‘Bor’ba s banditizmom v Leningrade’, p. 145; Elizabeth White, ‘After the War was Over: The Civilian Return to Leningrad’, Europe-Asia Studies, 59:7 (2007), pp. 1145–61 (p. 1153). The National Archives, Foreign Office, 371/77676. Eric Naiman makes a similar point about crime reporting in the 1920s in, Sex in Public. The Incarnation of Early Soviet Ideology (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997), p. 150. For a flavour of crime reporting in Leningrad during the crime wave see ‘V sude – Shaika khishchnikov s zavoda “Sevkabel” ’, Leningradskaia pravda, 24 October 1946, p. 4; ‘V gorodskom sude – Bandit rasstrelian’, Leningradskaia pravda, 13 December 1946, p. 4; ‘V prokurature goroda – khuligany strogo nakazany’, Leningradskaia pravda, 18 December 1946, p.4; ‘Proisshestviia – Khishchniki / Vorovskaia shaika / Spekulianty’, Vechernii Leningrad, 11 January 1946, p. 4; ‘Proisshestviia – Krazha so vzlomom’, Vechernii Leningrad, 20 March 1946, p. 4 and ‘Proisshestvia – Shaika spekuliantov’, Vechernii Leningrad, 21 October 1946, p. 4. TsGA-SPb/f.9260/op.1/d.27/ll.151–2. LOGAV/f.R-4380/op.1/d.1104/ll.2–3ob. TsGAIPD-SPb/f.25/op.12/d.113/ll.86–92 (l.89). Biulleten’ Lengorispolkoma, No.13, 1946, p. 12. TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.36/d.149/ll.72–7 (l.73ob). Biulleten’ Lengorispolkoma, No.14, 1946, p. 14. For an examination of sexual crime in these spaces see Dan Healey, ‘Comrades, Queers, and “Oddballs”: Sodomy, Masculinity and Gendered Violence in Leningrad Province of the 1950s’, Journal of the History of Sexuality, 20:3 (2012), pp. 496–522.

Notes

225

48 TsGAIPD-SPb/f.24/op.12/d.111/l.40. 49 TsGA-SPb/f. 7179/op.53/d.150/l.44. 50 On the importance and persistence of the second economy see Julie Hessler, A Social History of Soviet Trade: Trade Policy, Retail Practices, and Consumption, 1917–1953 (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004); Hessler, ‘A Postwar Perestroika? Toward a History of Private Enterprise in the USSR’, Slavic Review, 57:3 (1998), pp. 516–42; Sheila Fitzpatrick, Everyday Stalinism: Ordinary Life in Extraordinary Times: Soviet Russia in the 1930s (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 59–66; and Jeffrey W. Jones, ‘ “People Without a Definite Occupation”. The Illegal Economy and “Speculators” in Rostov-­on-the-Don, 1943–48’, in Donald J. Raleigh (ed.), Provincial Landscapes: Local Dimensions in Soviet Power, 1917–1953 (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2001), pp. 236–54. 51 Richard Bidlack, ‘Survival Strategies in Leningrad during the First Year of the Soviet-German War’, in Robert W. Thurston and Bernd Bontwetsch (eds), The People’s War: Responses to World War in the Soviet Union (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2000), pp. 81–107. 52 Govorov, Prestupnost’ i bor’ba s nei v poslevoennom Leningrade, p. 120. 53 TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.36/d.227/ll.26–9 (l.27). 54 Govorov, Prestupnost’ i bor’ba s nei v poslevoennom Leningrade, p. 138. 55 See for example the unpublished memoirs of Ivan Gonchukov, TsGAIPD-SPb, f.4000/ op.18/d.333/ll.165–6. 56 Leningradskaia pravda, 23 October 1945, p. 2 57 Siobhan Peeling, ‘Displacement, Deviance and Civic Identity: Migrants into Leningrad at the End of the Second World War’, Forum for Anthropology and Culture, No.6 (2010), pp. 201–14. 58 David R. Shearer, Policing Stalin’s Socialism: Repression and Social Order in the Soviet Union, 1924–1953 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009), p. 412. 59 Golfo Alexopoulous, ‘Amensty 1945: The Revolving Door of Stalin’s Gulag’, Slavic Review, 64:2 (2005), pp. 274–306 (p. 274). 60 TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.36/d.149/l.67; Samarin, ‘Bor’ba s banditismom v Leningrade’, p. 43. 61 Hiroaki Kuromiya, Freedom and Terror in the Donbas: A Ukrainian-Russian Borderland. 1870s–1990s (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 301. 62 LOGAV/f.R-3824/op.2/d.94/ll.7–10. 63 Samarin, ‘Bor’ba s banditismom v Leningrade’, p. 47. 64 A. Z. Vakser, Leningrad poslevoennyi 1945–1982 gody (St. Petersburg: Izdatel’stvo Ostrov, 2005), p. 90. 65 For one isolated instance see LOGAV/f.R-3824/op.3/d.94/l.7. 66 Vakser, Leningrad poslevoennyi, p. 10; LOGAV/f.R-4380/op.1/d.1270/ll.3–8. See also Biulleten’ Lengorispolkoma, No.4, 1948, p. 7. 67 Blair A. Ruble, Leningrad: Shaping a Soviet City (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1990), p. 51. 68 W. Bruce-Lincoln, Sunlight at Midnight: St. Petersburg and the Rise of Modern Russia (New York: Basic Books, 2000), p. 311. 69 This issue is examined in greater detail in Chapter 6. 70 On Germany see Richard Bessel, ‘The “Front Generation” and the Politics of Weimar Germany’, in Mark Roseman (ed.), Generations in Conflict: Youth Revolt and Generation Formation in Germany 1770–1968 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 121–36; Richard Bessel, Germany After the First World War (Oxford:

226

71

72 73 74

75

76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85

86

Notes Clarendon Press, 1995). On France see Antoine Prost, In the Wake of War: Les Anciens Combattants and French Society. The Legacy of the Great War, trans. Helen McPhail (New York: Berg, 1992). On Britain see Dennis Winter, Death’s Men: Soldiers of the Great War (London: Penguin, 1978), p. 241, and Kent, Making Peace, p. 98. Vladimir A. Kozlov, Massovye besporiadki v SSSR pri Khrushcheve i Brezhneve: 1953-nachalo 1980-kh gg. (Novosibirsk: Sibirskii khronograf, 1999), pp. 60–1; Kozlov, Neizvestnyi SSSR: Protivostoianie naroda i vlasti 1953–1985 gg. (Moscow: OLMA Press, 2006), p. 152. Mark Edele, Soviet Veterans of the Second World War: A Popular Movement in an Authoritarian Society, 1941–1991 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), pp. 26–7. TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.36/d.148/l.155; TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.36/d.149/l.170. See Omer Bartov, The Eastern Front, 1941–45: German Troops and the Barbarisation of Warfare, second edition (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001); Amir Weiner, ‘Something To Die For, A Lot To Kill For. The Soviet System and the Barbarisation of Warfare, 1939–45’, in George Kassimeris (ed.), The Barbarisation of Warfare (London: Hurst and Company, 2006), pp. 101–25; Mark Edele, ‘Learning from the Enemy? Entangling Histories of the German-Soviet War 1941–1945’, in Daniel Baratieri, Mark Edele and Giuseppe Finaldi (eds), Totalitarian Dictatorship: New Histories (London: Routledge, 2014), pp. 190–211. Mark Edele and Michael Geyer, ‘States of Exception: The Nazi Soviet War as a System of Violence, 1939–1945’, in Michael Geyer and Sheila Fitzpatrick (eds), Beyond Totalitarianism: Stalinism and Nazism Compared (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), pp. 345–95. Catherine Merridale, Ivan’s War: The Red Army 1939–45 (London: Faber and Faber, 2006), p. 3. Richard Bessel, Germany 1945: From War to Peace (London: Simon & Schuster, 2009), p. 2. Richard Overy, Russia’s War: A History of the Soviet War Effort: 1941–1945 (London: Penguin, 1998), p. 262; Bessel, Germany 1945, pp. 11–12. Richard Bessel, ‘Hatred after the War: Emotion and the Postwar History of East Germany’, History and Memory, 17:1–2 (2005), pp. 195–216. On this wave of mass violence see Filip Slaveski, The Soviet Occupation of Germany: Hunger, Mass Violence, and the Struggle for Peace, 1945–1946 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013). Oleg Budnitskii, ‘The Intelligentsia Meets the Enemy. Educated Soviet Officers in Defeated Germany, 1945’, Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, 10:3 (2009), pp. 629–87. Budnitskii, ‘The Intelligentsia Meets the Enemy’, p. 660. E. Sherstianoi, ‘Germaniia i nemtsy v pis’makh krasnoarmeitsev vesnoi 1945g.’, Novaia i noveishaia istoriia, No.2 (2002), pp. 137–51 (pp. 144–6). For a discussion on the nature, functions and importance of unwritten rules in soldiers’ letters see Michael Roper, The Secret Battle: Emotional Survival in the Great War (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2009), pp. 49–72. On the mass rape conducted by the Red Army see: Norman M. Naimark, The Russians in Germany: A History of the Soviet Zone in Occupation, 1945–1949 (Cambridge, MA: Belnapp Press of Harvard University Press, 1995), pp. 70–1; Merridale, Ivan’s War, pp. 264–75; Atina Grossmann, ‘Trauma, Memory and Motherhood. Germans and Jewish Displaced Persons in Post-Nazi Germany, 1945–1949’, in Bessel and Schumann (eds), Life After Death, pp. 93–127 (p. 100); Budnitskii, ‘The Intelligentsia Meets the Enemy’, p. 661. Sherstianoi, ‘Germaniia i nemtsy v pis’makh krasnoarmeitsev’, pp. 144–6.

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  87 Slaveski, The Soviet Occupation of Germany, pp. 25–7; Edele, Soviet Veterans, p. 31.   88 Naimark, The Russians in Germany, p. 34.   89 Naimark, The Russians in Germany, p. 35.   90 Robert Service, Stalin: A Biography (London: Macmillan, 2004), p. 528.   91 Sherstianoi, ‘Germaniia i nemtsy v pis’makh krasnoarmeitsev’, p. 144; Merridale, Ivan’s War, p. 279; Budnitskii, ‘The Intelligentsia Meets the Enemy’, p. 657.   92 Edele, Soviet Veterans, pp. 30–3; Merridale, Ivan’s War, p. 279; Budnitskii, ‘The Intelligentsia Meets the Enemy’, pp. 657–60.   93 LOGAV/f.R-3824/op.3/d.94/l.53; LOGAV/f.R-3824/op.3/d.96/l.6.   94 Slaveski, The Soviet Occupation of Germany, pp. 35–6.   95 TsGA-SPb, f.7384/op.36/d.149/ll.95–108 (l.101).   96 Govorov, Prestupnost’ i bor’ba s nei v poslevoennom Leningrade, p. 73.   97 TsGA-SPb/f.7179/op.53/d.132/ll.278–80.   98 TsGA-SPb/f.7179/op.53/d.132/l.259.   99 TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.17/d.1520/l.23. 100 Roger R. Reese, Why Stalin’s Soldiers Fought: The Red Army’s Military Effectiveness in World War II (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas: 2011), pp. 140, 167; Anne Applebaum, GULAG: A History of the Soviet Camps (London: Allen Lane, 2003), pp. 402–4; Fyodor Vasilevich Mochulsky, Gulag Boss: A Soviet Memoir, trans. and ed. Deborah Kaple (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), p. 79. 101 Healey, ‘Comrades, Queers, and “Oddballs” ’, p. 499, note 11. 102 Samarin, ‘Bor’ba s banditismom v Leningrade’, pp. 79–80. 103 Author’s calculation. By the end of November 1946 a total of 241,021 soldiers had been demobilized in the city of Leningrad (TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.36/d.201/l.180). By 1 January 1947 city district social security offices had record of 53,334 war invalids claiming disability pensions (TsGAIPD-SPb/f.24/op.2v/d.8230/l.1). On 1 January 1947 official population statistics estimated Leningrad’s population at 1,920,000 (Vakser, Leningrad poslevoennyi, p. 10). 104 TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.36/d.149/ll.78–78ob. 105 TsGA-SPb/f.7179/op.53/d.110/l.21. 106 TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.36/d.214/l.33. 107 TsGA-SPb/f.7179/op.53/d.176/ll.27, 29, 78–9. 108 TsGA-SPb/f.7179/op.53/d.110/l.21. 109 TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.36/d.148/l.20ob. 110 TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.36/d.148/l.21ob. 111 RGANI/f.6/op.6/d.1526/ll.16–17. 112 LOGAV/f.R-3820/op.2/d.2518/ll.64–5, 70–2. 113 TsGA-SPb/f.8164/op.3/d.1102/ll.114–114ob, 131–131ob, 132–132ob, 187. 114 TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.36/d.148/l.20. 115 TsGA-SPb/f.7179/op.53/d.132/l.3. 116 Alan Allport, Demobbed: Coming Home After the Second World War (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009), p. 84. 117 TsGA-SPb/f.7384/op.36/d.149/l.7. 118 Govorov, Prestupnost’ i bor’ba s nei v poslevoennom Leningrade, pp. 20, 69; Samarin, ‘Bor’ba s banditismom v Leningrade’, pp. 51, 79. 119 On the involvement of veterans in Soviet peace campaigns and the role of traumatic memories of conflict in shaping attitudes towards peace see Timothy Johnston, ‘Peace or Pacifism? The Soviet “Struggle For Peace in All the World”, 1948–54’, Slavonic and East European Review, 86:2 (2008), pp. 257–82 (pp. 274–9).

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120 Keene, ‘A “Brutalizing” War?’. 121 Shearer, Policing Stalin’s Socialism, pp. 405–36; Peter H. Solomon, Soviet Criminal Justice Under Stalin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 337–403. 122 For a discussion of similar issues in the infamous case of Pavlik Morozov, see Catriona Kelly, Comrade Pavlik: The Rise and Fall of a Soviet Boy Hero (London: Granta, 2005), pp. 13, 77. 123 LOGAV/f.R-3820/op.2/d.2388/l.1, 140. 124 LOGAV/f.R-3820/op.2/d.2388/ll.266–7. For a discussion of the forensic evidence linking the accused to the crime scene see LOGAV/f.R-3820/op.2/d.2388/ll.190–2. 125 LOGAV/f.R-3820/op.2/d.2388/l.266ob. 126 Bourke, An Intimate History of Killing, p. 354. 127 Samarin, ‘Bor’ba s banditismom v Leningrade’, p. 7. 128 TsGA SPb/f.7384/op.36/d.148/ll.77–77ob. 129 Shearer, Policing Stalin’s Socialism, pp. 424–5. 130 Monkkonen, Murder In New York City. 131 TsGA-SPb/f.8134/op.3/d.1022/ll.198–201. 132 TsGA-SPb/f.8134/op.3/d.1022/l.262. 133 Dan Healey, ‘Early Soviet Forensic Psychiatric Approaches to Sex Crime, 1917–1934’, in Angela Britlinger and Ilya Vinitsky (eds), Madness and the Mad in Russian Culture (Toronto: Toronto University Press, 2007), pp. 150–71. On the concept of vmeniaemost’ see Dan Healey, Homosexual Desire in Revolutionary Russia: The Regulation of Sexual and Gender Dissent (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2001), p. 175. 134 For example see LOGAV/f.R-3820/op.2/d.2518/ll.171–2; TsGA-SPb/f.8134/ op.3/d.1002/ll.114–114ob. 135 TsGA-SPb/f.8134/op.3/d.1025/ll.161–161ob. 136 LOGAV/f.R-3820/op.2/d.2468/ll.52–3. 137 Zubkova, Russia After the War, pp. 27–8. 138 LOGAV/f.R-3820/op.2/d.2403/ll.96, 109–11, 140, 145, 147–147ob., 150. 139 Healey, ‘Early Soviet Forensic Psychiatric Approaches to Sex Crime’ (note 85), pp. 157–60. 140 Catherine Merridale, ‘Culture, Ideology and Combat in the Red Army, 1939–45’, Journal of Contemporary History, 41:2 (2006), pp. 305–24 (pp. 307–9). 141 Naiman, Sex in Public, pp. 250–88. On the image of the city as a corrupting social force see Joan Neuberger, Hooliganism: Crime, Culture and Power in St. Petersburg 1900–1914 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1993). 142 Sanborn, Drafting the Russian Nation. 143 Mark Von Hagen, Soldiers in the Proletarian Dictatorship: The Red Army and the Soviet Socialist State, 1917–1930 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1990). 144 Holquist, ‘Violent Russia, Deadly Marxism?’. 145 Petrone, The Great War in Russian Memory, p. 129. 146 Christian Gerlach, ‘Extremely Violent Societies: An Alternative to the Concept of Genocide’, Journal of Genocide Research, 8:4 (2006), pp. 455–71. 147 Petrone, The Great War in Russian Memory, p. 127. 148 Dmitrii Sergeevich Likhachev, Reflections on the Russian Soul. A Memoir, trans. Bernard Adams (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2000), p. 238. 149 Likhachev, Reflections on the Russian Soul, p. 244. 150 Boris Belozerov, ‘Crime During the Siege’, in John Barber and Andrei Dzeniskevich (eds), Life and Death in Besieged Leningrad, 1941–44 (London: Palgrave Macmillian, 2005), pp. 213–28 (p. 221).

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151 Ibid., pp. 222–3. 152 Ivanov, ‘ “Skorpiony”: Korruptsiia v poslevoennom Leningrade’, p. 240; Belozerov, ‘Crime During the Siege’, p. 223; Likhachev, Reflections on the Russian Soul, pp. 234–5. 153 Harrison E. Salisbury, The 900 Days: The Siege of Leningrad (London: Pan Macmillan, 2000), p. 447; Lisa A. Kirschenbaum, The Legacy of the Siege of Leningrad, 1941–1995: Myth, Memories, and Monuments (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 238–46.

6  Demobilizing the Mind   1 On postwar emotions and demobilization see, Frank Biess, ‘Feelings in the Aftermath. Toward a History of Postwar Emotions’, in Frank Biess and Robert G. Moeller (eds), Histories of the Aftermath: The Legacies of the Second World in Europe (Oxford: Berghahn, 2010), pp. 30–48; Robert Dale, ‘Rats and Resentment: The Demobilization of the Red Army in Postwar Leningrad, 1945–50’, Journal of Contemporary History, 45:1 (2010), pp. 113–33.   2 The phrase demobilizing the mind is borrowed and adapted from John Horne, ‘Demobilizing the Mind: France and the Legacy of the Great War, 1919–1939’, French History and Civilization, 2 (2009), pp. 101–19. However, while Horne focuses on the cultural demobilization of societies, I concentrate upon how individual veterans readjusted their mindsets.   3 Adam R. Seipp, The Ordeal of Peace: Demobilization and the Urban Experience in Britain and Germany, 1917–1921 (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009), pp. 14–15.   4 Elena Zubkova, Russia After the War: Hopes, Illusions, and Disappointments, 1945–1957, ed. and trans. Hugh Ragsdale (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1998), p. 19.   5 Richard Bidlack and Nikita Lomagin, The Leningrad Blockade, 1941–1944: A New Documentary History from the Soviet Archives, trans. Marian Schwartz (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2012), p. 68.   6 Lisa Kirschenbaum, The Legacy of the Siege of Leningrad, 1941–1995: Myth, Memories, and Monuments (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), p. 142.   7 Lisa Kirschenbaum, “‘Our City, Our Hearths, Our Families”: Local Loyalties and Private Life in Soviet World War II Propaganda’, Slavic Review, 59:4 (2000), pp. 825–47.   8 Alexander Werth, Russia: The Post-War Years (London: Robert Hale & Company, 1971), pp. 202–9; Yoram Gorlizki and Oleg Khlevniuk, Cold Peace: Stalin and the Soviet Ruling Circle, 1945–1953 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), pp. 32–3.   9 Gorlizki and Khlevniuk, Cold Peace, p. 33. 10 David Brandenberger, ‘Stalin, the Leningrad Affair and Limits of Postwar Russocentrism’, Russian Review, 63:2 (2004), pp. 241–55. 11 Aileen G. Rambow, ‘The Siege of Leningrad: Wartime Literature and Ideological Change’, in Robert W. Thurston and Bernd Bonwetsch (eds), The People’s War: Responses to World War II in the Soviet Union (Chicago, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2000) pp. 154–70; Kirschenbaum, The Legacy of the Siege of Leningrad, p. 142. 12 Serhy Yekelchyk, ‘Celebrating the Soviet Present. The Zhdanovshchina Campaign in Ukrainian Literature and the Arts’, in Donald J. Raleigh (ed.), Provincial Landscapes: Local Dimensions of Soviet Power, 1917–1953 (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2001), pp. 255–75; David Brandenberger, National Bolshevism: Stalinist Mass

230

13 14

15

16

17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24

25 26 27

28

Notes Culture and the Formation of Modern Russian National Identity, 1931–1956 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002), pp. 190–6. Richard Bidlack, ‘Ideological or Political Origins of the Leningrad Affair? A Response to David Brandenberger’, Russian Review, 64:1 (2005), pp. 90–5 (p. 90). Benjamin Tromly, ‘The Leningrad Affair and Soviet Patronage Politics, 1949–1950’, Europe-Asia Studies, 56:5 (2004), pp. 707–29. See also that description of the fanning out of the purge in Novgorod, Pskov and other places in V. I. Demidov and V. A. Kutuzov (eds), Leningradskoe delo. Sbornik (Leningrad: Lenizdat, 1990). Brandenberger, ‘Stalin, the Leningrad Affair, and the Limits of Postwar Russocentrism’; Kirschenbaum, The Legacy of the Siege, p. 143; Geoffrey Hosking, Rulers and Victims: The Russians in the Soviet Union (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2006), p. 254. Harrison E. Salisbury, The 900 Days: The Siege of Leningrad (London: Pan Macmillan, 2000), pp. 571–83, Kirschenbaum, The Legacy of the Siege, pp. 144–6; Stephen Maddox, ‘Healing the Wounds: Commemorations, Myths, and the Restoration of Leningrad’s Imperial Heritage, 1941–1950’ (Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Toronto, 2008) pp. 216–17; W. Bruce Lincoln, Sunlight at Midnight: St. Petersburg and the Rise of Modern Russia (New York: Basic Books, 2000), p. 312. Maddox, ‘Healing the Wounds’, pp. 189–205. Maddox, ‘Healing the Wounds’, pp. 245–8; Kirshchenbaum, The Legacy of the Siege, pp. 144–5. Maddox’ Healing the Wounds’, pp. 243–4. Bidlack and Lomagin, The Leningrad Blockade, p. 76. Elena Zubkova, Poslevoennoe sovetskoe obshchestvo: politika i povsednevnost’ 1945–1953 (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 1999), pp. 28–37. On the development of Soviet veterans organizations after 1956 see Mark Edele, Soviet Veterans of the Second World War: A Popular Movement in an Authoritarian Societry, 1941–1991 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), pp. 153–84. Mark Edele, ‘More than just Stalinists. The political sentiments of victors 1945–1953’, in Juliane Fürst (ed.), Late Stalinist Russia: Society Between Reconstruction and Reinvention (London: Routledge, 2006), pp. 167–92 (p. 174). For example Yuri Bondarev, Silence: A Novel, trans. Elisaveta Fen (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1966); Petr Andreevich Pavlenko, Happiness, trans. J. Fineberg (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1950); Semen Petrovich Babayevsky, Cavalier of the Gold Star, trans. Ruth Kisch (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1956). See also Amir Weiner, Making Sense of War: The Second World War and the Fate of the Bolshevik Revolution (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001), p. 49. Mark Von Hagen, Soldiers in the Proletarian Dictatorship: The Red Army and the Soviet Socialist State, 1917–1930 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1990), pp. 299–300. The candidature period for party membership, for example, was reduced to just three months. See Werth, Russia: The Post-War Years, p. 100 and Gorlizki and Khlevnuik, Cold Peace, p. 182 note 72. Cynthia S. Kaplan, ‘The Impact of World War II on the Party’, in Susan J. Linz (ed.), The Impact of World War II on the Soviet Union (Totowa, NJ: Rowman & Allenheld, 1985), pp. 157–80 (p. 160), Sheila Fitzpatrick, ‘Post-War Soviet Society: The “Return to Normalcy”, 1945–53’, in Linz (ed.), The Impact of World War II, pp. 29–56. V. N. Ponomarev (ed.), Istoriia SSSR s drevneishikh vremen do nashikh dnei. Tom 11. Sovetskii soiuz na puti k razvitomy sotsializmy 1945–1961 gg. (Moscow, Izdatel’stvo

Notes

29 30 31 32 33 34

35 36

37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49

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Nauka, 1980), p. 61; T. H. Rigby, Communist Party Membership in the USSR, 1917– 1967 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1968), p. 27. V. N. Donchenko, ‘Demobilizatsiia sovetskoi armii i reshenie problemy kadrov v pervyye poslevoennye gody’, Istoriia SSSR, No.3 (1970), pp. 96–102 (p. 101). Weiner, Making Sense of War, pp. 43–81. Zubkova, Russia After the War, p. 32. Amir Weiner, ‘Robust Revolution to Retiring Revolution: The Life Cycle of the Soviet Revolution, 1945–1968’, Slavonic and East European Review, 86:2 (2008), pp. 203–32 (p. 225). Zubkova, Russia After the War, p. 18. Bernd Bonwetsch, ‘War as a “Breathing Space”: Soviet Intellectuals and the “Great Patriotic War”’, in Robert W. Thurston and Bernd Bonwetsch (eds), The People’s War, pp. 137–53; Nina Tumarkin, The Living and the Dead: The Rise and Fall of the Cult of World War II in Russia (New York: Basic Books, 1994), pp. 64–71. Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago, trans. Max Hayward and Manya Harari (London: Collins and Harvill Press, 1958), p. 453. On the positive effects of the war upon the ‘frontline generation’ see in particular the work of Elena Seniavskaia. In order of publication: E. S. Seniavskaia, ‘Dukhovnyi oblik frontovogo pokoleniia istoriko-­psikhologicheskii ocherk’, Vestnik Moskovskogo Universitata, Seriia 8 Istoriia, No.4 (1992), pp. 39–51; Seniavskaia, 1941–1945, Frontovoe pokolenie; Seniavskaia, Psikhologiia voina v XX veke, pp. 171–200: Seniavskaia, ‘Psikhologiia soldata’, in G. N. Sevost’ianov (ed.), Voina i obshchestvo, Kniga 2 (Moscow: Nauka, 2004), pp. 215–31. Amir Weiner, ‘Saving Private Ivan: from What, Whom and Why?’, Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, 1:2 (2000), pp. 305–36 (pp. 317–20). Quoted in Tumarkin, The Living and the Dead, p. 64. Robert Service, A History of Twentieth-Century Russia (London: Penguin, 1997), p. 298. Hosking, Rulers and Victims, p. 238. Seniavskaia, Psikhologiia voina v XX veke, p. 187. Catherine Merridale, Ivan’s War: The Red Army 1939–45 (London: Faber and Faber, 2006), p. 306. Edele, ‘More than just Stalinists’; Rósa Magnúsdóttir, ‘The Myth of “Amerika” and Soviet Socialism: Perceptions and Realities in the Postwar Soviet Union’, The Soviet and Post-Soviet Review, 31:3 (2004), pp. 291–307 (p. 299). Oleg Budnitskii, ‘The Intelligentsia Meets the Enemy. Educated Soviet Officers in Defeated Germany, 1945’, Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, 10:3 (2009), pp. 629–87 (pp. 673–9). Konstantin Simonov, Glazami cheloveka moego pokoleniia: razmyshleniia o I.V. Staline (Moscow: Novosti, 1988), p. 91. E. Shershianoi, ‘Germaniia i nemtsy v pis’makh krasnoarmeitsev vesnoi 1945g.’, Novaia i noveishaia istoriia, No.2 (2002), pp. 137–51. Merridale, Ivan’s War, p. 306. Walter Beddell Smith, Moscow Mission, 1946–1949 (London: William Heinemann, 1950), p. 280. Zubkova, Poslevoennoe sovetskoe obshchestvo, pp. 32–4; Edele, Soviet Veterans, p. 33; Kees Boterbloem ‘Soviet GIs or Decembrists? The Reintegration into Postwar Soviet Society of Russian Soldiers, POWs, Partisans, and Civilians who lived under German Occupation’, War and Society, 25:1 (2006), pp. 77–87.

232

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50 Viacheslav Kondratiev, ‘Ne tol’ko o svoem pokolenii’, Kommunist, 1990, No.7, p. 115 quoted in Zubkova, Russia After the War, p. 26. 51 S. S. Dmitriev et al., Leningradskaia organizatsiia KPSS v tsifrakh, 1917–1973. Statisticheskii sbornik (Leningrad: Lenizdat, 1974), pp. 45–6. 52 Dmitriev, Leningradskaia organizatsiia, pp. 90–1. 53 Merridale, Ivan’s War, p. 199. 54 ‘O roste partii i vospitanii molodykh kommunistov – Doklad tov. P. S. Popkova na ob’edinennom plenume Leningradskogo oblastnogo i gorodskogo komitetov VKP(b) ot 27 Avgusta 1946 g’, Propaganda i agitatsiia, (August 1946) No.16, pp. 11–25 (pp. 12, 17) and ‘O roste partii i o merakh po usileniiu partiino-­organizatsionnoi i partiino-­ politicheskoi raboty s voinov’ vstupivshimi v VKP(b) (Postanovlenie ob’edinnogo plenuma Leningradskogo obkoma i gorkoma VKP(b) ot 27 avgusta 1946 g.)’, Propaganda i agitatsiia (August 1946) No.16, pp. 47–52. 55 For similar critiques of the party in different periods see J. Arch Getty, Origins of the Great Purges: The Soviet Communist Party Reconsidered, 1933–1938 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), pp. 10–37; Vladimir Brovkin, Russia after Lenin: Politics, Culture and Society, 1921–1929 (London: Routledge, 1998), pp. 37–56. 56 Vera Dunham, In Stalin’s Time: Middleclass Values in Soviet Fiction, enlarged and updated edition (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1990), pp. 3–23. 57 RGANI/f.6/op.6/d.1526/ll.21–3 (l.21). 58 Getty, Origins of the Great Purges, pp. 73–4; Sheila Fitzpatrick, ‘Signals from Below: Soviet Letters of Denunciation of the 1930s’, Journal of Modern History, 68:4 (1996), pp. 831–66. 59 RGANI/f.6/op.6/d.1526/l.4. 60 RGANI/f.6/op.6/d.1526/l.8. 61 RGANI/f.6/op.6/d.1526/l.2. 62 RGANI/f.6/op.6/d.1526/ll.10–11. 63 Bidlack and Lomagin, The Leningrad Blockade, p. 76. 64 RGANI/f.6/op.6/d.1526/l.4; for a similar example see RGANI/f.6/op.6/d.1526/ll.2–3. 65 TsGAIPD-SPb/f.25/op.20/d.470/l.49. 66 TsGAIPD-SPb/f.25/op.20/d.470/ll.23–4. 67 A. P. Smirnov (ed.), Sud’by liudei. “Leningradskoe delo” (St. Petersburg: Norma, 2009). 68 Weiner, Making Sense of War. 69 Dale, ‘Rats and Resentment’. 70 Ministerstvo iustitsii RSFSR, Ugolovnyi kodeks (Moscow: Ministervstva iustitsii SSSR, 1947), p. 30. 71 S. K. Bernev and S. V. Chernov (eds), Blokadnye dnevniki i dokumenty, 2-e Izdanie (St. Petersburg: Evropeiskii Dom, 2007), pp. 268–70. 72 O. V. Lavinskaia, ‘Dokumenty prokuratury o protsesse reabilitatsii zhertv politicheskikh repressii v 1954–1956 gg’, Otechestvennye arkhivy, No.3 (2007), pp. 38–46. 73 Thanks to a database created by Vladimir Kozlov and his colleagues at the Russian State Archive it is possible to navigate the hundreds of thousands of cases, which has allowed historians to mine these files for evidence relating to all sorts of subjects. Kozlov makes extensive use of these materials in his own research in Massovye Besporiadki v SSSR and Mass Uprisings in the USSR. Miriam Dobson uses these documents to shed light on the process of rehabilitating victims of Stalinist repression in Khrushchev’s Cold Summer: Gulag Returnees, Crime and the Fate of Reform After Stalin (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2009). Review files form the basis of Rosa

Notes

74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87

88 89 90 91 92

233

Magnúsdóttir’s research into late Stalinist perceptions about life outside of the Soviet Union, and in particular popular myths about America: ‘The Myth of “Amerika” and Soviet Socialism’, pp. 291–307. Jonathan Waterlow uses review files to explore the jokes and humour of the 1930s in ‘Intimating Trust. Popular Humour in Stalin’s 1930s’, Cultural and Social History, 10:2 (2013), pp. 211–29. Most importantly Mark Edele’s research into the political sentiments of Red Army veterans draws extensively upon these sources in ‘A Generation of Victors’, pp. 423–95 and, ‘More than Just Stalinists’, pp. 167–91. GARF-SSSR/f.R-8131/op.31/d.17,137/ll.7–12 (l.9) GARF-SSSR/f.R-8131/op.31/d.26,669/ll.5–7, 21–2. GARF-SSSR/f.R-8131/op.31/d.32,266/ll.16–18. Boris Lianda-Geller, Vospominaniia 1949–1953 (St. Petersburg: Nestor Istoriia, 2009), pp. 4–40 (pp. 14, 20–2). GARF-SSSR/f.R-8131/op.31/d.28,240/ll.12–14. GARF-SSSR/f.R-8131/op.31/d.40,419/ll.9–17. Edele, ‘A Generation of Victors’, pp. 481–2, Magnúsdóttir, ‘The Myth of “Amerika” and Soviet Socialism’, p. 301. Harrison E. Salisbury, American in Russia (New York: Harper and Brother, 1955), pp. 61–3. GARF-SSSR/f.R-8131/op.31/d.39,030/ll.5–7, 8–10. GARF-SSSR/f.R-8131/op.31/d.28,280/ll.5–7, 13–14. GARF-SSSR/f.R-8131/op.31/d.36,641/ll.5–7, 16–17. For examples from the Leningrad front see Nikita Lomagin, ‘Soldiers at War: German Propaganda and Soviet Army Moral During the Battle of Leningrad’, The Carl Beck Papers in Russian & East European Studies, No.1306 (November 1998). ‘Veteran’, in Boris Vasil’ev, Letiat moi koni (Moscow: Sovestskii pisatel’ 1984), pp. 277–92 (p. 284). Zubkova, Russia After the War. This idea has proved extremely influential, shaping the historiography of how veterans viewed the postwar period as well as how historians have approached the late-Stalinist period more generally; see for example Jeffrey Brooks, Thank You, Comrade Stalin! Soviet Public Culture from Revolution to Cold War (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000), pp. 195–232; Donald Filtzer, Soviet Workers and Late Stalinism: Labour and the Restoration of the Stalinist System after World War II (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 1–12. Vasily Grossman, Life and Fate. A Novel, trans. Robert Chandler (London: Harvill Press, 1985), p. 488. Quoted in Elena Zubkova, Obshchestvo i reformy 1945–1964 (Moscow: Rossiia molodaia, 1993), p. 16. Merridale, Ivan’s War, p. 322. Merridale, Ivan’s War, p. 323 and Merridale, ‘Culture, Ideology and Combat in the Red Army’, pp. 307–8. Weiner, Making Sense of War, p. 367.

Conclusion   1 Mark Edele, Soviet Veterans of the Second World War: A Popular Movement in an Authoritarian Society, 1941–1991 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008).   2 ‘Besplatno prokatit’sia, poletet’ i pozvonit. K Dniu Pobedy veteranov zhdut priiatnye siuprizy’, Vechernyi Peterburg, 6 May 2011, p. 3.

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Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv noveishei istorii (RGANI) f. 6

Komiteta partiinogo kontrolia TK KPSS

Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv sotsial’no-­politicheskoi istorii (RGASPI) f. 17 f. 77 f. 78

Tsentral’nyi komitet VKP(b) Andrei Akeksandrovich Zhdanov Mikhail Ivanovich Kalinin

Local archives Leningradskii oblastnoi gosudarstvennyi arkhiv v gorode vyborge (LOGAV) f. R-300 f. R-2798 f. R-3672 f. R-3820 f. R-3824

Ob’edinenyi arkhivnyi fond kolkhozov Leningradskoi oblasti Otdel sotsial’nogo obespecheniia ispolkoma Leningradskogo oblastnogo soveta Leningradskaia gorodskai kollegiia advokatov ministerstvo iustitsii RSFSR Leningradskii oblastnyi sud Prokuratura Leningradskoi oblasti

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Muzei istorii Sankt-Peterburgskogo Gosudarstvennogo Universiteta Op. VOV Velikaia Otechstvennaia Voina

Tsentral’nyi gosudarstvennyi arkhiv istoriko-­politicheskikh dokumentov SanktPeterburga (TsGAIPD-SPb) f. 7 f. 24 f. 25 f. 4000 f. K-598

Pavlovskii raionnyi komitet VKP(b) Leningradskii oblastnoi komitet KPSS Leningradskii gorodskoi komitet KPSS Institut istorii partii Leningradskogo Obkoma KPSS Leningradskii oblastnoi komitet VLKSM

Tsentral’nyi gosudarstvennyi arkhiv kinofotofonodokumentov Sankt-Peterburga (TsGAKFFD-SPb) Tsentral’nyi gosudarstvennyi arkhiv literatury i iskusstva Sankt-Peterburga (TsGALI-SPb) f. 97 f. 390

Gosudarstvennaia publichnaia biblioteka, im. M. E. Sal’tykova Shedrina Korneev, Boris Vasil’evich

Tsentral’nyi gosuderstvennyi arkhiv nauchno-­tekhnicheskoi dokumentatsii SanktPeterburga (TsGANTD-SPb) f. 313 f. 368

Psikhonevrologicheskii institut imeni V. M. Bekhtereva Leningradskii nauchno-­issledovatel’skii institut ekspertizy trudosposobnosti i organizatsii truda invalidov

Tsentral’nyi gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Sankt-­Peterburga (TsGA-SPb) f. 327 f. 1788 f. 2554 f. 7179 f. 7240 f. 7384 f. 8134 f. 9156 f. 9260

Leningradskoe gorodskoe biuro po uchetu i raspredeleniiu rabochei sily Kirovskii zavod Leningradskii gorodskoi otdel sotsial’nogo obecpecheniia RSFSR Leningraskii oblastnoi sovet narodnykh deputatov Leningradkii gosudarstvennyi universitet Sankt-Peterburgskii gorodskii sovet narodnykh deputatov Leningradskii gorodskoi sud Leningradskii gorodskoi otdel zdavookhraneniia Voennaia prokuratura voisk MVD Leningradskoi oblasti

Published sources, documentary collections, etc. Bobylev, P. N. et al. (eds), Prikazy Narodnogo komissara oborony SSSR i Ministra Vooryzhennukh Sil SSSR. 12 Oktiabria 1945 g. – 1949g. Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2011. Dzeniskevich, A. Z. (ed.), O blokade Leningrada v Rossii i za rubezhom, Nestor, No.8. St. Petersburg: Nestor Istoriia, 2005.

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——, Iz raionov oblasti soobshchaiut . . .: Svobodnye ot okkupatsii raiony Leningradskoi oblasti v gody Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny: 1941–1945. Sbornik dokumentov. St. Petersburg: Dmitrii Bulanin, 2007. ——, Leningrad v osade: sbornik dokumentov o geroicheskoi oborone Leningrada v gody Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny, 1941–1944. St. Petersburg: Liki Rossii, 1995. Gorinov, Mikhail Mikhaiilovich, Ponomarev, Anatolii Nikolaevich, and Taranov, Evgenii Vasil’evich (eds), Moskva poslevoennaia,1945–1947 arkhivnye dokumenty i materialy. Moscow: Mosgorarkhiv, 2000. Khastov, V. N., Naumov, V. P., and Plotnikova, N. S. (eds), Lubianka. Stalin i NKVD – RKGB – GUKP – “SMERSH”. 1939 – Mart 1946. Moscow: Izdatel’stvo materik, 2006. —— (eds), Lubianka. Stalin i MGB SSSR. Mart 1946 – mart 1953. Moscow: Izdatel’stvo materik, 2007. Lebedeva, N. V. (ed.), Ot voiny k miry: Leningrad. 1944–1945. St. Petersburg: Liki Rossii, 2013. Lomagin, Nikita, Neizvestnaia blokada (Dokumenty, prilozheniia). Kniga Vtoraia 2-e izdanie. St. Petersburg: Izdatel’svkii Dom Neva, 2004. Zubkova, E. Iu. (ed.), Sovetskaia zhizn’, 1945–1953. Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2003.

Periodicals National newspapers Krasnaia zvezda Literaturnaia gazeta Trud

Local newspapers Leningradskaia pravda Vechernii Leningrad Smena

Factory/professional newspapers Elektrosila Krasnoe znamia Leningradskii universitet Post’ revolutsii

(Elektrosila electrical engineering works) (Krasnoe znamiia engineering works) (Leningrad University) (Leningrad Police)

Journals Biulleten’ Ispolnitel’nogo Komiteta Leningradskogo Gorodskogo Soveta Deputatov Trudiashchikhsia Biulleten’ Ispolnitel’nogo Komiteta Leningradskogo Oblastnogo Soveta Deputatov Trudiashchikhsia Krokodil’ Propaganda i agitatsiia Fel’dsher i akusherka Gospitalnal’noe delo Vrachebnoe delo

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Statistics Dmitriev, S. S. et al., Leningradskaia organizatsiia KPSS v tsifrakh, 1917–1973. Statisticheskii sbornik. Leningrad: Lenizdat, 1974.

Memoirs and memoir collections Aleksandrova, O. I. et al. (eds), Vospominaniia vypusknikov Vostochnogo Fakul’teta Leningradskogo (Sankt-Peterburgskogo) universiteta poslevoennykh let (1948–1952). St. Petersburg: Sankt-Peterburgskii gosudarstvennyi universitet, Vostochnyi fakul’tet, 2001. Avzereg, Leopol’d, ‘Ia vskryval vashi pis’ma . . . Iz vospominanii byvshego tainogo tsenzora MGB’, Vremia i my, No.55 (1980), pp. 224–53, No.56 (1980), pp. 254–78. Bernev, S. K. and Chernov, S. V. (eds), Blokadnye dnevniki i dokumenty, 2-e Izdanie. St. Petersburg: Evropeiskii Dom, 2007. Boldyrev, A. N., Osadnaia Zapis’ Blokadnyi dnevnik (Dnevniki i vospominaniia peterburgskikh uchenykh). St. Petersburg: Evropeiskii Dom, 1998. Cherepov, V. P. (ed.), Veterany sela vspominaiut o voine, 5th ed. St. Petersburg, 1995. ——, Veterany sela vspominaiut, 3rd edn. St. Petersburg: Izdatel’stvo Leningradskim pravleniem rossiskogo NTO sel’skogo khoziastva, 1993. ——, Veterany sela vspominaiut . . . 1st edn. Leningrad: Isdatel’stvo leningradskim pravleniem rossiskogo NTO sel”skogo khoziaistva, 1990. Cherniaev, A. S., Moia zhizn’ i moe vremia. Moscow: Mezhdunarodnye otnosheniia, 1995. Clifford, Alexander and Nicholson, Jenny, The Sickle and the Stars. London: Peter Davies, 1948. Dondukov, Y. Zh. Sh., ‘Moia ucheba na vostochnom fakyl’tete i moi uchitelia’, in O. I. Aleksandrova et al. (eds), Vospominaniia vypusknikov Vostochnogo fakul’teta Leningradskogo (Sankt-Peterburskogo) universiteta poslevoennykh let (1948–1952). St. Petersburg: Sankt-Peterburgskii gosudarstvennyi universitet vostochni fakul’tet, 2001, pp. 91–102. Dunaevskaia, Irina, Ot Leningrada do Kenigsberga. Dnevik voennoi perevodchitsy (1942–1945). Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2010. Inozemtsev, N. N., Tsena pobedy v toi samoi voine: frontovoi dnevnik. Moscow: Nauka, 1995. Lianda-Geller, Boris, Vospominaniia 1949–1953. St. Petersburg: Nestor Istoriia, 2009. Likhachev, Dmitrii Sergeevich, Reflections on the Russian Soul – A Memoir. Budapest: Central European University Press, 2000. Mikhailov, Boris, Zhivye stranitsy voiny i blokady. St. Petersburg: Izdatel’stvo GIPT-SPb, 2005. ——, Na dne blokady i voiny. St. Petersburg: VSEGEI, 2000. Mochulsky, Fyodor Vasilevich, Gulag Boss: A Soviet Memoir, trans. and ed. Deborah Kaple. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. Moniushko, Evgenii D., From Leningrad to Hungary: Notes of a Red Army Soldier, 1941–1946. ed. David M. Glantz, trans. Oleg Moniushko. New York: Frank Cass, 2005. Nikulin, Nikolai, Vospominaniia o voine. Moscow: AST, 2014. Pushkarev, L. N., Po dorogam voiny. Vospominaniia fol’klorista-­frontovika. Moscow: IRI-RAN, 1995. Salisbury, Harrison E., American in Russia. New York: Harper and Brother, 1955. Snetkova, E. M., Pis’ma very, nadezhdy, liubvi. Pis’ma s fronta, veterany voiny protiv germanskogo fashizma v 1941–1945 godakh. Moscow: Bilingva, 1999.

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Simmons, Cynthia and Perlina, Nina (eds), Writing the Siege of Leningrad: Women’s Diaries, Memoirs, and Documentary Prose. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2002. Simonov, Konstantin, Glazami cheloveka moego pokoleniia: razmyshleniia o I. V. Staline. Moscow: Novosti, 1988. Smith, Walter Bedell, Moscow Mission 1946–1949. London: Heinemann, 1950. Sokolov, N. I., ‘Iz dnevnika voennoplennogo krasnoarmeitsa’, in Iu. V. Krivosheeva (ed.), Leningradskaia oblast’ v Velikoi Otechestvennoi voine. K 65-letiu Pobedy. St. Petersburg: 2012. Suris, Boris, Frontovoi dnevnik: dnevnik, rasskazy. Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Tsentrpoligraf, 2010. Steinbeck, John Ernst. A Russian Journal. London: Heinemann, 1949. Tsygankov, D. S., Otets: dnevnik maiora Krasnoi armii: 7 oktiabria 1941g. – 12 sentiabria 1945g. Moscow: Sinteg, 2000. Veteran: Sbornik, Leningrad: Lenizdat, 1977. Vinogradov, Aleksei Vladimirovich and Pleysier, Albert Jan, Bitva za Leningrad v sud’bakh zhitelei goroda i oblasti vospominaniia zashchitnikov i zhitelei blokadnogo goroda i okkupirovannykh territorii. St. Petersburg: Izdatel’stvo Saint-Peterburgskogo universiteta, 2005.

Novels Babayevsky, Semen Petrovich, Cavalier of the Gold Star, trans. Ruth Kisch. London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1956. Bondarev, Yury Vasil’evich, Silence. A Novel of Post-­war Russia trans. Elisaveta Fen. London: Chapman & Hall, 1965. Grossman, Vasily, Life and Fate. A Novel, trans. Robert Chandler. London: Harvill Press, 1985. Nagibin, Yuri, ‘Terpenie’, Novyi Mir, No.2 (1982), pp. 25–53. Nekrasov, Viktor, V rodnom gorode. Moscow: Molodaia gvardiia, 1955. Pasternak, Boris, Doctor Zhivago, trans. Max Hayward and Manya Harari. London: Collins and Harvill Press, 1958. Pavlenko, Petr Andreevich, Happiness, trans. J. Fineberg. Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1950. Vasilev, Boris, Letiat moi koni: povesti i rasskazy. Moscow: Sovetskii pisatel, 1984.

Other primary books Averbukh, E. S. (ed.), Konferentsiia, posviashchennaia voprosam psikhogenie, psikhoterapii i psikogigeny. 23–24 Marta 1946g. Tezisy dokladov. Leningrad: 1946. Averbukh, E. S. and Miasishchev, V. N. (eds), Organizatsionno-­methodicheskie voprosy sovremennoi neiropsikhiatrii. Leningrad: 1948. Bubnov, A. (ed.), Opyt raboty obshchestvennykh komissii sodeistviia vosstanovlenie i ekspluatatsii domokhoziaistv goroda Leningrada. Leningrad: Lenizdat, 1948. Demobilizovannomy voiny Krasnoi Armii. Tbilisi: Izdanie politicheskogo upravleniia Tbivo, 1946. Krupianskaia, V. Iu, Fol’klor Velikoi Otechestvennoi Voiny (zadachi i metody sobiraniia). Moscow and Leningrad: Izdatel’stvo akademii nauk SSSR, 1949.

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Miasishchev, V. N. (ed.), Nauchnaia deiatel’nost psikhonevrologicheskogo instituta imeni V.M. Bekhtereva za 1946 god. Leningrad: Uchebno-­proizvodstvennye masterskie Lenpoligraftekhnikuma, 1947. ——, Nauchnaia Deiatel’nost’ psikhonevrologicheskogo instituta im. V.M. Bekhtereva za 1947 god. Avtoreferaty nauchnykh rabot. Leningrad: 1948. Ministerstvo iustitsii RSFSR, Ugolovnyi kodeks. Moscow, Ministervstva iustitsii SSSR, 1947. Naucho-­issledovatel’skaia deiatel’nost instituta za 50 let. Leningrad: 1958. Obodan, N. M. (ed.), Vozvrashchenie k trudovoi deiatel’nosti invalidov, Leningrad: 1945. Osipov, I. A. (ed.), Sbornik: ukazov, postanovlenii, reshenii, rasporiazhenii i prikazov voennogo vremeni, 1941–1942. Leningrad: Leningradskoe gazetnoe zhurnal’noe i knizhnoe izdatel’stvo, 1942. Pamiatka demobilizovannym soldatami i serzhantam sovetskoi armii, sostavlena glavnoi voennoi prokuraturoi vooruzhennykh sil SSSR, 3-e dopolnennoe izdanie. Moscow: Voennoe Izdatel’stvo, Ministerstva Vooryzhennykh Sil SSSR, 1947. Resheniia deviatoi sessii Leningradskogo oblastnogo soveta deputatov trudiashchikhsia ot 9-10 avgusta 1945 goda. Leningrad: Upravleniia izdatel’stv i poligrafii ispolkoma Lengorsoveta, 1945. Trudovoe ustroistvo invalidov v SSSR. Sbornik normativnykh aktov i metodicheskikh materialov. Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stve iuridcheskoi literatury, 1963. Verzhibilovsky, P. P., The Care of War Pensioners in Russia. London: Soviet News, 1945.

Selected secondary sources Ageenko, E. M. (ed.), Sankt-­peterburgskii gospital’ dlia veteranov voin. K 55 letiiu so dnia osnovaniia (1946–2001). St. Petersburg: Izdatel’stvo RGPY im. A. I. Gertsena, 2001. Alexiyevich, Svetlana, War’s Unwomanly Face. Moscow: Progress, 1985. Alexopoulos, Golfo, ‘Amnesty 1945: The Revolving Door of Stalin’s Gulag’, Slavic Review, 64:2 (2005), pp. 271–306. Allport, Alan, Demobbed: Coming Home After the Second World War. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009. Amosova, A. A., Predannyi zabveniiu: politicheskaia biografiia Petra Popkova. 1937–1950. St. Petersburg: Aleteiia, 2014. Applebaum, Anne, GULAG: A History of the Soviet Camps. London: Allen Lane, 2003. Archer, Dane and Gartner, Rosemary (eds), Violence and Crime in Cross-National Perspective. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1984. Arstiutkina, O. N., ‘Leningradskaia partiinaia organizatsiia v bor’be za vosstanovlenie zhilogo fonda (1944–1945gg.)’, Vestnik Leningradskogo Universiteta, Seriia istorii, iazyka i literatury, No.20 (1964), pp. 17–28. Attwood, Lynne, Gender and Housing in Soviet Russia: Private Life in a Public Space. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2010. ——, Creating the New Soviet Woman: Women’s Magazines as Engineers of Female Identity, 1922–53. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1999. Baranov, V.I. and Isachenko, V.G., Glavnyi arkhitektor Leningrada: Nikolai Baranov. Tvorcheskii put’ i sud’ba. St. Petersburg: Stroiizdat SPb, 2001. Barber, John and Harrison, Mark, The Soviet Home Front, 1941–1945: A Social and Economic History of the USSR in World War II. London: Longman, 1991. Barber, John and Dzeniskevich, Andreii (eds), Life and Death in Besieged Leningrad, 1941–44. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005.

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Baron, Nick, ‘Remaking Soviet Society: the Filtration of Returnees from Nazi Germany, 1944–49’, in Peter Gatrell and Nick Baron (eds), Warlands: Population Resettlement and State Reconstruction in the Soviet-East European Borderlands, 1945–50. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009, pp. 89–116. Bartov, Omer, The Eastern Front, 1941–45: German Troops and the Barbarisation of Warfare, 2nd edn. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001. Belozerov, Boris, ‘Crime During the Siege’, in John Barber and Andrei Dzeniskevich (eds), Life and Death in Besieged Leningrad, 1941–44. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillian, 2005, pp. 213–28. Bennett, Michael J., When Dreams Came True: The G.I. Bill and the Making of Modern America. Washington: Brassey’s, 2000. Beyrau, Dietrich, ‘Brutalization Revisited: The Case of Russia’, Journal of Contemporary History, 50:1 (2015), pp. 15–37. Berezhnoi, A. F., V pervye poslevoennye gody: 1946–1954. (K istorii Leningradskogo – Sankt-Peterburgskoro gosudarstvennogo universiteta). St. Petersburg: Izdatel’stvo Saint-Peterburgskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta, 2005. ——, Oni srazhalis’ za Rodiny. Universanty v gody voiny i v poslevonnye gody. Dokumental’nye ocherki. St. Petersburg: Izdatel’stvo Sankt-Peterburgskogo universiteta, 1995. Berezhnoi, A. F. et al., Leningradskii universitet v Velikoi Otechestvennoi. Ocherki. Leningrad: Izdatel’stvo Leningradskogo universiteta, 1990. Berkhoff, Karel C., Motherland in Danger: Soviet Propaganda During World War II. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012. Bernstein, Frances, ‘Prosthetic Promise and Potemkin Limbs in Late-Stalinist Russia’, in Michael Rasell and Elena Iarskaia-Smirnova (eds), Disability in Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union: History, policy and everyday life. London: Routledge, 2014, pp. 42–66. Bessel, Richard, Germany 1945: From War to Peace. London: Simon & Schuster, 2009. ——, ‘Hatred After the War: Emotion and the Postwar History of East Germany’, History and Memory, 17:1–2 (2005), pp. 195–216. ——, Germany After the First World War. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995. ——, ‘The “Front Generation” and the Politics of Weimar Germany’, in Mark Roseman (ed.), Generations in Conflict: Youth Revolt and Generation Formation in Germany 1770–1968. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995, pp. 121–36. ——, ‘The Great War in German Memory: The Soldiers of the First World War, Demobilisation and Weimar Political Culture’, German History, 6:1 (1988), pp. 20–34. ——, ‘Unemployment and Demobilisation in Germany after the First World War’, in Richard J. Evans and Dick Geary (eds), The German Unemployed: Experiences of Mass Unemployment from the Weimar Republic to the Third Reich. London and Sydney: Croom Helm, 1987, pp. 23–43. Bessel, Richard and Schumann, Dirk (eds), Life After Death: Approaches to a Cultural and Social History During the 1940s and 1950s. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Beumers, Birgit, A History of Russian Cinema. Oxford: Berg, 2009. Biakina, V. P., Vosstanovlenie i razvitie zdravookhraneniia v poslevoennyi period: 1945 – seredina 50-kh godov (na materialakh severo-­zapade SSSR). St. Petersburg: Izdatel’stvo SPbGMU, 1999. Bidlack, Richard, ‘Lifting the Blockade on the Blockade. New Research on the Siege of Leningrad’, Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, 10:2 (2009), pp. 333–51.

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Bucher, Greta, Women, the Bureaucracy and Daily Life in Postwar Moscow, 1945–1953. Boulder, CO: East European Monographs, 2006. ——, ‘ “Free, and Worth Every Kopeck” Soviet Medicine and Women in Postwar Russia’, in Willian B. Husband (ed.), The Human Tradition in Modern Russia. Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 2000, pp. 175–85. Buckler, Julie A., Mapping St. Petersburg: Imperial Text and Cityshape. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005. Budnitskii, Oleg, ‘The Intelligentsia Meets the Enemy. Educated Soviet Officers in Defeated Germany, 1945’, Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, 10:3 (2009), pp. 629–87. Burds, Jeffrey, Sovetskaia agentura: ocherki istorii SSSR v poslevoennye gody, 1944–1948. Moscow and New York: Sovremennaia Istoriia, 2006. ——, ‘Bor’ba s banditismom v SSSR v 1944–1953 gg.’, Sotsial’naia Istoriia, Ezhegodnik 2000. Moscow: IRI-RAN, 2000, pp. 169–90. Burton, Christopher, ‘The Labour Region in Late Stalinist Population Dynamics’, Russian History, 36:1 (2009), pp. 117–40. ——, ‘Soviet Medical Attestation and Problems of Professionalisation under Late Stalinism, 1945–1953’, Europe-Asia Studies, 57:8 (2005), pp. 1211–29. ——, ‘Medical Welfare during Late Stalinism: A Study of Doctors and the Soviet Health System, 1945–53’. Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Chicago, 2000. Cattell, Davis T., Leningrad: A Case Study of Soviet Urban Government. New York, Washington and London: Frederick A. Praeger, 1968. Cherepenina, Nadezhda, ‘The Demographic Situation and Healthcare on the Eve of the War’, in John Barber and Andreii Dzeniskevich (eds), Life and Death in Besieged Leningrad, 1941–44. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005, pp. 13–27. Clapperton, James, ‘The Siege of Leningrad as Sacred Narrative: Conversations with Survivors’, Oral History, 351 (2007), pp. 49–60. Clark, Katerina, Moscow, The Fourth Rome: Stalinism, Cosmopolitanism, and the Evolution of Soviet Culture, 1931–1941. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011. ——, The Soviet Novel: History as Ritual, 3rd edn. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2000. Cohen, Deborah, ‘Civil Society in the Aftermath of the Great War. The Care of Disabled Veterans in Britain and Germany’, in Frank Trentmann (ed.), Paradoxes of Civil Society: New Perspectives on Modern German and British History. New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2003, pp. 352–68. ——, The War Come Home: Disabled Veterans in Britain and Germany, 1914–1939. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2001. ——, ‘Will to Work: Disabled Veterans in Britain and Germany after the First World War’, in David A. Gerber (ed.), Disabled Veterans in History. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2000, pp. 295–321. Cohen, Deborah and O’Conner, Maura (eds), Comparison and History: Europe in Cross-National Perspective. New York: Routledge, 2004. Connor, Walter D., Deviance in Soviet Society: Crime, Delinquency and Alcoholism. New York: Columbia University Press, 1972. Conroy, Mary Schaeffer, ‘The Soviet Pharmaceutical Industry and Dispensing, 1945–1953’, Europe-Asia Studies, 56:7 (2004), pp. 1211–29. Dale, Robert, ‘The Valaam Myth and the Fate of Leningrad’s Disabled Veterans’, Russian Review, 72:2 (2013), pp. 260–84.

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Index 8 July 1945 military parade 23–5 Abbakumov, S.I. 160 accidents at work 80 administrative resettlement 53 administrators, housing 67, 68, 138 advertisements 84 age groups, demobilization by 19, 20, 22, 39, 90 agriculture 96–7, 164 airwomen 93 Akhmatova, Anna 159 alcohol consumption 150–1 see also drunken disorder Aleksandrov, Vasilii 41 amputees 102, 105, 112, 115, 118 anti-Semitism 105 anti-­social behaviour 135–6 see also drunken disorder anti-Soviet agitation accusations 170–4 archives 6, 11–12, 35, 53 army see Red Army Astafyev, Viktor 176 Averbukh, E.S. 123–4, 125 Avetikov, Engineer-Captain 138 Babaevskii, Semen 78 Babina, Elena 46 banditry 145 Baron, Nick 34–5 basements 45 beer vendors 89 Bekhterev Institute 122–3, 124, 125, 126 benefits, welfare 22, 23, 42, 47, 48, 106–7 see also social security administration Bevin, Ernest 18–19 Beyrau, Dietrich 132 Bidlack, Richard 161 birth cohorts, demobilization by 19, 20, 22, 39, 90 black market 57, 139

blind veterans 112–13 Blockade of Leningrad 2, 8, 51–2, 154–5, 160–1 Boldyrev, Alexander 24 Bolshevik factory 79–80, 81 bribery 67, 89 bricks, shortage of 61 Britain brutalization fears 133 demobilization 18–19, 21, 32 unemployment 70, 71 Brooks, Jeffrey 13 brutalization fears/thesis 132, 133, 142, 148, 149 absence of fear in Leningrad 134, 152–6 building materials shortage 61, 62 bureaucracy 66, 67, 68, 171 burglary 146 cannibalism 154 capitalism, Soviet soldiers’ exposure to 163–4 casualties, Great Patriotic War 2, 100 Cavalier of the Gold Star (Babaevskii) 78 censorship 64 Central Commission for Party Control 167 Chernov, Ivan 97 Chubarov Alley affair 153 Chumakova, Tamara 3 City College of Lawyers 48–9 Clause 58–10, criminal codex 170 clothing 22 collective farms 97, 164 communal apartments (kommunalki) 46 Communist Party 161, 162, 165–70 Central Commission for Party Control 167 expulsions from 167

260 membership fees 168–9 officials 50 comparative studies 11 construction workers 43–4, 85 convicts, in Red Army 145 corruption 57, 63, 67, 88, 107–8 Council of People’s Commissars (Sovnarkom) 47 ‘counter-­revolutionary’ crimes 170–4 countryside 9, 80, 96–7 court files 148, 150 credit schemes, self-­built construction 62–3 crime 131–56 and alcohol consumption 150–1 banditry 145 black market 57, 139 burglary 146 ‘counter-­revolutionary’ crimes 170–4 court files 148, 150 disabled veterans 145–7, 150, 151 housing 63 looting 143 migrants 140, 141 murder 131, 135, 147, 148–9, 150 newspaper reports 153 rape 142, 143 Red Army conduct 142–4 robbery 135, 148–9 speculation 139, 145–6 statistics 134–5 theft 137–8, 143, 146, 154 veterans as perpetrators 141–2, 145–52 veterans as victims 137–9 weapons 149 youth crime 140 criminal codex, Clause 58–10 170 Davies, Sarah 65 Decembrism threat 164 ‘demob strikes’ 21 demobilization definition/terminology 3–4 legislation 19, 20, 22, 72–3, 85–6 statistics 36–9 studies of 6 demobilization points 83, 87–8, 141 demography 10, 36, 43

Index diaries 13 disabled veterans 99–130 adaptive technology in workplace 112 amputees 102, 105, 112, 115, 118 anti-Soviet agitation 173 attitudes towards 100, 114, 117, 130 blind veterans 112–13 classification of disability 104, 105–6 crime 145–7, 150, 151 employment 105, 108–14 home working 112 housing 55 mental illness 120–9 pensions 101, 106, 107–8, 110 propaganda campaigns 107, 108–9 prosthetics 117–18 psychiatric illness 120–9 reintegration barriers 104–5 statistics 101–2 status of 30 training schemes 113 welfare benefits 106–7 work placement commissions 111 disease 44, 58, 102, 103, 116 district housing administrations 52, 56 doctors 103 Donchenko, V.N. 6 dormitories 46, 49 drivers 89, 131 drugs 103 drunken disorder 18, 21, 136, 141, 173–4 see also alcohol consumption dugouts (zemlianki) 43–4 Dunaevskaia, Irina 1–2, 31 Dunham, Vera 109 Duskin, Eric 13 Dzerzhinskii district gasification project 85 hostels 58 Edele, Mark 7, 30, 34, 42, 110 education 90–2 Ehrenburg, Ilya 47 Elektrosila 59, 78, 83 employers and housing crisis 59 employment 69–98 accidents at work 80 adaptive technology for disabled workers 112

Index administrative bodies 82–3 advertisements 84 barriers to 96 choice of 83–4 desirable jobs 89–90 disabled veterans 105, 108–14 home working 112 model workers 78–9 newspaper articles 74–7 officers 94–6 and pension system 110 personal reinvention 90 recruitment 83, 84 seasonal work 88 statistics 81–2 types of work 88 under-­utilization of workers’ skills 86 veterans’ rights 73 women 80, 92–4 workplace morale 81 see also labour force entitlement to benefits/welfare 22, 23, 42, 47, 48, 106–7 see also social security administration evacuees, housing rights 55 Evseev, V.M. 50, 59 factories Bolshevik factory 79–80, 81 Elektrosila 59, 78, 83 Kirov factory 46, 79, 80, 85, 111, 112 newspapers 78 Falin, A. 73 family relationships 14–15, 59 Fedotov, Stepan 171 female veterans see women filtration system 33–5 Filtzer, Donald 62 fires 44 First World War 19, 21, 100, 109, 121, 133 Fitzpatrick, Sheila 59 food processing plants 89 food shortages 92, 102–3, 154 food supplies 21–2 forced labour 33, 34 fraud 63 ‘frontline generation’ 90, 163 frostbite injury 125

261

Fürst, Juliane 11 further education 90–2 gangs, criminal 154 gasification project 85 Gefter, Mikhail 163 gender structures 93–4 German POWs 43, 89 Germany agriculture 164 demobilization 21 Soviet Military Administration 20, 143, 164 surrender 1 unemployment 70–1 G.I. Bill 72, 91 glass shortage 61 Gonchukov, Aleksei 46, 79 Gorispolkom investigations/resolutions 50, 56 Great Patriotic War 2, 77, 142 Grossman, Vasily 175 Gulag 170 guns 149 healthcare system 114–27 hospitals 103, 115–17, 119, 126–7 psychiatric care 126–7, 129 residential homes 117 historic buildings 44 historical sources 11–14 home working 112 homecoming 17–39 hospitals 103, 115–17, 119, 126–7 hostels 56–8 housing 8, 41–68 administrative resettlement 53 administrators 67, 68, 138 appropriation of 63 basements 45 building materials shortage 61, 62 bureaucracy 66, 67, 68 claims for special treatment 54–5 communal apartments 46 condition of 44–5, 46, 58 construction programme 45–6, 59–63 disputes 52, 53, 54–6 district administrations 52, 56 dormitories 46, 49

262 dugouts 43–4 employers’ role 59 enquiries about 48 fraud 63 hostels 56–8 industrial workers 43–4 legislation 47, 48, 49 local planning 49, 50 officials 67, 68, 138 overcrowding 41, 46 relocation of houses scam 63 repair of service families’ homes 60, 61–2 resettlement powers 53 rights of Blockade survivors/evacuees 55 self-­built construction 62–3 statistical reports 50–1 temporary accommodation 43–4, 45, 56–8 tenancy rights 52 veterans’ anger and disenchantment 64–7 waiting lists 50–1, 52, 58 wartime destruction 42–3, 44–5 wartime movements within Leningrad 51–2 illiteracy 80 industrial production 79 industrial worker housing 43–4 invalid veterans see disabled veterans Ivanov, F.I. 168 Ivanov, Ivan 48, 95 Ivanov, Mikhail 109 Ivanov, V.A. 64 journals 13, 73, 91–2, 94, 159 Kalinin, Mikhail 92 Karelian Isthmus 63, 97 Kasatkevich, M.I. 51 killings 131, 138–9, 147, 148–9 Kirov factory 46, 79, 80, 85, 111, 112 Klimov, Mikhail 131, 132, 150 Kolpino 43, 85 kommunalki (communal apartments) 46 Komsomol 93, 153 Koretsky, Viktor 70, 73–4

Index Krasnaia zvezda (Red Army newspaper) 18 Kravchenko, Alexei 151 Krokodil (satirical journal) 73, 91–2, 94 Krylov, M.I. 66–7 Krylova, Anna 99 Krymov, Vladimir 174 Kuznetsov, Stepan Ivanovich 94–5, 170 labour force 6, 32, 33, 34, 59 see also employment labour market 8 labour resource offices (raspredbiuro) 82–3, 84, 87, 88 Latvia 63 Law on the demobilization of the oldest age groups of the standing army 19, 20, 22 lawyers 48–9 legal psychiatry 150 legal services 48–9 legislation demobilization 19, 20, 22, 72–3, 85–6 housing 47, 48, 49 Leningrad 8 July 1945 military parade 23–5 Blockade 2, 8, 51–2, 154–5, 160–1 City College of Lawyers 48–9 demography 10, 36 economic importance of 9–10 historic buildings 44 military parades 23–5, 179 Moscow rivalry 158–9 political importance of 9–10 population 10, 36 reconstruction programme 59–63 Siege of 2, 8, 51–2, 154–5, 160–1 wartime destruction/legacy 8, 42–3, 44–5 Leningrad Affair 158, 159–61, 169 Leningrad oblast’ disabled veterans 101 economy 72, 84 hospitals 117 industry 84 population 43 Leningrad Research Institute of Work Fitness and the Organization of Work for the Disabled (LIETTIN) 101, 102, 105–6, 111, 112

Index Leningradskaia pravda (newspaper) 24, 26, 76, 82, 86, 118, 137 letters on anti-­social behaviour 135–6 from disabled veterans 107, 113, 117–18 on housing crisis 64–7 to newspaper editors 13 on work 82, 86 Lianda-Geller, Boris 172 LIETTIN see Leningrad Research Institute of Work Fitness and the Organization of Work for the Disabled Life and Fate (Grossman) 175 Likhachev, Dmitrii 154 local planning 49, 50 Lodukhin, Vladimir 32 looting 143 lorries 131 Makarov, A.P. 167–8 Malenkov, G.M. 160 managerial work 71, 94–5 Manley, Rebecca 19, 42, 55 Martynov, Iosif 173 medical examination/re-­examination 104–5 see also healthcare system medical journals 13 Medical-Labour Expert Commissions (VTEKi) 104–6 medicines 103 memoirs 13–14, 35 memory 158, 174–5 mental illness 120–9 Merridale, Catherine 7, 129, 176 Miasishchev, V.N. 1 migrants 80, 101, 140, 141 Mikhailov, Boris 2, 22 Mikhailov, L.I. 54 military censors 64 ‘military covenant’ 42 Military Medical Academy 122, 123 military parades 23–5, 179 military registration offices (voenkomaty) 83, 96 military service, and Soviet identity 153

263

misogyny 93–4 Moniushko, Evgenii 22 mortality rates, injured soldiers 100 Moscow/Leningrad rivalry 158–9 Moskovskii Victory Park 61 Mosse, George 132 murder 131, 135, 147, 148–9, 150 Museum of the Heroic Defence of Leningrad 160 music colleges 113 myths 6, 121, 134, 169 see also propaganda newspapers crime reporting 153 employment information 74–7 factory newspapers 78 Krasnaia zvezda 18 Leningradskaia pravda 24, 26, 76, 82, 86, 118, 137 letters to editor 13 Nikulin, Nikolai 17 normality, transition to 180 novels 78 Novikov, N.I. 65–6 officers demobilization 36–8, 94, 95 employment 94–6 housing 55 monitoring of 96 unemployment 96 oral history 14 Order No. 227 33 Order No. 270 33 overcrowding 41, 46 parades 23–5, 179 party officials 50 passports 140 peasant veterans 30 pension system 101, 106, 107–8, 110 ‘phoney peace’ 17–18 photographs, propaganda 24, 26, 27, 28 physiotherapy 115 planned economy 60–1 planners/planning 19, 49, 50 Pleskhov, Boris 171 pocketbooks 48

264

Index

points-­based systems for demobilization 18, 20 Polenov, Konstantin 173–4 Poliakov, L. 90 Polian, Pavel 35 police 88, 135, 148 political education 168 politics anti-Soviet agitation accusations 170–4 Communist Party 161, 162, 165–70 Leningrad/Moscow rivalry 158–9 purges 158, 159–61, 167, 169 ‘re-­education’ of veterans 164 veterans’ engagement with 158, 161, 165–70 polyclinics 114–15 Popkov, P.S. 166 Popov, Aleksandr 172 population 10, 36, 43 posters 70, 73–4, 75 poverty 108 POWs see prisoners of war Pozdniakov, Georgii 63 pregnant servicewomen 30–1 press see newspapers prisoners of war (POWs) 32–5, 36, 43, 89 propaganda and brutalization fears 152–3 disabled veterans 107, 108–9 mixed messages of 77 new Soviet man trope 163 photographs 24, 26, 27, 28 posters 70, 73–4, 75 veterans as model citizens trope 77 see also myths propiski (residence permits) 57, 140 prosthetics 117–18 Provisional Government 19 psychiatric assessment 150, 151 psychiatric hospitals 126–7 psychiatric illness 120–9 public opinion 12, 64 punishment battalions 145 purges 158, 159–61, 167, 169 radio broadcasts 172–3 railways 23, 25 Rakov, Lev 160 rape 142, 143

raspredbiuro (labour resource offices) 82–3, 84, 87, 88 ration cards 86, 87, 154 reception points 27 reconstruction programme 59–63 recruitment 83, 84 Red Army convict recruits 145 criminal conduct 142–4 decline in discipline/morale 20, 21 demobilization process 3, 19 ‘phoney peace’ 17–18 and Soviet identity 153 Release and Resettlement (British official publication) 18 research sources 11–14 residence permits (propiski) 57, 140 residential homes 117 revenge 18, 147 ‘review files’, anti-Soviet agitation 170–4 rights of veterans see welfare benefits and entitlements robbery 135, 148–9 rural economy 96–7 rural migration 80 Russian Army see Red Army Russo–Japanese War 120 sanatoria 103 Sanitation Inspectorate 45 seasonal work 88 Second World War 100 see also Great Patriotic War secret police, interception of letters 64–7 self-­built construction 62–3 self-­demobilization 21 Seniavskaia, Elena 120 Shatalov, Nikolai 116 shell-­shock 125 Shiktorov, Lieutenant General 136–7, 140 Siege of Leningrad 2, 8, 51–2, 154–5, 160–1 Simonov, Konstantin 163–4 skilled workers 32 Slaveski, Filip 18 Smith, Mark 58, 62 social commissions 61–2 social expectations 78 social mobility 71

Index social security administration 107–8, 109, 111, 113 see also welfare benefits and entitlements Sokolov, David 150 Sokolov, Nikolai 32–3, 35 Sokolova, A. 93 Soviet identities 153 Soviet Military Administration in Germany (SVAG) 20, 143, 164 Sovnarkom (Council of People’s Commissars) 47 ‘special communications’ (spetssoobshchenie) 64–5 speculation 139, 145–6 Stalin, Joseph 159, 162 Stalinism 6–7, 11, 153–4 statistics crime 134–5 demobilization 36–8 disabled veterans 101–2 employment 81–2 housing 50–1 Stepanov, Matvei 172 ‘Stolen Victory’ concept 175–6 Stouffer, Samuel 21 students 91–2, 128 success of demobilization/reintegration 176–7, 183 suicide 127–9 surgeons 103 surgery 119 Suris, Boris 17 surrender of Germany 1 survival rates, injured soldiers 100 SVAG see Soviet Military Administration in Germany Svirina, G.A. 146–7 technical specialists 32 temporary accommodation 43–4, 45, 56–8 tenancy rights 52 theft 63, 137–8, 143, 146, 154 timber shortage 61 training schemes, disabled veterans 113 trains 23, 25 Trakhtenberg, David 24, 26, 27, 28 transport logistics 23 trauma 7, 120–9, 151

265

trophy goods 143 trudoustroistvo (work placement for officers commission) 95, 111 tuberculosis 116 Tur’ev, Khristofur 51, 56 underground accommodation 45 unemployment 70–1, 96 uniforms 22 United States (US) brutalization fears 133 demobilization 18, 19, 21 employment 71 G.I. Bill 72, 91 Voice of America 172–3 university students 91–2, 128 USSR Supreme Soviet, appeals to 52 Utkin, Boris 25 Vakser, Alexander 9 Vasil’ev, Boris 175 Verification-Filtration points and camps 33–4 Veteran (Vasil’ev) 175 veterans’ movement 179 Victory Day 1–3, 17, 179–80 Vigdorchik, N.A. 106 Vinnitsa 7 violence 18, 23, 132, 133, 152 and Stalinist society 153–4 see also brutalization fears/thesis vodka 150–1 voenkomaty (military registration offices) 83, 96 Voice of America 172–3 Voldarskii district, hostels 57, 58 Volkhovskii district, construction credit scheme 63 voluntary labour 45 Voropaevism 109 VTEKi see Medical-Labour Expert Commissions Vyborg filtration point 34 Vyborgskii district housing administration 51 waiting lists, housing 50–1, 52, 58 war invalids see disabled veterans war narratives 174–5

266 ‘war participants’ 4, 35 war trauma 120–9, 151 warehouses, theft from 138 water supplies 45 weapons 149 Weiner, Amir 7, 163, 176 welfare benefits and entitlements 22, 23, 42, 47, 48, 106–7 see also social security administration women airwomen 93 demobilization 30–1, 36–8 employment 80, 92–4 housing disputes 56

Index work placement for officers commission (trudoustroistvo) 95, 111 ‘work therapy’ 109 workers see employment; labour force youth crime 140 Zaitsev, A.I. 65 Zarubin, A.T. 66 zemlianki (dugouts) 43–4 Zhdanov, Andrei 159, 160 Zhdanovshchina 158, 159 Zoshchenko, Mikhail 159 Zubkova, Elena 7