The other person Berlinsky mentions, Pavel Stroilov, hasn’t put any of his material on the web, at least as far as I’ve been able to find. But as Berlinsky presents his claims, he’s got lots of terrific and untapped documents, like Georgii Shakhnazarov’s Politburo minutes and Anatolii Cherniaev’s diaries. Here’s the problem: a 700-page book in Russian has been published, based on those Politburo minutes from Shakhnazarov and others. Cherniaev’s diaries were published in the journal Novaia i noveishchaia istoriia, and are even available in English. They aren’t exactly tough to find–type “Cherniaev diaries” into google and see what pops up.

So at least some of the hot, secret material Berlinsky says Stroilov possesses is neither hot nor secret, and representing it as hot and secret is misleading. It’s tough to know whether Berlinsky or Stroilov is responsible. Berlinsky herself admits she doesn’t know any Russian.

The next big problem is that in many cases, Stroilov is pushing on an open door, and Berlinsky seems simply unaware of what scholars have known for quite some time. For example, Stroilov’s documents on German reunification (as presented in late 2009) show that Margaret Thatcher didn’t want to see it happen. Of course, that’s the same conclusion established by more or less all the scholars who’ve worked on the subject, including most notably Philip Zelikow and the hardly obscure Condoleezza Rice, who showed quite conclusively in 1997 in Germany Unified and Europe Transformed that France and Britain opposed German unification and only strong efforts by Helmut Kohl and George Bush the elder made it happen. Helmut Kohl himself in his memoirs, published four years before Stroilov’s big unveiling, said exactly the same thing.

Berlinsky says Stroilov’s documents describe “most shockingly” that Francois Mitterand wanted a socialist Germany under French and Soviet domination. Since Mitterand was a socialist, and French politicians since de Gaulle have wanted to see Germany under French domination, I don’t see how this qualifies as shocking.

Last, it’s clear that Berlinsky is writing with a particular political agenda–to discredit the European left, question European unification, and cast doubt on the continental European social model while at the same time pummeling the dead horse of Communism. I don’t have any problem with that. My problem comes when pursuing that political aim results in doing violence to historical perspective. One example: Berlinsky finds it scandalous that Joaquin Almunia, current member of the European Commission, was strongly opposed to Ukrainian independence. Know who else was opposed to Ukrainian independence? George Bush the elder.

Secret documents detailing the Soviet leadership’s decision to murder 22,000 Polish officers at Katyn were released to the Russian public today on orders from President Medvedev.

In an unprecedented step, the Russian State Archive published documents showing how Soviet leader Joseph Stalin approved the World War Two massacre proposed by his secret police henchman Lavrenty Beria. Other prominent members of the ruling Soviet Politburo also signed off on the slaughter.

For the full story, go here.

On board were the army chief of staff, national bank president, deputy foreign minister, army chaplain, head of the National Security Office, deputy parliament speaker, civil rights commissioner and at least two presidential aides and three lawmakers, the Polish foreign ministry said.

Ninety-six people are said to have died in the crash. The President and other state officials were en route to events marking the seventieth-anniversary of the Katyn massacre.

For an early report on the story, click here.

UPDATE @ 9:21 am CST: RIA Novosti is reporting that human error was the cause of the crash. The death toll is now estimated to be as high as 132.

What’s striking to me is that Buchanan’s argument–that war could have been avoided had only Poland been more reasonable in dealing with Nazi Germany’s legitimate demands–is in its essentials identical to the case made by Russian Colonel S. N. Kovalyov a couple of months ago.

In Buchanan’s formulation,

The German-Polish war had come out of a quarrel over a town the size of Ocean City, Md., in summer. Danzig, 95 percent German, had been severed from Germany at Versailles in violation of Woodrow Wilson’s principle of self-determination. Even British leaders thought Danzig should be returned.
Why did Warsaw not negotiate with Berlin, which was hinting at an offer of compensatory territory in Slovakia? Because the Poles had a war guarantee from Britain that, should Germany attack, Britain and her empire would come to Poland’s rescue.
But why would Britain hand an unsolicited war guarantee to a junta of Polish colonels, giving them the power to drag Britain into a second war with the most powerful nation in Europe?
Was Danzig worth a war? Unlike the 7 million Hong Kongese whom the British surrendered to Beijing, who didn’t want to go, the Danzigers were clamoring to return to Germany.

In short, the Poles should have surrendered Danzig, an ethnically German city, to the Germans rather than fight.

I’ve outlined the argument (as formulated by Kovalyov) and my objections to it before.  What Buchanan (and Kovalyov earlier) are omitting is the context of the guarantee to Poland against German aggression at the end of March 1939.  On 13 March 1939, Hitler had invaded and annexed the rump Czechoslovakia, rendering meaningless his claims to be reuniting German territories to the Reich.  Why trust him after that?

I’m headed to the MoD website to see if I can find it for myself. My thanks to the person who brought this to my attention.

UPDATE: here’s the Russian-language text of the Defense Ministry’s statement disavowing the official status of the argument.

UPDATE: the article in question by S. N. Kovalyov seems to have been taken down from its original page (subtly titled “History: Against Lies and Falsification), but I was able to grab a copy of the text and will post it soon.

Today’s Johnson’s Russia List#74 includes an enlightening interview with Sergei Shamba, Foreign Minister of Abkhazia. He hails Kosovar independence as something that makes Abkhazia’s break-away from Georgia more likely than ever before. To quote him at length,

After February 17, after Kosovo’s recognition, the second wave of recognition of the former Soviet and Yugoslavian autonomous states begins.

Certainly, we hope to be in this second wave. We can now discern a direct analogy between Kosovo and Abkhazia, even though Abkhazia has much greater legal, historical, and moral reasons for having its independence recognized than Kosovo does.

We live on our native land. We ourselves obtained our independence without any foreign military aid, in contrast to Kosovo. The Abkhazians ourselves drove out the Georgian aggressors from our territory.

In contrast to Kosovo we have developed all structures of state and government authority, developed civil society, a multiparty political system, an independent mass media, and non-governmental funds and organizations. During the last twenty years we have had presidential and parliamentary elections.

But Kosovo’s precedent gives us hope that the process of recognition can develop more quickly. In global affairs things develop unexpectedly and quickly. Almost anything can happen as a result of present events.

I do not happen to support the break-up of Georgia, and I am certain that the current administration in Washington feels the same way.  My point is that the recognition of Kosovo as an independent state, and the precedent it sets for national self-determination trumping the sovereignty and integrity of states, has pernicious consequences for precisely those governments that pushed Kosovo independence.

One hears a lot about frozen conflicts around the former Soviet Union.  While frozen conflicts are bad things, they sure beat the thawed ones, much like the Cold War was a heck of a lot better than its Hot equivalent would have been.  By thawing Kosovo, the US and EU have made life much more difficult for putative Western allies in the former Soviet block.

NATO CHIEF CALLS ON MACEDONIA TO COMPROMISE ON NAME ISSUE. NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said in Athens on March 3 that the Macedonian authorities should take the first step in resolving the long-standing dispute with Greece over Macedonia’s official name, news agencies reported. He stressed that “we have to realize that Greece is a staunch member of NATO. Aspiring nations are not members of NATO, and that is the basic difference.” Macedonia hopes to receive an invitation to join NATO at the alliance’s Bucharest summit in April. The name issue has bedeviled relations between the two countries ever since Macedonia declared independence from Yugoslavia in 1991. It was admitted to the UN in 1993 under the name Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM). Greece maintains that the name “Macedonia” alone implies a claim on the northern Greek province of the same name. PM

The merits of this particular case aside, I have to admire de Hoop Scheffer’s frankness. It makes me think of a great Greek authority on matters military and political. In the Melian dialogue, Thucydides writes

The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.

Which is more or less de Hoop Scheffer’s point. Of course, Thucydides puts this argument in the mouth of those who massacre the men of Melos and sell the women and children into slavery.

This collection of articles examines the variety of gendered experiences during the first and second world wars in Eastern Europe. The essays cover a wide spectrum of experiences and effects of war, exploring both military and civilian aspects (with emphasis on the latter). They seek to reevaluate traditional war narratives that focus heavily on men, particularly combatant men, and thus, “gender the front” (1). The book is divided into thematic sections: “challenging gender/resorting order,” “gendered collaborating and resisting,” and “remembering war: gendered bodies, gendered stories.”

Alon Rachamimov’s “’Female Generals’ and ‘Siberian Angels’: Aristocratic Nurses and the Austro-Hungarian POW Relief” demonstrates that women administrative nurses did not enjoy the positive reception of nurses who served in purely medical capacities. These women were not in auxiliary medical positions subordinate to male personnel, but rather in positions of authority assigned with the task of reporting on the conditions of the POWs within the camps and ensuring their loyalty to the Austro-Hungarian government. Rachamimov reveals the considerable gendered tension between male POWs and female administrative nurses. The men often found it difficult to accept women in positions of power over them and reacted to their presence with indifference, sullenness, and even hostility. This stands in stark contrast to the views male POWs had of women serving in purely nursing capacities, who were seen as a source of solace and comfort in their more traditional roles of caregivers and nurturers, and who held little to no authority over male personnel.

In “Civilizing the Soldier in Postwar Austria” Maureen Healy discusses the important correlation between attempts to reintroduce soldiers into civilian life after the end of hostilities in Austria, to reestablish their roles as patriarchal heads of families, and to restore traditional gender roles as part of the postwar “return to normalcy.” Healy finds numerous difficulties encountered in this process as men attempted to regain authority over their domestic lives after their long absences which required a shift of authority to women. “Between the Red Army and White Guard: Women in Budapest, 1919,” by Eliza Ablovatski, looks at the gendered aspects of the attempt to create a conservative order after World War I and two failed revolutions in Hungary. Ablovatski asserts that the forces of Admiral Horthy often gained support because they promoted traditional gender roles and values disrupted by war and revolution. And while the behavior of the White forces was not always consistent with the chivalric image fostered by the Horthy government (for example, in its attacks against women), the right wing was able to justify this violence by labeling the women they attacked as dangerous and unfeminine, and therefore not deserving of male protection.

Melissa Feinberg, in “Dumplings and Domesticity: Women, Collaboration, and Resistance in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia,” finds that during Nazi occupation of the Czech lands the “kitchen also became a site of struggle” (95). She argues that efforts of a group of right wing Czech women to teach others how to cook traditional Czech cuisine without traditional ingredients (unavailable during the war) constituted a form of resistance to Nazi occupation. This argument is undermined, however, by the fact that the Nazis had an interest in allowing these kinds of activities, to keep the population of Czech workers healthy. Moreover, preparing dishes that resembled traditional Czech foods actually contributed to a sense of normalcy (even if false) and thus helped to stabilize the occupational order, which benefited the Nazis. In “Denouncers and Fraternizers: Gender, Collaboration and Resistance in Bohemia and Moravia during World War II and After,” Benjamin Frommer examines why denunciation was most often associated with women despite the fact that in absolute numbers, women were much less frequently tried for this collaborative act than men. Stereotypes about women and gender roles played a part in creating this association, but the gendered nature of collaboration with the Nazis was also important, because it excluded women from more public acts. Mara Lazda’s “Family, Gender, and Ideology in World War II Latvia” explores ways family and gender were used by the two occupying powers of Latvia during World War II, the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, to legitimize their regimes. The Soviets promoted women’s emancipation and contrasted their gender and family policies with the restrictive, “medieval” policies of the independent interwar Latvian government. The Nazis sought to identify themselves with the interwar government by espousing similar conservative gender roles and family policies. At the same time, the family was a space in which Latvians living under both occupying powers could retain at least some degree of autonomy.

“Kosovo Maiden(s): Serbian Women Commemorate the Wars of National Liberation, 1912-1918,” by Melissa Bokovy, investigates how women’s war experiences were not celebrated, but the act of honoring the fallen was seen as a female responsibility. This not only gave women a special role (although not an active one), it also had a nationalist component, for it promoted Serbians as those who sacrificed most for the state and therefore gave them rights to primacy over other nationalities in Yugoslavia. Maria Bucur, in “Women’s Stories as Sites of Memory: Gender and Remembering Romania’s World Wars,” finds that despite evidence in wartime testimonies of great courage and sacrifice on the part of women, such experiences were not incorporated into the collective memory of the world wars in Romania. Bucur contends that silence about women’s participation in the war effort in World War II was something of an anomaly for a Communist state, contrasting it to the Soviet Union, where she claims a “great deal of attention” was paid to women’s contributions, even in combat (183). This is not altogether accurate, however, as official Soviet sources tried to significantly downplay the role of women, particularly in combat, after the war. (See Reina Pennington, “Do Not Speak of the Services You Rendered” in Gerard DeGroot and Corina Peniston-Bird, eds., A Soldier and a Woman: Sexual Integration in the Military, 2000.) In “The Nation’s Pain and Women’s Shame: Polish Women and Wartime Violence,” Katherine Jolluck finds that Polish women were able to cope better with the extremely poor treatment and living conditions they faced in Soviet exile during World War II by incorporating their non-gendered suffering (hunger, illness, beatings) into the general struggle for Polish independence. The women exiles were unable to assimilate gender-specific acts of sexual exploitation and violence into the national struggle, or even to speak about them on a personal level. Lisa A. Kirschenbaum’s “’The Alienated Body’: Gender Identity and the Memory of the Siege of Leningrad,” looks at one of the best examples of where the lines between the front and the rear were blurred: the “city front.” Most narratives of the siege center on violent acts perpetrated by the Germans, i.e. bombing and artillery fire, rather than the much more prevalent starvation that plagued Leningraders. The relative silence about starvation is often attributed to Soviet censorship that would not allow discussion of something that could be blamed on the state (for failure to stockpile food or evacuate civilians). Kirschenbaum finds, however, that even narratives produced outside of the control of Soviet censors usually did not discuss starvation and its effects to a great extent because such self-censorship helped survivors cope with the tragedy of the siege. Thus, many survivors themselves framed their experiences by emphasizing heroism, sacrifice, and courage, giving themselves agency rather than portraying themselves as helpless victims.

This volume is an impressive collection of articles that will appeal to those interested in the history of eastern Europe, war and the war experience, both world wars, and gender and women’s studies. The articles successfully reassess the traditional dichotomy of war historiography that separates male and female experiences based on front line and home front divisions, respectively. Thus, the contributors to this collection aspire to do more than just “gender the front” but to gender the entire war experience. This is an important task for general understanding of war, especially in Eastern Europe, where there is a significant dearth of such scholarship.

Laurie Stoff
Louisiana Tech University