University Press of Kansas
Stalin's World War II Evacuations: Triumph and Troubles in Kirov
Key Metrics
- Larry E Holmes
- University Press of Kansas
- Hardcover
- 9780700623952
- 9.2 X 6.3 X 0.9 inches
- 1.15 pounds
- History > Military - World War II
- English
Secure TransactionBook Description
The citizens and government of Kirov, some 500 miles northeast of Moscow, provided food, clothing, and shelter to the people and institutions that descended on the region in numbers far exceeding prewar plans or anyone's imagination. But as they continued to share their already strained resources--with adult evacuees, Leningrad's children, wounded and ill soldiers, factories, and commissariats--the people of Kirov became increasingly resentful, especially as it grew clear that the war would be prolonged, and that their guests demanded privileged treatment. Larry E. Holmes reveals how, without directly challenging the Stalinist system, they vigorously advanced their own private and regional interests. He shows that, as Kirov and Moscow pursued their respective agendas, sometimes in concert but increasingly at cross-purposes, they exposed preexisting and highly dysfunctional dimensions of Soviet governance at both the center and the periphery.
The dictatorial center and the periphery literally came face-to-face in the evacuation to Kirov, allowing for a new, informed understanding of the tensions inherent in the Stalinist system, and of the power politics of the wartime Soviet Union.
Author Bio
Larry E. Holmes is a professor of history at the University of South Alabama where he has taught since 1968. During the 1992/3 academic year he lectured in Russian and Soviet History at Rostov State University in the Russian Federation.
Holmes has been the recipient of numerous awards including grants from the Kennan Institute, National Endowment for the Humanities, American Council of Teachers of Russian, and the International Research and Exchanges Board. Author of The Kremlin and the Schoolhouse: Reforming Education in Soviet Russia, 1917Ð1931, and Sotsial’naia istoriia Rossii: 1917Ð1941,
Holmes has also published articles in Slavic Review, Russian Review, History of Education Quarterly, and other scholarly forums. He lives in Mobile, AL.
Source: University of Pittsburgh Press
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