Soviet Veterans of World War II: A Popular Movement in an Authoritarian Society, 1941-1991

Abstract

This book explores the fate of the millions of Soviet soldiers who survived the Second World War and returned to Stalin's state after victory, tracing the veterans' story from the early post‐war years right through to the end of the Soviet Union in 1991. It describes in detail the problems they encountered during demobilization, the dysfunctional bureaucracy they had to deal with once back, and the way their reintegration into civilian life worked in practice in one of the most severely destroyed countries of Europe. It pays particular attention to groups with specific problems such as the disabled, former prisoners of war, women soldiers and youth. Using a wealth of archival documents as well as the recollections of veterans, contemporary movies, periodicals, and literature, this book analyses the old soldiers' long struggle for recognition and the eventual emergence of an organized movement in the years after the dictator's death. The Soviet state at first refused to recognize veterans as a group worth special privileges or as an organization. They were not a group conceived of in Marxist‐Leninist theory, there was suspicion about their political loyalty, and the leadership worried about the costs of a special status for such a large population group. And as the book shows, these preconceptions were overcome only after a long, hard struggle by a popular movement which slowly emerged within the strict confines of the authoritarian Soviet regime.