While arrest was not guaranteed, persecution was ubiquitous.
The Center for European and Russian Studies invites you to a book talk with Seth F. Bernstein, Associate Professor of History at the University of Florida to discuss Return to the Motherland Displaced Soviets in WWII and the Cold War (2023). The talk will be followed by Q&A moderated by Professor Jared McBride, UCLA Department of History. This book talk is open to all and will take place at Bunche Hall Room 10383 on January 30, 2025 at 4 PM, with registration requested.
About the Book
Return to the Motherland follows those who were displaced to the Third Reich back to the Soviet Union after the victory over Germany. At the end of World War II, millions of people from Soviet lands were living as refugees outside the borders of the USSR. Most had been forced laborers and prisoners of war, deported to the Third Reich to work as racial inferiors in a crushing environment. Seth Bernstein reveals the secret history of repatriation, the details of the journey, and the new identities, prospects, and dangers for migrants that were created by the tumult of war. He uses official and personal sources from declassified holdings in post-Soviet archives, more than one hundred oral history interviews, and transnational archival material. Most notably, he makes extensive use of secret police files declassified only after the Maidan Revolution in Ukraine in 2014. The stories described in Return to the Motherland reveal not only how the USSR grappled with the aftermath of war but also the universality of Stalinism's refugee crisis. While arrest was not guaranteed, persecution was ubiquitous. Within Soviet society, returnees met with a cold reception that demanded hard labor as payment for perceived disloyalty, soldiers perpetrated rape against returning Soviet women, and ordinary people avoided contact with repatriates, fearing arrest as traitors and spies. As Bernstein describes, Soviet displacement presented a challenge to social order and the opportunity to rebuild the country as a great power after a devastating war.
About the Author
Seth Bernstein (Ph.D. University of Toronto, 2013) is a historian of the Soviet Union and post-Soviet states and Associate Professor at University of Florida. He was previously Assistant Professor of History at Higher School of Economics (Moscow). His most recent book is Return to the Motherland: Displaced Soviets in WWII and the Cold War (Cornell, 2023), a history of the millions of Eastern Europeans who came to Hitler's Europe as forced laborers and who returned to a Soviet Union that treated them as traitors. In 2017 he published Raised under Stalin: Young Communists and the Defense of Socialism (Cornell University Press; Russian translation ROSSPEN, 2018). He translated Moscow State University Professor Alexander Vatlin's Agents of Terror: Ordinary Men and Extraordinary Violence in Stalin's Secret Police (University of Wisconsin Press, 2016) and Higher School of Economics Professor Liudmila Novikova's An Anti-Bolshevik Alternative: The White Movement and the Civil War in the Russian North (University of Wisconsin Press, 2018). His digital humanities work in articles and blog posts explores how GIS and historical databases can enrich historical research.
About the Discussant
Jared McBride is a historian who examines Russia, Ukraine, and Eastern Europe in the 20th century with a focus on nationalist movements, mass violence, interethnic conflict, and war crimes prosecution, related to both the Second World War and Cold War periods. He also has a strong interest in the politics of archival research and access to freedom of information. His research has been supported by the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, the Fulbright-Hays Foundation, and the Social Science Research Council, among others, and he has published in Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Journal of Genocide Research, The Carl Beck Papers, Ab Imperio, Kritika, and Slavic Review. Prior to starting at UCLA, Dr. McBride held post-doctoral positions at Columbia University, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Kennan Institute, and USC’s Shoah Foundation. Over the past five years, he has directed and instructed “Political Violence in the Modern World,” a year-long Cluster course that one thousand first-year students have completed at UCLA. He also teaches courses on the Soviet Union, 20th century Eastern Europe, the Second World War, and on History and Film. Presently, he is completing a book manuscript concerning interethnic violence and local perpetrators in Nazi-occupied western Ukraine. Dr. McBride is available for media inquiries concerning Ukraine and Russia.
Venue
Bunche Hall 10383
(10th floor of Bunche Hall)
315 Portola Plaza
Los Angeles, CA 90095
Parking
You can find nearby parking at Parking Structure 4 or Parking Structure 5. Parking Structure 5 has an hourly rate of $8 per hour and Parking Structure 4 has an hourly rate of $4 per hour for visitors. Visit UCLA Visitor Parking for more information. Ride-share drop off is closest at the turnaround at the front of Royce Hall located at: 10745 Dickson Court, Los Angeles, CA 90095. Accessible Parking: If you have accessibility needs, you may park in the Pay-By-Space/Visitor Parking area on the rooftop (level 5) of Parking Structure 5 and proceed to the Self-Service Pay Station machine to pay by credit card.