General Information

Author/Creator

Kende, Tamás (Historian), author.

Language

English.

Published

London ; New York : Routledge, 2024.

Physical Description

194 p. ; 24 cm.

Contents/Summary

Summary

"Class War or Race War is more than an anti-thesis of the master-narrative regarding the Soviet state antisemitism. Kende not only refutes the originally anti-Communist myth of the systemic nature of (state) socialism, but tries to re-, and deconstruct the origins of this myth. With intensive use of historical documents, memoirs and the related historiography, the book attempts to make historical sense from the myth it intends to refute. Kende goes beyond the contemporary perceptions of the "Jewish question" and antisemitism and with close reading of original documents, reconstructs the real frontlines of the Soviet society of the 1940s, which were not constructed along identity-political lines. The book reinvests the long forgotten understanding of social classes in an allegedly classless and monolithic society. The spontaneous formations of the actual frontlines in the hinterland, or on the actual fronts (battlefields, in the Red Army) lacked the participants' class consciousness, thus its occurrences in the form of conflict producing historical records were recorded as acts of antisemitism. As the book advocates, Jews could have been found on both sides of the inner frontlines of the Soviet society during, and right after the WWII. An insightful read for scholars of Soviet history, that presents a bold and challenging interpretation of the regime and its flaws - both perceived and real"--

Subjects

Subject

Antisemitism > Soviet Union.

Jews > Persecutions > Soviet Union.

Jews > Soviet Union > Social conditions.

Soviet Union > Race relations.

Soviet Union > Ethnic relations.

Bibliographic Information

Responsibility

Tamás Kende.

Series

Routledge studies in modern history

Content

Introduction: Anti-Semitism as a window to the possible history -- Perceptions of a pogrom -- Evacuation and anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union during WWII -- Jewish communism versus Bolshevik anti-Semitism or the quest for the right adjective -- Post-war anti-Jewish violence in the collective memory of Soviet Jewry -- Evacuation and anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union during WWII -- Other inner frontlines : housing, hunger, and food supply in Jewish memoirs -- The rising Jewish self-esteem -- The selected but not elected : the Jewish Antifascist Committee and the rise of Soviet-Jewish national pride -- Contemporary echoes of the Holocaust -- Anti-semitism or inner frontlines on the front : the Red Army's soldiers on the Jewish question -- Jews remembering Jews on the other side of the front-line in the post-war period -- The spontaneous "us" and "them" in a pogrom in Uzbekistan through the eyes of a Soviet Jewish child -- Conclusion : class and/or race.

ISBN

9781032577333

9781032577388

Holdings

Item Type	Current Location	Collection	Call Number	Volume Info	Shelving Location	Public Note
Book	OSA Archivum Library	Reference collection	305.892/4047 KEN		Reference	-

Browse related items