Advertisement
Irina Makhalova (Humboldt University), 'Nazi Occupation and Stalinist Justice: Crimean Citizens on Trial, 1944-1953'During World War II, up to 60 million Soviet citizens stayed on the territories occupied by Nazi Germany and its allies. Crimea with its multinational population was under the Nazi rule for two and a half years, and civilians interacted with the occupation regime differently trying to survive and adjust to new realities. Specific national policy of Nazi Germany towards Muslim population (Crimean Tatars) along with the presence of karaites and krymchaks on the peninsula make Crimea an interesting region for examining both Nazi occupation and Soviet retribution policy. Once these territories were liberated from Nazi invaders, the Soviet government sent regional military tribunals to prosecute individuals who expressed disloyalty to the Soviet Union during the war. In Crimea, this process began in April 1944, when the Red Army liberated the peninsula and began re-establishing the Communist regime. This presentation aims, on the one hand, to highlight how the Soviet “ambivalent state” defined guilt and balanced between pursuing political goals and investigating real crimes on liberated territories. It analyzes closed war crimes trials against people of different nationalities and how various types of crimes influenced the investigation process. On the other, it aims to show how Soviet citizens faced the need to construct narratives about what had happened during the war. Historians express various opinions about the credibility and reliability of trial records, generally stating that Soviet war crimes trials were a political tool to fight politically unreliable citizens rather than a real method of investigation. Yet in many cases, witnesses were victims of the Nazi regime who lost their beloved ones, and they were eager to provide testimonies about those who humiliated them. However, in some cases witnesses, possessing their own agency, testified according to their interests and to the changing political situation. Complicated personal relations, complicity in Nazi crimes, and fear of punishment influenced accounts of those who testified about the occupation. The presentation aims, among others, to highlight how Soviet citizens interacted with those who represented returning Soviet power, and how the regime reacted to their testimonies.
Irina Makhalova received a BA in History from the National Research University Higher School of Economics (Russia, Moscow) in 2014 and a MA in Modern European History from the Humboldt University (Berlin) in 2016. She was awarded a Ph.D. degree in 2021 from the National Research University Higher School of Economics in Moscow where she also worked as a senior lecturer at the department of history from 2018 until 2022. Currently, Irina is an Alfred Landecker Lecturer Program fellow (post-doc) at the Humboldt University of Berlin. Irina has been a fellow at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USA, Washington), at the Institute of Contemporary History (Germany, Munich), and at the German Historical Institute in Moscow. In 2022-2023, she spent seven months as a Fulbright Fellow at the University of Florida (Gainesville). She has published several articles on Soviet collaborators in academic journals, including Journal of Slavic Military Studies, Cahiers du Monde Russe, and The Soviet and Post-Soviet Review.
Advertisement
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
124 Old Arts, University of Melbourne, Parkville campus, University of Melbourne-Parkville, Tin Aly, Parkville VIC 3052, Australia,Melbourne, Victoria, Australia