The Legacy of World War II on the Stalinist Home Front: Magnitogorsk, 1941--1953

The Legacy of World War II on the Stalinist Home Front: Magnitogorsk, 1941--1953
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Published on 2007 by ProQuest

... had special importance because "bourgeois \u003cb\u003eideology\u003c/b\u003e, which misinterprets the \u003cbr\u003e\nSoviet realities, is penetrating our country to ... More importantly, due to its \u003cbr\u003e\nwartime \u003cb\u003eexperience\u003c/b\u003e the government realized the necessity of learning some \u003cbr\u003e\nadvanced ...

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This dissertation investigates the impact of the Second World War on Magnitogorsk, a defense industrial center in the Urals, and its people. Drawing on interviews and sources located in Magnitogorsk and Cheliabinsk archives, this study explores the city authorities' strategies to overcome social, economic, and political problems created by the war, and the ways in which the urban inhabitants responded to governmental policies, by investigating three important aspects of postwar daily life: living conditions, labor, and social security. By examining the experiences of Magnitogorsk, the study aims to illustrate that the home-front region had its own unique war legacy and distinctive identity because Soviet war experiences and their impacts were not homogenous, but varied across the region. Wartime experiences in the home front, including hard labor and Magnitogorsk's propagandized portrayal as a key arsenal for victory, enhanced regional identity based on a sense of entitlement among urban inhabitants. Unlike the increased significance of wartime exploits in postwar daily life within frontline and occupied regions, the inhabitants of Magnitogorsk defined their own participation and success in the war not in terms of heroic feats in battle, but in terms of the productivity and labor that supported the Soviet war effort. My analyses of Magnitogorsk authorities' strategies of distribution, productivity, and welfare reveal previously neglected characteristics of postwar Stalinism. Unlike previous scholarship, which views coercion and exclusion as the postwar Stalinist government's main tool vis-a-vis society, this study demonstrates that inclusion and concession were essential components of the Stalinist strategies by investigating authorities' initiations of need-based distribution of food and consumer goods and a humanitarian and paternalistic spirit imbedded in their welfare practices. The findings further suggest that the postwar Stalin era was not an apogee of the Stalinist rule, implemented with a firmly established set of tenets, policies, and practices. Rather, postwar Stalinism was fluid, in constant flux, and even contradictory as the leadership rehabilitated and redefined prewar Soviet values and practices and eventually established new ones.

This Book was ranked 3 by Google Books for keyword world war II: ideology, experience, legacy.

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