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Soviet Women’s Acceptance of Infantilization as a Means of Compromise, Resistance, and Denial on the Frontlines of World War II and Beyond
By Julia-Maria Xavier Content Warning: Sexual Assault Abstract World War II was marked by the violent acquisition of land, shaping, and re-shaping of territories and populations both in its immediacy and aftermath. For citizens of the Soviet Union, like most other nations, defending their territory was an issue of patriotism, in which all citizens were…
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Revolution under the Shadow of the State: Organized Crime in the Soviet Union
Moscow’s Red Square during the Soviet era. Photo: daves_archive_1/Flickr. No changes made. View the license here. By Mike Shirley Introduction “I have no mother and no father. There is only the code, the vory v zakone code.” – Nikolai Luzhin, Eastern Promises[1] In 1971, Voldemar Mirkin, an antiques dealer in the Soviet Union’s thriving black market, came…
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The Voices of a Few: Women in the Gulag
Shack from Gulag- Museum of the Occupation of Latvia. Photo: Marcin Szala/Wikimedia Commons. No changes made. View the license here. By: Julia Maria-Xavier The Stalinist era saw millions of people caught within the penal system, whether in prisons, labour camps, forced labour colonies, or exile, and millions more who bore the traumatic experience of being…