August 2005 Newsletter

A Russian-American Scholarly Exchange

on the Second World War

Christopher Phelps

Gusting winds, snow, ice, and subzero temperatures greeted American scholars arriving in Moscow for a March conference on World War II as seen by Russians and Americans. The bracing weather provided a persuasive demonstration of why it had been so fateful for Hitler’s invading armies to become ensnared in the bitter Russian winter.

Convened on the sixtieth anniversary of the war’s end and sponsored by the Center for American Studies of the Russian State University for the Humanities (RSUH), the two-day conference brought together six American presenters, six Russian scholars, and three Russian graduate students, along with an eclectic audience of American émigrés and Russian students and scholars. Excellent simultaneous translation was provided in both languages through headsets.

Given the wartime Grand Alliance between the Soviet Union, the United States, and Britain, a commemorative meeting of intellectuals from two of the victorious allies might have been expected to gravitate toward triumphal celebration, but the conversation proved wide-ranging and self-reflective. Three themes emerged: the war in patriotic and transnational imaginations; questions of technology, war, and culture; and the moral character of the Second World War.

John Dailey, senior advisor to the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations, was among those who spoke to patriotism in the memory and experience of war. In distinguishing patriotism from nationalism, he held that nationalism, which motivated Nazism, was exclusive and aggressive, while patriotism was inclusive, allowing all citizens to contribute. As examples of the latter, he cited American women who went to work in defense plants and feats of Soviet industrial reorganization during the “Great Patriotic War.”

Alexander Logunov of RSUH spoke to complications arising from the use of Victory Day in Russia to legitimate authoritarian state leadership, not merely to commemorate the war. However, Elena Senyavskaya, a young scholar at the Institute of Russian History in the Russian Academy of Science, held that in the 1990s, politically motivated “democratic journalists” had destroyed heroic myths, symbols, and memorials in the name of anti-Stalinism, damaging ordinary citizens’ capacity for patriotic belief. She argued that historians had a moral obligation to restore pride about the war in Russian national consciousness.

In poignant internationalist contrast were remarks from the sole war veteran in attendance, RSUH’s Georgij Knabi. With medals displayed on his chest, the 85-year-old distinguished professor recounted his participation in the battle of Moscow at the age of 21. He recalled marching with his friends through the city, singing German political anthems to convey that their fight was with Nazi barbarism, not Germany or German culture. In October 1941, with the Nazi lines just miles away, he and his student cohort insisted upon being allowed to serve in the city’s defense. Provided with a “wholly inadequate” Canadian musket from 1898, Knabi was wounded during the battle and was unable to take part in the Red Army’s eventual advancement westward.

Several speakers focused upon technology and the culture of war. In a multimedia presentation on tanks as an illustration of the “opposition of mentalities,” Aleksey Kilinichenkov of RSUH examined the introduction of the Panzer V in 1943 as indicative of differing national approaches to technological development. German engineers, seeking superior design, created a tank that was better than its Soviet, British, and American competitors in numerous respects. However, in their pursuit of perfection the Germans rethought the entire tank. Production slowed because the new tank required the retooling of assembly lines from top to bottom. American and Soviet engineers simply modified their existing tank designs, thereby rapidly eliminating the German advantage.

From the floor, RSUH vice-rector Natalia Basovskaya whimsically noted that the lack of interior space in Soviet tanks implied a lack of concern for the comfort of the soldiers, itself an indication of Russian mentality.

Alexander Gayevsky, RSUH graduate student, demonstrated several Russian computer games about the Second World War. He noted that Russian game producers were not averse to including swastikas on the tail of German planes, a detail erased by programmers at Microsoft, a company “known for its pacifism.” Despite this attempt to claim popular culture for academic inquiry, most of the Russian scholars present appeared skeptical, if not derisive, about the historical value of computer war games.

On the final day of the conference, the conversation turned to a vigorous discussion of the moral character of the war. RSUH graduate student Sergey Mruz invoked his aunt, a sniper in the war, and implored his generation to adopt a reverential stance toward the memory of the war. Peter Hahn of The Ohio State University provided a thorough overview of American diplomatic efforts for the duration of the Grand Alliance, exploring Allied tensions as well as commonalities. His comprehensive presentation yielded questions about the propriety of the Yalta agreement and the decision to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Irwin Weil of Northwestern University and RSUH, a convener of the conference, maintained with passion that the unique moral horror of the Nazi campaign of “extermination” should be given a special primacy, since that was what unified those fighting to defeat it. Others, however, both Russian and American, stated that knowledge of the Holocaust was widespread only at the conclusion of the war, and pointed out that the United States was initially slow to act against Hitler or to defend European Jewry. They cited Studs Terkel’s decision to put the phrase “The Good War” in quotation marks, not only because of the horrors inherent in war but because of the internment of Japanese Americans, the prevalence of Jim Crow racial segregation in the 1940s American South and U.S. military, and the “total war” targeting of civilian populations by the Allied as well as the Axis powers.

This exchange transpired against a background of increasingly strained official relations between the United States and Russia. One week earlier, Russian President Vladimir Putin and American President George W. Bush, at a summit in Bratislava, had chided each other about their respective backtrackings from democracy. The conference dialogue, by contrast, did not polarize by nationality. Among Russian scholars there were many differences in political and interpretive judgment—and so, too, among the Americans.

All the same, the conference highlighted distinctive national styles of scholarship. Russian presentations were often emotive, tapping letters and memories of relatives who fought in the war. This tendency suggests that the Second World War remains a raw wound for Russians, who sacrificed twenty million lives, more than it does for Americans, who lost half a million lives. Russian scholars were far more likely to be concerned with the guarding of memorials, myths, and symbols.

American presenters’ style was less nationalistic, more critical, and (somewhat paradoxically) more objective. They focused upon event-centered narratives and evaluation. They were more likely than the Russian participants to mention the Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact of 1939-1941 and the dictatorial character of the Stalinist state, as well as to express doubts about measures taken by the United States government in the course of the war.

Some participants sought directly to illuminate such cultural differences. Anthony Brown of Brigham Young University shared his survey of American and Russian students. Asked to name significant Russian historical or cultural figures, Americans tended to list Lenin and Stalin. Russians, by contrast, listed Pushkin and Peter the Great.

Further intellectual and cultural exchange is indispensable for bridging such perceptual divides. A truly international conference on the Second World War, bringing together Japanese, German, Polish, Italian, Finnish, Ethiopian, and British scholars as well as Russians and Americans, might yield even more interesting results. A world war, it is clear, requires a global scholarship.

Christopher Phelps, associate professor of history at The Ohio State University at Mansfield, presented a paper at the conference entitled “The American Left, the Second World War, and the ‘Russian Question.’ ” He expresses gratitude to Elena Smetanina of RSUH’s American Center for her superb organizational work, and to RSUH students Olesya Sukonnikova and Matvey Dzyuba for guiding him to Red Square and beyond. Scholars wishing to obtain information about further activities of the RSUH’s American Center should write to amcenter@rsuh.ru.