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Regular version of the site

Presentation ‘ The Great Terror as a Moral Panic: Youth during 1937-38 ’ by Seth Franklin Bernstein

Event ended
On January 29 a research seminar of the International Center for the History and Sociology of World War II and Its Consequences will take place at HSE.
Seth Franklin Bernstein, Research Fellow of the Centre will give a presentation ‘The Great Terror as a Moral Panic: Youth during 1937-38’.
Abstract: 
In the years 1937-38, Stalin's regime unleashed a mass campaign of arrest against the population. During these years, official estimates placed the number of arrested at 1.5 million and executed at 700 000. Leaders of party and state organizations, including the Young Communist League (Komsomol), fell during purges of their administrations. Although scholars have focused on the mass campaign to remove "anti-Soviet elements" from the population and Stalin's perceived political enemies from administrations, the story of youth during the Great Terror reveals another side of political repression. Repression and the narrative of repression among youth became a "moral panic"– a publicity campaign that created political and moral deviants from arrestees. Youth leaders purged as "Trotskyist degenerates" for their alleged drinking and the discussions of their cases among ordinary youth reveal how the terror underlined that "lifestyle cannot be separate from politics." While the primary purpose of the terror was to destroy the supposed enemies of socialism, it also attempted to construct the first socialist generation by saving youth from deviancy.
Working language: English
Start time: 6.00 pm
Address: 12 Petrovka Ulitsa, Room 207
Everyone interested is welcome.
If you need a pass to HSE, please contact worldwar2@hse.ru