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Regular version of the site

About the Center

The International Center for the History and Sociology of the Second World War and Its Consequences (hereinafter - the Center) was established on October 8, 2010 and began its activities in January 2011. In 2014, the Center received the status of an international laboratory. For almost 10 years of its existence, the Center has gained the position of one of the leading institutions in the scholar community studying the history of the Second World War and Soviet history. The Center was an associate department with the Faculty of Humanities of the Higher School of Economics (HSE University).

However, since the establishment of the Center, the problems of its research have significantly expanded and have gone far beyond the history of the Second World War. The research of the members of the Center`s team also covered the era of the First World War, the Revolution, and the Civil War when many extraordinary practices and methods reflected in the later Soviet history were developed. The Center's employees also paid special attention to the pre-war years of Stalin's rule. Over time, studies on the Soviet economy and on social and cultural processes in different periods of the country's existence were added to focus of the research of the center's employees. In 2018-2019, the Center implemented a large-scale project together with the Boris Yeltsin Presidential Center on the topic "The Social History of Russia (the 1990s)". Thus, the 1990s became another area of scientific research of the scholar team. Recently, the Center's employees have been engaged in research covering the entire period of Soviet history, as well as the first post-Soviet decade. This circumstance, along with a significantly increased number of employees and interns-researchers, dictated the need to reorganize the Center. Therefore, on July 1, 2021, the International Center for the History and Sociology of the Second World War and Its Consequences was reorganized into the Institute for Advanced Soviet and Post-Soviet Studies (ISPI).

 The Center for the History and Sociology of the Second World War and Its Consequences, which is now one of the divisions of the ISPI, continues research on the history of the Second World War at the HSE University.

 

THE MAIN GOALS OF THE CENTER (remain unchanged):

  • Development of academic studies in the field of history and sociology of World War II and Holocaust
  • Dissemination of research results by publication of historical sources and secondary studies as well as organization of seminars, conferences, public lectures, etc.
  • Training of students
  • Forming of professional creative intellectual environment, providing fruitful research in the field World War II studies and Holocaust studies

 

Scholarly Activity at the Center

Researchers at the International Center for the History and Sociology of World War II and Its Consequences produce work in several areas:

— various aspects of the Nazi occupation regime and the life of Soviet citizens under occupation, including collaboration and comparative analysis of the occupied areas of the USSR with other parts of occupied Europe

— the politics of propaganda in the USSR and Nazi Germany

— the dynamics and forms of violence, especially in the Holocaust, including the role of ideology, politics and the local conditions where violence took place

— the social and cultural history of Stalinism during wartime and the reaction of the Soviet political system and Soviet society on the Nazi invasion

— the liberation and re-sovietization of occupied regions, as well as the experience of Soviet citizens who came to Europe as part of the Red Army

— comparative analysis of occupation and liberation politics, including the comparison between the Russian and non-Russian occupied areas of the USSR, between the occupation of the USSR and Eastern Europe, and between the Eastern Front and other areas of Europe

— World War II considered as part of the broader development of the USSR and the comparison of World War II with other conflicts of the twentieth century

The results of the Center’s research have appeared in a number of books and articles published in the leading journals for Slavic studies. In addition, the Center also focuses on the study of people at war through the spread of new archival documents. Scholars at the Center are active in publishing ego sources, in particular wartime diaries.

The Center houses the scholarly-instructional group Social History of the Second World War, whose members are currently working on the project “The Harvard Project: Forgotten Testimony about the Second World War.” A result of this work will include the publication of a collection of materials from the Harvard Project about World War II.


 

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