Ethnic and religious minorities in Stalin’s Soviet Union : new dimensions of research

This anthology presents studies of Stalinism in the ethnic and religious borderlands of the Soviet Union. The authors not only cover hitherto less researched geographical areas, but have also addressed new questions and added new source material. Most of the contributors to this anthology use a micro-historical approach. With this approach, it is not the entire area of the country, with millions of separate individuals that are in focus but rather particular and cohesive ethnic and religious communities.

Micro-history does not mean ignoring a macro-historical perspective. What happened on the local level had an all-Union context, and communism was a European-wide phenomenon. This means that the history of minorities in the Soviet Union during Stalin’s rule cannot be grasped outside the national and international context; aspects which are also considered in this volume. The chapters of the book are case studies on various minority groups, both ethnic and religious. In this way, the book gives a more complex picture of the causes and effects of the state-run mass violence during Stalinism.

The publication is the outcome of a multidisciplinary international research network lead by Andrej Kotljarchuk (Södertörn University, Sweden) and Olle Sundström (Umeå University, Sweden) and consisting of specialists from Estonia, France, Germany, Russia, Sweden, Ukraine and the United States. These scholars represent various disciplines: Anthropology, Cultural Studies, History and the History of Religions.