A Feat or Collaboration with the Enemy? Soviet People during the Great Patriotic War on the Pages of the Russian Emigrant Press

This article examines the political behaviour of the Soviet people during the Great Patriotic War. The author focuses on the interpretations of this problem found in the works of representatives of the Russian Abroad. The work uses émigré periodical press as well as some materials from the State Archives of the Russian Federation (Moscow) and the Bakhmeteff Archive of Russian and East European Culture of Columbia University (New York, USA). The study draws upon both printed periodicals oriented towards the position of the countries of the anti-Hitler coalition (primarily, Novoe Russkoe Slovo and Socialist Herald published in New York), and collaborationist newspapers, i. e. Novoe Slovo and Zarya (Berlin), as well as Parizhsky Vestnik (Paris). The author poses a novel question regarding the value bases that émigré patriots and collaborators used to make their decisions during the war. This question has not been previously addressed. The study proves that the part of the emigrants who supported the anti-Hitler coalition proceeded from the fact that the political behaviour of the Soviet people was based on the feat of self-sacrifice associated with the awakening of Russian national selfconsciousness during the war. In their opinion, the war, which had a Patriotic character, actualised those specific characteristics that distinguished the people of our country throughout its history. Concurrently, among the patriotic segment of the emigrant population, there were those who maintained their opposition to communism. They expressed their support for the efforts of the Red Army and their admiration for the accomplishments of the Soviet people. However, they also criticised the national and foreign policy of Stalin’s leadership. The article proves that the collaborationist emigrants also tried to use patriotic rhetoric, declaring that the interests of the USSR leadership headed by Jospeh Stalin and the Russian people were opposite. To substantiate the thesis that only repressions by punitive organs forced Soviet people to participate in the war, they created an image of the USSR as a “reign of terror”. The author concludes that in practice, such a position led to the idealisation by collaborators of German Nazism, and its expansionist plans with respect to our country.