“Someone has broken into my flat. Three months after arriving in Russia as the Guardian’s new Moscow bureau chief, I return home from a dinner party. It’s late. I turn the key. At first, everything appears normal … and then I see it. It’s a strange detail. The window of my son’s bedroom is wide open.

I find myself in a new world. It is a place of unknown rules, of thuggish adversaries. Suddenly, it appears we have become the objects of a malign psychological exercise, a dark experiment on the human soul. Our souls. I hug my son close.”

- ‘Prologue: The Break In’ – in Luke Harding, Mafia State: How one reporter became an enemy of the brutal new Russia (Guardian Books, 2011)

Luke Hardings 'Mafia State' (Guardian Books, 2011) is part sensational expose and part damning indictment into the shadowy underbelly of contemporary Russia.

Luke Harding’s Mafia State intrigued me from its opening line (‘Someone has broken into my flat …’) and when I finished reading his book, I described it as ‘unputdownable’ on Twitter. Perhaps the best testament to the book’s readability though – due, no doubt to a combination of Harding’s incisive and engaging journalistic penmanship, the division of his narrative into a series of short, interlinked chapters and the darkly alluring nature of the subject matter – is the fact that after finishing it, I left Mafia State lying on my coffee table, and returned home a few hours later to find my boyfriend, who, by his own admission ‘never really reads’, was engrossed in it!

At first glance, you could be forgiven for thinking that Harding’s book is a rather stereotypical tale of Cold War intrigue. The story sounds familiar: a British journalist arrives in Moscow, uncovers some uncomfortable truths about those in power and, despite attempts to restrict his freedom of movement and speech, starts asking some difficult questions and publishing some critical reports. This quickly marks him out as an ‘enemy of the state’ and he encounters official hostility, becoming the target of an insidious campaign of harassment and intimidation, until one day, he is simply barred from re-entering the country on some small bureaucratic pretext, in a textbook Soviet-style expulsion. What is distinctive about Harding’s case, however, is that the experiences he describes take place, not in Stalin’s Soviet Union, but in Putin’s ‘Neo Soviet Russia’, twenty years after the end of the Cold War and the collapse of communism. Harding, who worked as the Moscow correspondent for The Guardian from 2007 until his expulsion in February 2011 (when, on arrival at Moscow airport after a visit to the UK, he was politely informed that ‘For you, Russia is closed’), has now published Mafia State, part sensational expose and part damning indictment into the shadowy underbelly of life in contemporary Russia. His account includes some fascinating (and at times rather frightening) insights into a range of areas that  illustrate the corrupt nexus of crime and politics underpinning Russian interests today.

Harding’s journey takes him from the destitution and decay of rural Russia to the extravagant lifestyles of the ‘dollar millionaires’ who have proliferated in the post-communist decades. He witnesses the blatant use of corruption and vote fixing in local elections and the ‘Potemkin villages’ built to impress Olympic inspection teams in advance of 2014, when Russia will host the Winter Olympics. He observes the brutal violence and state-authorised ethnic cleansing in Georgia in the aftermath of the 2008 war and investigates the brutal ‘counter-terrorist’ methods employed in the north Caucasus, creating a spiralling circle of violence and insurgency which, in turn, fuels xenophobia, nationalism and the radicalisation of the far right in contemporary Russia. On an equally sombre note, he highlights the suspected state-authorised assassinations of numerous ‘troublesome elements’ ranging from Russian journalists and human rights activists who criticise the Kremlin to the notorious murder of former FSB officer Litvinenko in London during November 2007.

Mafia State is a timely read for anyone interested in the shadowy workings of contemporary Russia, and seems particularly pertinent in light of more recent developments, such as the mass protests against electoral fraud and Vladimir Putin’s confirmation that he intends to return to the Presidency by standing for a third term in 2012.

I recently wrote a full review of Mafia State which has been published in the latest edition of the journal New Eastern Europe, alongside a range of other excellent articles. If you’re interested in central and east European affairs and you haven’t checked it out yet, then you really should! For more information, go to their website. You can also follow New Eastern Europe on Twitter @NewEastEurope

Mafia State is published by Guardian Books and you can purchase it from their online bookshop or from Amazon. You can also follow Luke Harding on Twitter @LukeHarding1968

Would you be interested in writing for The View East?

The View East is looking for occasional guest authors, to write short articles of interest relating to modern and contemporary (c20-c21) central and eastern Europe (including Russia/FSU) during 2012. These will supplement my own regular blog posts here. I will continue blogging throughout the year of course, but my idea is that once every few weeks I will host a guest-authored article. This will provide a forum to present research, thoughts, opinions, analysis and discussion on modern east Europe, written by a range of other individuals.

The View East aims to adopt a deliberately broad remit. While many blog posts are historically based, they often also relate to more contemporary developments in the region.

Articles can focus on particular individuals, countries and/or issues of interest, or adopt a cross-national or regional approach.

Full authorial credit will be given for all content posted online, and a short ‘guest author’ bio will be included.

If you think you might be interested in writing a guest authored blog post for The View East, or if you have an idea for a forthcoming blog post that you would like to discuss, then please email me at:

thevieweast@gmail.com

Kelly Hignett.

2011 is a year that has prompted numerous historical comparisons, even before it has ended. This has been a year marked by economic turmoil, widespread international protest and revolutionary activity, as evidenced by Time Magazine’s recent announcement that their coveted ‘person of the year’ was to be awarded to ‘The Protestor‘. Throughout 2011, global news coverage has frequently been dominated by the growing wave of protest and demonstrations that swept the Arab World; quickly dubbed the ‘Arab Spring’ by international media and drawing frequent comparisons with the East European revolutions of 1989. Some (including, recently, Eric Hobsbawm) have suggested that comparisan with the ‘Spring of Nations’ of 1848 is more fitting although many have questioned the value of either historical analogy. Similarly, almost twenty years to the day, in the last weeks of 2011, mounting protests against electoral fraud in Russia have evoked memories of the collapse of the communist monopoly of power and the break-up of the USSR in 1991, with the last Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev recently advising current Prime Minister Vladimir Putin to ‘learn the lesson of 1991’ and resign from power, although Russia-watcher Mark Galeotti has suggested that 1905 may turn out to be a more fitting historical parallel.

The increasingly uncertain economic climate and global financial downturn also dominated news coverage throughout 2011, particularly of late due to the growing crisis in the Eurozone. Across central and eastern Europe, economic crisis and social insecurity has generated fresh concern about ‘ostalgie’ with the release of surveys suggesting high levels of nostalgia for the communist era. In recent polls conducted in Romania 63% of participants said that  their life was better under communism, while 68% said they now believed that communism was ‘a good idea that had been poorly applied’. Similarly, a survey conducted in the Czech Republic last month revealed that 28% of participants believed they had been ‘better off’ under communism, leading to fears of a growth in ‘retroactive optimism‘.

Much of the subject matter presented here at The View East aims to combine historical analysis with more contemporary developments. During 2011 a range of blog posts have covered topics as diverse as the Cold War space race (with posts about Sputnik and the 50^th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin‘s first successful manned space flight); the role of popular culture (and specifically, popular music in the GDR) in undermining communism; the use and abuse of alcohol in communist Eastern Europe; espionage and coercion (with posts relating to the East German Stasi, Romanian Securitate and the notorious murder of Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov) and in relation to continuing efforts to commemorate contested aspects of modern history including Katyn; the construction of the Berlin Wall, German reunification, Stalin’s legacy and the continuing controversy over Soviet-era war memorials. This summer also saw the first ‘student showcase’ here at The View East, which was a great success, with a series of excellent guest authored posts on a range of fascinating topics, researched and written by some of my students at Swansea University.

Something that I constantly stress to my students is the need to recognise how our knowledge and understanding of modern central and eastern Europe was, in many respects, transformed as new evidence and sources of information became accessible to historians of Eastern Europe after the collapse of communism 1989-1991; and the ways in which our understanding continues to evolve as new information and perspectives continue to emerge today. So, with that in mind, here is a quick review of some of my own personal favourite topics of interest, events and developments during 2011. This short summary is by no means exhaustive so please feel free to add suggestions of your own in the comments section below!

Anniversaries for Reagan and Gorbachev

February 2011 marked the centenary of Ronald Reagan’s birth. Today, former US President and ‘Cold Warrior’ Reagan remains highly regarded throughout the former communist block, where he is widely credited with helping to end the Cold War and open a pathway for freedom across Eastern Europe. A series of events were thus organised to mark the occasion across central and eastern Europe, where several streets, public squares and landmarks were renamed in Reagan’s honour and and the summer of 2011 saw statues of Reagan popping up in several former communist block countries, including Poland, Hungary and Georgia. To mark the centenary, the CIA also released a collection of previously classified  documents, along with a report on ‘Ronald Reagan, Intelligence and the End of the Cold War’ and a series of short documentary style videos that were made to ‘educate’ Reagan about the USSR on a range of topics including the space programme, the Soviet war in Afghanistan and the Chernobyl disaster, which can be viewed here. An exhibition held at the US National Archives in Washington DC also displayed examples of Reagan’s personal correspondence including a series of letters exchanged with Mikhail  Gorbachev and the handwritten edits made to Reagan’s famous ‘Evil Empire’ speech of 1983.

A statue of former US President Ronald Reagan, unveiled in the Georgian capital Tblisi in November 2011. The centenary of Reagan's birth was celebrated throughout the former communist block in 2011.

Today, citizens of the former East Block tend to view Reagan much more kindly than his Cold War counterpart, former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev who celebrated his 80^th birthday back in March. Still feted in the West, Gorbachev was the guest of honour at a celebratory birthday gala in London and and was also personally congratulated by current Russian President Medvedev, receiving a Russian medal of honour. In a series of interviews, Gorbachev claimed he remained proud of role in ending communism, although for many, his legacy remains muddied.  April 2011 saw the 25^th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, while August 1991 marked the twentieth anniversary of the failed military coup launched by communist hardliners hoping to depose Gorbachev from power and halt his reforms and finally, the 25 December 2011 was 20 years to the day since Gorbachev announced his resignation from power and the formal dissolution of the USSR. Recently released archival documents have also provided historians with more detailed information about the dying days of the Soviet Union as a desperate Gorbachev tried to hold the USSR  together.

March 2011 - Russian President Dmitry Medvedev shakes hands with Mikhail Gorbachev during a meeting to celebrate his 80th birthday. Gorbachev was awarded the Order of St Andrew the Apostle, Russia's highest honour.

Half a Century Since the Construction of the Berlin Wall

August 2011 marked 50 years since the construction of the famous wall which divided Berlin 1961-1989 and became one of the most iconic symbols of Cold War Europe. The anniversary was commemorated in Germany as I discussed in my earlier blog post here and was also widely covered by international media including the Guardian and the BBC here in the UK. I particularly enjoyed these interactive photographs, published in Spiegel Online, depicting changes to the East-West German border. In October, the CIA and US National Archives also released a collection of recently declassified documents relating to the Berlin Crisis of August 1961, which have been published online here.

13 August 2011 - A display in Berlin commemorates the 50th anniversary of the construction of the Berlin Wall.

Thirty Years Since Martial Law Crushed Solidarity in Poland

13  December marked 30 years since General Jaruzelski’s declaration of Martial Law in Poland in 1981, as the emergent Solidarity trade union was declared illegal and forced underground. NATO have released a fascinating series of archived documents relating to events in Poland 1980-81 which have been published online here.  Today Jaruzelski still argues that he ordered the domestic crackdown to avoid Soviet invasion, claiming in a recent book that  his actions were a ‘necessary evil’ . but intelligence contained in the newly available NATO reports suggest that the Soviet leadership were actually ‘keen to avoid’ military intervention in Poland. Fresh attempts to prosecute 88 year old Jaruzelski for his repressive actions were halted due to ill health in 2011, as the former communist leader was diagnosed with lymphoma in March 2011 and has been undergoing regular chemotherapy this year.

13 December 2011 marked 30 years since General Wojciech Jaruzelski's declaration of Martial Law in Poland, designed to crush the growing Polish opposition movement, Solidarity.

The Communist-Era Secret Police

Stories about communist-era state security are always a crowd pleaser and 2011 saw a series of new revelations from the archives of the notorious East German Ministerium für Staatssicherheit or Stasi. I particularly liked the archived photos that were published in Spiegel Online, taken during a course to teach Stasi agents the art of disguise, as discussed in my previous blog post here and, in a similar vein, information from Polish files about espionage techniques used by Polish State Security which was published in October. In November, new research published in the German Press suggested that the Stasi had a much larger network of spies in West Germany than was previously thought, with over 3000 individuals employed as Inofizelle Mitarbeiter or ‘unofficial informers’, to spy on family, friends, neighbours and colleagues. The Stasi even compiled files on leading figures such as German Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI) and former East German leader Erich Honecker, gathering information that was later used as leverage to force his resignation in October 1989. A new book published in September also detailed the extent of Stasi infiltration in Sweden, with information published in the German media suggesting that Swedish furniture manufacturer  IKEA used East German prisoners as a cheap source of labour in the 1970s and early 1980s.

‘Tourist with Camera’ – a favoured disguise used by Stasi surveillance agents, unearthed from the Stasi archives and part of a new exhibition that went on display in Germany earlier this year.

The Death of Vaclav Havel

2011 ended on something of a sombre note, as news broke of the death of communist-era dissident and former Czechoslovakian/Czech President Vaclav Havel on 18 December. An iconic figure, Havel’s death dominated the news in the lead up to Christmas, (only eclipsed by the subsequent breaking news about North Korean leader Kim Jong Il’s death on December 17!) with numerous obituaries and tributes to Havel and his legacy appearing in the media (such as this excellent tribute in The Economist, ‘Living in Truth‘), as discussed in more detail in my recent blog post here. Havel’s funeral on 23 December was attended by world leaders, past and present and received widespread media coverage. In recent interviews, such as this one, given shortly before his death, Havel commented on a range of contemporary issues including the Arab revolutions and the global economic crisis. RIP Vaclav – you will be missed.

December 2011 - News breaks of the death of playwright, communist-era dissident and former Czech President Vaclav Havel. Hundreds of candles were lit in Prague's Wenceslas Square in his memory, thousands of mourners gathered to pay their respects and tributes poured in from around the globe.

The Growth of Social Networking

The use of social networking as a tool for organising and fuelling protest and opposition movements has also been a regular feature in the news throughout 2011 with particular reference to the Arab Spring, the UK riots and the recent ‘Occupy’ movement. Many more universities and academics are also now realising the potential benefits of using social media sites to promote their interests, and achievements, disseminate their research to a wider audience and engage in intellectual debate with a wider circle of individuals working on similar areas of interest, both within and beyond academia.  The potential benefits of Twitter and other social networking sites for academics has been promoted by the LSE and their Impact Blog during 2011, including this handy ‘Twitter guide for Academics‘.  On a more personal note, promoting The View East via Twitter has also helped me develop a much stronger online profile and contributed to an increased readership in 2011, something I discussed further in a September blog post here.

Was 2011 the year of the 'Twitter Revolution'?

As 2011 ends, our twitter feed @thevieweast is heading for 500 regular twitter followers; most days The View East receives well over 100 hits, the number of regular email subscribers has almost doubled and I’ve been able to reach a much wider audience – some older blog content I wrote relating to Solidarity was recently published in a Macmillan textbook History for Southern Africa and in the last twelve months I have given interviews to ABC Australia, Voice of America, and Radio 4, all in relation to subjects I’d written about here at The View East. So, as 2011 draws to a close, I’d like to take this opportunity to thank all of you who have read, commented, followed and re-tweeted from The View East in 2011 – A very Happy New Year to you all, and I’m looking forward to more of the same in 2012!

Happy New Year from The View East!

The manager of a fruit-and-vegetable shop places in his window, among the onions and carrots, the slogan: “Workers of the world, unite!” Why does he do it? What is he trying to communicate to the world?

I think it can safely be assumed that the overwhelming majority of shopkeepers never think about the slogans they put in their windows, nor do they use them to express their real opinions. That poster was delivered to our greengrocer from the enterprise headquarters along with the onions and carrots. He put them all into the window simply because it has been done that way for years, because everyone does it, and because that is the way it has to be. If he were to refuse, there could be trouble. He could be reproached for not having the proper decoration in his window; someone might even accuse him of disloyalty. He does it because these things must be done if one is to get along in life.

Obviously the greengrocer . . . does not put the slogan in his window from any personal desire to acquaint the public with the ideal it expresses. The slogan is really a sign, and as such it contains a subliminal but very definite message. Verbally, it might be expressed this way: “I, the greengrocer XY, live here and I know what I must do. I behave in the manner expected of me. I am obedient and therefore I have the right to be left in peace.”. Let us take note: if the greengrocer had been instructed to display the slogan “I am afraid and therefore unquestioningly obedient;’ he would not be nearly as indifferent to its semantics, even though the statement would reflect the truth. The greengrocer would be embarrassed and ashamed to put such an unequivocal statement of his own degradation in the shop window, and quite naturally so, for he is a human being and thus has a sense of his own dignity. To overcome this complication, his expression of loyalty must take the form of a sign which, at least on its textual surface, indicates a level of disinterested conviction. Thus the sign helps the greengrocer to conceal from himself the low foundations of his obedience, at the same time concealing the low foundations of power. It hides them behind the facade of something high. And that something is ideology.

- Vaclav Havel, The Power of the Powerless (1978)

Remembering Vaclav Havel

Today marks the passing of communist-era dissident and former Czech President Vaclav Havel, who died on Sunday 18 December 2011, aged 75.  I was very saddened to learn of Havel’s death last weekend after aprolonged period of ill health  – for me, Havel was, and will remain, one of the most iconic figures to emerge from communist Eastern Europe.

Havel’s funeral at St Vitus Cathedral in Prague later today, which will be televised and broadcast on large screens across the Czech Republic, brings an end to a three days of official mourning, during which time thousands have queued to pay their respects while Havel’s body has lain in state.  Havel’s funeral will be attended by leaders from around the world; at twelve noon a minutes’ silence will be observed in his honour; requests have already been received from numerous Czech towns and cities seeking to name streets and squares in his memory, along with proposals that Prague airport be renamed in his honour. Tributes to Havel have also poured in from world leaders across the globe and the School of Slavonic and East European Studies at UCL have compiled a handy list of links to press and media coverage of Havel’s death HERE.

Crowds of Czech mourners follow Vaclav Havel's hearse on its journey to Prague Castle earlier this week. Thousands of people have queued to pay their respects to the former playwright, dissident and President during a three day mourning period.

Havel’s life has been well documented in the numerous tributes and obituaries that have appeared in the international press during the past week. Some of the best (English language) articles I’ve read have been Anne Applebaum’s article in The Washington Post; Edward Lucas’s tribute in The Economist; John Keane’s portrait ‘Remembering the Many Vaclav Havels’ and particulalry, David Remnick’s Letter from Prague ‘Exit Havel: The King Leaves the Castle’, first published in The New Yorker shortly after Havel left office in February 2003, but providing a fascinating insight into his Presidency.

Communist-Era Dissidence

The son of a wealthy ‘bourgeois’ family,  as a teenager Havel was prevented from pursuing his love of the arts at University and forced instead to enter a technical engineering programme, which he dropped out of after two years. His love of the theatre led to his finding work as a stage hand, and during the 1960s he made his name as a playwright, until his support for the ill-fated Prague Spring of 1968 resulted in enforced exclusion from theatre work. Instead, Havel was forced to take a job working in a brewery (which he later wrote about in his play Audience), but became increasingly politically active, writing a series of underground essays critically appraising the communist regime and later acting as a key figure in the Czech dissident movement Charter 77.

Charter 77 - the original membership card bearing Havel's signature.

Havel was imprisoned numerous times and was a frequent victim of repression and  harassment by the communist-era StB ( Czechoslovakian state security).  I’ll always remember seeing the following footage, originally filmed at the close of the 1970s and more recently shown as part of a documentary on The Lost World of Communism where Havel  demonstrated the blatantly intrusive level of police surveillance he was constantly subjected to:

Havel and The Power of the Powerless

Havel’s most enduring legacy will almost certainly be his most famous essay The Power of the Powerless, written in 1978 but still widely considered to be the greatest political essay to emerge from communist central and eastern Europe, and something which  I still set as essential required reading  for students taking my courses on communist Eastern Europe today. The Power of the Powerless proved a source of inspiration, not only to millions living during the last decade of communist rule across Eastern Europe but more broadly, speaking to those who have and continue to struggle to resist totalitarian rule across the globe.

Havel’s greengrocer, who unthinkingly places a sign in his shop window ‘because it has been done that way for years, because everyone does it ‘ and because ‘these things must be done if one is to get along in life’ aptly represented the faceless millions living under communist rule. Havel however, looked beyond this act of seemingly harmless conformity to communism – the real meaning of the sign, he argued,  was not conveyed by the printed words on display, but by the silent signalling of conformity, acceptance and  desire to avoid trouble, the unseen signal ‘I am afraid and therefore unquestioningly obedient’.  Havel’s greengrocer illustrated the fact that even the most oppressive regimes depend on some level of minimal compliance by the people they govern, the majority of whom chose to ‘live within the lie’ and, by conforming to the system, thus perpetuate its illusions.  This then was ‘The Power of the Powerless’. Instead, Havel thus called on the inhabitants of communist regimes to ‘live in truth’, practice non-violent civil resistance wherever possible, and encouraged the development of independent civil society. He recognised that this would not be an easy course for people to choose, as illustrated by the fate of his grocer:

“Let us now imagine that one day something in our greengrocer snaps and he stops putting up the slogans merely to ingratiate himself. He stops voting in elections he knows are a farce. He begins to say what he really thinks at political meetings. In this revolt the greengrocer steps out of living within the lie. He rejects the ritual and breaks the rules of the game. The bill is not long in coming. He will be relieved of his post as manager of the shop and transferred to the warehouse. His pay will be reduced. His hopes for a holiday in Bulgaria will evaporate. His children’s access to higher education will be threatened. His superiors will harass him and his fellow workers will wonder about him. They will persecute the greengrocer either because it is expected of them, or to demonstrate their loyalty, or simply as part of the general panorama, to which belongs an awareness that this is how situations of this sort are dealt with, that this, in fact, is how things are always done, particularly if one is not to become suspect oneself”

These were tactics commonly employed by the communist authorities against any perceived dissidence, opposition and non-conformity as Havel had personally experienced. Havel however, quietly retained the courage of his convictions, and urged others to choose a similar course.

The Quiet Revolutionary

Havel went on to lead the Czechoslovakian ‘Velvet Revolution’ of 1989, establishing a Civic Forum during the dying days of communism in November 1989, and, as communism finally crumbled, appearing side by side with reformist communist leader and architecht of the failed Prague Spring Alexander Dubcek, while thousands of protestors lined Wenceslas Square, jingling their car keys and chanting ‘Havel na Hrad!’ (Havel to the Castle!).

November 1989: Vaclav Havel greets crowds in Prague's Wenceslas Square during Czechoslovakia's 'Velvet Revolution'.

November 1989: Havel turns and embraces former Communist leader Alexander Dubcek as news reaches them that the Czechoslovakian communist party have resigned from power.

Within weeks Havel  had indeed been elected as the first post-communist President of Czechoslovakia.  He was one of the few communist –era  dissidents to successfully make the transition from shadow politics into ‘real’ politics after 1989, spending a total of thirteen years as President, of Czechoslovakia (1989-1992) and then, following the Czech-Slovak ‘Velvet Divorce’ of 1993,  as President of an independent Czech Republic (1993-2003). Havel’s transition from dissident to head of state was not always a smooth one, and his post-communist Presidency was not without its problems  – most notably, he had strongly opposed the breakup of Czechoslovakia but failed in his efforts to hold the federation together – while critics have argue that he clung too long to the Presidency to the detriment of both his own health, and the wellbeing of his country, issues that Havel himself addressed in one of his most recent plays Leaving.

Since leaving the Czech Presidency, Havel retained relatively high popularity levels within the Czech Republic and remained an iconic figure internationally. In his last interview, recorded shortly before his death, Havel gave his thoughts on a range of contemporary issues including the Arab Spring and the current global financial crisis. Havel’s legacy will continue to exert influence long after his death.

“Wherever I go, I always will be a political prisoner of my father’s name.” – Stalin’s daughter, speaking during an interview with Wisconsin State Journal, in 2010.

STALIN’S ‘LITTLE SPARROW’

Last week, news broke of the death of Stalin’s daughter, Svetlana Alliluyeva, aged 85. Born Svetlana Stalina in 1926, Stalin’s only daughter by his second wife Nadezhda (who committed suicide in 1932), Svetlana adopted her mother’s surname after her father’s death in 1953, and would later claim that Stalin’s ‘loneliness’ after her mother’s suicide may have contributed to the ruthless barbarity displayed during his rule.

Stalin’s troubled relationship with his two sons has been well documented: his oldest son, Yakov, committed suicide while interned in a German concentration camp during the Second World War (after Stalin had refused to secure his release, in exchange for that of a prominent German General), while his younger son Vasili was a notorious alcoholic who died in 1962. However, Stalin appeared to dote on his only daughter, giving her the nickname ‘Little Sparrow’ .  Svetlana’s early childhood was privileged and indulgent; she was feted as the ‘little princess of the Kremlin’, a ‘Soviet Shirley Temple’.

Svetlana Alliluyeva, Stalin's 'Little Sparrow', pictured in her father's arms during a holiday at their country dacha.

However, as she grew older and more independent, Svetlana too suffered at her father’s hands, later claiming in interviews that Stalin had ‘broken her life’.  He had insisted that she study History rather than her preferred choice of Literature at Moscow University (Stalin contemptuously dismissed literature as ‘too bohemian’).  He didn’t approve of her first love Aleksi Kapler, a much older Jewish filmmaker either, so Kapler was swiftly dispatched for a ten year stretch in a Siberian Gulag camp, where he died. In his later years, Stalin became distant and his behaviour towards Svetlana was described as increasingly violent and unpredictable.

DEFECTION TO THE USA

In 1967, during a trip to India, the world was stunned when Svetlana gave her KGB minders the slip and walked into the US Embassy to seek political asylum. Svetlana claimed she had defected due to the ‘denial of self-expression’ inflicted upon her in the USSR, publically burning her passport, condemning communism and denouncing Stalin as a ‘moral and spiritual monster’. However, she may also have been motivated by more personal concerns: after all she had lost many of her former privileges after Stalin’s death as the implementation of Destalinisation in the USSR meant the label ‘Stalin’s daughter’ became something of a curse rather than a blessing, and she had been further alienated by the Soviet authorities’ harsh treatment of her lover, Indian communist Brajesh Singh (who she was forbidden to marry) who had died in 1966.

Regardless of her true motivations, Svetlana’s defection was highly embarrassing for the Soviet communist party – there are suggestions that the KGB even considered the possibility of orchestrating a revenge assassination, while Svetlana herself later claimed that ‘my father would have shot me, for what I have done’ – and constituted a huge Cold War propaganda coup for the USA. After gaining US citizenship and remarrying in 1970, Svetlana adopted the name Lana Peters. She went on to write two memoirs, Twenty Letters to a Friend (1967) and Only One Year (1969) – both became best sellers, making millions of dollars – and gave numeorus media interviews about her experiences.

LATER YEARS

Svetlana declared that her new life in the USA was ‘free, gay and full of bright colours’, but she frequently complained of loneliness and exclusion. This was exacerbated by the fact that she never settled in one place for very long and found it difficult to maintain lasting relationships. In 1984 she briefly returned to the USSR in a blaze of publicity, ultimately settling in Tblisi, Stalin’s Georgian hometown, but she  returned to the USA in 1986. Svetlana settled in the UK for a while in the 1990s before returning to America, where she spent her final years. In later interviews, she claimed that she always felt ‘caught somewhere in between’ the USA and Russia, and that her life had been hampered because she had always been forced to live in her father’s shadow: ‘I don’t any longer have the pleasant illusion that I can be free of the label ‘Stalin’s daughter’’, she claimed in an interview conducted in 1990, and ‘you can’t regret your fate, though I do regret my mother didn’t marry a carpenter’. In other interviews, she defended Stalin  – remembering how his face had shone with fatherly pride the first time she learned to drive a car, claiming she had loved and respected him, and that ‘many other Soviet officials’ also shared responsibility for the attrocities that had happened during his rule.

One of the last known photographs of Lana Peters, Stalin's daughter, taken in Wisconsin last year.

During the final years of her life, Svetlana settled in Wisconsin, where she largely faded from the public eye, until her death last week spurred a final flurry of media attention. For more insights into her life, see this fascinating obituary, published in the New York Times, while over at the London Review of Books, Inigo Thomas remembers her own meeting with Svetlana during her brief residence in London in 1992 in  ‘Tea with Stalin’s Daughter’. Finally, over at the Financial Times, Simon Seabag-Motefiore’s article ‘Enduring Lessons of Stalin’s little sparrow’  provides a compelling account of Svetlana’s childhood, while also drawing wider parallels between her troubled life and the children of other notorious dictators: to be the daughter of a titan may be a burden, he concludes, but to be the son, a curse.

Mafia International? Organised Crime in Central and Eastern Europe.

By Thomas Garrett.

In the decades since the collapse of communism, Central and Eastern Europe has been popularly portrayed as a cross roads for international organised crime: a meeting point for mafias from east and west and a hotbed of criminal cooperation, fuelled by the forging of international crime links between domestic criminal gangs and various external mafias who have infiltrated the region. In the early 1990s, crime groups from the former Soviet Union quickly moved in to develop a formidable presence in central and Eastern Europe, and as early as 1993, Irving Soloway, a spokesman for the US State Department claimed that American and Sicilian mafias were also ‘working with their counterparts in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union… to apply strategic planning and market development policies for the new emerging free markets [of Eastern Europe]… and to develop and expand extremely illegal activities’. Soloway even claimed that three post-communist ‘crime summits’ had taken place in central and eastern Europe soon after the collapse  -  in Warsaw (1991), Prague (1992), and Berlin (1993) – where he alleged that the leaders of various organised crime groups met to approve alliances, divide territories of interest, and organise ways to work together (Irving Soloway quoted in Washington Times, 1993). Soloway’s scenario smacks of the kind of ‘Pax Mafiosa’ outlined by Claire Sterling in her book Crime Without Frontiers (Little, Brown & Company, 1994) – the formation of a transnational alliance allowing criminals to work together peacefully in the post-Cold War world, an arrangement regulated by business-like meetings to coordinate mutually profitable ventures. This is an idea that remains popularly accepted today: organised crime expert Mark Galeotti recently described how ‘I’ve come across… prosecutors who believe that somewhere – like a scene out of some Bond movie – there is a ruling council running all post-Soviet organised crime’. Galeotti disagrees with the idea that any kind of ‘Pax Mafiosa’ exists in central and Eastern Europe however, arguing that this idea is a ‘myth’ and argues that instead, crime in the post-Soviet states is characterised by a diverse mix of ‘loose but entrepreneurial’ organisations and smaller networks centred around important underworld figures (Mark Galeotti, Mythologising the Mafia, The Moscow News, August 2011).

Mafia International?

Whether they are united or not, the organised criminals of Central and Eastern Europe certainly represent a powerful force. A thriving domestic underworld has developed in countries across the region in the decades since the collapse of communism. The World Security Network Foundation currently estimates that as much as 20% of Hungary’s GDP is under the control of organised criminals, with Hungarian police citing a significant increase in illegal economic activity since Hungary joined the EU in 2004. Czech police now believe that they face about 100 different organised crime groups, comprised of around 3000 members, and 5000 further ‘auxiliary supporters’, with recently published survey data suggesting that Czechs believe organised crime to be one of the most serious problems facing their country today. While the Slovakian underworld appears to be rather less developed, with police estimating that only about 700 organised criminals are active in the country, that hasn’t stopped Bratislava from becoming a European centre for prostitution, an industry believed to generate over 50 million Euros in profit a year (Michaletos and Hanakova, Organised Crime in Central Europe). Poland has become a leading European centre for amphetamine production, while Albania remains a key European route for heroin smuggling. Organised crime has successfully penetrated economic and political spheres across the regions, with a number of ‘scandals’ connecting high profile politicians to organised crime. Reports compiled by both the Council of Europe and the German military have claimed that Hashim Thaci, Prime Minister of Kosovo, ran a powerful Albanian Mafia group controlling racketeering and heroin trade in the Balkans, and has alleged they even murdered Serbian captives to sell their organs on the black market (These allegations have always been denied by the KLA – the original version of the report is available here).

Hashim Thaci (Left) - the Kosovan Prime Minister is alleged to have close links with the mafia.

The geopolitical position of many central and east European states, lying between the poor, crime-ridden states of the former Soviet Union and the richer consumer countries to the west made the region a naturally lucrative smuggling route once the ‘Iron Curtain’ was opened, thus also attracting the attention of organised crime groups based outside of the region. Today, heroin from Afghanistan and Pakistan destined for sale in western Europe and north America travel through central Asia across Russia and into eastern Europe, or through Iran, Turkey and the Balkans. While a lot of marijuana is produced in north Africa and transported directly to western Europe, marijuana grown in fields across central Asian states such as Kazakhstan (also a leading producer of marijuana for west European markets), has to be smuggled through Russia or Turkey before entering the EU.

Macedonian police seize packages of heroin, en-route for sale in Vienna and Frankfurt

Human smuggling routes follow a similar pattern across the region  Prostitution is a particularly lucrative crime, with women commonly brought from the poorer states of south east Europe and the former Soviet Union, and smuggled into states including the Czech Republic, Germany and the Netherlands. There they will be forced to work in brothels to earn money for the gangs who now ‘own’ them. Middle Eastern countries (particularly Israel), are also common destinations for prostitutes originating from the former USSR, who are often illegally transported through the Balkans. Aside from prostitution, victims of trafficking are sometimes forced to work for criminal gangs in various other illegal capacities to make them money, such as fraud.

Prague has become a European centre for prostitution

Today, despite heightened security measures, EU borders remain far from impermeable. In EU member states such as Bulgaria where corruption is rife, it remains relatively easy for criminal gangs to arrange for fake documentation such as passports and visas, which allow both material and human cargo to illegally travel on to popular European destinations such as Germany, France and Britain after they arrive in Bulgaria. And while trafficking drugs and people remain two of the most serious smuggling crimes, they are by no means the only illegal cargo to pass through central and Eastern Europe. Speedboats cross the Adriatic sea every night, laden with cigarettes and alcohol, to dodge tax regulations. Cars stolen in the West can be smuggled to Eastern Europe, but much more commonly today, cars stolen in Eastern Europe are smuggled to Russia, the Middle East and central Asia. Counterfeit designer fashion and bootleg DVDs and computer software, produced domestically and imported from Asia are also transported for sale inside the European Union.

Cooperation … and Conflict.

Given the broad scope of these smuggling operations, the post-communist decades have clearly witnessed a significant level of criminal cooperation, both between the various domestic mafias of central and Eastern Europe, and between domestic criminals and gangs based outside of the region. But does this equate to the formation of a ‘Pax Mafiosa’ -  a coordinated criminal network spanning the central and east European region? Or are we witnessing a series of more transient, short-term mutually profitable individual agreements between gangs who retain the power to fight over territory and markets when their interests and loyalties shift?

Since the beginning of the 1990s, Italy has been clamping down hard on the Sicilian Mafia. According to the deputy director of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, at the end of the 1990s the Mafia sought to survive this crackdown by forming a “symbiotic” relationship with the Albanian crime families known as fares, who provided the struggling Sicilians a number of services (mostly providing ‘muscle’), in their operations across Italy. Today, both Sicilian Mafia groups and the ‘Ndrangheta are believed to have franchised out prostitution, gambling and drug dealing in territories along the Adriatic coast to the Albanians. One CSIS report even claimed that this partnership had proved so successful that the Sicilian mafia established a ‘headquarters’ in Vlorë, a coastal town in southern Albania at the close of the 1990s (And the Winner is … the Albanian Mafia, Washington Quarterly, 1999).

Vlorë, Albania, suspected to be the external headquarters of the Sicilian Mafia

While the Sicilian Mafia initially seems to have benefitted from cooperative relations with Albanian groups, using them to make up for the loss of manpower suffered during the Italian government’s clampdown, other Italian groups appear to have had less success. This has been particulalry apparent since the Albanian gangs have sought to expand their own influence in the last decade. According to one British anti-organised crime agency, native criminal groups based in Milan struggled violently with Albanian gangs who were attempting to muscle in on their lucrative drug market at the close of the 1990s, eventually losing out to their new competitors (Albanian Mafia targets Britain, The Guardian, 1999). Other criminal groups are also wary of working with their Albanian rivals. A US Newspaper reporter investigating Polish organised crime was told by an underworld source that ‘the Poles will work with just about anybody… blacks, Italians, Russians, Asians. But they won’t go near the Albanian mob. The Albanians are too violent and too unpredictable’. (Philadelphia citypaper.net, December 2002).

A similar scenario unfolded with the powerful Russian gangs. After the fall of the USSR, Russian crime groups quickly moved to establish a ‘presence’ in Eastern Europe, forging mutually profitable alliances through cooperation with many native criminal groups. According to the Conflict Studies Research Centre, many Russian gangs used connections formerly established during the Soviet era to forge links with the emergent East European underworld in the 1990s. Russian criminals liaised with Czech gangs to smuggle arms and drugs through Prague and into Germany (Dallow, Russian Organised Crime, 1998). Prague also quickly became a centre for prostitution, with Russian gangs smuggling girls in from the former Soviet Union, where they were sold or loaned to the ‘local’ Czech gangs who operated the brothels. In exchange, Czech gangs used their influence with local law enforcement to benefit their Russian counterparts, for example, faking court orders to free a particularly infamous Russian gangster from gaol. During the Cold War era, many Red Army recruits were stationed in East Germany, meeting German criminals who they were later able to form ‘business’ links with. In addition to the familiar alliances relating to prostitution and drug smuggling, a thriving market in stolen cars also developed through Germany in the aftermath of the collapse of the Berlin Wall. High-value cars stolen by German car thieves (sometimes to order) would be passed on to Russian gangs, who arranged for their illegal transportation through Poland and into the former Soviet Union In a matter of days, if not hours, a car stolen in Warsaw could end up anywhere from Kiev to Vladivostok. In Hungary, it was estimated that during the last week before the Soviet Union’s collapse, 1000 Red Army soldiers stationed in Hungary deserted rather than return home. Many of these later became involved in criminal enterprises based in Hungary but having connections in the former USSR. Dirty Russian money has been laundered through numerous financial institutions in central and eastern Europe.

But again, the post-communist Russian influx led to conflict as well as cooperation. While the early 1990s provided a windown of opportunity for Russian criminals to move in to Eastern Europe this influx often resulted in violence. In the mid-1990s one infamous case in Frankfurt involved the slaughter of a Russian pimp, his wife and four prostitutes due to a feud with other criminals, while a series of bombs set off in the Cypriot town of Limassol were believed to be caused by gangs fighting over extortion rackets on Russian businessmen. All across eastern Europe there were similar conflicts and ‘turf wars’ as gangs battled over the control of illegal markets, with car bombs, shoot outs, assassinations and even stereotypical gangland instances where gang members have been killed, hidden in the boots of cars and then buried. Levels of overt violence peaked at the close of the 1990s, partly as the underworld stabilised and partly because the state fightback launched by many central European governments led to a number of Russian criminals being ‘forced out’. However, there has been some resurgence in violence during the second post-communist decade and occasional ‘flare ups’ still occur today, for example in Italy, where Russian gangsters have recently sought to establish operations in the north (especially Milan), a strategy which has has brought them into conflict with both indigenous Italian gangs and with the resurgent Albanian fares.         

It would seem wrong then, to claim that there is some kind of East European ‘Pax Mafiosa’, as the relationships between the various criminal gangs operating across central and eastern Europe are often fractious and violent. It would also be wrong to characterise them as bitter rivals however, continually warring over territory and always seeking to monopolise their own particular markets. In today’s globalised economy, cooperation is increasingly a prerequisite for successful criminal organisations. Today, the East European underworld is characterised by loose alliances between groups, who cooperate to carry out more sophisticated and profitable crimes when it suits them, but also retain the capacity for fractious infighting and disunity. There is certainly no supreme Mafia council coordinating crimes across Eastern Europe, but in the twenty years since the collapse of communism, many criminals have learned how to work together to fully exploit the lucrative advantages that carving out a presence in the heart of Europe can provide.

About the Author:

Thomas Garrett is completing his MA in History at Swansea University. He is currently working on his dissertation, entitled ‘The Internationalisation of the Russian Mafia’ which analyses the global spread of Russian organised crime from the 1980s to the present day.

For more information see:

RW Dallow, Conflict Studies Research Centre, Russian Organised Crime (Surrey: Camberley, 1998)

Ian Davies, Chrissie Hurst, Bernado Mariani; Saferworld, Organised crime, corruption and illicit arms smuggling in an enlarged EU: Challenges and Perspectives (December 2001)

Kelly Hignett, ‘The Changing Face of Organised Crime in Post-Communist Central and Eastern Europe’ Debatte, vol 18, no 1 (April 2010)

Ioannis Michaletos and Marketa Hanakova; World Security Network Foundation, Organised Crime in Central Europe (2010)

“Whatever the price in human lives, for all of its murderous record, socialism has killed more souls and minds than bodies” – Jo Langer.

I recently read Convictions: My Life With A Good Communist, Jo Langer’s account of life in Czechoslovakia spanning the decades between the initial establishment of communism in 1948 and the failed Prague Spring of 1968. First published in 1979, and re-issued by Granta earlier this year (with an introduction written by Neil Ascherson), playwright Tom Stoppard recently described Convictions as ‘one of the classic testimonies to come out of post-war Europe under communist rule’.

'Convictions: My Life With A Good Communist' by Jo Langer (Granta, 2011)

Jo moved from her home in Budapest to Bratislava when she married committed Slovakian communist Oscar Langer in 1934. The couple, both Jewish, fled to America in 1938 where they remained for the duration of the Second World War (while numerous members of their families who remained behind perished in the Holocaust), before returning to Czechoslovakia to assist with the construction of a new socialist state and society. Oscar, working as an economist for the Central Committee, quickly rose to prominence within the Czechoslovakian Communist Party, while Jo worked for State Exports in Bratislava. However, everything changed when Oscar fell victim to the purges and show trials of the early 1950s.

The Stalinist-era terror and the political purges that swept communist Eastern Europe in the aftermath of the Second World War are thus a central part of Jo’s story and Convictions joins a growing list of memoirs penned by those who were affected by these turbulent years. In 1951 Oscar Langer (the ‘good communist’ of her book’s title) was arrested, detained and forced to give (false) evidence in the infamous Slansky trial of 1952; before being sentenced to a 22 year prison term himself, for charges including espionage, sabotage, high treason and ‘Zionist conspiracy’. Several of the Langers’ communist party acquaintances were also purged and either executed or imprisoned. While similar show trials occurred across much of Eastern Europe in this period the Czechoslovakian purges were distinguished by their underlying anti-semitism: a high number of Jews were targeted and 11 of the 14 defendants in the Slansky trial were Jewish, charged with participation in an alleged ‘Zionist conspiracy’ to undermine and overthrow communism.

In Convictions Jo vividly describes the slowly creeping climate of fear that came to dominate their lives during the period of the purges: initially both Oscar and Jo attempted to ascribe the arrests of loyal communists (many of whom were also personal friends) to ‘over zealousness’ on the part of the investigators. As it became apparent that Oscar himself was under surveillance their sense of unease and helplessness grew, but even when Jo finally received news of Oscar’s arrest she still hoped that something could be done to clarify his innocence and secure his speedy release so that justice could prevail. However, as Jo comes to realise when she meets sustained official resistance to any kind of enquiry or investigation into Oscar’s case: ‘the show trials were the house of cards on which the whole power system rested and if anyone started tampering with even one small part of the structure, the whole thing would collapse’.

For much of the book, Oscar Langer is absent – the first few years of his long incarceration are spent mining uranium in a north Bohemian labour camp – but his absence assumes a dominant presence throughout Jo’s narrative. As Jo’s own story unfolds, we also receive insights into Oscar’s ordeal. In a letter smuggled out from his prison cell and partly reproduced by Jo here, Oscar provides a detailed first-hand account of the circumstances surrounding his arrest, detention, trial and imprisonment. In his letter, Oscar proclaimed his innocence, retracted his confession and detailed how his experiences at the hands of the communist security agents ‘bought me into a state of mind that cannot be considered that of a normally thinking sane man’. Oscar describes how he resisted in the face of the ‘combination of terror, deceit, provocation, blackmail and alternate physical and mental torture’ used by the secret police to extract confessions – constant interrogation, sleep deprivation, solitary confinement, agent provocateurs, exposure to cold and hunger, regular beatings, humiliation and threats made against his family – before (after two failed suicide attempts) finally submitting to make a full ‘confession’. His signed testimony (which was dictated to him by his interrogators and which he was later forced to read verbatim at the Slansky trial) made absurd and easily refutable admissions about his involvement in an
anti-communist conspiracy with men he had never even met.  During the Slansky trial, Oscar’s testimony was broadcast over the radio and his confession was printed in the press; so Jo was also able to discredit many of his claims.

Convictions focuses predominantly on the personal – recalling one woman’s struggle to survive in a repressive, flawed and unforgiving system. When Oscar was arrested Jo not only lost her husband but also her privileged place in society (becoming a ‘non-person’) and the last shreds of faith in the communist system she had found it increasingly hard to believe in. Forcibly evicted from her home and dismissed from her job as a result of Oscar’s ‘crimes’, Jo and her two young daughters were exiled to a remote countryside village, where she managed to survive by taking on occasional translation work and depending on the kindness of strangers. In Jo’s own words, ‘life had become what it was and people had to make the best of it’.

There are insights too, into a variety of personal relationships – her own troubled relationship with Oscar (despite his ordeal, he remained a committed communist until the end of his life); with her two daughters, and with various other friends, neighbours and acquaintances including the forging of some unlikely friendships, as people found themselves bought together due to the circumstances of the time. When Jo first turns to the people she thought she could depend on for help, many of them shun her (often through fear of implicating themselves, due to a desperate desire for self-preservation), but contrasted with this are occasional unexpected and spontaneous acts of genuine kindness from both friends and strangers – such as Bronia, a casual acquaintance who brings Jo food on the evening she is evicted from her flat and forcibly ‘resettled’ and Maria, the café owner who shelters Jo and her younger daughter Tania when they are caught out in a snowstorm.

However, Jo’s personal story effectively intersects with the bigger picture as she navigates the changing political climate in Czechoslovakia 1948-1968. Jo analyses the early attempts to establish socialism in Czechoslovakia through the reorganisation of politics, economics, society and culture; effectively details the Hobbesian climate of the purges and trials of the late 1940s and early 1950s and explores the impact of Stalin’s death and Khrushchev’s subsequent policy of Destalinisation (noting  that the effects of Stalin’s death took longer to be felt in Czechoslovakia compared with elsewhere in the Eastern bloc, Jo describes how she felt the first real influence of the post-Stalinist ‘thaw’ during a rare prison visit to Oscar at the end of the 1950s, because for the first time ‘there was no wire dividing them’). Jo describes her sadness over the Soviet invasion of her native Hungary in 1956, during which time she monitered events closely as she was employed to interpret communications coming into Bratislava from Budapest via telex. Of course, Czechoslovakia would have its own ‘Hungary’ 12 years later: the failed Prague Spring and Soviet-led invasion of August 1968, which provided Jo with the opportunity to flee Czechoslovakia. She devotes some time to briefly assessing the events of 1968 too, noting the mixture of popular optimism inspired by the rise of Alexander Dubcek (she wishes her husband had lived to see the attempts to develop ‘socialism with a human face’ in Czechoslovakia) mixed with what would prove to be well-founded cynicism about the ability of communism to reform itself.

Oscar Langer was eventually released from prison and rehabilitated in the early 1960s. However, his return was not the happy homecoming that Jo had yearned for. Their marriage had never been trouble-free, but while she remained loyal to Oscar during his incarceration and never doubted his innocence, the long years of limited and censored correspondence and occasional snatched prison visits had taken their toll. She describes poignantly the true impact her husband’s return had on the family after so many years of living without him: the sudden reappearance of a dominant father figure who was a virtual stranger to her two daughters (for the oldest, Susie, he was a distant childhood memory, while the youngest, Tania, only ever remembered seeing him through prison wire), and on her own life. Both Oscar and Jo were left battling their own private demons as a result of their mistreatment by the regime they had striven to support (Jo tellingly concludes that ‘whatever the price in human lives, for all of its murderous record, socialism has killed more souls and minds than bodies’) but while Jo became thoroughly disillusioned and hardened by the reality of life in communist Czechoslovakia, Oscar continued to cling to his ideological ideals, choosing to view his arrest and imprisonment as a ‘dreadful but exceptional mistake’ in an otherwise normally functioning state, despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Their time together was brief: Oscar was left physically weakened after years of hard labour during his incarceration and
died after a short illness following his release from prison.

Jo Langer fled Czechoslovakia in the aftermath of the Prague Spring in 1968, and finally settled in Sweden, where she died in 1990. Her story is a remarkable tale of courage, survival and endurance; she vividly demonstrates the devastating impact of the Stalinist era terror, both physically and psychologically, on those directly involved (such as Oscar) and on numerous ‘secondary casulaties’, those deemed ‘guilty by association’ such as herself and her daughters. The personal experiences of everyday life effectively intersect with the high politics of the time, and as a result Jo’s depiction of  her life in communist Czechoslovakia provides numerous insights into the experiences of life in a hostile state. This is a story about losing – and gaining - ones convictions in the face of adversity. I would recommend Convictions to anyone interested in communist Eastern Europe and will certainly be including it on the recommended reading list for students taking my own course on Eastern Europe at Swansea this year.

You can purchase Convictions via Amazon HERE.

In Russia today, Josef Stalin’s historical legacy remains a controversial topic  - should Stalin be remembered primarily as a strong, heroic leader, responsible for leading the USSR to victory over Nazi Germany or as a cruel dictator, responsible for the death and suffering of millions of his own people? This article, by guest author John Harman, analyses some of the problems faced by those who attempt to memorialise and publicly mourn victims of Stalin-era repression in contemporary Russia; exploring the uncomfortable juxtaposition between the dominant heroic myth of WWII and the darker aspects of Stalinism in the contemporary Russian psyche.

Contesting Popular Memory in Contemporary Russia.

By John Harman.

‘If the problem in Western Europe has been a shortage of memory, in the continents other half the problem is reversed. Here there is too much memory, too many pasts on which people can draw, usually as a weapon against the past of someone else ~ Tony Judt.

 
Arseny Roginsky  labels the memory of Stalinism as primarily the ‘memory of state terror’, a system of state rule that used terror as a universal instrument for solving any political and social task. For many people today, the word ‘Stalinism’ remains most synonymous with the execution, exile and traumatisation of millions of Soviet citizens. Revelations shedding light on the many crimes of Stalinism have been a feature of Soviet historiography ever since Khrushchev delivered his famous ‘Secret Speech’ denouncing Stalinist terror in 1956. The trickle of information that first began during Khrushchev’s ‘Destalinisation’ later became a flood: gathering pace during Gorbachev’s glasnost in the dying days of the USSR and further increasing due to the release of previously-classified information following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Today, while many aspects of the Stalinist era still spark contestation and controversy, the crimes of Stalinism can be documented more clearly than ever before.

Despite this, nostalgia for the despotic leader appears to be ever more apparent. Research undertaken by the Levada Centre in Moscow indicates that, two decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union, attitudes towards Stalin are becoming increasingly positive. In a poll taken in 2005, nearly 19% of respondents said they would either ‘definitely’ or ‘probably’ vote for Stalin in Russian elections if he were alive today, an increase from the findings of 2003 and 2004 when only 13% answered in the same way. In 2008, Stalin was voted the third-greatest Russian  in history, during a public poll held by Rossiya, one of Russia’s largest TV stations. More recently a poll commissioned by VTsIOM (All-Russian Public Opinion Research Centre) in April 2011 showed that more than a quarter of those surveyed felt that Stalin’s wartime leadership means that he did ‘more good’ for the country than bad, a rise of 11% from a similar poll in 2007.

The contested nature of historical memory about Stalinism runs more deeply than the publication of controversial popular opinion polls, however.  On October 30 2009 Russian President Dmitry Medvedev published a post on his official web portal to coincide with the annual Russian ‘Remembrance Day of Victims of Political Repression’. His blog post condemned continued public ambivalence towards Stalin’s legacy of mass repression, and was written in response to growing concerns about nostalgia for and glorification of the Stalin era in contemporary Russia. However, the State’s official policy towards Stalin has also frequently been called into question,  particularly following the publication of Alexander Fillipov’s history textbook  in 2007, which formed part of the official government-approved curriculum in Russian schools. The textbook portrayed the mass terror of the Stalin years as essential to ensure rapid modernisation in the face of military threats from Germany and Japan; avoided any attempt at a moral assessment of Stalinism and strongly implied that the (victorious) ends of World War II justified the repressive means of the pre-war years.  The memorialisation of Stalin-era victims is also the subject of a contentious ongoing dialogue between the state and those who seek to commemorate the darker aspects of the Soviet past. In 2008 Vladimir Putin ordered the confiscation of digitally archived material from Memorial, a non-governmental organisation which aims to aid the process of memorialisation of state terror in Russia. Memorial representatives believed that the raid was not justified in any juridical sense, but constituted a state-sanctioned act of sabotage against their attempts to document and disseminate knowledge about the crimes of the Stalinist era (for more information about Memorial see their website HERE).

Negative Memorialisation: Terror and Repression

In Adam Hochschild’s The Unquiet Ghost (London: Penguin Books, 1994) Hochschild records a conversation he had with a clinical psychologist from Moscow. The psychologist described a former patient who had recently returned to him seeking treatment – she was in deep distress, because newly published accounts had described how her father, a former diplomat, had been responsible for the denunciations (and subsequent imprisonment and deaths) of many people during the Stalinist era. As a result of his actions, her father had not only remained alive but had even been promoted whilst most of his colleagues had perished. Her father was already dead, but now the woman had to confront and come to terms with his memory all over again.

This case illustrates an important point. During the Soviet terror, the line between victim and perpetrator was often blurred: the persecutors often became the persecuted. For example, the CPSU regional committee secretaries of 1937 were responsible for sanctioning many death sentences, but by November 1938 half of them had fallen victim to the terror themselves. Even Stalin’s feared secret police were purged, with Nikolai Ezhov, feared NKVD chief and leading orchestrator of the terror arrested and executed in 1940. During the Stalinist era, life for many people was never black or white, but instead comprised of shades of grey. Many people engaged with Stalinism, passively if not actively. Today, widespread public reluctance to confront the past can therefore be attributed to more than just general ignorance: in some cases outward ambivalence stems from a deep-rooted fear of uncovering atrocities committed by close friends and family members, or even confronting ones own past culpability, therefore leading to a greater sense of guilt about the past.

These ambiguities are also reflected in attempts at public commemoration. Memorial  have compiled a database of all known monuments which are archived in its online ‘virtual gulag’. At first glance, the number of monuments and exhibits appear impressive: listing 109 museum exhibits and 337 monuments relating to Soviet-era mass repression. However, none of these monuments have been overseen by the central government, but were developed through the efforts of local communities and independent organisations such as Memorial. The location of the monuments are also telling: within cities, these monuments and commemorative signs are not located in central areas, but are overwhelmingly found in more remote locations. The choice of location may at times serve a function; for example, the Mendurskoe Memorial, located 13 Kilometres from the city of Yoshkar-Ola within the Mari El Republic, marks the mass grave of 164 prisoners who were executed by the NKVD in August 1937. However, one should question the lack of memorialisation in more central areas, which may also hint at a low level of state enthusiasm for such memorials,  especially since Soviet era street names directly linked with state-sanctioned repression  – such as Checkist Street (honouring the forerunners to the NKVD) in St Petersburg – still exist.

The Mendurskoe Memorial marks the mass grave of 164 Soviet prisoners who were executed by the NKVD in August 1937.

The contentious dialogue surrounding negative memorialisation is also reflected in the design of such monuments, which are largely depoliticised. Alexander Etkind has used the term ‘aesthetic minimalism’ to describe such monuments which regularly consist of plain granite stones and raw crosses. This aesthetic, created somewhere between the need for memory and political confrontation may hinder popular memory as a certain amount of accountability or even historical truth is lost in transmission. This confused representation also extends beyond ‘hard’ physical monuments, as illustrated by Etkind’s study of the Russian 500-ruble banknote, issued in the late 1990s and remaining in circulation today. The artwork on the bill depicts the Solovki monastery, a historical complex on an island in the extreme north of Russia. The architecture of the monastery dates to the 1920’s, a time of peak development of the Solovki camp, one of the earliest and most significant camps in the Soviet gulag.

The 500 ruble note depicts the Solovki Monastary, site of one of Stalin's notorious Gulag camps.

Despite the existence of 337 Russian museum exhibits relating to mass repression, in reality only a few of these are specifically dedicated to the history of the terror. Roginsky argues that the exhibitions relating to the Gulag camps and labour settlements are usually embedded within wider displays relating to Soviet-era industrialisation, modernisation and economic development. The repressions themselves (i.e. the arrests and executions) are generally consigned to biographical stands and window displays. This, he argues, serves to represent the terror in a fragmented manner, creating the image of a succession of ‘localised disasters’ rather than the unified image of a national catastrophe. Today, there is still no national museum of state terror, which could play an important role in crystallising the image of the terror in popular consciousness.

Positive Memorialisation: Russia’s ‘Great Patriotic War’

Monuments are often used as a positive political tool, to demonstrate the continuity of the political tradition of a nation state and to represent its (perceived or desired) identity. Etkind describes monuments as ‘materialised forms of patriotic sentiment’, which create the future by ‘distorting the past’. As a result, it is perhaps unsurprising that attempts at negative memorialisation have been limited in post-Soviet Russia. In the search for a ‘usable’ or ‘promotable’ past, recent Russian administrations have thus relied heavily on the myth of the Second World War – Russia’s  ‘Great Patriotic War’ – above the memory of the terror, for obvious reasons.

The memorialisation drive over the Great Patriotic War began during the Brezhnev era (1964-1982), and has evolved to become the greatest legitimising myth of Soviet history: mythologizing Soviet victory over Germany, presenting the USSR as the saviour of the world from fascist enslavement and the Red Army as the liberators of Europe, a hard-fought feat that was achieved through the spilling of large amounts of Russian blood, with limited outside help.

The memory of the Second World War therefore, serves important functions for the Russian state in a way that the memory of the terror could never do.  Nina Tumarkin argues that the key functions of the narrative that has emerged around World War Two in Russia are as follows:

Respect for the Armed Forces and Russia’s Militaristic Past – the USSR defeated fascism because of their strong army, while the sheer number of Soviet casualties in World War Two (est. 20-25 million) promotes Russia as a country who understands the price of war.

A Rise in National Self-Esteem and Hard Work – war time victory, bolstered by the notion that Russia had to overcome all the odds in order to fight back after the surprise German invasion of June 22 1941.

Moral Courage - generated by nostalgia for a time before the uncertainties of post-communism, when it was made clear what (and who) was good and bad.

The absence of memorials dedicated to the victims of mass repression is further highlighted by the grandiose and hyperbolic nature of memorialisation dedicated the heroic triumph of the Red Army, although since the fall of the USSR the status of many Soviet war monuments has been challenged across Eastern Europe and the FSU (for more on the contested status of Soviet war memorials, see the previous blog post HERE). Such monuments rarely attempt subtlety: the famous ‘Motherland Calls’ statue in Volgograd was the largest statue in the world at the time of its public dedication on October 15, 1967 and the central monument in Moscow’s Victory Park conveys a huge dragon covered with swastikas, curled beneath a towering obelisk adorned with Nike, the goddess of victory engaging in battle with St. George on horseback – and this is but one part of the park complex whose museum also boasts the ‘Hall of Glory’, listing all names of the wartime ‘heroes of the Soviet Union’.

Monument to commemorate Soviet Victory in the Second World War, Victory Park, Moscow.

The scale of these monuments is nothing short of breathtaking. In contrast to the ‘collective amnesia’ often displayed when confronted with memories of terror and repression, the memory of the Great Patriotic War is actively commemorated with pomp and circumstance, in the form of the annual Victory Parade in Moscow each May 9th, illustrated in this recent VIDEO.

The immense pride in Soviet victory during the Second World War thus provides one of the most important bases for contemporary support for Stalin, particulalry amongst the older generations, effectively marginalising the darker aspects of Stalinist rule. The drive for truth and reconciliation, which constitutes a key part of the memory of Stalinist-era repression and terror, comes into direct conflict with this heroic ‘war narrative’. Some steps have been taken to revise elements of the Russian ‘war myth’ in light of new evidence available in the post-Soviet period, such as the 2009 publication of formerly secret documents relating to the Nazi-Soviet Pact of 1939, which Prime Minister Vladimir Putin condemned as ‘immoral’. In April 2010 the Russian Federation also published documents relating to the true nature of the Soviet role in the massacre of 20,000 Polish Army officers in the Katyn forest. When the mass graves were uncovered in 1943 the Soviet Union blamed the murders on the Nazis, and it was only in 1990 that Mikhail Gorbachev admitted Soviet guilt. The recent publication of these documents confirmed that the massacre was designed by Beria (head of the NKVD) and directly approved by Stalin. This was followed in November 2010 by the Russian Parliament’s adoption of a statement recognising Soviet responsibility for the massacre and condemning Katyn as ‘an act of lawlessness of a totalitarian regime’. Public acknowledgment of this crime may serve as indication of a renewed policy towards popular national memory, however it may be seen as an act of appeasement towards the west – and more specifically the Poles, especially in light of the recent death of Polish President Lech Kaczynski (for more on Katyn see the previous blog  post HERE).

However, the Russian leadership have indicated that they will only allow historical revisionism to go so far. In response to mounting criticism from neighbouring states regarding elements of Russia’s ‘war myth’, in 2009 President Medvedev declared the creation of a special commission ‘to counteract attempts to falsify history that undermines the interest of Russia’.  Any deviation from the dominant state-sanctioned war narrative in Russia was thus deemed hostile and against the national interest. This stance also makes it difficult for many people to combine the popular image of Stalin as a heroic wartime leader with their memories of Stalin as a murderous autocrat.

Concluding Remarks

Unsurprisingly, since 1991 successive Russian administrations have chosen to emphasise aspects of the Soviet past that they view as ‘worth remembering’, in order to convey particular values and ideals, which sustain a positive identity. The dark chapter in their recent history involving terror, mass repression, denunciation and death does not fit with the heroism promoted by the dominant narrative of war memorialisation. Despite some indications that the current leadership are refining certain elements of Stalinist-era history, any revisionism must be state-sanctioned and thus transparency remains limited.

As Stalin’s popularity continues to rise in opinion polls it is difficult to predict how future Russian generations will approach the darker aspects of their Soviet past. Any true condemnation of Stalinism also requires closer scrutiny and possibly further reappraisal of the Soviet role in the Second World War, which may undermine its place in popular memory. The dichotomy of the Stalinist era is not one that can coexist peacefully, particularly while a significant proportion of the population hold some kind of personal attachment to the horrors of Stalinism. At the current time, the Stalinism that represents an era of glorious victory and great achievement outweighs the Stalinism of a criminal regime responsible for decades of terror.

About the Author:

John Harman is currently completing a Masters degree in History at Swansea University, UK. His MA dissertation considers changing perspectives on the commemoration and memorialisation of Stalinist-era repression from the post-Stalinist USSR to post-Soviet Russia.

This week marks 33 years since the murder of Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov, who was poisoned in London on 7 September 1978. Markov’s assassination, an operation conducted by the Bulgarian Secret Services (the Darzhavna Sigurnost or DS) under the guidance of the Soviet KGB, contained all the essential ingredients of a Cold War spy thriller: mystery, intrigue, nameless, faceless assassins and a nifty James Bond style gadget used as a murder weapon. Markov’s murder also led to widespread outrage and concern – after all, he was killed in the centre of London, in broad daylight, during rush hour, by communist secret agents who appeared to be able to kill with impunity, before vanishing into thin air …

Georgi Markov

Georgi Markov, author, broadcaster and communist-era dissident, who was murdered in extraordinary circumstances in London on 7 September 1978.

Born in Sofia in 1929, Georgi Markov studied industrial chemistry at university in the 1940s, before working as a chemical engineer and technical school teacher. However, Markov’s true love was literature and he went on to become an acclaimed novelist, playwright and TV script writer.  Many of his works were critical of communist Bulgaria – Markov had described his novel ‘The Great Roof’ as ‘a symbol of the roof of lies … that the communist regime has constructed over Bulgaria’ – and as a result, were often prohibited from publication. In 1969 Markov left Bulgaria for the West, travelling first to Italy before settling in Londonin the 1970s, where he learned English and worked as a broadcaster and journalist for the Bulgarian section of the BBC World Service, Deutsche Welle and Radio Free Europe. Several of Markov’s novels were published and his plays were performed to critical acclaim in the UK during the 1970s.

Markov’s defection to the West meant that he quickly became persona non grata back in Bulgaria. In 1972 his membership in the Union of Bulgarian Writers was suspended and he was sentenced (in absentia) to a six year prison sentence for his defection. Markov’s previously published works were withdrawn from libraries and bookshops and his name was not permitted to be mentioned in the official Bulgarian media until 1989. Even from afar however, Markov proved a continuing thorn in the side of the Bulgarian Communist Party, criticising the regime in radio broadcasts for the BBC Bulgarian service. Between 1975 and 1978 Markov worked on a series of ‘In Absentia’ reports – analysis of life in Communist Bulgaria, broadcast weekly on Radio Free Europe. His continued criticism of the Communist government and personal attacks against party leader, Todor Zhivkov, made Markov an enemy of the regime. A recently declassified letter, sent from the DS to the KGB in 1975 complained that Markov’s radio broadcasts ‘insolently mocked’ the communist party, and ‘encouraged dissidence’ in Bulgaria. The DS kept a surveillance file on Markov using the code name ‘Wanderer’ and whilst in London he received several death threats via telephone. Markov’s publisher, David Farrer, later said that ‘he (Markov) knew his activities made him a possible target for assassination’.

The Case of the Poisoned Umbrella.

On the morning of 7 September 1978, Georgi Markov was on his way to work at the BBC. While waiting at a bus stop near Waterloo bridge alongside several other commuters, he felt a sudden, sharp pain on the back of his right thigh, which he later described as ‘similar to an insect bite’. A nearby man (described as ‘heavy set with a foreign accent’) then briefly stooped to pick up an umbrella from the ground and mumbled ‘I’m sorry’, before hurriedly crossing the street and jumping into a taxi. Upon closer examination after he arrived at work, Markov discovered a small, painful red bump on the back of his leg. Over the course of the working day he became progressively sicker and was admitted to hospital that evening, suffering from a high fever. He died a few days later, on 11 September.

Georgi Markov had been poisoned by a small pellet fired into his leg on that fateful morning. During the subsequent autopsy, forensic pathologists discovered a spherical metal pellet the size of a pin-head embedded in his leg, containing holes drilled at right angles to each other, to form an “X” shaped well inside the pellet. The pellet had been filled with 0.2mg of the deadly poison Ricin and then covered with a waxy coating that was designed to melt at 37 degrees celsius (the temperature of the human body), thus triggering the release of the poison into the bloodstream.

Suspicion that a specially designed ‘umbrella-gun’ had been used as the murder weapon led to Markov’s assassination being dubbed ‘The case of the poisoned umbrella’. Diagrams were even produced to demonstrate how the umbrella may have been adapted into a lethal killing machine with a ‘poisoned tip’, and former KGB officers have since claimed that such a device had indeed been designed. However, subsequent theories have suggested that the poisonous pellet may have been directly injected by hypodermic needle or fired into Markov’s leg by a specially adapted pen, with the umbrella being dropped nearby as a distraction. Following the autopsy, the coroners’ ruling determined that Markov had been ‘unlawfully killed’.

Diagram depicting the small metal pellet found embedded in Georgi Markov's leg after his death.

Diagram depicting the 'umbrella-gun' that many people believe was used to fire the poisoned pellet into Georgi Markov's leg while he stood waiting for a London bus.

The Murder.

Evidence suggests that Markov’s assassination was ordered from the highest levels, with the full knowledge and involvement of both the Bulgarian DS and the Soviet KGB. Prior to the events of 7 September 1978, the DS had sought advice from the KGB about how best to ‘neutralise’ Markov, and two previous attempts had been made on his life: a toxin slipped into his drink at a dinner party and a previous attempt on his life during a visit to Sardinia, both of which had failed. It has been suggested that the date chosen for the third assassination attempt – 7 September – was because this was Zhivkov’s birthday, and Markov’s murder was to act as some sort of ‘gift’ to the Bulgarian leader.

Recently declassified Bulgarian Secret Service files have confirmed the close nature of the relationship between the DS and KGB, although KGB representatives were keen to ensure there was no ‘trail’ directly linking Markov’s death toMoscow. However, the files show that two high-level Bulgarian secret-service delegations visited Moscow in the months leading up to the murder, where the dynamics of the Markov case were specifically discussed with technical experts from KGB laboratories. According to the files, an Italian-born, Dane Francesco Gullino, codenamed ‘Piccadilly’, was recruited by the DS to act as the assassin, with records also documenting training and a series of payments made to ‘Picadilly’.

Even today, mystery and controversy still surround Markov’s death. In 2010 TIME Magazine listed Markov’s murder as one of their ‘Top 10 Assassination Plots’ and in 1998, Bulgarian President Peter Stoyanov, described the assassination as ‘one of the darkest moments’ in communist Bulgaria. No charges have ever been bought though, despite renewed interest in the case in the post-Cold War period. In September 2008 a team of counter-terrorism experts from Scotland Yard  travelled to Bulgaria to access archived documents on the Markov case. Much of the evidence has been destroyed however, leading to accusations of a Bulgarian cover up – in 1992 General Vladimir Todorov, former Bulgarian intelligence chief, was sentenced to 16 months in jail for destroying 10 volumes of material relating to Markov’s death while two other individuals suspected of involvement in the assassination both died in mysterious circumstances in the 1990s – and Bulgarian prosecutors have now officially closed the investigation, under legislation which allows unsolved criminal cases to be dropped after 30 years.

Interestingly, ten days before Markov’s murder, a similar assassination attempt was made on another Bulgarian exile, Vladimir Kostov, while he was waiting at a Paris metro station. Like Markov, Kostov came down with a high fever and was hospitalized, where Doctors found the same kind of metal pellet embedded in his skin. On this occasion however, Kostov survived: possibly because he had not been shot at point blank range; possibly because the coating on the pellet had failed to fully dissolve, meaning that only a small quantity of Ricin was able to enter his blood or possibly because he was wearing a thick sweater on the day of the attack, which may have provided enough resistance to prevent the pellet completely penetrating his skin. However, Kostov’s case suggests that the attack on Markov may not have been an isolated case, but was perhaps intended as part of a wider strategy aimed at ‘silencing’ troublesome dissidents overseas. In the post-Cold War era, numerous cases including the dioxin poisoning of Ukrainian opposition leader (and later President) Viktor Yushchenko in the run-up to the 2004 elections; the still unsolved October 2006 murder of Russian journalist and human rights activist Anna Politkovskaya and the November 2006 death of former KGB and FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko from radiation poisoning after exposure to polonium in London have drawn fresh comparisons with the Markov case, suggesting that when it comes to politically-motivated assassination, old communist-era habits may be hard to break.

(For a more detailed overview of recent cases suspected of involving politically motivated poisoning, see THIS Open Democracy article by Zygmunt Dzieciolowski).

Today marks the second anniversary of the Twitterstorians – two years ago today Katrina Gulliver began compiling a list of historians on Twitter, using the #twitterstorian hashtag. Last year, to mark our first anniversary, I wrote a short blog post about the virtues of using Twitter for academic networking and praising its ability to allow me to connect with other historians which you can read HERE.

Everything I wrote a year ago remains true today. Social networking remains controversial in some respects and my own friends, colleagues and acquaintances provide an interesting and illustrative sample spectrum: polarised between some who enthusiastically and actively engage with social networking; some who dismiss Twitter as ‘an utter waste of time’, and all of those who fill the void in between: occasional users, passive tweeters (those who use Twitter to follow others rather than tweet themselves) and some who use Twitter for a clearly defined aim, tweeting on a strictly professional or strictly personal basis. 2011 has been a year which has seen Twitter hit the headlines: initially praised for its role as a tool facilitating the organisation of protest movements and resistance during the so called ‘Arab Spring’ and then swiftly denigrated for its alleged use by rioters during the unrest that swept London and several other UK cities in July (although drawing on evidence from my own timeline, I saw no examples of Twitter being used as a tool for spreading unrest, but several examples of Twitter being utilised for positive ends during the post-riot clean-ups that were spontaneously organised in many UK cities, such as THIS campaign, which I personally contributed to).

The UK Higher Education Sector are increasingly recognising the potential benefits of using social networking as a medium for communication, publicity, self-promotion and information exchange. In the current climate universities are keen to explore cost effective ways of promoting themselves to and engaging with potential and current students, while academics are increasingly urged to demonstrate the wider ‘impact’, engagement and relevance of their research – this includes Historians, who, even within academic circles, often have the reputation for being behind the times and resistant to change! Last September I began a Lectureship at the History and Classics department at Swansea University. Since then, the department has established its own twitter feed HERE and several of my colleagues have also become regular ‘tweeters’.

Over the last year, I have continued to use Twitter as a tool to promote and publicise The View East. The Blog’s Twitter Feed @thevieweast now has over 300 followers, and I’d like to thank each and every one of you who have re-tweeted links and comments of interest I’ve posted during the last year! Publicising new blog posts via Twitter enables me to reach a much wider audience. As a result, today The View East is receiving a greater number of ‘hits’ than ever before, with my blog stats indicating that traffic directed via Twitter is consistently one of the highest sources of viewings (along with Google searches). This summer I hosted a ‘student showcase’ on The View East – the first in what I hope will become an annual event – publishing a series of blog posts authored by final year history students from Swansea University. This initiative was widely promoted on Twitter (not only on @thevieweast and my own personal twitter feed @kellyhignett but also via @SwanseaUni and @SwanseaHistory) and via the main university website. Over the last twelve months, my own blog posts at The View East have led to several media engagements, consultancy opportunities, conference papers and other research-related activities, as well as bringing me into contact with a number of people working in related areas.

The list of Twitterstorians has continued to grow over the last year, so here are just a small selection of some of my favourite Tweeters relating to modern history and contemporary affairs (largely Russia/FSU/Eastern Europe):

@HistoryCarnival – Highlights the best in history-related blogging each month (and the September issue includes The View East!)

@CWIHP – Cold War International History Project

@nickblackbourn – Author of the Twitter based  ’Cold War Daily’ which can also be viewed HERE

@coldwarpenguin – For general Cold War related links

@BASEES – British Association of Slavonic and East European Studies

@UCLSSEES –School of Slavonic and East European Studies at UCL

@UCLSSEESLibrary – SSEES Library, based in London, hosting the UK’s largest open access collection on Russia and Eastern Europe and site of many of my own research visits!

@RFERL  – International media service, including some fascinating articles relating to the Former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe

@MoscowTimes – For Russian related news (in English)

@RT_com (Russia Today) – For Russian related news (in English)

@ria_novosti – For Russian related news (in English)

@Russianist – Tweets and blogs on Russian history and literature

@EdwardLucas – Tweets about Central Eastern Europe, the Balkans, Cold War, especially crime &  intelligence

@MishaGlenny – Tweets about history, politics and media, including Central Eastern Europe, the Balkans, organised crime, technology

@MarkGaleotti – NYU academic and blogger, tweets about Russian security, crime, corruption and policing.

@MattPotter – Author and journalist, tweets about crime, politics, media

@MDRBrown – Academic, tweets on Cold War history, international relations, Eastern Europe

@andrewholt – Academic tweeting on Cold War History, C20 British Foreign Policy

@Lemberik – Blog about minorities and human rights in Central and Eastern Europe

@Horia_Victor – Tweets about minorities and human rights in Russia/FSU and Eastern Europe

@polandww2 – Tweets about Poland, WWII, the Eastern Front

@JohnsonRussiaLi – Johnson’s Russia List, for a wide range of Russian-related info

@RussianSphinx – Tweets on Russia

@kremlinologist_ – Tweets on Russia

@siberianlight – Tweets on Russia

@AskSiberia - Tweets on Siberia and the Far East

@globalvoices – For a range of interesting links and articles

@brainpicker – For a range of interesting links and articles

So, as we enter the ‘terrible twos’ – Happy Birthday, fellow #Twitterstorians!