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SUMMARY:Demobilisation and Deviance: Leningrad's Second World War Veterans
  Brutalisation and Criminality - Robert Dale (Queen Mary\, University of L
 ondon)
DTSTART:20100303T173000Z
DTEND:20100303T190000Z
UID:TALK22566@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Ilya Berkovich
DESCRIPTION:The war on the Eastern Front during the Second World War was a
  brutal war of extermination\, during which the Red Army’s conduct was e
 xceptionally violent. Throughout the Twentieth Century European society ha
 s confronted the tension between soldiers as heroes and as killing-machine
 s.  Although the evidence was ambiguous it was constantly asserted that ex
 -servicemen were brutalised by exposure to extreme violence. This ‘bruta
 lisation thesis’ enjoyed great popularity with sociologists\, criminolog
 ists\, psychiatrists and historians. Not so in the Soviet Union. As ex-ser
 vicemen returned in the summer of 1945 there were no popular or official c
 oncerns that veterans were brutalised by war. Propaganda myths stressed th
 at veterans were quickly and successfully reintegrated into society.\nBase
 d on a case study of post-war Leningrad and its periphery\, this paper arg
 ues that the behaviour or Soviet veterans frequently fell short of these p
 ropaganda stereotypes. Firstly\, it explores to what extent veterans were 
 responsible for the post-war crime wave. Newly uncovered documents reveal 
 that criminal\, violent and disorderly behaviour was more common amongst L
 eningrad’s veterans than previously understood. Secondly\, I argue that 
 violent crime was not the result of brutalisation. Violence was caused by 
 a combination of poverty\, trauma\, alcohol and the failure to reintegrate
  into society. Criminality and social disorder were not the same as brutal
 isation. Finally\, I argue that the lack of fears about brutalisation can 
 be explained by viewing late-Stalinism as an ‘extremely violent society
 ’. Successive waves of war\, revolution\, civil-war\, famine and politic
 al violence created different social and cultural attitudes to violence.
LOCATION:Seminar Room N7\, Pembroke College
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