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The Minsk Ghetto, 1941-1943. Jewish Resistance and Soviet Internationalism

factory. The horrible results of the terror are clearly visible in the census of 1937. After some ten million persons were found to be simply ‘missing’ in the census, the publication of the data was banned and the persons responsible were shot. There have been plenty of studies of the ‘Great Terror’ before now. Schlögel’s contribution shows the role of the mobilisation and involvement of the ‘masses’. The show trials had the character of public lynchings: at mass events on Red Square the crowd finally demanded the death of the dehumanised ‘enemies’, recalling Goebbels’ speech on ‘total war’ in 1943 in Berlin. The mass arrests and killings were not secret but well known. According to Schlögel, they served the masses as a form of compensation for the bitterness and misery of life following the beginning of collectivisation in the late 1920s: ‘spies’ and ‘enemies’ were said to be responsible, and were eliminated. Further, Schlögel outlines the ethnic dimension of the great terror. A significant number of the victims were non-Russians who had been accused and sentenced because of their ethnicity. Germans, Poles and Latvians were the main victims in Moscow, according to Schlögel. Xenophobia and racism had deeply infected society; even in the factories, graffiti such as ‘Kill the Letts, Kill the Poles’ appeared. Schlögel follows the scholars who see the racist outburst as a short-term phenomenon, a result of ‘international encirclement’ and isolation, such that every foreigner came under suspicion. This argument, however, ignores the systematic and often racist repression of non-Russians in the Soviet Union from as early as 1917. Schlögel gives a broad picture of the Soviet Union under Stalin in 1937. One important event whose inclusion may have improved the book is the world conference on genetics that was to take place in Moscow in 1937, but that was banned by Stalin shortly before its opening. Leading Soviet geneticists were arrested and shot. Contrasting the racist repression of minorities with the official liquidation of specialists in genetics and biological science and the propagandising of an anti-biological agenda and anti-racism could lead to a new perspective on the relationship between ideology and violence under Stalin. Schlögel contributes to current approaches in cultural history. Without losing himself in reconstructing ‘cultures’ he succeeds in analysing the main political strategies of Stalinist policy. Schlögel has written an impressive book that gives a fresh perspective on Stalinism.