Retribute or reintegrate? The ambiguity of soviet policies towards repatriates : The case of kalinin province, 1943-1950
Résumé
In the wake of World War II, Europe faced the challenge of repatriating the millions of people displaced by war: POWs, forced or voluntary workers, ethnic groups... Soviet Union was the first concerned, with more than 5.5 million displaced citizens. Several specialists enlightened the process and huge device set up to manage this task, revealing the forced character of repatriation in this country and the problems met at home by the returnees. Basing on central, regional and local archives and on oral testimony, we propose to study the topics linked with these massive returns of deportees to their homeland in a province of central Russia (Kalinin). The paper focuses on a simple question: which kind of reintegration and why was prescribed and how did the chains of command succeed in implementing it? Subsidiarly, we'll turn to the issue of the repatriates' experiment of this coming back in an attempt of questioning the novelty of social identities generated by war. The example of Kalinin province allows to draw some qualified conclusions. From the very elaboration of repatriation, its principles and methods, Soviet approach was characterized by ambiguity. The leadership dithered between compassion, victimization of the returnees and suspicion toward them. As the filtration and repatriation went on, the lower levels of power coped with material hurdles linked with the undergone destructions and long-lasting scarcity. Local reactions of ostracism mingled with reconstruction priorities and begetted hard conditions of resettling while Stalinist manicheist discourse was inclined to see returnees as dubious (ideologically corrupted) or even treacherous. On the whole, repatriates didn't meet a warm welcome and were doomed to keep their hardships secret.