Description
Book SynopsisThe first English-Language study of a non-Russian Soviet republic during World War II, this book explores how the war altered official policies toward the region's ethnic groups - and accelerated Central Asia's integration into Soviet institutions.
Trade ReviewKazakhstan in World War II is a thoroughly researched and broadly conceptualized study that contributes significantly to our understanding of Kazakhstan and the USSR during World War II. By an examination of archival materials in Kazakhstan and Moscow, of memoirs, and of the periodical press, Carmack reveals the prejudice and suffering endured by Kazakhs and by other non-Russian nationalities among deportees, evacuees, and conscripts of the Labor Army. The author highlights exceptionally well a fluid and oft-contested relationship among local, republican, and national leaders exacerbated by shortages of human and material resources. Carmack makes a compelling case for a complex and uneven integration during the war and in the period immediately thereafter of Kazakhstan’s bureaucracy, economy, and people into the larger Soviet Union." - Larry E. Holmes, author of
Stalin’s World War II Evacuations: Triumph and Troubles in Kirov"World War II was the moment when the diverse peoples of the Soviet Union were tested under fire and forged into a mobilized force that defeated fascism. With Roberto J. Carmack’s vivid study of Kazakhstan in wartime, we have a deep analysis of how this vast and multiethnic country was politically integrated into a relatively cohesive community. Although Russians enjoyed more privileges than Kazakhs, languishing at the bottom of the Soviet hierarchy of nationalities were the exiled peoples-Volga Germans and North Caucasians-who were considered treacherous and rebellious. Condescension and discrimination between Kazakhs and Slavs hindered an easy passage into “Friendship of the Peoples,” and yet over time many Kazakhs identified with the Soviet project and celebrated the victory over the invaders as a triumph they shared with other Soviet peoples. Persuasively argued, this book breaks new ground in our understanding of the complexities and contradictions of Soviet imperial history." - Ronald Grigor Suny, William H. Sewell Jr. Distinguished University Professor of History and Political Science, University of Michigan
"This book illuminates the Soviet war effort in Central Asia, a critical but rarely examined aspect of the war. Carmack makes extensive use of Soviet-era archives to reveal Kazakhstan’s experience of World War II, its contributions to the Soviet war effort, and the ways in which the war transformed and ‘Sovietized’ the region and its people. Focusing on wartime mobilization, nationality policy, and the state's treatment of repressed and deported populations, Carmack’s study should be essential reading for anyone interested in the Soviet home front both at the regional and national levels." - Kenneth Slepyan, author of
Stalin’s Guerrillas: Soviet Partisans in World War IITable of Contents
- Preface and Acknowledgments
- Glossary of Terms
- Note on Translation and Transliteration
- Introduction
- 1. All to the Front? Nationality and Military Mobilization in Wartime Kazakhstan
- 2. History and Hero Making: Kazakh Frontline Propaganda and Dynamics of Assimilation
- 3. The Labor Front: Work and Institutional Competition in Wartime Kazakhstan
- 4. The Ideological Front: Propaganda and Religion in Wartime Kazakhstan
- 5. The Dejected and the Exploited: Deportation, Labor Mobilization, and the Dynamics of Exclusion in Kazakhstan's Special-Settlements
- Conclusion: The Soviet National Hierarchy and the Fate of the Soviet Empire
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
