The Meaning of Resilience: Soviet Children in World War II

During World War II, the Soviet media depicted children suffering as well as children actively participating in the war effort and mothers making sacrifices for them. Such mixed messages served clear political purposes, publicizing Nazi atrocities while deflecting attention from the Soviet state’s failure to protect its children. Historians have tended to approach such images and stories within a framework of trauma that validates stories of children’s suffering, despite their political purposes, while also discounting wartime accounts and postwar (and post-Soviet) reminiscences that highlight children’s strength and recovery. The concept of resilience, as developed in psychology, psychiatry, and anthropology, however, allows historians to understand such material as authentic and vital components of survivors’ understandings and memories of the war.