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Chapter Five "Every family has its freak": Perceptions of Collaboration in Occupied Soviet Russia "Every family," in the words of a Russian proverb, "has its freak." During and after World War II the proverb was used to refer to Soviet citizens who sided with or assisted Nazi occupying forces. A cloud of suspicion hung over the country. German rule varied greatly from country to country in Eu ropeeven from region to region within the same country - as did local reaction to it; but throughout the occupied areas, Nazi administration depended on local officials, police, and security units recruited from the native population to maintain order and quell resistance1 Thus, after liberation every formerly occupied coun try had to come to term s with acts of treason and collaboration among its populace. The ways in which societies dealt with this issue have been well studied for Western Europe (especially Vichy France), and increasingly so for Eastern Europe2 In the USSR, as noted, the Stalinist regime's 1 For a discussion of Nazi occupation of the Soviet Union, see Barber and Harrison, Soviet Home Front, 113-16. 2 See, for example, Klaus-Peter Friedrich, "Collaboration in a 'Land withou t a Quisling ': Patterns of Cooperation with the Nazi German Occupation Regime in Poland during World War II," Slavic Review 64: 4 (Winter 2005): 711-46; Lloyd, Collaboration and Resistance in Occupied France; Gross, Neighbors; Deak et aI., Politics ofRetribution, including the essay by Deak, "A Fatal Compromise? The Debate over Collaboration and Resistance in Hungary"; Rab Bennett, Under the Shadow of the Swastika: The Moral Dilemmas of Resistance and Collaboration in Hitler's Europe (New York: New York University Press, 1999); Mazower, Dark Continent, 229-37; Claudia Kuretsidis-Haider and Winfried R. Garscha, eds., Keine "Abrechnung": NS-Verbrechen, Justiz und Gesellschaft in Europa nach 1945 (Leipzig-Vienna: Akademische Verlagsanstalt, 1998); Tadeusz Piotrowski , Poland's Holocaust: Ethnic Strife, Collaboration with Occupying Forces and Genocide in the Second Republic, 1918-1947 Uefferson, NC: McFarland Press, 1998); Kenney, Rebuilding Poland; Bennett, End of the War in Europe,; Martin Conway, Collaboration in Belgium: Leon Degrelle and the Rexist Movement, 1940-1944 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993); Gerhard Hirschfeld and Patrick Marsh, eds., Collaboration in France: Politics and Culture during the Nazi Occupation, 1940-1944 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989); Gerhard Hirschfeld, Nazi Rule and Dutch Collaboration: The Netherlands under German Occupation, 1940-45, trans. Louise Willmot (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988); Gross, Polish Society under German Occupation; Peter Novick, The Resistance 146 EVERYDAY LIFE AND THE "RECONSTRUCTION" OF SOVIET RUSSIA "family rhetoric" emphasized national unity and the party's paternal care, but evidence shows that collaboration was widespread and systemic within the vanguard party as well as society. Soviet leaders saw the war as a test of one's true feelings toward the regime, a way of judging the trustworthiness of every citizen or even entire nationalities. A person's whereabouts and activities during the war followed him or her throughout "reconstruction," as applications for work, party membership, government assistance, and the like requested information about what one and one's family did during the war3 The acknowledgement and discussion of collaboration further undermines the "single Soviet family myth" while exposing a major divide in society created by the war. This chapter looks at the "freaks" in the Soviet "family," highlighting subtle differences in the perception of "collaboration" in society through an analysis of the language in a variety of sources. It is impossible to determine how many people helped the Germans during occupation, held pro-Nazi views, or actively betrayed the USSR. It is also impossible to establish the extent to which those who did were punished after Soviet control was reestablished, or the degree to which people were wrongfully accused.4 My point is not to argue the "truth" of specific cases revealed in the archives but to focus on the attitudes expressed on collaboration by those in power as well as by the population at large. Recent scholarship on occupied Europe emphasizes the ambiguity between the two extremes of ardent resistance and enthusiastic collaboration . In northern France, many people under Nazi rule were apolitical, their decisions concerning how to cope with the Germans driven mainly by a desire to continue livingS For decades a limited '''binary vision" -resister! collaborator, good/bad-dominated research of Vichy France, but the reality was far more nuanced and complex6 In looking at Vichy and Europe as a whole it is important to distinguish between"collaboration" - working...

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