Crucibles of Power: Smolensk Under Stalinist and Nazi Rule

During the Cold War, the Smolensk Archive held the only collection of Soviet Communist Party documents available to Western scholars, becoming the foundation for generations of scholarship on Soviet history. This seminar returns to the Smolensk Region with fresh eyes and fresh sources, reassessing the experiences of Smolensk residents in the 1930s and 1940s, a period during which the city and region passed from Stalinist rule to Nazi occupation and back. The seminar focuses on individual and collective choice and power under dueling forms of murderous totalitarianism.

Event Speakers

Michael David-Fox: Director, Center for Eurasian, Russian and East European Studies, Georgetown University

Serhii Plokhii: Mykhailo S. Hrushevs’kyi Professor of Ukrainian History / Director of the Ukrainian Research Institute , Harvard University

Mark Kramer: Director, Cold War Studies Project, Davis Center