Soviet War Experiences, 1937-1950
This project charts the varieties of wartime experiences on Soviet-held territories between the outbreak of the Second World War in Asia in 1937 and the end of the counter-insurgency in the western borderlands by 1950.

The project thus embeds the German-Soviet war of 1941-1945 (the Great Patriotic War in Soviet terminology) into a larger Eurasian war.
Refusing to extract one, allegedly ‘typical’ experience, this project focuses on the range, variety, and complexity of wartime experiences of ordinary (and some extraordinary) people living, fighting, surviving, dying, or passing through the lands controlled, sometimes more, sometimes less, by Stalin and his political apparatus during the years of war in the 1930s and 1940s.
Publications
Books
- Edele, M. Stalinism at War: The Soviet Union in World War II (under review with Bloomsbury)
- Edele, M. The Soviet Union. A Short History. Hoboken: Wiley Blackwell, 2019; hardback and paperback
- Edele, M. Stalin’s Defectors: How Red Army Soldiers became Hitler’s Collaborators, 1941-1945. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017; paperback: 2019
Articles
- Edele, M. 'Escaping the Holocaust: Restoring the Soviet Contribution to the Survival of Polish Jews in World War II,' in Yad Vashem Studies, forthcoming 48, No. 1, 2020.
- Edele, M. 'Who Won the Second World War and Why Should You Care? Reassessing Stalin’s War 75 Years after Victory,' in Journal of Strategic Studies, forthcoming 2020.
- Edele, M. 'The Soviet Union’s World War II, 75 Years after Victory,' contribution to special issue of Journal of Slavic Military Studies, forthcoming 2020.
- Edele, M. 'Why did Ukrainian Red Army Men go over to the Germans? The Case of Defectors to the Wehrmacht’s 296 Infantry Division, 1942-1943,' in Ukrains’kyi istorychnyi zhurnal, No. 5, 2019, pp. 86-102.
- Edele, M. 'The Soviet Culture of Victory,' in Journal of Contemporary History 54, No. 4, 2019, pp. 780-798.
- Edele, M and Glisic, Iva. 'The Memory Revolution Meets the Digital Age: Red Army Soldiers Remember World War II,' in Geschichte und Gesellschaft 45, 2019, pp. 95-119.
- Edele, M. 'Fighting Russia’s History Wars. Vladimir Putin and the Codification of World War II in Russia,' in History and Memory 29, No. 2, 2017, pp. 90-124.
- Edele, M. 'Not an Ordinary Man: Ivan Nikitich Kononov and the Problem of Frontline Defection from the Red Army, 1941-1945,' in Australian Journal of Politics and History 62, No. 4, 2016, pp. 546-560.
- Edele, M and Slaveski, Filip. 'Violence from Below: Explaining Crimes against Civilians across Soviet Space, 1943-1947,' in Europe-Asia Studies 68, No. 6, 2016, pp. 1020-1035.
- Edele, M. 'Take (No) Prisoners! The Red Army and German POWs, 1941-1943,' in The Journal of Modern History 88, No. 2, 2016, pp. 342-379.
Publications for a general audience
- Edele, M. 'The Soviet Union after World War II,' SHAPS Podcast series ‘Disaster and Change’ 11 May 2020.
- Edele, M. 'The Battle of Kursk: 75 Years On,' in Pursuit, 13 July 2018.
Project details
Sponsor
Australian Research Council Future Fellowship
Project team
Professor Mark Edele, School of Historical and Philosophical Studies, The University of Melbourne
Research assistant
Dr Oleg Beyda