An Army of Skeptics: Polish Military Units in the USSR and the Meaning of the New Soviet Empire, 1943-1945

Type: 
Lecture
Audience: 
Open to the Public
Building: 
Nador u. 11
Room: 
Hanak Room
Tuesday, November 23, 2010 - 5:30pm
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Date: 
Tuesday, November 23, 2010 - 5:30pm to 7:00pm

The lecture is about the experiences of Polish political officers in the Soviet-sponsored, Polish army units created in the USSR in 1943. They and the Polish Communist who were ultimately in charge learned there how to deal with some of the most anti-Soviet, anti-Communist and sometimes anti-Semitic Poles, and with the Soviet officials who accompanied them.

Patryk Babiracki is Assistant Professor of Modern Russian and East European History at the University of Texas-Arlington and he is currently the Józef Tischner Fellow at the Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen in Vienna. His research concentrates on cultural and social links between the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe after WW II, as well as problems of empire and transnational history. He has published articles in Cultural and Social History and Ab Imperio: Studies of New Imperial History and Nationalism in the Post-Soviet Space as well as book chapters. This lecture is part of his current book project entitled "Staging the Empire: Soviet-Polish Cultural Initiatives in Propaganda, Science and the Arts, 1943-1957," which explores Soviet and Polish communists' efforts to use culture and transnational interactions in order to consolidate the new empire.