Across Eastern Europe and Russia in the first half of the twentieth century, conflict and violence arising out of foreign and civil wars, occupation, revolutions, social and ethnic restructuring and racial persecution caused countless millions of children to be torn from their homes. Displaced Children in Russia and Eastern Europe, 1915-1953 addresses the powerful and tragic history of child displacement in this region and the efforts of states, international organizations and others to 're-place' uprooted, and often orphaned, children. By analysing the causes, character and course of child displacement, and examining through first-person testimonies the children's experiences and later memories, the chapters in this volume shed new light on twentieth-century nation-building, social engineering and the emergence of modern concepts and practices of statehood, children's rights and humanitarianism. Contributors are: Tomas Balkelis, Rachel Faircloth Green, Gabriel Finder, Michael Kaznelson, Aldis Purs, Karl D. Qualls, Elizabeth White, Tara Zahra

"an exciting collaborative effort... there is no available study with this scope and intellectual boldness... this volume will be a sure hit with a broad set of reading publics, appropriate for specialists in the field and a very attractive introduction for undergraduate students in history, human rights, international relations, and many other fields." -- Mark von Hagen, Professor of History, Columbia University well defined, authoritative, disciplined and topically innovative& a pioneering publication in an academic field which is just opening up. -- Raymond Pearson, Professor of Modern European History, School of History and International Affairs, University of UlsterThis new volume, by a team of international scholars, explores aspects of population displacement and statehood at a crucial stage in modern European history, when the entire continent took on the aspect of a laboratory atop a mass graveyard (Tomas Masaryk).This topic of state formation has become newly urgent today, following the collapse of the USSR and the Soviet bloc, and the violent conflicts in the Balkans and Caucasus. Many of these current dilemmas and tragedies have their origins in the aftermath of World War I, when newly emerging nation states in this region first sought to define themselves in terms of population and citizenship.The sudden reconfiguration of power and territory in Eastern Europe after 1918 was characterized by extreme flux, in the form of massive population movements, shifting territorial borders and cultural boundaries, and new political and social formations taking shape. Acknowledging the chaotic and destructive nature of involuntary migration and the intensity of human suffering andtrauma involved, the current volume emphasizes the active and constructive participation of refugees and returnees in negotiating their status and role in the newly formed independent states of Eastern Europe.Based on original research in recently opened East European and Russian archives, this volume examines domestic and international changes that affected the entire region between the end of the war in 1918 and the stabilization of post-imperial European frontiers and regimes by 1924. It includes detailed case studies on Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, Ukraine, Belorussia, the Urals region of Soviet Russia and Armenia.War, Population and Statehood in Eastern Europe and Russia, 1918" 1924 highlights why the topics of population displacement, state building and social identity should be matters of vital concern, not only to contemporary political scientists, demographers, policymakers, journalists and others, but also to historians.

In 1920, Lenin authorised a plan to transform Karelia, a Russian territory adjacent to Finland, into a showcase Soviet autonomous region, to show what could be achieved by socialist nationalities policy and economic planning, and to encourage other countries to follow this example. However, Stalin's accession to power brought a change of policy towards the periphery - the encouragement of local autonomy which had been a key part of Karelia's model development was reversed, the state border was sealed to the outside world, and large parts of the republic's territory were given over to Gulag labour camps controlled by the NKVD, the precursor of the KGB. This book traces the evolution of Soviet Karelia in the early Soviet period, discussing amongst other things how political relations between Moscow and the regional leadership changed over time; the nature of its spatial, economic and demographic development; and the origins of the massive repressions launched in 1937 against the local population.

Contents:
Introduction 1. The Histories of Karelian Space
2. The Structures of Karelian Autonomy, 1920-1928: Borders, Boundaries and Spatial Ambitions
3. 3. The Limits of Karelian Autonomy, 1920-1928: Economy, Population and the Origins of the Gulag
4. The First Five-Year Plan, 1928-1932: Economic Development and Forced Labour on the Periphery
5. The Second Five-Year Plan, 1933-1937: Visions and Realities of Peripheral Developments
6. Production and Terror on the Periphery, 1935-1937
Conclusion

‘We have waited a long time for this war’s All Quiet on the Western Front’, wrote the critic V.S. Pritchett. ‘Here It is.’ He was reviewing the 1948 novel From the City From the Plough by Alexander Baron (1917-1999). With its success, Baron became a full-time writer. His best-known later novels include The Human Kind (1953), The Lowlife (1963) and King Dido (1969). Between the 1950s and 1980s he also wrote many film and television scripts. Here Baron recounts the experiences of his childhood and youth that shaped him as a writer and provided subject matter for his novels. He evokes the sights, sounds and aromas surrounding him growing up in a Jewish family in Hackney, East London, in the 1920s. Later, aware of the rising fascist threat, Baron was drawn to left-wing politics, becoming a leader of Labour’s youth organisation. Although not formally a member, he also worked secretly for the Communist Party as an organiser and propagandist. With World War Two his life changed again. A keen solider, he fought with the Pioneer Corps in Sicily, Italy, and northern France. After a hard transition to post-war life, he worked at Unity Theatre in London while writing his breakthrough novel.