‘Soviet Women at War: Report from the Archive Front’
2Wednesday, 6 August, 2008 by uoncc
School of Humanities and Social Science
HISTORY SEMINAR SERIES – 2008
‘Soviet Women at War: Report from the Archive Front’
Dr Roger Markwick
History, SH&SS,
University of Newcastle
Friday, 15 August
10am to 11am
(with morning tea/coffee afterwards)
Cultural Collections Reading Room (near the Information Common),
Level 2, Auchmuty Library, Callaghan Campus
Half a million women joined the Red Army in the fight against Nazism on the Eastern Front in the Second World War. Women field nurses, partisans, snipers, anti-aircraft gunners and fighter pilots became models of Soviet heroism. Female participation in military conflict on such a scale is historically unique. But researching and writing the history of a conflict which both its participants and Soviet and Russian authorities have overwhelmingly depicted in a monochromatic, heroic light has proven a demanding historiographical challenge.
This paper reflects on this challenge, particularly in relation to the multiplicity of primary sources on which it draws: interviews, diaries, memoirs, letters, communist party and military reports, newspapers and photographs, the bulk of which have been obtained from Russian archives, most recently in April-May 2008.
Roger Markwick is a Senior Lecturer in Modern European History at the University of Newcastle and the author of Rewriting History in Soviet Russia. The Politics of Revisionist Historiography 1956-1974 (Palgrave, 2001) which won The Alexander Nove Prize. He is co-authoring, with Euridice Charon Cardona, the first comprehensive history of ‘Women, War, and the Stalinist State, 1941-45′, research for which has been supported by an ARC Discovery Grant.
Staff, students and members of the public are welcome
Enquiries to: Victoria Haskins Victoria.Haskins@newcastle.edu.au Ph 49215221
[...] 15 August, Dr Roger Markwick, History, H&SS, University of Newcastle Soviet Women at War: Report from the archive front [...]
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