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Return to the Motherland
February 2, 2022 @ 12:50 pm - 1:50 pm
A Soviet Woman’s Journey from Nazi Germany to Stalin’s Gulag
Seth Bernstein, History, UF
Moderator, Sheryl Kroen, History, UF
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Nazi Germany took millions of people from occupied Eastern Europe to the Third Reich as prisoners and forced laborers. After World War II, more than five million returned to the USSR. One was Nadezhda Severilova, a teenager from Kyiv. Her postwar journey took her across Europe under multiple identities and ultimately resulted in her arrest at the hands of Stalin’s secret police. Severilova’s case was remarkable, but it was also typical of the agency of postwar Soviet displaced persons and of the Stalinist pursuit of order via repression after the chaos of war.
