National Minorities in the Soviet Bloc after 1945: New Historical Research in Micro- and Regional Studies

Abstract

The development of ethnicity and nationality as key concepts of local identities in East-Central Europe has been thoroughly explored in regional studies. Yet, these studies have largely focused on the 19th and early 20th century. This focus can easily create the impression that the region’s ethnic groups and nationalities had developed into stable and well-established entities by the time of the Second World War. It is only in recent research that the formation of ethnic and national groups is understood as an ongoing process which continued even during the Second World War and into the postwar Eastern bloc. The circumstances were considerably different from those of the prewar years. Soviet annexations of territory in eastern Poland, the Baltic states, and Romania as well as Poland’s “westward shift” had created new border regions. Meanwhile, the war and the horrors of the German occupation had led to a radicalization of nationality policy. Forced population exchanges and the displacement of ethnic and religious groups, especially during the 1930s and 1940s, were not only a feature of Soviet nationality policy but were also accepted by the West as a means of shaping the postwar order in East-Central Europe.1 However, policy