From DP Camps to the “Green Continent”

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.15826/qr.2020.2.489

Keywords:

second wave of Soviet emigration; collaborators; displaced person; Australia; Jayne Persian

Abstract

This review focuses on a monograph written by Jayne Persian, lecturer at the University of Southern Queensland (Australia). The work is the first complex study devoted to the adaptation of former “displaced persons” (more particularly, émigrés from the Soviet Union) in Australia between the 1940s and 1960s. The work refers to an extensive complex of documents from the National Archives of Australia, the National Archives (United Kingdom), the Noel Butlin Archives Centre, Australian National University, and interviews with former “displaced persons” residing in Australia. The study is very important because it provides new information on the second wave of Soviet emigration, which is seldom examined by contemporary Russian scholars. Persian demonstrates that political factors played an important role in how the Australian government granted immigration permission. Quite frequently, Australia preferred people who shared anti-communist positions. Therefore, many former collaborators of the World War II era came to Australia; this hindered cooperation between the USSR and Australia. Persian shows that “new Australians” had difficulty integrating into society. The government tried to assimilate them, which pushed the immigrants to seek isolation in their communities. This book helps us understand the controversial character of the state policy of historical memory, a problem that is also very important for contemporary Russia.

Author Biography

Alexey Antoshin

Dr. Hab. (History), Professor, Executive Secretary Associate of Quaestio Rossica Journal, Ural Federal University.

19, Mira Str., 620002, Yekaterinburg, Russia.

ORCID 0000-0002-6093-2219

alex_antoshin@mail.ru

References

Dichbalis, S. (2003). Zigzagi sud’by [Zigzags of Fate]. Moscow, Institut politicheskogo i voennogo analiza. 272 p.

Hilton, L. J. (2001). Prisoners of Peace: Rebuilding Community, Identity and Nationality in Displaced Persons Camps in Germany, 1945–1952. PhD Diss. Ohio State Univ. 517 p.

Holian, A. M. (2011). Between National Socialism and Soviet Communism: Displaced Persons in Postwar Germany. Ann Arbor, Univ. of Michigan Press. 367 p.

Istoriya russkikh v Avstralii v 4 t. [The History of Russians in Australia. 4 Vols.]. (2004). Sydney, S. n. Vol. 1. 297 p.

Kanevskaya, G. I. (2010). “My eshcshe mechtaem o Rossii…”. Istoriya russkoi diaspory v Avstralii (konets XIX v. – vtoraya polovina 80-kh gg. XX v.) [“We are dreaming of Russia…”. The History of the Russian Diaspora in Australia, Late 19th Century – Second Half of the 1980s]. Vladivostok, Izdatel’stvo Dal’nevostochnogo universiteta. 372 p.

Konstantinov, D., archp. (1997). Cherez tunnel’ XX stoletiya [Through the Tunnel of the 20th Century]. Moscow, Istoriko-arkhivnyi institut Rossiiskogo gosudarstvennogo gumanitarnogo universiteta. 592 p.

Persian, J. (2017). Beautiful Balts. From Displaced Persons to New Australians. Sydney, N. South Publ. 240 p.

Polyan, P. M. (2019). O Borise Men’shagine [On Boris Menshagin]. In Boris Men’shagin. Vospominaniya, pis’ma, dnevniki. Moscow, St Petersburg, Nestor – Istoriya, pp. 23–160.

Popov, A. V. (Ed.). (1997). V poiskakh istiny. Puti i sudby vtoroy emigratsii [In Search of Truth. The Roads and Fates of the Second Wave of Emigration]. Moscow, Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi gumanitarnyi universitet. 376 p.

Shnirel’man, V. A. (2003). Voiny pamyati: mify, identichnost’ i politika v Zakavkaz’e [Memory Wars: Myth, Identity, and Politics in the South Caucasus]. Moscow, Akademkniga. 350 p.

Shteppa, K. F. (2003). “Ezhovshchina” [Ezhovshchina]. In XX vek. Istoriya odnoi sem’i. Moscow, Institut politicheskogo i voennogo analiza, pp. 15–138.

Tolstoy, N. D. (1996). Zhertvy Yalty [The Victims of Yalta]. Moscow, Russkii put’. 543 p.

Troitskii, N. A. (2006). Ty, moe stoletie… [My Century…]. Moscow, Institut politicheskogo i voennogo analiza. 496 p.

Wyman, M. (1998). DPs: Europe’s Displaced Persons, 1945–1951. Ithaca, N. Y., Cornell Univ. Press. 560 p.

Zemskov, V. N. (1991). Repatriatsiya i vtoraya volna emigratsii [Repatriation and the Second Wave of Emigration]. In Rodina. No. 6–7, pp. 110–113.

Published

2020-06-23

How to Cite

Antoshin, A. (2020). From DP Camps to the “Green Continent”. Quaestio Rossica, 8(2), 692–698. https://doi.org/10.15826/qr.2020.2.489

Issue

Section

Controversiae et recensiones