Jan Gross describes the terrors of the Soviet occupation of the lands that made up eastern Poland between the two world wars: the Western Ukraine and Western Belorussia. His lucid analysis of the revolution that came to Poland from abroad is based on hundreds of first-hand accounts of the hardship, suffering, and social chaos that accompanied the Sovietization of this poorest section of a poverty-stricken country. Woven into the author's exploration of events from the Soviet's German-supported aggression against Poland in September of 1939 to Germany's attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941, these testimonies not only illuminate his conclusions about the nature of totalitarianism but also make a powerful statement of their own. Those who endured the imposition of Soviet rule and mass deportations to forced resettlement, labor camps, and prisons of the Soviet Union are here allowed to speak for themselves, and they do so with grim effectiveness.
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Fiction Literature & Fiction Mystery Mystery, Thriller & Suspense Thrillers Women SleuthsIn contrast with his later works, Gross is quite candid about Jewish-Soviet collaboration against Poles. (pp. 29-35). However, his reflexive exculpation of this conduct in terms of the awfulization of minorities' experiences in prewar Poland is, at best, oversimplified. For instance, Jews retained their economic dominance, and the average Jew remained wealthier than the average Pole. For those not willfully blind, "Communist...
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Jan Gross does a commendable job in expanding the studies of World War II Central European History beyond the dominant themes: Poland, and the Holocaust. He focuses on what was, from Versailles to Molotov-Ribbentrop, eastern Poland, today, Byelorussia, Lithuania and western Ukraine. The first map effectively demonstrates the shifting borders, and how ethnographic identities could be lost in a swirl of martial dust. Jan...
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According to the Polish national anthem, "Poland is not dead whilst we live. What others took by force, with the sword will be taken back." Both Nazi and Soviet occupiers must have taken these words to heart as they set out thoroughly to crush the Polish population between September 1939 and June 1941. In Revolution from Abroad: the Soviet Conquest of Poland's Western Ukraine and Western Belorusssia, Jan T. Gross (New York...
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The main primary source of this book is a collection of thousands of handwritten statements collected by the Polish government in exile when they interviewed the surviving Polish citizens released after the 1942 "amnesty" of those detained by the Soviets after 1939. By careful research, crosschecking and comparison with other resources Professor Gross has been able to produce a work of exceptional clarity and importance...
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