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Traitors, Collaborators and Deserters in Contemporary European Politics of Memory pp 311–336Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

Silken Braids Under the German Boot: Creating Images of Female Soviet Ostarbeiters as Betrayers and Betrayed

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Part of the book series: Palgrave Macmillan Memory Studies ((PMMS))

Abstract

Ascriptions of betrayal as a way of manipulating collective consciousness and collective memory have always been a popular instrument in portraying the Ostarbeiters. However, unlike, for example, “Ukrainian bourgeois nationalists,” policemen and village heads, Vlasov’s troops, or entire “nations of traitors,” who were officially accused of treason on all levels, the Ostarbeiters were never accused directly of treason against the fatherland because of their work for the enemy. Instead, accusations of betrayal aimed at the Ostarbeiters, especially females, were introduced into the official public discourse primarily by means of insinuations, rather than through direct stigmatizing. The main argument of Gelinada Grinchenko and Eleonora Narvselius in this chapter is that in the cases both of Soviet suspicion of betrayal and of the post-Soviet designation of the status of the betrayed group, the history and memory of the Soviet female Ostarbeiters were suffused with invented topics, and their collective image with non-existent characteristics.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Penter, T. (2005). “Collaboration on Trial: New Source Material on Soviet Trials against Collaborators”, Slavic Review 64, no. 4: 784.

  2. 2.

    Transcript of interview with Mariia Kobzysta.

  3. 3.

    Parts of these study have been published earlier in: Grinchenko G., Radians’ki zhinky na prymusovykh robotakh Tretioho Raikhu. In: Gelinada Grinchenko, Kateryna Kobchenko, Oksana Kis (eds.): Zhinky tsentral’noyi ta skhidnoyi Ievropy u Druhiy svitoviy viyni: henderna spetsyfika dosvidu v chasy ekstremal’noho nasyl’stva: Zb[irnyk] nauk[ovykh] st[atei] (Kyiv: ART-KNYHA, 2015), 233–251.

  4. 4.

    Shul’ha, Z. Ukraïns’ke selianstvo ne bude u fashysts’kii nevoli (Ufa: AN URSR, 1942), p. 23.

  5. 5.

    “Lystivka Iams’koho pidpil’noho raikomu KP(b)U і Iams’koho partyzans’koho zahonu Donets’koï oblasti z zaklykom do molodi unykaty mobilizatsiï і vidpravlennia do Nimechchyny 21 serpnia 1942 r.,” in: Lystivky partiinoho pidpillia і partyzans’kykh zahoniv Ukraїny u roky Velykoï Vitchyznianoï viiny (Kyiv: PolitvydavUkraïny, 1969), pp. 44–45.

  6. 6.

    Kononenko, E. V. Otomsti nemtsu (Moscow: Politizdat, 1943), p. 8.

  7. 7.

    The “unprecedented” nature of this subject was linked, not least of all, to the general absence of the topic of sexual relations in the Soviet pre-war public discourse; the exposure of violent relations of a sexual nature was even more unthinkable.

  8. 8.

    “Proshchal’naia,” in Isakovskii, M. V. Stikhotvoreniia (Moscow; Leningrad, 1965), 245.

  9. 9.

    “Pis’mo iz plena,” in Kuleshov, A. Belarus’ v ogne, ed. P. Glebka (Moscow, 1943), 71.

  10. 10.

    “Kateryna,” in Zdravstvui, Ukraina!: (Lit.-estrad. sb. proizvedenii ukrainskikh pisatelei (Moscow; Leningrad, 1944), 76. The poems are translated by Olena Jennings and reproduced from the publication: Grinchenko, G. (2013). “(Re)Constructing Suffering: ‘Fascist Captivity’ in Soviet Commemorative Culturе,” Cuadernos de Historia Contemporánea, no. 35: 243–261.

  11. 11.

    This translation of Simonov’s poem “Kill Him” was published in Modern Russian Poetry: An Anthology with Verse Translations, ed. Vladimir Markov and Merrill Sparks (Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., 1967), pp. 763, 765.

  12. 12.

    Goscilo, H. “Slotting War Narratives into Culture’s Ready-Made,” in Fighting Words and Images: Representing War across the Disciplines, ed. Elena V. Baraban, Stephan Jaeger, and Adam Muller (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012), p. 144.

  13. 13.

    All figures are cited in Table 4, “Civilian Labor Force in Germany by Country of Origin, Gender, and Economic Sector, 1939–1945,” in Spoerer, M. and Fleischhacker, J. “Forced Laborers in Nazi Germany: Categories, Numbers, and Survivors,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 33, no. 2 (2002): 187. However, it must be emphasized that the total number of slave laborers has not been established yet.

  14. 14.

    In a recent study Johannes-Dieter Steinart identifies as children all those who were 18 years and younger when they were transfered from the territory of the USSR, thereby creating a separate category of slave laborers. See Steinert, J.-D. Deportation und Zwangsarbeit: Polnische und sowjetische Kinder im nationalsozialistischen Deutschland und im besetzten Osteuropa 1939–1945 (Essen: Klartext Verlag, 2013).

  15. 15.

    Spoerer, M. and Fleischhacker, J. “Forced Laborers in Nazi Germany,” 199 (Table 9, “The Age Structure of Selected Groups of Forced Laborers according to Year of Birth”).

  16. 16.

    For example, between mid-January and mid-April 1942, 14,445 people (10,920 men and 3 525 women) were sent from Kharkiv to Germany. As of 28 September 1942, a total of 73,391 people were transported to Germany from Kharkiv and Kharkiv oblast. See Hrinchenko, H. [Grinchenko, G.], Usna istoriia prymusu do pratsi: Metod, konteksty, teksty (Kharkiv: NTMT, 2012), pp. 82, 86.

  17. 17.

    Herbert, U. Fremdarbeiter: Politik und Praxis des “Ausländer-Einsatzes” in der Kriegswirtschaft des Dritten Reiches (Bonn: Dietz, 1999), p. 204.

  18. 18.

    Hrinchenko, Usna istoriia, p. 96.

  19. 19.

    Herbert notes that as of March 1944, there were 100,000 maids, nearly half of whom were from the USSR (Herbert, Fremdarbeiter, p. 485, n. 262).

  20. 20.

    Spoerer, M. Zwangsarbeit unter dem Hakenkreuz: Ausländische Zivilarbeiter, Kriegsgefangene und Häftlinge im Deutsche Reich und im besetzten Europa 1939–1945 (Stuttgart; München: Deutsche Verlagsanstalt, 2001), p. 120.

  21. 21.

    It should be noted that these young women, who, according to the law, were recruited on the territory of the Ukrainian SSR, are called Russians by the author.

  22. 22.

    Herbert, Fremdarbeiter, p. 205, n. 263.

  23. 23.

    Ibid., p. 205.

  24. 24.

    Halbmayr, B. “Sexzwangsarbeit in NS-Konzentrationslagern,” in Jahrbuch 2005: Schwerpunkt Frauen in Widerstand und Verfolgung (Vienna: Dokumentationsarchiv des österreichischen Widerstandes, 2005), p. 98. In a similar fashion, the Nazi Forced Labour Documentation Centre in Berlin informs visitors that 600 female forced laborers worked in special bordellos for foreign workers.

  25. 25.

    Ibid., p. 107.

  26. 26.

    However, such relations were practically impossible. Elsewhere the author writes that “although the majority of female Ostarbeiter who were born in the 1920s did not have any religious upbringing, unlike the Poles, premarital sex was taboo at least for village girls, and extramarital pregnancy was a disgrace” (Spoerer, Zwangsarbeit unter dem Hakenkreuz, p. 206).

  27. 27.

    Halbmayr, “Sexzwangsarbeit,” 111.

  28. 28.

    Cited in Skorobohatov, A. V. Kharkiv u chasy nimets’koї okupatsiї (1941–1943) (Kharkiv: Prapor, 2006), p. 119.

  29. 29.

    Obviously, these Soviet leaflets, newspapers, and posters were not widely circulated in the already occupied territories. Therefore, the main target audience was the population of territories adjacent to the front, which were occupied later.

  30. 30.

    Polian, P. Zhertvy dvukh diktatur: Zhizn’, trud, unizheniia i smert’ sovetskikh voennoplennykh i ostarbaiterov na chuzhbine i na rodine, 2d rev. and exp. ed. (Moscow, 2002), p. 165.

  31. 31.

    Cited in a copy stored at the Military Archives of the Federal Republic of Germany: BA/MA,RW 31/719. Unfortunately, the absence of a cover renders it impossible to cite the title of the brochure.

  32. 32.

    Ibid., p. 17.

  33. 33.

    Ibid., pp. 19–25.

  34. 34.

    “If you have already killed a German, then kill another one—there is nothing more amusing to us than a heap of German corpses. Do not count the days, do not count the miles. Count only the Germans you have killed. Kill the German—this is your old mother’s prayer. Kill the German—this is what your children beseech you to do. Kill the German—this is the cry of your Russian earth. Do not waver. Do not let up. Kill!”.

  35. 35.

    “So kill at least one of them / And as soon as you can. Still / Each one you chance to see! / Kill him! Kill him! Kill!”.

  36. 36.

    Naturally, there were exceptions, e.g., Vasilii Lebedev-Kumach’s poem, “Dlia chego ia zhivaia ostalas′” (For What Did I Stay Alive), in which the heroine hopes to see the “Kremlin star” one more time. See V. Lebedev-Kumach, “Dlia chego ia zhivaia ostalas′ (Golos iz nemetskogo plena),” in V. Lebedev-Kumach, Pesni (Moscow: Moskovskii rabochii, 1947), p. 155.

  37. 37.

    Bratun, R. (1948). Partyzanka. Za radians’ku nauku! 12 February 1948, p. 3.

  38. 38.

    Baturin, S. OST: roman (Lviv: Kal’variia, 2005).

  39. 39.

    Produced in 1967, Solntseva’s film was released the following year, but it did not stay long in theaters. However, the film was not officially banned (unlike Dovzhenko’s films), and many people managed to see it because it was also screened in small towns and villages, as attested by posts that appear on contemporary Internet forums, e.g., here: http://www.kino-teatr.ru/kino/movie/sov/4377/forum/.

  40. 40.

    Hrinchenko, H. [Grinchenko, G.], Usna istoriia prymusu do pratsi: Metod, konteksty, teksty (Kharkiv: NTMT, 2012); Grinchenko, Gelinada. “The Ostarbeiter of Nazi Germany in Soviet and Post-Soviet Ukrainian Historical Memory,” in: Canadian Slavonic Papers, vol. IV, nos. 3–4, 2012: 401–426.

  41. 41.

    See, e.g., the works of M. Koval and T. Pastushenko, which feature eloquent but unfounded titles.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Ukrainian Studies, V. N. Karazin Kharkiv National University, 6, Svobody Sq., office 485, Kharkiv, 61022, Ukraine

    Gelinada Grinchenko

  2. Lund University, Helgonabacken 12 Box 221 Lund, 22100, Lund, Sweden

    Eleonora Narvselius

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  1. Gelinada Grinchenko
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  2. Eleonora Narvselius
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Correspondence to Gelinada Grinchenko .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Ukrainian Studies, V. N. Karazin Kharkiv National University, Kharkiv, Ukraine

    Gelinada Grinchenko

  2. Centre for Languages and Literature, Lund University, Lund, Sweden

    Eleonora Narvselius

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Grinchenko, G., Narvselius, E. (2018). Silken Braids Under the German Boot: Creating Images of Female Soviet Ostarbeiters as Betrayers and Betrayed. In: Grinchenko, G., Narvselius, E. (eds) Traitors, Collaborators and Deserters in Contemporary European Politics of Memory. Palgrave Macmillan Memory Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-66496-5_13

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