The Story of Evacuees in the USSR During WW II: Impact and Legacy

In this edition of Wilson Center NOW we speak with Natalie Belsky, former Title VIII Research Scholar with the Wilson Center’s Kennan Institute. She discusses her project “Encounters in the East: Evacuees in the Soviet Hinterland During the Second World War,” which focuses on the wartime experiences of Soviet evacuees and their interactions with the local communities at sites of resettlement. The project examines how this experience shaped Soviet citizens’ mentalities, notions of entitlement, citizenship and belonging within a diverse, multi-ethnic, and multi-lingual state.