Making Sense of War: The Second World War and the Fate of the Bolshevik Revolution

The Second World War was a cataclysm that shook institutions, identities, and beliefs that had previously seemed unshakable. This book presents the war as a key event in Soviet history. Approaching it from a Ukrainian perspective (primarily focusing on the Vinnytsia region), Amir Weiner explores its significance in the context of the global historiography of modern practices of social engineering, the Holocaust, ethnic deportations, collaboration with the occupying authorities, and postwar population movements.

He reveals the impact of the war on the ideology, beliefs, and practices of the Soviet regime and its citizens, revealing the ways in which different elements of the state structure attempted to make sense of this traumatic event. The war, the author argues, gave a kind of new beginning to Soviet power: it gave rise to a myth that defined the state more strongly than the previous founding myth of the revolution. Moreover, the meaning of the myth of the "war against fascism" did not disappear over the years - on the contrary, it began to be perceived as suprahistorical, timeless.