The Soviet Punishment of an All-European Crime, “Horizontal Collaboration”

Abstract

Based on central archives and on the case study of Kalinin province, Vanessa Voisin examines the punishment the Soviet state inflicted upon female collaborators sexually compromised with the enemy during WWII, and attempts to determine whether this retribution resembles the socio-political cleansing that happened in other parts of freed Europe at the end of the war. The dynamics of this type of sanction make it quite similar to its European counterparts: people being punished extra-judicially for developing friendly or intimate relationships with the invader. It appears that the security imperative for the Soviet authorities mattered far less than did the moral and cultural impact within the local communities. Indeed, such behavior aroused as much indignation in the USSR as in other occupied countries; and, as elsewhere, there was a perceived need to sanction those involved, even if only symbolically, in order to restore the norms of the society. Notably, however, the state did not understand this demand right away, focused as it was on political deviations more than moral ones.