The talk explores debates about turncoat general Vlasov and his collaborationist Russian Liberation Army in post-Soviet Russia. It argues that Vlasov has served as a lighting rod for clashing ideas about loyalty and disloyalty during World War Two, and particularly the place of Russia national identity in discourse on the Great Patriotic War.
Speaker
Benjamin Tromly teaches Russian and modern European history at University of Puget Sound. He is the author of Cold War Exiles and the CIA: Plotting to Free Russia (Oxford University Press, 2019) and Making the Soviet Intelligentsia: Universities and Intellectual Life under Stalin and Khrushchev (Cambridge University Press, 2014).
Moderator
Marlene Laruelle, Ph.D., is Director of the Institute for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies; Director of the Central Asia Program; Director of the Illiberalism Studies Program; Co-Director of PONARS Eurasia; and Research Professor of International Affairs at The George Washington University. She works on political, social, and cultural changes in the post-Soviet space. Marlene’s research explores the transformations of nationalist and conservative ideologies in Russia, nationhood construction in Central Asia, as well as the development of Russia’s Arctic regions.