Diana Dumitru
Research Fellow (02/2019–07/2019)
From Friends to Enemies? The Soviet State and Its Jewry in the Aftermath of the Holocaust
The primary goal of this research is to explore how Soviet society faced the aftermath of the Holocaust: What was the interaction between the three dynamics of (i) Jewish/non-Jewish encounters, (ii) the strategy/tactics of the Soviet state in this context, and (iii) the various paths taken by Soviet Jews, non-Jews, and the state when grasping the implications of the Holocaust and charting a path forward for Soviet society?
Specifically, this project aims to understand the extent to which an antisemitic agenda was embraced by the Soviet state and its political elites during the late Stalinist era, and what the open and/or hidden channels were for conveying this agenda to the mid- and lower-level agents tasked with its implementation. In so doing, it seeks to grasp the implications for the broader policies towards other ‘nationalities’ within the Soviet Union.
Diana Dumitru is Associate Professor of History at Ion Creangă State University of Moldova. She has authored over thirty articles and two books. Her second book, The State, Antisemitism and the Collaboration in the Holocaust. The Borderlands of Romania and the Soviet Union, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2016. She is a member of the advisory board of the EU project European Holocaust Research Infrastructure.