Kiev at war (1937-1947). An integrated study on tyranny, occupation and the persecution of Jews

• Applicant: Dr. Bert Hoppe
• Subject Area: Modern and Contemporary History
• Term: since 2020
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 444013802

Due to the Covid pandemic and the large-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, the processing of my project has been severely hampered, which means that I need more time to complete it. However, due to the lifting of the anti-Covid measures and the stabilisation of the war situation in Kiev itself, the successful completion of the project is guaranteed, which is why the objectives of the project can be maintained.Using Kiev as an example, I describe and analyse the lives and deaths of Jews and non-Jews in a major Soviet city between 1937 and 1947 - i.e. between the "Great Terror" and the conclusion of the restoration of Soviet power - and ask how Stalinist mass terror, German war crimes and the resumption of Soviet repression changed the city as a physical and social place. A chronological sequence or parallelism should not necessarily be interpreted as a causal connection, but it shows the background against which the events were perceived. The aim is a monograph of 400 to 500 pages, a multi-perspective account of the everyday life of the inhabitants of Kiev and their social environment as well as an analysis of individual perceptions and experiences of those years. In doing so, I also want to realise a new form of city history. It will not be solely about institutions and the respective rulers, but about how society and the space in which people moved changed. In order to examine how these people reacted to the upheavals, around a dozen concrete life stories from different groups of actors will therefore be traced. In this way, individual scope for action as well as such influences that lie beyond the period under investigation are to become tangible in an examplary way. The project thus also fits into the research focus "The Holocaust and European societies" of the Centre for Holocaust Studies.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants