First Impressions: Moliere or The League of Hypocrites

by Kathryn Hadley

Moliere or The League of Hypocrites opened at the Finborough Theatre last week. Written by Mikhail Bulgakov (1891-1940), in 1931, under the Stalinist regime, the play recalls Molière’s fight to keep his integrity during the reign of Louis XIV when his plays were viewed by the Church and court authorities as increasingly subversive. It provides fascinating insights into both the life of Jean-Baptiste Molière (1622-1673) in 17th-century France and the Stalinist regime, of which Bulgakov was a victim.

The play is framed by two scenes in which the ‘scribbler’ records the events of the days on which the play begins and ends. He marks both days ‘with a black cross’. On the first day marked with a black cross, in 1662, Molière marries Armande Béjart, who is significantly younger than him and whom he believes to be his lover Madeleine’s sister. However, Armande was rumoured to be Madeleine’s daughter and the marriage is in the end one of the causes of Molière’s downfall. The play ends, in 1673, on another day marked with a ‘black cross’: the day of Molière’s death during his performance of Le Malade Imaginaire.

Bulgakov’s play provides, first of all, an intriguing insight into the life of one of the most famous French playwrights and the court of Louis XIV. This particular period of French history is vividly brought to life by the excellent staging, costumes, choreography and performances. The hypocrisy and extensiveness of the court is subtly highlighted, for example, by the identical masks worn by the women at Louis XIV’s court. The staging of the last scene, during which Molière’s company perform Le Malade Imaginaire, is particularly powerful. The actors chant medical formulae in Latin and oppressively dance around the main character Argan, a hypochondriac who imagines himself sick and scrupulously follows all his doctor’s orders, highlighting the arrogance and pedantry of doctors in 17th-century France, a recurring theme in Molière’s plays.

Beyond 17th-century court life, however, the play acts as a mirror of the time during which Bulgakov wrote and provides a deeper insight into the repression of the Stalinist regime. The story of the attack mounted against Molière’s Tartuffe following its premiere in 1664 hints at similar censorship in Soviet Russia. The play, which mocks a hypocritical priest and his dupes, was viewed as an attack on the Church. The Archbishop of Paris issued a statement excommunicating anyone who performed, watched or even read the play. The play itself was banned.

In a particularly dark and terrifying scene set in the crypt of church, hooded monks from the ‘League of the Holy Writ’ interrogate Zacharie Moirron forcing him to confess that Molière is married to his lover’s daughter, Armande Béjart. In the words of Jean-Jacques Bouton, the theatre factotum, the members of the league ‘take no account of the law so we must be prepared for anything’. Numerous references are made to the dangers of losing the king’s favour and a later scene, during which Moirron is interrogated by the king himself, is a further allusion to the torture and interrogations of the Stalinist era. When Moirron asks what he should do now that he has been banished from Moliere’s theatre company, the king suggests that he might ‘enter the royal service and work for the secret police’.

Bulgakov wrote at the time of the Great Terror in Russia. His plays were gradually banned and he found himself unemployable. His situation at the end of his life closely resembles that of Molière, who is portrayed as a broken man. Molière is old, has a ‘weak heart’ (he was in reality suffering from tuberculosis), has been deprived of the king’s patronage, his wife has left him and his lover is dead.

Excellently staged and performed in this production directed by Blanche McIntyre, a powerful and thought provoking play, which has forced me to reconsider my choice of the best history play of the year for our advent calendar of the top history moments of 2009!

Moliere or the League of Hypocrites
Until December 19th
Finborough Theatre
118 Finborough Road
London SW10 9ED
Telephone: 020 7244 7439
http://www.finboroughtheatre.co.uk/

Photos (by Sheryl Tait):

- Justin Avoth as Molière

- court scene with Gyuri Sarossy as Louis XIV

The Collapse of Communism in Europe: A Re-examination 20 Years After

by Kathryn Hadley

Why did communist systems in Europe collapse twenty years ago? A big question. A question that has been repeatedly asked and a question that has been tentatively answered time and time again.

It was the question that a panel of six speakers sought to answer yesterday evening at The British Academy. All speakers were present and involved in various ways in the events and through each of their presentations they sought to both recapture the spirit and views of the time and to assess the latest research. Speakers included the British academic Professor Timothy Garton Ash; Dr Andrei Grachev, who was Deputy Head of the International Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1989 to 1990 and Presidential Press Spokesman for Mikhail Gorbachev in 1991; Bridget Kendall, the BBC Moscow correspondent at the time; US Professor Robert Legvold; the Hungarian Professor Ferenc Miszlivetz, who was part of a Hungarian movement promoting East-West dialogue; and Dr Lilia Shevtsova, who was Deputy Director of the Institute of Economics of the World Socialist System in Moscow in 1989.

How were the changes perceived at the time? Was there a sense of the scale of events? Did people know that communist systems in Europe were about to collapse?

Professor Timothy Garton Ash warned against the dangers of studying the events in retrospect and of ‘hindsight bias’. In the light of these ‘illusions of retrospective’, even asking such questions may be misleading. There is a tendency to believe that the collapse of communism was bound to happen. However, it is not lose sight of what Garton Ash described as the ‘real alternatives that were there at the time’ and to examine why these real alternatives did not happen.

Indeed, most speakers stressed the unexpected outcome of the events at the time. According to Garton Ash, it is impossible to recapture the excitement of the time and times were exciting because nobody knew what would happen the following day. The outcome was also unexpected for Gorbachev. Bridget Kendall met Gorbachev on various occasions and argued that he did not want the collapse of the communist system. He ‘wanted evolution not revolution’, both to ensure popular support for his policies and that he remained in control.

As a student and member of a small group of East-West dialogue formed in 1985, Ferenc Miszlivetz remembered the hope and optimism of the time. The group sought to ‘give life’ to the Helsinki Accords signed in 1975 by establishing, for the first time, networks between students in the East and West. He described a growing sense of central European ‘togetherness’ which inspired a hope that things were gradually changing. Miszlivetz and members of similar groups that may have contributed to the collapse of communist systems on a local level had no sense, however, of the scale of what would come just a few years later.

If the collapse of communism was so unexpected, how then and why did it eventually fall?

On the whole, historians agree to a variety of causes. The fall of communism was the result of the complex interaction of all these causes on various levels, between different states, but also between states and societies.

Both Dr Andrei Grachev and Dr Lilia Shevtsova argued, however, that the collapse of communism in Russia came primarily from within due to the distinct nature of the Russian communist model. It fell victim to the contradictions of its own identities and ambitions, which were to realise social justice for all and to build and project the image of a Russian superpower in the world.

Shevtsova reiterated the words of Arnold J. Toynbee stressing the ‘suicidal statecraft’ of Russia. It gradually became increasingly difficult to realise these ambitions, in particular as war came to an end and states instead sought cooperation rather than conflict. Dr Lilia Shevtsova highlighted the uniqueness of the Russian civilisation: it was a militarised civilisation, which survived on conflict and war. The Russian economy had best performed in times of war. It was dependent on war and, from the First World War, to the Russian Civil War, the Second World War and the Cold War; war had been a constant feature throughout the 20th century.

Ferenc Miszlivetz thus underlined the importance of the effects of the Helsinki Accords signed in 1975 by the USSR and thirty-two other European states, as well as Canada and the United Sates, in an attempt to improve the relations between the communist bloc and the West.

What is the state of research on the topic today? What is the legacy of the events twenty years ago? Is communism really dead?

According to Professor Timothy Garton Ash, there remains considerable research to be done. To date research has focused on high politics and the picture therefore tends to be skewed towards high politics. However, ‘in key places and at key times’, those on the ground also exerted considerable influence on the outcome of events and there lacks a comprehensive study of the role of revolutionary crowds.

Last month, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) published a series of archived documents on German reunification as part of the Documents on British Policy Overseas (DBPO). The documents provide an insight into official British reactions to the collapse of Germany and the fall of the Berlin Wall. FCO in-house historians held a seminar, today, October 16th, to mark the event. However, the documents are restricted, once again, to the realm of high politics.

Finally, what is left of the European communism today, twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall? Although communism as a structure and economy is dead, Ferenc Miszlivetz argued that in contemporary Eastern Europe communism survived as ‘a way of thinking’. He issued the following final words of warning: ‘Be careful when you suggest that something is over; it is over and it is not’.

In many ways the ghost of Soviet Communism still haunts Eastern Europe today. In our latest September and October issues we featured a short series exploring the impact on history and memory of the collapse of Soviet Communism entitled 'After the Cold War'.
In Haunted by Stalin Catherine Merridale examines competing versions of Russia's troubled past in the light of present politics.
In After the Cold War: The Private Side of German Reunification considers the consequences of the collapse of Soviet Communism in Germany.
In After the Cold War: Finland & the Soviets Ed Dutton looks at how the experience of Finland during the period 1945 to 1989 has led to a historical identity crisis for the nation that remains unresolved.

Death of Mikhalkov, author of lyrics of Russian national anthem

by Kathryn Hadley

Sergei Mikhalkov, the author of the lyrics of the Soviet and Russian national anthems (and father of the Russian film director Nikita Milhalkov), died in Moscow yesterday, August 27th, aged 96. The life of the Russian writer is truly extraordinary. He lived through almost a century of Russian history and, from the Stalinist Soviet Union to the 21st century, rewrote the words of the Russian national anthem three times in accordance with the prevailing political agenda.

Mikhalkov was first commissioned to write the words for a national anthem, which would inspire the Red Army troops fighting Nazi Germany, in 1943. The lyrics, co-authored with the journalist Gabriel El-Registan, were set to music by Aleksandr Aleksandrov and praised Stalin as a great leader who had ‘raised [the Russian people] to be loyal to the nation, inspired us to labour and great deeds’.

In the aftermath of Stalin’s death in 1953, under Khrushchev’s policy of De-Stalinisation, all references to Stalin were discarded. The anthem was still used, albeit without any official lyrics. Mikhalkov reworked the words for the 60th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution in 1977. The lyrics were approved by the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet and became official with the adoption of the new Soviet Constitution in October 1977.

In 1991, however, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the music and lyrics of the national anthem were replaced with a piece by the 19th-century composer Mikhail Glinka. Nevertheless, in 2000, President Vladimir Putin decided to restore the old music by Alexamnder Alexandrov and Mikhalkov was commissioned, once again, to rewrite the lyrics for a third time. The current version, which extols Russia’s uniqueness and vastness and describes it as a land ‘protected by God’, was first used officially on December 30th, 2000, during a ceremony at the Great Kremlin Palace in Moscow.

Mikhalkov began his career as a children’s writer and adopted various European and Russian fairy tales to make them conform with Stalinist propaganda. He was decorated by the State for his works and notably received three Stalinist prizes for plays and film scripts. In 2003, Putin presented him with the Order of Service to the Fatherland. An article published on The Times website quoted President Medvedev’s praise of Mikhalkov, yesterday, who described the author as having ‘lived up to the interests of his Motherland, served it and believed in it’.

Nevertheless, Mikhalkov’s membership of the state-controlled Union of Soviet Writers and consequent involvement in various smear campaigns against alleged anti-Soviet writers such as Boris Pasternak and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn continues to be a source of controversy. Formed by the Communist Party Central Committee in 1932, the Union promoted the theory of Socialist Realism and other writers groups were effectively banned.

According to the article published by The Times, his lyrics also continue to cause controversy. The reproduction of those of his first national anthem in praise of Stalin in the Kurskaya station on the Moscow Metro has been heavily criticised, notably by human rights activists. However, the controversy surrounding the author’s legacy and lyrics provides, above all, an insight into how Russia has dealt, and continues to deal, with the memory of its Soviet past.

Catherine Merridale’s latest research on the topic, published in the September issue of History Today, explained this return to Russia's Stalinist past. She concluded that

‘Stalin’s ghost still walks, […] and, though it is easy to condemn the Kremlin’s
new occupants for evoking it in their pursuit of power and wealth, the strategy
could work only because a large proportion of Russia’s people was ready to
welcome the old villain home with open arms’.

The Forsaken

by Kathryn Hadley

The Forsaken by Tim Tzouliadis was published in paperback at the end of last week by Abacus. The book was the winner of the 2008 Longman/History Today Book of the Year award. Every year since 1994 History Today has presented the award in conjunction with the publisher Longman in memory of History Today’s co-founding editors Peter Quennell and Alan Hodge. This year’s judges were Professor Miri Rubin of Queen Mary, University of London, Professor Jeremy Black of University of Exeter, Taylor Downing, a documentary film-maker and historian and Peter Furtado, former editor of History Today.

‘I am in jail in Russia. Go to the nearest police station and report it. Matter of dead or live. Save me please and all the others.’

The author discovered this plea inscribed on a wooden tag smuggled out of a Soviet Gulag camp whilst carrying out research in a State Department Archive. Based on official records, memoirs, newspaper reports and interviews, The Forsaken describes the fate of the thousands of Americans who, in the 1930s in the depths of the Great Depression, emigrated to the communist Soviet Union, lured by the prospect of racial equality and honest work under Stalin’s Five Year Plan. They were, however, betrayed both by Stalin’s Russia and by their own countrymen, when the US embassy failed to protect US citizens caught up in the Terror.

For further information read the review by Taylor Downing published in the March issue of History Today.

The Tiny Enemy that Caused the Failure of Napoleon’s Russian Campaign: The Louse!

by Kathryn Hadley

According to the latest research published in a new book by the American author, Stephan Talty, Napoleon’s Russian campaign in 1812 failed primarily as a result of the spread of typhus amongst the ranks of the Grande Armée. The Illustrious Dead: The Terrifying Story of How Typhus Killed Napoleon's Greatest Army was published last month by the Crown Publishing Group. The author reconstructs the medical history of Napoleon's Russian campaign and concludes that its failure was in reality caused by an epidemic of typhus exanthematicus spread by lice.

Napoleon’s Grande Armée, larger than the population of Paris at the time, with over 600,000 men and 50,000 horses, embarked on its march to Russia in the spring of 1812. It invaded Russia on June 24th, 1812. Before the fighting began, however, many soldiers had already died.

New research into the causes of the demise of the Grande Armée began in 2001, following the discovery of a mass grave containing 2,000 bodies in Vilnius, the Lithuanian capital. Belt buckles and inscriptions of regimental numbers on the uniform buttons of the corpses revealed that the men were not victims of the KGB, nor were they Jews who had been killed during the German occupation; they were soldiers of Napoleon’s Grande Armée. The analysis of DNA samples taken from the teeth of the bodies showed that they carried pathogens of typhus exanthematicus, known in Napoleon’s era as ‘war plague’, and spread by crawling parasites.

It is believed that in the first week of the campaign, 6,000 men a day fell ill. In field hospitals along the route contagious soldiers were not isolated from their reasonably healthy comrades and the disease spread rapidly following an outbreak of lice. The only remedies used at the time were bloodletting, herbs and a mixture of wine, water and a bit of lemon juice. By the time Napoleon’s army reached Moscow, his men were far too weak to conquer the city and on October 19th, 1812, Napoleon turned the Grande Armée back towards France.

The Belgian physician at the time, J.L.R. de Kerckhove, was quoted in an article published on the website of Der Spiegel:

‘The numbers of the sick grew in overwhelming numbers, and they crawled along
the road where many of them died’.

The Westphalian batallion commander Friedrich Wilhelm von Lossberg was also quoted in the same article in a letter to his wife:

‘Napoleon doesn't give a damn how many of his soldiers are collapsing on the
road’.

For further information on Napoleon’s Russian campaign and the responses of Russian populations, read our article Napoleon in Russia: Saviour or Anti-Christ?

Quote of the Day: Peter the Great's Hairy Decree

Hence forth, in accordance with this, His Majesty's decree, all court attendants... provincial service men, government officials of all ranks, military men, all the members of the wholesale merchants' guild and members of the guilds purveying of our household must shave their beards and moustaches.

Tsar Peter the Great. Although this brought Peter and many of his court into conflict with Orthodox teaching on the wearing of facial hair the decree, dated 16th January 1705, was largely adhered to.

Read more about the historical significance of hairstyles in our article Scissors or Sword: The Symbolism of a Medieval Haircut

Past and Present meet on the seabed of the Gulf of Finland

by Kathryn Hadley

A sunken ship, which dates back almost three centuries, has been discovered in the Gulf of Finland during a seabed survey for the Nordstream gas pipeline project. The wreck was found, 54 metres beneath the seabed, near the island of Gogland along with the remains of five other ships from a Russian fleet which sank after a storm in 1713. The 16-metre long ship is a Dutch-modelled tjalk, a flat-bottomed military transport ship with a shallow draught particularly adapted to the rivers and coastal waters of Old Frislandia. It is one of the few remaining vessels from the time of Peter the Great and a precious relic of his attempts to build up the Russian navy and transform Russia into a maritime power.
Andrey Lukoshkov, the consultant for the project 'Sunken Ships', explained:

‘It was the time when Sweden and Russia fought each other over supremacy in Europe’s North’.

The ship is remarkably well-preserved and personal possessions and tableware are still identifiable in the captain’s cabin. Scientists now hope to raise the necessary funds in order to bring the ship to the surface and to transport it to a naval museum in Kaliningrad before construction work on the pipeline begins.

The extensive ‘Secrets of Sunken Ships’ project was initiated in St Petersburg in 2002 in an attempt to search, explore and ensure the state registration of the wealth of artefacts and ship wrecks discovered on the seabed of the Gulf of Finland and the Ladoga Lake. 10,000 sunken objects, which chart the history of northern Europe over a period of almost 1,400 years, have already been listed, including planes, tanks, torpedoes, anchors and ancient burials. It is believed that this figure represents a mere 30% of the artefacts which remain to be discovered. For more information on the project, visit the website

www.baltic-sunken-ships.com

For more information on the present struggle for the control of oil and gas and its history during the Great Game, read our latest article
The Great Game: Power Struggles in Asia

Magnificence of the Tsars

by Kathryn Hadley

In this dazzling exhibition, which opens today, over forty costumes and uniforms worn by the Tsars and court officials of Imperial Russia, from the collections of the Moscow Kremlin Museums, go on display at the Victoria and Albert Museum. The lavish ensembles include the coronation uniforms of seven Russian emperors from Peter II, who reigned from 1727 to 1730, to the last emperor, Nicholas II, who was crowned in 1896. The display ends with the five metre long ermine-trimmed mantle worn by Empress Alexandra at the coronation of Nicholas II, which weighs 13 kilos. The costumes are richly decorated with intricate gold and silver embroidery, lace and silks. They have survived wars and revolutions. They have been preserved in the Armoury Chamber of the Kremlin and reflect, to this day, the glamour and luxury of the Imperial Russian court. Many of the uniforms have never been on public display before. In the words of Svetlana Amelekhina, the curator of the exhibition and senior Research Officer and Curator of the Imperial Dress Collections at the Moscow Kremlin Museums: ‘it is a miracle that they have survived’.

Their preservation is a miracle, moreover, because they are tangible relics of tsarist politics. Displayed side by side and in chronological order, the evolution in the design of the costumes offers a deeper insight into almost two centuries of political changes in Russia. Peter II’s wardrobe reveals, first of all, the continued influence of Peter the Great’s programme of Westernisation on imperial dress. Peter I was the first Russian prince to visit Europe in 1697. He sought to modernise Russia by emulating aspects of social, political and cultural life in the West and issued a series of decrees, which notably made Western European dress compulsory for Russia’s urban population and stipulated that all men should be clean-shaven. The majority of Peter II’s coats and waistcoats were thus made in France and mirror French fashion of the time.

Peter I’s reforms were, however, challenged from the onset and debates about the path that Russia should follow ensued throughout the nineteenth century. The costumes of the succeeding six emperors are, to a large extent, testimony to such questioning and gradual moves away from Western influences. In 1796, Paul I was the first emperor to be crowned wearing a Prussian military style uniform. Alexander II’s accession to the throne, in 1855, saw the introduction of further reforms in accordance with the imperial policy of ‘official nationalism’. He notably gave the Russian name polucaftan to a skirted coat already worn in Western Europe. His successor, Alexander III, pursued similar reforms and designed a new military uniform, which he wore for his coronation and other public functions, which closely resembled the Russian national costume.

The costumes also reflect, however, a number of paradoxes and Western influences were not cast aside altogether. Although the polucaftan was given a Russian name, it remained a Western European style coat rather than a Russian creation. Paul I’s military style coronation uniform was also similar to that worn in Britain by the Prince of Wales, the future King George IV. Lastly, Nicholas I, who ruled from 1825 to 1855, introduced new elements of French military fashion to the uniforms worn by generals in the Russian army since 1808, despite the fact that Russia and France had been at war between 1805 and 1807 and, again, in 1812, following Napoleon’s invasion of Russia.

A series of talks, seminars, study days and film screenings will be held as a complement to the exhibition.
Film screenings notably include
Ivan the Terrible, Sergei Eisenstein, 1994, on January 2nd
Catherine the Great, Marvin J. Chomsky, 1995, on January 9th
Nicholas and Alexandra, Franklin J. Schaffner, 1986, on January 16th

For more information on the exhibition read our article

Magnificence of the Tsars

For more information on Peter the Great's programme of Westernisation read

The 17th Century 'Renaissance' in Russia: Western Influences on Art and Architecture

For more information on British influences in nineteenth century Russia read

Scottish Architects in Tsarist Russia

For more information of the Russian Tsars read our articles

The Reforms of Tsar Alexander II

Alexander III, Tsar of Russia, 1881-1889

Body of Poland’s Second World War Prime Minister exhumed

by Kathryn Hadley

The body of Wladyslaw Sikorski, the Prime Minister of the Polish government in exile in London during the Second World War, was exhumed yesterday, Tuesday 25th November, in the hope to solve the mystery of his death in a plane crash in 1943. His marble tomb in Krakow cathedral was opened up and his body was transferred to Krakow’s Institute of Forensic Research and Jagiellonian University to undergo DNA and pathological tests. The prosecutors, who are specifically investigating a communist crime sponsored by the former Soviet Union, have the backing of the Poland’s President and Prime Minister.

During the Second World War, Sikorski took command of the Polish army in France and thereafter became the head of the Polish government in exile. At the time of his death, on July 4th 1943, he was returning to London from the Middle East where he had been inspecting Polish troops which were about to join the allies. He was notably accompanied by two British MPs, his chief of staff and his daughter. His plane crashed into the sea just a few seconds after take-off from Gibraltar, allegedly due to a technical failure. Apart from the Czech pilot, all the passengers on board were killed. British investigations in the aftermath of his death concluded that it was an accident.

New investigations in 1992 revealed, however, that, at the height and speed at which it was travelling, the plane could technically not have crashed. Some claimed that the pilot had deliberately brought the plane down. The mystery of Sikorski’s death remains and has since been subject to various theories: a murder planned by the Soviet Union or by the British government.

Ewa Koj, the prosecutor overseeing the investigation claimed that:

“Given Sikorski’s important role in Poland’s history – and having the tools and know-how that we have now – we cannot let this remain a historical mystery”.

One theory is that the murder was ordered by Churchill in an effort to maintain good relations with Stalin, at a time of increasing tension between Poland and the Soviet Union. But crumbling diplomatic relations between Poland and the Soviet Union also point towards the possibility of a Soviet sponsored murder. Just before his death, Sikorski had called for an investigation into the massacre of more than 20,000 Polish officers in the Katyn forest and the finger was increasingly being pointed towards the NKVD. A further cause for tension was the Soviet Union’s moves towards the creation of a communist sponsored Polish government for the postwar period.

Dariusz Baliszewski is a Polish historian and has spent fifteen years researching the crash. For him, there is little doubt that Sikorski was assassinated.

“The British were at least passive witnesses because nothing could take place at Gibraltar without them knowing”.

Sikorski’s body will be reinterred next Wednesday following a Catholic mass. The results of tests will take time and may not prove to solve the mystery of his death. The investigation may, however, shed new light by putting pressure on the British government to open up secret documents of the time.

(the above image shows Sikorski in Gibraltar just before his death)

For more information on Anglo-Polish relations on the eve of the Second World War read our article A Fatal Guarantee: Poland, 1939

A Woman in Berlin: the fate of German victims of rape by Red Army soldiers in cinemas

by Kathryn Hadley

A Woman in Berlin, a new German film which tells the story of the fate of German women who were raped by Red Army soldiers during the occupation of German towns, was released in cinemas in Germany today, October 23rd. The woman played by Nina Hoss is raped several times by Soviet soldiers before forming a liaison with a Red Army officer in order to protect herself from further attacks.

The film is based on the diary of the German journalist Marta Hillers who was raped several times by Soviet soldiers during the days of the occupation. She began to record her experiences on April 20th 1945, the date of Hitler’s birthday, and his last before he committed suicide ten days later. She wrote her book anonymously and it was first published in the 1950s in Germany, Britain and the United States. It was, however, ignored in Germany. In 2003, it was reissued in Germany and became a bestseller, but was viewed primarily as a novel rather than a historical testimony to the horrors of the fate of some German women. Hillers died in 2001, aged 90.

The Red Army arrived in Berlin in April 1945 and, on hearing rumours of the brutality of the Soviet soldiers, many civilians sought to flee the city. It is estimated that almost two million German girls and women were raped during the closing months of the war, and many repeatedly so. Many gave birth to Russenbabies, many were infected with sexually transmitted diseases, many resorted to illegal abortions and some took their own lives. Between 1945 and 1948 approximately two million German women a year had illegal abortions. The spread of sexually disease was such that, in 1947, the Soviet authorities were forced to impose penalties on their forces in eastern Germany for fraternising with the enemy.

The release of the film coincides with the official launch of a research project headed by Dr Phillipp Kuwert at the University of Greifswald in eastern Germany about the trauma of women who were raped during the period. More than sixty years later, researchers hope to unveil more victims and to consider the extent and impact of their trauma on their lives in the aftermath of the war. Despite the focus of the film on eastern Germany, stories of rape also spread to the West where French and American soldiers in particular were tried for rapes committed in the first months of 1945. Red Army soldiers were also punished and sometimes executed, but on the whole many were able to get away with their crimes.

The film’s aim is allegedly not to depict Germans as mere victims, nevertheless, it will address stories that have remained buried and silenced beneath the humiliation and trauma of its victims. In the post-war period, Soviet propaganda in communist eastern Germany portrayed the Soviet Union as a protector; in western Germany, women were reluctant to speak of their humiliating experiences and the returning men did not want to know about the suffering of their wives, sisters, daughters and mothers. The film will raise issues of conduct and morality in war and is expected to fuel reaction and possible resentment in Russia.

For more information on the Red Army and the Soviet Liberation see the History Today articles: Liberation, Soviet Style, 1944-45 and The Price of Victory, the Cost of Aggression