Lost Souls: Soviet Displaced Persons and the Birth of the Cold War

A vivid history of how Cold War politics helped solve one of the twentieth centurys biggest refugee crises

When World War II ended, about one million people whom the Soviet Union claimed as its citizens were outside the borders of the USSR, mostly in the Western-occupied zones of Germany and Austria. These displaced persons, or DPsRussians, prewar Soviet citizens, and people from West Ukraine and the Baltic states forcibly incorporated into the Soviet Union in 1939refused to repatriate to the Soviet Union despite its demands. Thus began one of the first big conflicts of the Cold War. In Lost Souls, Sheila Fitzpatrick draws on new archival research, including Soviet interviews with hundreds of DPs, to offer a vivid account of this crisis, from the competitive maneuverings of politicians and diplomats to the everyday lives of DPs.

American enthusiasm for funding the refugee organizations taking care of DPs quickly waned after the war. It was only after DPs were redefinedfrom victims of war and Nazism to victims of Communismin 1947 that a solution was found: the United States would pay for the mass resettlement of DPs in America, Australia, and other countries outside Europe. The Soviet Union protested this theft of its citizens. But it was a coup for the United States. The choice of DPs to live a free life in the West, and the Wests welcome of them, became an important theme in Americas Cold War propaganda battle with the Soviet Union.

A compelling story of the early Cold War, Lost Souls is also a rare chronicle of a refugee crisis that was solved.