Wielka Wojna Ojczyźniana – bilans wykluczenia

The article deals with the problem of exclusion and repression of whole social groups by the Stalinist regime during the so called Great Patriotic War. It purports to show that Stalin and his milieu tried to consolidate a majority of the society by means of excluding and subjecting to repressions arbitrarily chosen social groups, seeking in this way to reduce the threat posed by instant successes of the German army in the war against the USSR. The first such group comprised Red Army soldiers who surrendered to the Germans and were prisoners of war – they were declared traitors and so their families were to suffer repressions. Another group consisted of the national minorities residing in the Soviet Union - in 1941 those were Germans and later during the liberation of the country from German occupation it meant whole nations whose representatives collaborated with the German occupants. The author argues that contrary to the claims of the Russian propaganda, victory in the war was not treated by Stalin as the victory of all the Soviet Union citizens.