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 century’s biggest refugee crisesWhen 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 DPs-Russians, prewar Soviet citizens, and people from West Ukraine and the Baltic states forcibly incorporated into the Soviet Union in 1939-refused 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 redefined-from “victims of