Wartime Suffering and Survival
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Wartime Suffering and Survival by Jeffrey Hass
During the 872-day siege of Leningrad from September 1941 to January 1944, civilians endured air raids, bread rations as low as 125 grams, food theft and speculation by opportunistic officials and shadow market traders, and death by starvation. As shocks of total war weaken institutions, desperate survival can compel violation of norms, and personal suffering can shatter long-held beliefs and practices. In Wartime Suffering and Survival, Jeffrey K. Hass uses the Blockade of Leningrad in World War II to explore the social practices and dynamics by which we cope or collapse. Using hundreds of personal accounts from diaries, recollections, police records, interviews, and state documents, Hass tells the story of how average Leningraders coped with the nightmares of war, starvation, and extreme uncertainty. By exploring the state and shadow markets, food, families, gender, class, death, and suffering, he describes the routines of daily life, the functioning of official institutions, and the development of illegal practices that were made and remade in the interactions of citizens and state agencies coping with new and extreme situations. The key to what Leningraders did and how they survived, Hass argues, is relations to anchors--entities of symbolic and personal significance that tethered Leningraders to each other and shaped practices of empathy and compassion, and of opportunism and egoism. Moving and powerful, Wartime Suffering and Survival goes to the heart of human resilience and fragility and to the core of the human condition--both individual and social.
Just as early biologists who sought to understand the human body's adaptation to heat or cold had to abandon the temperate zones for the deserts and the polar regions, so social scientists must expand the range of environments they study to fathom the adaptive capacity of the human spiritIn this comprehensive study of how citizens—everyday people and those representing the authority of the state—responded to extraordinary privation as Hitler's armies encircled Leningrad, Jeffrey Hass does exactly that. Drawing on detailed accounts from Russian archives, he tells a story of daily life in extremis, vivid and alternately horrifying and inspiring in its details, with profound implications both for social theory and for anticipating human responses to contemporary challenges. A tour de force of moral sociology. * Paul DiMaggio, Professor of Sociology, New York University *
Drawing on personal and state archives, Jeffrey Hass chronicles the efforts of men and women in besieged Leningrad to maintain their humanity even as survival compelled the violation of 'civilized' norms. In Leningraders' dilemmas, he seeks answers to universal questions of how individuals, institutions, and gender and class relations adapt and endure through moments of profound suffering. * Lisa A. Kirschenbaum, Professor of History, West Chester University, and author of The Legacy of the Siege of Leningrad, 1941-1995: Myth, Memories, and Monuments *
Jeffrey Hass, in this beautifully written and bracingly clear book, presents the material, institutional, and moral dilemmas Leningraders faced during the Nazi Blockade in which one million of them died. Readers will gain insights into daily life and the overall dynamics of the Blockade while learning new truths about human behavior, emotion, and thought in extreme situations. * Richard Lachmann, Professor of Sociology, University at Albany-SUNY *
In Wartime Suffering and Survival, Hass masterfully weaves together individual stories with sociological analysis to present a fresh and compelling portrait of the human condition during the siege of Leningrad. Privileging the contemporaneous voices of Leningraders themselves, Hass is sensitive, subtle, and unflinching in revealing the complex, evolving interplay between people and institutions throughout the Blockade. His discussion of compelled and tragic agency—how individuals make unthinkable choices under desperate conditions—will stay with the reader long after the last page has been turned. * Juliet Johnson, Professor and Chair of the Department of Political Science, McGill University *
Drawing on personal and state archives, Jeffrey Hass chronicles the efforts of men and women in besieged Leningrad to maintain their humanity even as survival compelled the violation of 'civilized' norms. In Leningraders' dilemmas, he seeks answers to universal questions of how individuals, institutions, and gender and class relations adapt and endure through moments of profound suffering. * Lisa A. Kirschenbaum, Professor of History, West Chester University, and author of The Legacy of the Siege of Leningrad, 1941-1995: Myth, Memories, and Monuments *
Jeffrey Hass, in this beautifully written and bracingly clear book, presents the material, institutional, and moral dilemmas Leningraders faced during the Nazi Blockade in which one million of them died. Readers will gain insights into daily life and the overall dynamics of the Blockade while learning new truths about human behavior, emotion, and thought in extreme situations. * Richard Lachmann, Professor of Sociology, University at Albany-SUNY *
In Wartime Suffering and Survival, Hass masterfully weaves together individual stories with sociological analysis to present a fresh and compelling portrait of the human condition during the siege of Leningrad. Privileging the contemporaneous voices of Leningraders themselves, Hass is sensitive, subtle, and unflinching in revealing the complex, evolving interplay between people and institutions throughout the Blockade. His discussion of compelled and tragic agency—how individuals make unthinkable choices under desperate conditions—will stay with the reader long after the last page has been turned. * Juliet Johnson, Professor and Chair of the Department of Political Science, McGill University *
Jeffrey K. Hass is currently an associate professor in the Department of Sociology & Anthropology at the University of Richmond and a part-time Professor of Economics in the Faculty of Economics, Department of Economic Theory, at St. Petersburg State University in Russia.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780197514276 |
| ISBN 10 | 0197514278 |
| Title | Wartime Suffering and Survival |
| Author | Jeffrey Hass |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Hardback |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press Inc |
| Year published | 2021-08-10 |
| Number of pages | 440 |
| Prizes | Winner of Winner, 2023 Mirra Komarovsky Book Award, Eastern Sociological Society Co-Winner, 2022 Outstanding Book Award, Section on Peace, War and Social Conflict, American Sociological Association Honorable Mention, 2022 Distinguished Scholarly Book Award, American Sociological Association. |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |