Second Paper Assignment (Due November 14 at 10:00 am)

Please choose one of the following topics for your 4-5 page paper:

  1. In describing Polish responsibility for the massacre of Jedwabne’s Jews, Jan Gross writes that, "There were things people could have done at the time and refrained from doing; and there were things they did not have to do but nevertheless did. Accordingly, I will be particularly careful to identify who did what in the town of Jedwabne on July 10, 1941, and at whose behest" (9-10). At the book’s end he claims to have established what happened "beyond reasonable doubt" (170). Does the book live up to these claims? Put another way, does Gross successfully identify who did what, and why, on July 10, 1941 in the town of Jedwabne? If so, how? If not, why not?
     
  2. Surveying the experiences of societies under occupation, Jan Gross rejects the term "collaboration" as too restrictive, preferring "collusion or complicity" (Gross, "War as Revolution," 25). Are the categories "collaboration" and its opposite, resistance, sufficient to describe the behavior of people and governments in Eastern Europe during the Second World War? Why or why not? That is, you need to advance and defend criteria for evaluating these concepts. At a minimum, your answer should consider events from either Under a Cruel Star or Neighbors, as well as other cases described in the readings (e.g., Hungary as described by Deak, Yugoslavia as described by Lampe, Romania as described by Sebastian, and/or Berend about any of the countries we have been studying).
     
  3. Czesław Miłosz wrote in 1951 that, “Ketman in its narrowest and severest form is widely practiced in the people’s democracies” (51). Craft a paper describing what he meant by “Ketman” and evaluate whether it is a useful concept to describe why people behaved the way they did in Eastern Europe in the Stalinist period. Among the sources that might be helpful to you, apart from Miłosz himself, are Under a Cruel Star, Swain and Swain, and documents in Stokes (e.g., Jakub Berman’s memoir, the investigation of the Slansky Trial, Zhdanov’s explanation of the Two Camps, and/or the documents about the Stalin-Tito split.).

    4.  

    Whichever topic you choose, remember that your essay should demonstrate a close reading of the text(s) under consideration.

    Papers will be considered late if they are not in my mailbox in the Main Hall Office by 10:00 am on Thursday, November 14.