Benjamin Tromly
Biographic Data
| ID | 1124575 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Benjamin Tromly |
| GIVEN NAMES | Benjamin |
| FAMILY NAME | Tromly |
| SIGNATURE | TROMLY B |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Puget Sound |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-5500-092X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 13 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 11 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 13 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2004 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
The Origins of the Construct of Russophobia
This article re-examines the origins of Russophobia as a component of nationalist discourse in the late Soviet Union and beyond, pointing to the crucial roles played by Cold War institutions in the west and the Russian diaspora. The article focuses on Radio Liberty (RL), the US-funded broadcaster to the Soviet Union, as an institution where Russian national questions were confronted and then conveyed to the Soviet public. In the late Soviet years…
Such are the Demands of our Propaganda and our Truth
This article examines the production of historical knowledge by Russians who were displaced from the Soviet Union during the Second World War. Its focus is the followers of Soviet General Andrei Vlasov, who created a ‘Russian Liberation Army’ that served the Nazis during the war, many members of which were captured and punished as traitors by the Soviets after the war. The survivors of the so-called ‘Vlasov Movement’ found refuge in the Cold War …
Studying the Great Patriotic War in the Shadow of the Current Crisis
The full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 has thrown the field of post-Soviet studies into upheaval, as scholars seek to strike a balance between expressing opposition to an aggressive war and maintaining scholarly neutrality and recognition of complexity. Against this backdrop, the study of Russia’s memory of the Great Patriotic War—which has been invoked to justify the invasion of Ukraine—is particularly challenging. In this light, the…
The Stalinist Political Culture of the Second Wave of the Russian Diaspora
This article examines the career of Vladimir Vasil’evich Pozdniakov during the Second World War and the early Cold War. A lieutenant colonel in the Red Army who was arrested during the Great Terror, Pozdniakov was captured on the Eastern front in October 1941. He collaborated with the Germans, first serving as the head of camp police in 1942, then becoming a propagandist in the system of POW camps, and finally serving as a high-ranking officer in…
To win the confidence of these curiously twisted and disoriented people’
This article examines the origins of the Free Russia Fund/East European Fund, a philanthropic project carried out through the Ford Foundation that aimed to offer support for displaced persons arriving in the United States in the early 1950s. It demonstrates that George F. Kennan and other organisers of the project started the endeavour with bold Cold War ambitions, but soon lost hope in the political potential of refugees and exiles. The episode …
Beyond Betrayal
Cold War Exiles and the CIA
During the height of the Cold War in the 1950s, the United States government unleashed covert operations intended to weaken the Soviet Union. As part of these efforts, the CIA undertook support of Russian exiles, populations uprooted either during World War II or by the Russian Revolution decades before. No one seemed better prepared to fight in the American secret war against communism than the uprooted Russians, whom the CIA directed to carry o…
Émigré Politics and the Cold War
This article examines the post-war activities of the National Labor Alliance (NTS), a far-right Russian exile organisation whose members had served in German intelligence and propaganda structures during the Second World War. Using declassified CIA documents and previously untapped sources pertaining to NTS, it analyses the transformation of a semi-fascistic, collaborationist and anti-Semitic organisation into a Cold War asset of the CIA. The NTS…
The Making of a Myth
This article examines the role of the National Labor Alliance (NTS), a far-right organization of Russian exiles, in U.S. intelligence operations during the early Cold War. Drawing on declassified archival documents and émigré sources, the article discusses how the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) used the NTS in covert operations to undermine Communism in Europe. Early operations to penetrate Soviet borders failed, as NTS members who were s…
Brother or Other? East European Students in Soviet Higher Education Establishments, 1948–1956
After World War II, bilateral agreements within the Eastern bloc brought youth from the newly established satellite states of Eastern Europe to study in higher education establishments in the USSR. Designed to impart Soviet knowledge and practices in the countries of people’s democracy as well as to create a sense of solidarity within the bloc, the training of East Europeans in the center of world communism proved a tension-filled affair. Spurred…
Soviet Patriotism and its Discontents among Higher Education Students in Khrushchev-Era Russia and Ukraine
What was Soviet patriotism? A definition of the term offered by the Soviet ideological apparatus in 1953—a “social, historically conditioned feeling of love for one's motherland“—raises more questions than it answers. Patriotism was a concept foreign to classical Marxism; indeed, the concept, along with the corresponding term “the Soviet people,” entered mass usage only in the mid-1930s, when the Soviet government moved away from class as the dom…
An Unlikely National Revival
The article discusses higher learning in the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1965 and the generation of free-thinking writers and humanitarians known as the "sixtiers." A leader in this group was the Ukrainian novelist Volodymyr Drozd. The author explains that Drozd wanted to write only that which would benefit the Ukrainian people. The sixtiers promoted national cultural expression and national mobilization in the 1980s. How the sixtiers challenged es…
The Leningrad affair and Soviet patronage politics, 1949–1950
The Leningrad affair and Soviet patronage politics, 1949–1950
The Making of a Myth
This article examines the role of the National Labor Alliance (NTS), a far-right organization of Russian exiles, in U.S. intelligence operations during the early Cold War. Drawing on declassified archival documents and émigré sources, the article discusses how the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) used the NTS in covert operations to undermine Communism in Europe. Early operations to penetrate Soviet borders failed, as NTS members who were s…
Soviet Patriotism and its Discontents among Higher Education Students in Khrushchev-Era Russia and Ukraine
What was Soviet patriotism? A definition of the term offered by the Soviet ideological apparatus in 1953—a “social, historically conditioned feeling of love for one's motherland“—raises more questions than it answers. Patriotism was a concept foreign to classical Marxism; indeed, the concept, along with the corresponding term “the Soviet people,” entered mass usage only in the mid-1930s, when the Soviet government moved away from class as the dom…
An Unlikely National Revival
The article discusses higher learning in the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1965 and the generation of free-thinking writers and humanitarians known as the "sixtiers." A leader in this group was the Ukrainian novelist Volodymyr Drozd. The author explains that Drozd wanted to write only that which would benefit the Ukrainian people. The sixtiers promoted national cultural expression and national mobilization in the 1980s. How the sixtiers challenged es…
Studying the Great Patriotic War in the Shadow of the Current Crisis
The full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 has thrown the field of post-Soviet studies into upheaval, as scholars seek to strike a balance between expressing opposition to an aggressive war and maintaining scholarly neutrality and recognition of complexity. Against this backdrop, the study of Russia’s memory of the Great Patriotic War—which has been invoked to justify the invasion of Ukraine—is particularly challenging. In this light, the…
Brother or Other? East European Students in Soviet Higher Education Establishments, 1948–1956
After World War II, bilateral agreements within the Eastern bloc brought youth from the newly established satellite states of Eastern Europe to study in higher education establishments in the USSR. Designed to impart Soviet knowledge and practices in the countries of people’s democracy as well as to create a sense of solidarity within the bloc, the training of East Europeans in the center of world communism proved a tension-filled affair. Spurred…
The Leningrad affair and Soviet patronage politics, 1949–1950
Soviet Patriotism and its Discontents among Higher Education Students in Khrushchev-Era Russia and Ukraine
What was Soviet patriotism? A definition of the term offered by the Soviet ideological apparatus in 1953—a “social, historically conditioned feeling of love for one's motherland“—raises more questions than it answers. Patriotism was a concept foreign to classical Marxism; indeed, the concept, along with the corresponding term “the Soviet people,” entered mass usage only in the mid-1930s, when the Soviet government moved away from class as the dom…
An Unlikely National Revival
The article discusses higher learning in the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1965 and the generation of free-thinking writers and humanitarians known as the "sixtiers." A leader in this group was the Ukrainian novelist Volodymyr Drozd. The author explains that Drozd wanted to write only that which would benefit the Ukrainian people. The sixtiers promoted national cultural expression and national mobilization in the 1980s. How the sixtiers challenged es…
Brother or Other? East European Students in Soviet Higher Education Establishments, 1948–1956
After World War II, bilateral agreements within the Eastern bloc brought youth from the newly established satellite states of Eastern Europe to study in higher education establishments in the USSR. Designed to impart Soviet knowledge and practices in the countries of people’s democracy as well as to create a sense of solidarity within the bloc, the training of East Europeans in the center of world communism proved a tension-filled affair. Spurred…
The Making of a Myth
This article examines the role of the National Labor Alliance (NTS), a far-right organization of Russian exiles, in U.S. intelligence operations during the early Cold War. Drawing on declassified archival documents and émigré sources, the article discusses how the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) used the NTS in covert operations to undermine Communism in Europe. Early operations to penetrate Soviet borders failed, as NTS members who were s…
Cold War Exiles and the CIA
During the height of the Cold War in the 1950s, the United States government unleashed covert operations intended to weaken the Soviet Union. As part of these efforts, the CIA undertook support of Russian exiles, populations uprooted either during World War II or by the Russian Revolution decades before. No one seemed better prepared to fight in the American secret war against communism than the uprooted Russians, whom the CIA directed to carry o…
Émigré Politics and the Cold War
This article examines the post-war activities of the National Labor Alliance (NTS), a far-right Russian exile organisation whose members had served in German intelligence and propaganda structures during the Second World War. Using declassified CIA documents and previously untapped sources pertaining to NTS, it analyses the transformation of a semi-fascistic, collaborationist and anti-Semitic organisation into a Cold War asset of the CIA. The NTS…
Beyond Betrayal
The Stalinist Political Culture of the Second Wave of the Russian Diaspora
This article examines the career of Vladimir Vasil’evich Pozdniakov during the Second World War and the early Cold War. A lieutenant colonel in the Red Army who was arrested during the Great Terror, Pozdniakov was captured on the Eastern front in October 1941. He collaborated with the Germans, first serving as the head of camp police in 1942, then becoming a propagandist in the system of POW camps, and finally serving as a high-ranking officer in…
To win the confidence of these curiously twisted and disoriented people’
This article examines the origins of the Free Russia Fund/East European Fund, a philanthropic project carried out through the Ford Foundation that aimed to offer support for displaced persons arriving in the United States in the early 1950s. It demonstrates that George F. Kennan and other organisers of the project started the endeavour with bold Cold War ambitions, but soon lost hope in the political potential of refugees and exiles. The episode …
Studying the Great Patriotic War in the Shadow of the Current Crisis
The full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 has thrown the field of post-Soviet studies into upheaval, as scholars seek to strike a balance between expressing opposition to an aggressive war and maintaining scholarly neutrality and recognition of complexity. Against this backdrop, the study of Russia’s memory of the Great Patriotic War—which has been invoked to justify the invasion of Ukraine—is particularly challenging. In this light, the…
Such are the Demands of our Propaganda and our Truth
This article examines the production of historical knowledge by Russians who were displaced from the Soviet Union during the Second World War. Its focus is the followers of Soviet General Andrei Vlasov, who created a ‘Russian Liberation Army’ that served the Nazis during the war, many members of which were captured and punished as traitors by the Soviets after the war. The survivors of the so-called ‘Vlasov Movement’ found refuge in the Cold War …
The Origins of the Construct of Russophobia
This article re-examines the origins of Russophobia as a component of nationalist discourse in the late Soviet Union and beyond, pointing to the crucial roles played by Cold War institutions in the west and the Russian diaspora. The article focuses on Radio Liberty (RL), the US-funded broadcaster to the Soviet Union, as an institution where Russian national questions were confronted and then conveyed to the Soviet public. In the late Soviet years…
Political science (12 works) · Law (11 works) · History (10 works) · Law (9 works) · Politics (8 works) · Sociology (8 works) · Eastern European Communism and Reforms (7 works) · Economic history (7 works) · History (7 works) · Cold war (6 works)