{"id":58,"date":"2019-09-05T15:39:31","date_gmt":"2019-09-05T14:39:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/robertdale\/?p=58"},"modified":"2019-10-18T21:53:03","modified_gmt":"2019-10-18T20:53:03","slug":"a-intriguing-image","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/robertdale\/2019\/09\/05\/a-intriguing-image\/","title":{"rendered":"A Intriguing Image: John Strohm and Demobilised Veteran"},"content":{"rendered":"

In May 1947 John Strohm published an account of a visit he made to the Soviet Union in 1946.\u00a0 The book Just Tell the Truth: the Uncensored Story of How the Common People Live Behind the Russian Iron Curtain <\/em>was intended to be an honest account of everyday life in Stalin\u2019s Soviet Union in the aftermath of the war.\u00a0 Strohm hoped to give his readers a glimpse behind in the Iron Curtain as the cold war began, humanising ordinary Soviet citizens.\u00a0 In 1946 he resigned his job as the managing editor of the Prairie Farmer <\/em>in order to travel to the Soviet Union and write about its people.\u00a0 Apparently his access to the Union was only granted after a personal appeal to Stalin.\u00a0 Precisely how free Strohm\u2019s access to the Soviet Union was isn\u2019t entirely clear, he claimed to have permission to go where he wanted, to talk with whom he liked, and to take photographs at will, provided he \u201cJust Tell the Truth.\u201d <\/em>Given how visiting westerners and visiting journalists were usually managed, normally monitored by official handlers, this seems a little unlikely.\u00a0 Yet the book offers a genuine insight into how ordinary Soviet citizens lived, worked and possibly thought.\u00a0 The Rotarian<\/em>,<\/a> for example, certainly thought that it was a sympathetic study of ordinary Soviet people.\u00a0 Strohm published some accounts of his travels as he went in various newspapers and magazines, collating them with other impressions in this volume.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Strohm took his own photographs on this trip; unlike John Steinbeck\u2019s A Russian Journal <\/em>published in the same year, which could call on Robert Capa\u2019s talents.\u00a0 Remarkably I\u2019ve managed to purchase what appears to be an original, which was distributed by ACME.\u00a0 The seller had bought a large collection of photographs from press collections that had been dissolved, perhaps when ACME was sold to Corbis<\/a>, or Corbis changed ownership in 2016.<\/p>\n

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The image captures a recently demobilised Red Army veteran clutching a pair of boots, which the image description on the back explains as:\u00a0 \u201cJust demobilized, this Red Army soldier of Byeorussia carries a pair of U.S. Army shoes \u2013 UNRAA supplies. The shoes bring $100 per pair in Moscow. The solider turned down a barefoot women\u2019s offer to barter a supply of canned goods for the shoes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although this naturalistic image serves Strohm\u2019s purpose of humanising Soviet citizens, it raises a number of interesting questions.\u00a0 The United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) operated in Belorussia and Ukraine, but not in Russia.\u00a0 For more on UNRRA in the Soviet Union see Andrew Harder\u2019s article: \u201cThe Politics of Impartiality: The United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration in the Soviet Union, 1946-7.\u201d Journal of Contemporary History <\/em>47, no. 2 (April 2012): 347-69. Link<\/a><\/p>\n

However, there are a number of curious aspects of this image and the description.\u00a0 Demobilised veterans according to the 23 June 1945 demobilization law were to be supplied with a pair of footwear on their discharge.\u00a0 It seems odd that UNRRA was directly supply shoes to a veteran who already appears to be wearing a serviceable pair of boots (sapogi<\/em>), especially when people nearby why barefoot.\u00a0 UNRRA supplies, however, were perhaps being issued to demobilized veterans by the Soviet authorities.\u00a0 Footwear was a deficit commodity in the immediate post-war period, and returning soldiers were perhaps privileged citizens in getting access to these supplies.\u00a0 Although, it should be noted that obtaining shoelaces of the requisite length was not necessarily going to be easy (unless those are laces tied around the veteran\u2019s right wrist?).\u00a0 The description on the back of the photograph, however, demonstrates just how widespread barter and private trade was in the immediate post-war period.<\/p>\n

Strohm\u2019s trip to visit to the Soviet Union certainly deserves further consideration, both in his own account but perhaps also in his papers preserved at the University of Illinois Archives:\u00a0 Link<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0 Given Strohm’s extensive international connections throughout his career, an intellectual biography and international contacts and networks would be a really interesting project.<\/p>\n

N.B. 18\/10\/19<\/p>\n

Just to add that this photograph was actually published in Strohm’s book.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In May 1947 John Strohm published an account of a visit he made to the Soviet Union in 1946.\u00a0 The book Just Tell the Truth: the Uncensored Story of How the Common People Live Behind the Russian Iron Curtain was … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6000,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-58","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorised"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/robertdale\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/robertdale\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/robertdale\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/robertdale\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6000"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/robertdale\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/robertdale\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":65,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/robertdale\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58\/revisions\/65"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/robertdale\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/robertdale\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/robertdale\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}