1939 in the USSR: Self-awareness of a transitional epoch: From the guest editors

Abstract

: This introductory note explains the tasks of the section “1939 in the USSR: Self-awareness of a Transitional Epoch”. It discusses signifcant differences in the social perception of historical time between Soviet, Eastern European and NorthAmerican societies. In the USSR, the year 1939 became an epoch colored not only with anticipation of the forthcoming war, but also with the stress of the social and anthropological catastrophe — the Great Terror — that had already engulfed the country. After considering the special traits of historical imagination characteristic for Soviet society in 1939, we are able to defne more exactly certain analytical constructs that are relevant to notions of the future in societies going through a crisis.