ABSTRACT
At the end of the Second World War, between 250,000 and 500,000 Soviet citizens found themselves living outside of the borders of the USSR in Western Europe, the United States, and beyond. 1 For approximately six years after the cessation of hostilities, many of these individuals lived in displaced person camps. This high concentration of dislocated citizens provided Western scholars with a unique opportunity to study Soviet society first-hand by interviewing these émigrés concerning their lives under communist rule. Of course, such access to rank and file citizens living in the Soviet Union was not possible, given the closed and totalitarian nature of the Soviet government and society. Indeed, intelligence agencies from many Allied powers took advantage of this opportunity to interview some émigrés in an effort to better understand the Soviet Union. However, these interactions targeted specific people, particularly those who held positions of responsibility in the military and/or government, rather than attempting to analyze the general population. By the early 1950s, the displaced person camps were shutting down as Soviet and other refugees relocated across Europe and beyond, making it more difficult to identify, locate, and interview these people. The final closure of the camps could potentially signal that a unique opportunity to learn about the everyday lives of Soviet citizens had slipped away.
