ABSTRACT
The German invasion of the Soviet Union, when it finally came in June 1941, exaggerated to the extreme many of the practices of the Stalinist regime in all spheres of mobilization, diplomacy, and repression. This chapter summarizes the efforts to adapt to and meet the onslaught of the German armies. At the same time, the pattern of Stalin's reaction to real war differed from earlier crises. The nature of repression, in particular, changed, focusing increasingly on ethnic as well as social categories. Mobilization, of course, affected not only the military-industrial sphere, as in previous crises, but the whole country and population. The chapter explores the increasingly complicated distinctions that separated groups who were repressed, exiled, or relocated through evacuation. Attention is especially given to the sometimes blurred distinction between exile and evacuation. This chapter also makes clear that, as the war went on, policies of repression became increasingly focused on ethnic groups, not just because they were suspect as possibly collaborationist but because they possessed some essentially unredeemable anti-Soviet qualities.
