“ … [I wish] for you a swift victory and a healthy return home” (1). It is with these words written by a Russian villager to German troops in December 1941 that this important and lucidly written study begins. The author sees in this quotation an encapsulation of a broader pattern of attitudes among the largely rural population of northwest Russia during the first two years of the German occupation. That is to say, many peasants were eager to see Soviet forces defeated, even as they hoped that this would be followed by a quick departure of German forces and the establishment of some sort of non-communist Russian government. Hatred of the Bolsheviks and even embrace of German victory should not be simplistically equated with an absence of Russian patriotism in any form, Enstad argues.

There is no telling whether the Mikhail Nikiforov of Rakhovo village, who wrote the letter in question, was sincere in his sentiments or simply looking to gain prospective favor with the conqueror. Indeed, Enstad devotes Chapter 7 to considering the ambiguities surrounding such expressions of sentiment. Knowing how to convincingly perform the role of loyal and obedient subject before whichever side happened to have the upper hand in any given place at any given moment was a crucial survival skill in wartime. Nonetheless, the author does present a convincing case to the effect that, specifically in northwestern Russia, hostility towards the Stalinist regime manifested itself in widespread initial support for, or at least willingness to work with, the German invaders and that these attitudes did not evaporate entirely in this region until well into 1943.

Drawing on exhaustive research in a rich variety of Russian and German sources, Enstad challenges the conventional picture of ethnic Russians rallying patriotically around the Soviet cause, even as German troops were initially welcomed by ethnically non-Russian and non-Jewish populations (notably in the Baltic states and Ukraine) happy to be liberated from Moscow's iron fist. At least in the occupied sector of northwestern Russia that constitutes the focus of this case study, the evidence indicates otherwise. A number of factors contributed to this phenomenon. First, those elements of the population most closely identified with Soviet power were more likely than average to have fled the approaching German forces. Secondly, as in other parts of the Soviet Union, the rural population (which constituted 93 per cent of the total remaining in the region after its conquest) had every motive to hate the Soviets in the wake of the collectivization and dekulakization upheavals of the 1930s. Thirdly—and here the region's experience diverges sharply from that of occupied Ukraine—the Nazis acquiesced in the early decollectivization of agriculture in northwest Russia as well as the revival of the Church under the oversight of the German-authorized Pskov Orthodox Mission. The Germans also tended to be less rapacious in their exploitation of agrarian resources in this region than the Soviet authorities had been. In the eagerness with which peasants redistributed land-use rights and flocked into churches, Enstad sees indications of the survival within peasant communities and mentalities of a set of values and loyalties that defied the outward appearance of total transformation and ideological integration projected by the Stalinist regime on the eve of the war.

Even as it presents evidence of a relatively enlightened set of policies by the German military administration of this region, this book also documents in considerable detail the atrocities committed by Hitler's forces against the area's Jews, Roma, and Soviet POWs, as well as countless Russian peasants subjected to collective reprisals, forced labor, displacement, and hunger. That said, it would have been interesting to learn more about what enabled relatively cooler German heads to prevail in northwestern Russia when it came to management of the ethnic-majority population, even as Himmler's wanton disregard for indigenous interests ended up alienating Ukrainian nationalists to the south.

This is a superb monograph with important implications for our understanding of both life under Stalinism and responses to Nazi conquest among ethnically Russian peasants. It opens an intriguing window on the experiences of one hitherto understudied region of Russia during the war, and constitutes an inspiring model for the study of public attitudes and private emotions in other parts of the Soviet Union in this era.