“Red Thieves” of World War II: Origins, Scenarios and Consequences of Looting by Soviet Servicemen

Abstract

The article deals with the looting of soldiers and officers of the Soviet army in Europe during the World War II. The behavior of Russian invaders on the territory of Ukraine during the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian war makes this topic relevant.

The purpose of this article is to analyze the specifics of the Soviet version of military looting. The research tasks are to investigate the origins, record practices, find out how the soldiers themselves evaluated their actions and how Soviet leadership evaluated it. One of the tasks is to determine the consequences of “red looting” in shaping the social rules of the Soviet and his successor – Russian – society.

The methodology of the research is the theory of agency, which is based on the fact that under any circumstances (for example, continuous pressure from a totalitarian state or repression) people have a choice and act accordingly it.

The scientific novelty is that Soviet looting is seen as a holistic phenomenon and a well-established and permitted practice of warfare.

Conclusions. The origins of Soviet looting were not only in the desire for revenge and retribution, but in social envy (“class hatred”), because of which everyone must live not well, but as badly as the “liberators”. The reasons were also the ability to exercise the right of the strong to rob the weak, in the awareness of their superiority over enemies and those who seems to be “liberated”, for their “unique mission” in the world. Under such circumstances, the looting was directed not only against the Germans, but also against Serbs, Poles, Hungarians, Jews, Ukrainians, and so on. For the self-proclaimed successors of the victors in World War II – Russian society – the barbarization of war remained included both in the narrative of actualized memory (“We Can Repeat”, “To Berlin!”, etc.) and in the warfare against Ukraine, in which barbarism and looting are forms of institutionalization of the Russian imperial messianism.