"Ivan Goes Abroad: the Red Army in the Balkans and Central Europe, 1944-1945"
Professional Background
Mr. Vojin Majstorović is a PhD Candidate in history and Jewish studies at the University of Toronto (Canada). He received his MA from the same institution in 2006 for Russian and Eurasian studies. Mr. Majstorović has language skills in Serbo-Croatian, English, Russian, Ukrainian, and Bulgarian. While in residence at the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, Mr. Majstorović will work on his project, “Ivan Goes Abroad: the Red Army in the Balkans and Central Europe, 1944-1945”.
Mr. Majstorović’s article, “The Red Army in Yugoslavia, 1944-1945” is forthcoming in the 2016 summer issue of Slavic Review. He has presented a variety of original papers, including: “Gender, Nationalism and Identity in the Red Army,” presented at the the annual conference of the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in November 2015; “International Bonding through Hatred and Violence: the Yugoslav-Soviet Encounter and the German Enemy during World War II,” presented at The Violence of War Conference with the University College of London on June 19-20, 2014; and "Interpreting Genocide: Soviet Officers and the Holocaust in Bulgaria, Yugoslavia and Hungary," presented at the Conference New Scholars/New Research on the Holocaust at the University of Toronto in October, 2013. He has also been awarded Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada scholarship, the Granovsky-Gluskin Graduate Scholarship in Jewish Studies and the Earl and Renee Lyons Graduate Scholarship in Jewish Studies.
Fellowship Research
For his Alexander Grass Memorial Fellowship, Mr. Majstorović explored the Russian Army’s policies towards Jews in territories that had recently come under Soviet control and mutual perceptions between the Soviet troops and Jews. His work focused on how the Holocaust informed soldiers and officers’ worldview in general, and attitudes towards Romanians, Hungarians and Austrians in particular.
Mr. Majstorović was in residence at the Mandel Center until December 31, 2016.