Professional Background
Marina Goussev is a PhD candidate in Slavic studies at the Sorbonne University in Paris, where she also received a master's degree in Slavic studies. She also holds a master's degree in Russian and East European studies from the University of Oxford and a diploma in literature and languages from the École normale supérieure (ENS). Her research focuses on Soviet representations of the Red Army's liberation of Nazi concentration camps and has received support from both the ENS and the Maison Française d’Oxford.
Fellowship Research
While at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum as an Alexander Grass Memorial Fellow, Marina Goussev will conduct research on Soviet narratives about the Red Army’s liberation of Nazi concentration and extermination camps. Her research aims to identify how different victim groups–Soviet Jews, former Ostarbeiter, and POWs–described the discovery of Nazi camps. She examines how these narratives interacted with and influenced each other, how the event was utilized for political purposes in Soviet discourse, and how the Soviet and Western memories of the Holocaust intersected concerning the liberation of the camps.
Ms. Goussev plans to utilize the Museum's collections of Soviet documents gathered by the Extraordinary State Commission (ChGK). She will also make use of selected military records from the Central Archives of the Russian Ministry of Defense about the liberation of Auschwitz and other camps. Additionally, she will incorporate materials from the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, records from the Main Resettlement Administration, and notes by novelist and war correspondent Vasilii Grossman on Treblinka.
Residency Period: January 1, 2026–April 30, 2026