This C. Mildred Thompson lecture explores how ordinary things can tell the story of an epic event. The Red Army during World War II was the largest force assembled in human history. Millions of diverse people—men and women, peasants and workers, believers and atheists—came together to defeat an enemy who wanted to enslave or annihilate them. A common set of objects was often all that separated these soldiers from civilians and what united very different people in the ranks.

Brandon Schechter is author of The Stuff of Soldiers (2019). He has taught at Columbia, NYU, NYU Shanghai, Brown, and the University of California at Berkeley, where he received his PhD (2015). He received his BA in Russian Studies at Vassar (2005).