Refugee history at present lacks a conceptual framework, notwithstanding the proliferation of recent contributions that contribute to enlarging the field. Our article seeks to advance refugee history by drawing upon extensive research into historical case studies and proposing the framework of refugeedom. Refugeedom takes proper account of the states and other actors that defined the ‘refugee’ as a category and sought to manage refugees as figures of concern, but it also insists upon the need to consider refugees as an active and assertive historical presence in situations of crisis and constraint. It offers a promising approach for analysing episodes and sites of mass population displacement from the perspectives of governments, intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations. Crucially, refugeedom incorporates the experiences of refugees and how they narrated displacement. Finally, the article outlines a direction for global history by drawing attention to past episodes of displacement in ways that capture not only its global scale, but also the multiple relationships and practices of refugeedom.

This special issue of Contemporary European History is devoted to the impact of the two world wars on civilian population displacement in Europe. Each contributor has brought fresh material to bear on specific instances of involuntary migration that are either unfamiliar or poorly understood. The contributors seek to establish the origins of population displacement and the assistance provided by governments, non-government organisations and individuals and, where possible, also to reflect on the ways in which displacement was understood both at the time and subsequently.

During the twentieth century Armenia and Poland alike were sites of widespread population displacement, which brought into sharp focus arguments about national ‘survival’ advanced by patriotic leaders who found in refugees the embodiment of recurrent national suffering. Population displacement also attracted external support from sympathetic foreigners and from the Armenian and Polish diaspora, who regarded it as an affront to civilisation. Among Armenians a groundswell of support for repatriation gathered momentum after both world wars, because Soviet ‘protection’ offered the most realistic chance for national survival. In contrast many Poles opted not to return to Poland after 1945, regarding the communist takeover as a betrayal of Poland's struggle for independence.

This review considers Soviet economic history in the light of recent contributions to the historiography. Many of the latest studies in Soviet economic history take the form of archive-based treatments of economic policy and economic administration, the causes and consequences of periodic economic crises (notably famine), and the behaviour of workers, managers, and consumers within the constraints of the planned economy. As a result, we now have a clearer idea of the functioning of the economic system, the extent of coercion at various levels, and the scope of reform initiatives. Disagreement remains over important issues, notably the causes and timing of the Soviet economic collapse.