There are many people on the TOPWAR website, let's say, committed to the traditions of the past, and you can hardly blame them for this. And so I thought that it would be nice to give them the opportunity, on the one hand, to read a little lines that are dear to the soul, and on the other … to learn something new about such a difficult period in our military history as evacuation.
The evacuated cows pass through Moscow
And it so happened that in Soviet times, teachers of the history of the CPSU had to defend candidate and doctoral dissertations on the topic "Party leadership". What leadership is already the choice of the researcher. The main thing is that it, this leadership, be. It was required to documentarily confirm that it was, but if it did not exist, then … there was no dissertation either.
My colleague at the institute, Vyacheslav Solovyov, who studied in graduate school at Kuibyshev State University, then chose a very difficult topic "Organizational activity of the Communist Party among the evacuated population during the Great Patriotic War (based on materials from the party organizations of Kuibyshev, Penza and Ulyanovsk regions)." And I must say that he worked through as many documents as none of all the other graduate students, literally mountains, so that his work is a very interesting work, albeit of local significance. We recently met, remembered the past, youth, and I invited him to make a number of articles for VO. But he offered to do it to me, kindly submitting his work for publication. So the idea was born to give excerpts from his dissertation + my comments and additions, since I also had a chance to work on this topic in the process of writing the book "Let's Die Near Moscow or the Swastika Over the Kremlin." The text from Solovyov's dissertation is given in quotation marks. Many will be curious to see how scientific dissertations were written (and looked) in 1985. The footnotes had to be removed, there are so many of them. But some, significant ones, I put directly into the text. So, we read about how the VKP (b) led our evacuated population during the war years … That's how this dissertation began …
“During the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945, which went down in the history of our country as a time of unusually difficult trials, the Soviet people drew strength from the great Leninist ideas:“… the nature of the war and its success most of all depend on the internal order of the country war … "The origins of the USSR victory in the war against Nazi Germany lie in the very nature of the advanced social and state system, in the fundamental advantages of socialism over capitalism, as emphasized in the Program of the CPSU / new edition /, victory in the war is inextricably linked with the activities of the Communist Party, which is the inspiration and the organizer of the masses, the guiding and guiding force of our society. The victory was won by the massive heroism of Soviet soldiers at the front and the feat of the workers in the rear, unparalleled in the history of mankind. In the decree of the Central Committee of the CPSU "On the 40th anniversary of the Victory of the Soviet people in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945," it is emphasized: the creation of a mighty Soviet weapon.
An integral part of the heroic labor efforts of our people was the successful transfer of productive forces from areas that could be subject to occupation to the Soviet rear.
Even during the Civil War, V. I. Lenin pointed out the need, in the event of a threat of an enemy invasion, of urgent export from the front line to the inland areas of personnel and material resources (See: V. I. I. The evacuation carried out during the Great Patriotic War demonstrated the patriotism of the Soviet people, the organizational skills of the Communist Party, and its constant concern for people. The Political Report of the Central Committee of the CPSU XXUP Party Congress emphasizes: "Human life, the possibilities of its all-round disclosure … are the greatest value … The CPSU is guided by this in its practical activities." (Materials XXUP Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. M., Politizdat, 1986, p.21.)
In modern conditions of the continuing threat of a nuclear missile attack from the imperialist powers, organizing the protection of the population by dispersing it becomes important in the civil defense system and preserving the country's labor resources. In this regard, the experience of party leadership in the evacuation of Soviet people to safe areas, acquired during the Great Patriotic War, their placement and inclusion in productive activities, has not lost its relevance. It can find application in the economic development of new, still uninhabited regions of the country, in the rational, economical use of labor resources. This experience teaches, in particular, how to find optimal ways of effectively solving the problems facing party organizations.
The relevance of the chosen topic is also largely due to the fact that under the conditions of scientific and technological progress, the likelihood of sometimes unpredictable disasters associated with the complication of the technosphere increases. Speaking at a meeting with veterans of the Great Patriotic War, M. S. Gorbachev said: "In the current situation, the importance of the military-patriotic education of Soviet people is growing, and a lot of good things have been done in the course of preparations for the 40th anniversary of victory, this work must not be weakened even after the celebration of the anniversary." (The fortieth anniversary of the victory of the Soviet people in the Great Patriotic War: Documents and materials, M., Politizdat, 1985, p. 98.)"
The most important thing, however, in such dissertations is not praise in honor of the next fundamental congress of the CPSU and not assurances of loyalty to the cause of V. I. Lenin, but the factual materials dug up by the author in various archives, where at that time entry was firmly ordered for mere mortals. It's like mining for gold. You wash out the waste rock, and nuggets of … "information" remain. And here the work of V. Solovyov is simply beyond competition. He drew documents from 1256 files from 79 funds from 12 party and state archives. He worked at the Central Committee of the CPSU Central Committee of the IML, at the Central Committee of the Komsomol, at the Central State Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic of the USSR, the material of the funds of the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions was worked out, at the Central State Archives of the USSR - the funds of the people's commissariats of industry, and at the Central State Administration of the RSFSR the funds of the People's Commissariat of Education and the People's Commissariat of Social Security were studied.
“The base that gave most of the material was the party archives of the region. In the materials of the military departments of the party committees, documents are concentrated on the citizens who arrived from the families of soldiers, the documents of the organizational departments tell about assistance to the evacuees of all categories. The documents of the industry departments contain information about the everyday life, labor activity of the evacuated collectives of enterprises. The materials of the personnel departments contain correspondence on the appointment and movement of the evacuees. Also used were central and regional newspapers and memoirs."
So, here are a few numbers. War - war, soldiers are dying there, and civilians must be taken to the rear. And all right people … The cattle must be stolen, because the cattle is milk and meat. Take out factories. But even factories weren't as important as people. Who should work at the exported factories? "Cadres are everything!"
Therefore, during the offensive of the German troops, not only equipment was taken out, but also people! The evacuation was massive and was carried out in two stages: from June to December 1941 and from May to November 1942. Under the GKO, the Evacuation Council was first created, and then (already in the 42nd) the Evacuation Commission. During the first half of the year, about 17 million people were evacuated by all modes of transport, and in the second wave another 8 million, that is, 25 million people - the population of an entire European state, or about 30% of the population who lived in the occupied territory before the war, as well as 2,700 enterprises.
The following example speaks of the work that was carried out: an evacuation center was created in Penza on July 18, 1941. So, only through it on August 12, 399 trains with 437,800 evacuees passed. There were 15-18 trains per day. But people had to be fed, and in the canteen at Penza-I, up to 20 thousand portions were prepared daily! The Ulyanovsk evacuation point served 10 thousand meals a day!
All evacuees were divided into five groups. The first is the collectives of the factories. The second is the students of the FZO, the third is the families of military personnel. Fourth - orphanages and boarding schools. Fifth - evacuees individually. There was another category of evacuees, about which V. Soloviev did not write in his work - these are prisoners, but there will be a separate story about them.
Party organizations carried out work among the population on the subject of resettlement and consolidation. For example, in the houses where the Komsomol members lived, more than 4 thousand families were accepted. Barracks and even dugouts were built, but people settled. No one was left in the open air. And there and then the construction of factories was carried out, where these evacuees went to work.
In 1941-1942. 715 schools of FZO and RU with a contingent of 125,052 students were moved to the East from the threatened areas. In the Penza region, 80% of migrants were settled in rural areas, in the Kuibyshev region - about 58%, in Kazakhstan - 64.5%, on the Upper Volga - 77%. In the Sverdlovsk region, 80% of the migrants settled in cities and workers' settlements.
Any business in the state requires money. For resettlement in 1941, 3 billion rubles were spent. The settlers were given a one-time allowance: in December 1941 35 million rubles, in January-March 1942 55 million!
But people are people. Pravda wrote on December 18, 1941: "… there are signals that in some places workers of local organizations consider caring for the needs of the evacuated population to be almost a burden." Therefore, the party organizations fought with such an attitude, which was reflected in the documents. Families of front-line soldiers who had lost their breadwinners, evacuated from Leningrad and then Stalingrad were under special control. Much attention was paid to the creation of subsidiary plots at factories. Land was allocated for potatoes, cabbage, carrots, beets, greenhouse farms were set up.
In the Kuibyshev region alone, 306 such farms were created at factories, which produced 5 million poods of vegetables per year! In 1943, in the Kuibyshev region, an average of 320 kg of potatoes were received per family with a vegetable garden, and in the Ulyanovsk region - 559 kg. Average! For the family! That is, almost a kilogram of potatoes per day, and in some places a lot more. But the migrants received food not only from their own gardens. In the Penza region, an aid fund was created, through which almost 67.5 thousand centners of food, almost 540 thousand items of clothing and footwear, more than 12 million rubles of money were collected from the population!
As you can see, the resettlement of people was, firstly, quite well organized, that is, 30% of the most able-bodied population were removed, not counting those who left on their own, and secondly, all the settlers were resettled, provided with housing, clothing, money, work, land for vegetable gardens, seed material and even horses - to plow these same gardens. And all this in conditions when echelons with army units, military equipment, food products for the army were continuously going to the West. That is, even if we dismiss all the praises of the party traditional for that time, it is obvious that without the enormous organizational work, it would have been simply impossible to do all this.
