The Soviet Home Front during the Great Patriotic War: Modern Historiography about the Nature and Evolution of the Mobilization System

ISSN 1019-3316, Herald of the Russian Academy of Sciences, 2022, Vol. 92, Suppl. 8, pp. S751–S759. © The Author(s), 2022. This article is an open access publication. Russian Text © The Author(s), 2022, published in Rossiiskaya Istoriya, 2022, No. 3. The Soviet Home Front during the Great Patriotic War: Modern Historiography about the Nature and Evolution of the Mobilization System O. V. Khlevniuk NRU Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russia e-mail: Received October 28, 2022; revised November 1, 2022; accepted November 1, 2022 Abstract—This review examines the latest historiography of the Soviet home front during the Great Patriotic War. The focus is on investigations into various aspects of the problem of the limit state of the Soviet mobilization system. Aimed at the super-intensive use of the country’s resources in the interests of the front, the maximum mobilization gave rise to numerous contradictions that required prompt resolution. For this reason, its integral feature was a complex of adjustments of a private and fundamental nature, to which the system was subjected consciously (from above) or spontaneously (from below). It was in this altered state, which enhanced its effectiveness, that it ensured victory in the war and had a significant impact on the subsequent evolution of the Soviet Union. Keywords: Great Patriotic War, Soviet home front, mobilization system, marginal mobilization DOI: 10.1134/S1019331622140052 This review does not purport to cover systematically the significant and dynamically developing historiography of the Soviet home front during the Great Patriotic War.1 Its task is to identify some of the new aspects, which would allow studying the phenomenon of the limit state in the Soviet mobilization system.2 Aimed at the ultra-high use of the country’s resources in the interests of the front, marginal mobilization gave rise to numerous contradictions that required prompt resolution. For this reason, its integral feature was various adjustments of a private and fundamental nature, to which the system was subjected consciously (from above) or spontaneously (from below). It was this altered state enhancing its effectiveness that 1 In this connection, the citations provide only some representa- tive studies reflecting thematic and regional diversity. Many worthy works, due to their large number, cannot even be named within the framework of a short review. 2 On the phenomenon of mobilization development, see Goncharov G.A., Bakanov S.A., Grishina N.V., et al., Mobilizatsionnaya model' razvitiya rossiiskogo obshchestva v XX veke [Mobilization Model of the Development of Russian Society in the Twentieth Century], Chelyabinsk, 2013. In connection with the crisis state of commercial cooperation during the war years, Pass posed the problem of the “supermobilization effect” (Pass, A.A., K voprosu o predelakh sovetskoi mobilizatsionnoi ekonomiki 1941–1945 godov: regional’nyi aspekt [The question of the Limits of the Soviet Mobilization Economy in 1941–1945: The Regional Aspect], Vestnik Chelyabinskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta, Ser. 1: Istoriya, 2008, no. 34, pp. 71–84). ensured victory in the war and had a significant impact on the subsequent evolution of the Soviet Union. Resorting to the history of the Soviet home front as an integral part of the change in the development model during the war period is a characteristic feature of modern historiography. This approach underlies the new generalizing work prepared by two specialists with generally recognized achievements in research on the socio-economic history of the Soviet period in general and the Great Patriotic War in particular, and reflecting modern achievements in the historiography of the issue.3 The publication of this significant work prompted me to prepare this review. Traditionally, investigations into the issue of the Soviet home front involve topics such as evacuation, economic development, launched restoration of the liberated territories, regulation of the labor sphere and training of personnel, the people’s life and standard of living, propaganda and mass sentiments, etc.4 Recent historiography not only expands the list of topics but 3 Goldman, W.Z. and Filtzer, D., Fortress Dark and Stern: The S751 Soviet Home Front during World War II. N.Y., 2021. Other works of these authors are widely known, which gradually gave rise to this work: Filtzer, D., The Hazards of Urban Life in Late Stalinist Russia: Health, Hygiene, and Living Standards, 1943–1953. Cambridge, 2010; Hunger and War: Food Provisioning in the Soviet Union during World War II, Ed. by W.Z. Goldman and D. Filtzer. Bloomington, 2015. S752 KHLEVNIUK makes the analysis of each one more profound. This is due to emerging new sources, primarily archival. The book by W.Z. Goldman and D. Filtzer is just one of them. It is based, in addition to a thorough generalization of the research results obtained by their predecessors, on a significant set of new documents identified during long searches in the archival funds belonging to the party–state structures of the war period. Various sources of personal origin were also used extensively. Owing to this, the authors shifted the focus of the study from the institutional and structural aspects of the problem to the specifics of the preparation and implementation of directives and the results brought about by the work of numerous mobilization mechanisms. This approach is becoming increasingly popular among researchers. Its potential is demonstrated already by the first chapter of the book dedicated to evacuation. The rescue of millions of people and material values from a rapidly advancing enemy, unique in scale and pace, is the most important event at the initial stage of the war, which largely laid the foundations for future victory. The historiography of the evacuation went through the same stages as the historiography of other aspects of the Soviet home front. It began with a review of policy documents and the introduction of some reporting data.5 In recent decades, based on new archival materials, there has been an important turn towards the investigations into practices of evacuation and its economic and social aspects. In accordance with the general socio-cultural turn of humanitarian research, the living conditions and fate of the evacuees, their interaction with the population of the eastern regions of the country, cultural exchanges, etc.,6 were studied. At the same time, mass evacuation turned out to be an important part of the Soviet mobilization system 4 Barber, J. and Harrison, M., The Soviet Home Front, 1941– 1945: A Social and Economic History of the USSR in World War II, L.; N.Y., 1991; Voina i obshchestvo [War and Society]: 1941– 1945, in two books, Ed. by G.N. Sevost’yanov, Moscow, 2004; Narod i voina: ocherki istorii Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny 1941– 1945 gg. [People and War: Essays on the History of the Great Patriotic War 1941–1945], Ed. by A. N. Sakharov (...truncated)