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LABOR MOBILIZATION IN THE EVERYDAY LIFE OF STAVROPOL RESIDENTS DURING THE GREAT PATRIOTIC WAR // Tomsk State Pedagogical University Bulletin. 2018. Issue 5 (194). P. 157-165

Everyday life of wartime, or military daily life is one of the new research fields of modern historical science. The study of the events of the war “from the trench”, from the position of the combatant, or – through the eyes of a resident of the rear, who finds himself in harsh conditions of survival – helps to reconstruct the everyday labor and leisure practices, the behavioral motives of people, to more fully and deeper explore the reflection of war in the life of the population, and a separate region. The study of published and unpublished archival documents, including memoirs, letters from the inhabitants of Stavropol Territory during the Great Patriotic War, make it possible to present the scope and scale of such a phenomenon as labor mobilization. The population of the province, as well as the whole country, from the first days of the war was involved in the fulfillment of labor obligations – the construction of defense facilities, fortifications, agricultural work. Heavy physical labor, according to the memories of the participants, was beyond the strength of many women, children, adolescents. For the mobilized there were no life and nutritive conditions created, insanitary conditions prevailed. The schoolchildren, who were called to the factory schools, did not have enough clothes and shoes, poor nutrition was combined with hard work instead of training. Numerous “letters to the authorities” of wartime, including from the front line, are filled with pain and despair about the plight of their families, mobilized for work and being at the limit of survival. In general, labor mobilization, accumulating for the needs of defense the free work of a huge number of people, radically changed the daily life of the population. The hardest, in harsh conditions, shock work became the norm of life, allowing, in the end, to win the war.

Keywords: labor mobilization, the Great Patriotic War, the inhabitants of the rear, everyday life, the people of Stavropol