Kolkhozes in the Practice of State and Political Administration of the USSR at the Initial Stage of the Great Patriotic War of 1941–45

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УДК 94(47)

DOI 10.28995/2073-0101-2020-3-810-823

Olga A. Sukhova

Penza State University, Penza, Russian Federation

Kolkhozes in the Practice of State and Political Administration of the USSR at the Initial Stage of the Great Patriotic War of 1941–45

Abstract

The article addresses problems of document complexes interpretation, specifically, materials of the Agricultural Department of the Central Committee of the ARCP (B) from the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History, which reveal the specifics of state political management practices in the USSR in relation to kolkhozes during the initial stage of the Great Patriotic War. By their type, these sources are materials of informational, current records, and reporting documentation. They contain assessment of the state of agricultural production in the regions of the USSR; characterize practice of making and implementing management decisions; review reasons for the failure of administrative mobilization campaigns. The article attempts a source analysis of studying limits and possibilities of the mobilization model of agricultural management in the USSR in 1941–43 and content and results of relevant practices. The thesis of necessary correlation between authentic reproduction of political actors' judgments (in form of demands to fight the “anti-state line,” “squandering,” and “fraud”) and underlying reasons of anti-crisis management as a compensatory mechanism in implementation of the mobilization model has its special educational value. The research has allowed the author to conclude that the crisis of collective farm production was aggravated by the appearance of additional threats to viability of peasant economy at the initial stage of the Great Patriotic War. The situation was so critical that it required implementation of emergency measures in practices of state and political management, including restoration of political departments of the MTS, methods of direct anti-crisis management, general mobilization of labor resources during the most important agricultural campaigns, strengthening of mass political education of farmers, which involved huge corps of political workers.

Keywords

Archival document, collective farm system, USSR, Great Patriotic War, political department of the MTS, practices of state and political management, corpus of sources, source study.

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References

KONDRASHIN, V. V., MOZOKHIN, O. B. Politotdely MTS v 1933—1934 gg. [Political departments of the MTS in 1933-1934. In Russ.]. Moscow, Russkaya kniga publ., 2017, 304 p.

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ERIKSON, R. Komandnaya ekonomika i ee nasledie [Team economy and its heritage. In Russ.]. IN: Ekonomika Rossii. Oksfordskii sbornik [ALEXEEV, M., WEBER. Sh. (eds.). The Oxford Handbook of the Russian Economy. In Russ.]. Moscow, Izdatel'stvo Instituta Gaidara publ., 2015, pp. 101-165.

About the authors

Sukhova Olga Alexandrovna, PhD in History, professor, Penza State University, V. G. Belinsky Pedagogical University, faculty of history and philology, dean, Penza, Russian Federation, +7-927-289-20-41, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Grant information

The article has been prepared with the financial support of the RFBR (project no. 18-09-00125) “Economics and practices of social interaction in the Soviet village in the context of the mobilization economy of the USSR in the 1930s — early 1950s.”

Submitted 15.03.2020, published (for citation):

SUKHOVA, O. A. Kolkhozy v praktike gosudarstvenno-politicheskogo upravleniya v SSSR na nachal'nom etape Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny 1941-1945 gg. [Kolkhozes in the Practice of State and Political Administration of the USSR at the Initial Stage of the Great Patriotic War of 1941–45. In Russ.]. IN: Vestnik arhivista / Herald of an Archivist, 2020, no. 3, pp. 810-823. doi 10.28995/2073-0101-2020-3-810-823

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