“The Children Lost All Patience with Promises and Wrote a Letter to Comrade STALIN ...”: The Special Note of the Head of the NKVD District Department on Settlement of Children Evacuated from the City of Leningrad in the Kalachinsk District of the Omsk Reg

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УДК 94(47)+94(571.13)

DOI 10.28995/2073-0101-2020-1-236-248

Aleksey V. Sushko

Omsk Tank-Automotive Engineering Institute, Omsk State Technical University, Omsk, Russian Federation

Marina S. Nosova

Omsk State Technical University, Omsk, Russian Federation

“The Children Lost All Patience with Promises and Wrote a Letter to Comrade STALIN ...”: The Special Note of the Head of the NKVD District Department on Settlement of Children Evacuated from the City of Leningrad in the Kalachinsk District of the Omsk Region

Abstract

The article is a source study of the special note written by the head of the NKVD district department and concerning settlement of children evacuated from the city of Leningrad to the Kalachinsk district of the Omsk region. The special note is a special services top secret document of informational nature. It contains some negative information on poorly organized reception of the evacuated children, which the authorities attempted to gloss over. Text analysis of the special note and comparing its data with information from the minutes of the meetings of the Kalachinsk executive committee allows the authors to study various problems of settlement of children evacuated from besieged Leningrad. The source highlights the role of the NKVD bodies in organizing control over the placement of children evacuated to the Omsk region that has been practically unknown to researchers before. Independently from local district officials, the Chekists observed the evacuated children’s settlement and timely informed the higher party and state leadership of difficulties, shortcomings, and negligence of individual officials in this work. The district and regional party leaders could not ignore the information coming from the NKVD bodies. On Chekists’ urging, it made local officials normalize the living conditions of children from besieged Leningrad. The NKVD officers fought irresponsibility of some of those responsible for management of the evacuated children’s lives. The authors conclude that in circumstances when the country was transformed into a single camp, governed by emergency laws of war, the work of special services to control the placement of children from besieged Leningrad was necessary and productive. The materials of this article may be of interest to researchers studying Russian society in the days of the Great Patriotic War and wartime childhood as a part of the rear daily life, as well as activities of the Soviet special services in relation to government agencies.

Keywords

Sources, Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945, Omsk region, everyday life, special services, NKVD, evacuation, orphanages.

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References

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About authors

Sushko Aleksey Vladimirovich, PhD in History, professor, Omsk Tank-Automotive Engineering Institute, department of humanitarian and socio-economic disciplines, professor; Omsk State Technical University, department of history, philosophy and social communications, professor, Omsk, +7-962-057-13-27, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

Nosova Marina Sergeevna, Omsk State Technical University, department of history, philosophy and social communications, graduate student, Omsk, Russian Federation, +7-962-059-04-99, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Submitted 27.05.2019, published (for citation):

SUSHKO, A. V., NOSOVA M. S. “Deti vyshli iz vsyakogo terpeniya zhdat' posuly, napisali pis'mo tov. STALINU…”. Spetszapiska nachal'nika raionnogo otdeleniya NKVD o razmeshchenii evakuirovannykh detei iz goroda Leningrada v Kalachinskom raione Omskoi oblasti [“The Children Lost All Patience with Promises and Wrote a Letter to Comrade STALIN ...”: The Special Note of the Head of the NKVD District Department on Settlement of Children Evacuated from the City of Leningrad in the Kalachinsk District of the Omsk Region. In Russ.]. IN: Vestnik arhivista / Herald of an Archivist, 2020, no. 1, pp. 236-248. doi 10.28995/2073-0101-2020-1-236-248

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