Top secret report of E. M. Yaroslavsky to the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks on official journey to Siberia in November–December 1942

Document publication

doi 10.28995/2073-0101-2025-1-154-170

For citation

Sushko, Alexey V., Petin, Dmitry I. (2025). Top secret report of E. M. Yaroslavsky to the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks on official journey to Siberia in November–December 1942, Herald of an Archivist, № 1, pp. 154-170, doi 10.28995/2073-0101-2025-1-154-170

Sushko, Alexey V., Petin, Dmitry I., Omsk State Technical University, Omsk, Russia

Top secret report of E. M. Yaroslavsky to the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks on official journey to Siberia in November–December 1942

Abstract

This paper is a source study of the previously unpublished top secret report prepared by the famous Soviet party-statesman E. M. Yaroslavsky on the results of his last working trip to Siberia in November-December 1942. M. Yaroslavsky on the results of his last working trip to Siberia in November-December 1942. The content specificity of the document implied familiarization with it only by the top leadership of the USSR. The published source, which is in permanent storage at the Russian State Archive of Social and Political History (RGASPI), makes it possible to highlight a number of important points. First of all, these are the forms and methods of organizational and managerial work of the central government in relation to the Ural-Siberian rear at the stage of a fundamental turning point in the Great Patriotic War. The basis of the content of the published report makes a significant emphasis on the problems of the functioning of defense-industrial enterprises, the arrangement of the social block and everyday life of the inhabitants of the region, which ensured the fulfillment of strategic tasks for the state. The purpose of the study is to analyze the content features of the published source in the context of the concrete-historical situation of its appearance. The theoretical basis of the work is represented by a combination of anthropological approach, the principle of systematicity, source and biographical methods. This methodological combination allowed us to study the published document within the framework of the peculiarities of the Stalinist era and the Great Patriotic War period, taking into account its authorship. At the same time, the cited source is interpreted, among other things, as a product of the functioning of the Soviet administrative system. E. M. Yaroslavsky's report on the everyday life of the home front on his trip to Siberia is also very valuable from the perspective of local history. It covers several major centers of defense-industrial production and resource-mining capacities of that period. According to the publishers, the document is a vivid testimony of the Party's mass-political work aimed at the total mobilization of Soviet society to fight fascism. As emphasized in the work, such activities, in which E. M. Yaroslavsky took an effective part, became one of the guarantees of the victory of the Soviet people in the Great Patriotic War. The work may be of interest to researchers studying the Great Patriotic War, the Siberian rear and military everyday life, social and political activities of E. M. Yaroslavsky, as well as the role of ideology and mass-political work in the Soviet society of the Stalinist era.

Keywords

Historical sources, historical anthropology, mass-political work, All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks (b), Great Patriotic War 1941-1945, Siberian rear, everyday life, E. M. Yaroslavsky.

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About authors

Sushko Alexey V., Doctor of Historical Sciences, Omsk State Technical University, Department of History, Philosophy and Social Communications, Professor; Omsk, Russia, +7-962-057-13-27, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Petin Dmitry I., PhD of Historical Sciences, Omsk State Technical University, Department of History, Philosophy and Social Communications, Associate Professor, Omsk, Russia, Omsk, +7-950-333-56-81, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

The article was received in the editorial office on 17.06.2024, recommended for publication on 20.12.2024