The Modern Russian Historiography of the Evacuation of Industry during the Great Patriotic War and New Prospects for Research

Abstract

The article analyzes contemporary Russian historiography on the evacuation of indsutries during the Great Patriotic War. Particular attention is paid to digital data cited by researchers about the number of industrial enterprises from different economic sectors evacuated into the rear as one of the most important characteristics of the USSR military economy. The absence of comprehensive work on the evacuation of material resources into the country’s rear remains problematic. The article provides a comparison of central and regional studies of Siberia, the Volga region, and the Urals. The conclusion is drawn on the significant successes of regional historiography in studying a number of problems in organizing the relocation and placement of industrial enterprises in new places, commissioning, economic efficiency of evacuated industrial equipment, and consequences of evacuation for strengthening the Soviet rear. The points under consideration concern the main achievements and debatable issues in the study of industrial evacuation, as well as the characteristics of the prospects for this scientific problem studying. The necessity of intensifying research on such aspects. Among these aspects are the following: the influence of pre-war mobilization plans on the organization of evacuation during the war, identifying the share of equipment losses during evacuation and explanations for such losses, the creation and functioning of evacuation bases, the evacuation of design bureaus and their impact on modernization processes on evacuated factories, and the post-war fate of the evacuated equipment.