The Head of the Stalingrad City Defense Committee A.S. Chuyanov and the Issue of Evacuation of the Civilian Population of Stalingrad in July–September 1942

Introduction. The fate of Stalingrad’s civilian population in the summer and fall of 1942 is an exceptionally important and complex historical problem. Methods and materials. In the process of working with the documents of the Stalingrad City Defense Committee, we used the approaches of critical theory. In this respect, criticism and a reflexive attitude allow us to get away from a stereotypical and simplified consideration of the situation in the Stalingrad administration system in July–September 1942. Critical theory approaches allow us to raise the question of real and declared authority in the city. They allow us to get out from under the pressure of the authority of A.S. Chuyanov, whom the future victory in the Battle of Stalingrad made practically unattainable for critical consideration. All this allows us to assess the activities of the Stalingrad City Defense Committee in a nonbiased manner and without the usual defaults. The materials of the article are the documents of the Stalingrad City Defence Committee and the documents of the Stalingrad Regional Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, as they are presented in the fonds of the Centre for Documentation of Modern History of the Volgograd Region, the Russian State Archive of Social and Political History, the Center for Documentation of Contemporary History of the Volgograd Region, the Central Archive of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, the Archive of the Institute of Russian History of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and the State Archive of the Volgograd Region. At the same time, the resolutions are analyzed with the involvement of memoir literature, which adds subjective nuances. Analysis. It is important to understand that the fate of the civilian population of Stalingrad was literally determined by the Stalingrad City Defense Committee and personally by its head, the 1st Secretary of the Stalingrad Regional and City Committee of the All-Union Communist Party, A.S. Chuyanov, who, in turn, found himself in a complex context of very difficult relations with the command of the Stalingrad and Southeastern Fronts, the directors of large Stalingrad factories, and the political leadership of the country (including I.V. Stalin personally). At the same time, the powers of A.S. Chuyanov, who was the head of the Stalingrad City Defense Committee, as an extraordinary unconstitutional authority, were not clearly formulated and spelled out. Results. In our opinion, A.S. Chuyanov, due to his lack of management experience, was unable to fully implement important decisions concerning the organization of the city’s defense and, most importantly, to resolve the issue of the evacuation of the civilian population of Stalingrad.