Migration of rural population of Udmurtia during the great patriotic war

The paper analyzes the problem of migration of rural population of Udmurtia during the years of the Great Patriotic War which was purely studied previously. The main sources for the research are unpublished archival documents. Their analysis allows identifying the shape and amount of rural population's migration during wartime. During the war, the rural population of Udmurtia decreased from 848.2 thousand to 624.4 thousand people, and the percentage of rural population in total population of Udmurtia decreased from 71.3 % to 61.9 %. Rural population decreased mainly due to migration: according to the calculations 160.3 thousand of rural men migrated, and most of them went to the front. The arrival of the evacuated people partially offset the decrease in the number of rural residents. The largest number of evacuees in rural areas amounted to about 26 thousand people in 1943, among which about 90 % were women and children. The changes worsened the structure of the rural population by gender and age greatly: the number of men of working age (16-60 years) in the villages of Udmurtia during the war decreased more than three times - from 196 000 persons at the beginning of 1939 to 64 000 persons at the beginning of 1945. The demobilization after the war has slightly improved the situation: at the beginning of 1948 the number of rural men of working age increased to 132 000 people. But the number was very inferior to the number of women of the same age (247 000 people). Thus, the migration of rural population of Udmurtia during the Great Patriotic War has strongly worsened its structure and negatively influenced the development of agriculture of the Republic during the War and after it.