Partisans and money: financing and supplying food to the partisan movement in the Crimea (1941 - 1944)

The article examines the two interconnected aspects of the partisans’ everyday life in the Crimea during the Great Patriotic war: the financial situation and food supply of the partisan units. The main source of the research was archival documents from the State Archives of the Crimean republic which had not been previously studied. The author analyzes economic, political, administrative, military, and ideological factors which affected the financial state and food provision of the partisan movement. The focus is made on “food operations” carried out by the partisan units, which, in fact, meant forced food requisition from the population. For the first time in Russian historiography research is made on salary payments for the partisans as military personnel of the Red Army and allowances to their families. The author concludes that the financial and food problems were very acute due to a number of organizational errors, miscalculations and misconceptions, taking place at the very beginning of the partisan movement in the Crimea, as to the briefness of the fascist occupation. The mere existence of partisan movement depended on how these problems were to be solved. As the Crimean partisans were short of food supplies they resorted to forced food requisition from the population. That was caused by an acute money shortage for purchasing food, which combined with a quickly assumed attitude by the partisans that the food requisition operations were but a justified measure, a revenge on the population for collaborating with fascist invaders. Such practices, inevitably, resulted in the population’s growing resentment and hostility to the partisans.