Social and labor relocations of evacuated people in West Siberian rear (1941-1945): constraints and incentives

Aspects of employment for evacuated people in Western Siberia during the Great Patriotic War were highlighted in domestic trials. However, the issue of «technology» of Soviet state regulation of social and labor relocations of evacuees and their impact to the ways of solving the personnel problem remains one of the gaps in the history of the region during the Great Patriotic War. The goal of the paper is to identify the mechanisms of the operation of control and stimulation of social and labor relocations of evacuated people in West Siberian rear main trends of personnel policy of the Soviet state in the region during the war. A comprehensive analysis of the sources revealed that the central and local governments used to manage labor mobility of evacuees in West Siberian rear. A set of mechanisms is driven by socio-professional, material and household and administrative mobilization of measures aimed at strengthening the human resources of personnel and at employment non-working population in the production area. Socio-professional measures included providing relevant jobs to highly qualified personnel of evacuated enterprises and to students of educational institutions of gostrudrezervs; different ways of training and retraining of personnel; living measures - money and subsistence life support; administrative and mobilization measures - the threat of criminal punishment for draft evasion in industry and agriculture. While the mechanisms of labor regulation being in operation, relocations of evacuated people in West Siberian rear reflected two opposing tendencies in national personnel policy of wartime. The first trend was curb of outflow of the most experienced employees from defense and related sectors of heavy industry, the second one - in boosting the unemployed evacuees supply of key sectors of economy. These trends provided priority use of the evacuees human resources for regional economic development in Western Siberia, which was directly related to the strengthening of the defense capability of the Soviet Union in the world war.