The Great Patriotic War as a Dominant Factor Influencing the Professional and Life Trajectories of Generations: Case Study of Foreign Ministry Employees

The aim of the study is to assess the role of the Great Patriotic War as a determining factor influencing the fate of employees of the Foreign Ministry. In the article, on the basis of the analysis of biographical data of employees of the People’s Commissariat for Foreign Affairs of the USSR (more than 600 biographies), their life and professional trajectories are systematized in accordance with the proposed criteria, a number of patterns of social mobility of representatives of this profession in the pre- and post-war period are revealed. Particular attention is paid to the study of the educational, professional, party, scientific trajectories of the participants of the Great Patriotic War, who completed their diplomatic careers at the highest point of professional realization with the assignment of the rank of Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary. The novelty of the study is due to the absence in modern sociology of works devoted to the influence of the war of 1941–1945 on the trends and specifics of the transformation of the personnel of specific professional groups. The information base included reference and encyclopedic publications, publications of Russian historians and sociologists, memoir literature, materials posted on the Internet platforms of the Russian Foreign Ministry, MGIMO of the Russian Foreign Ministry, etc. The research method was a content analysis of the biographical data of diplomats, texts of memoirs of MGIMO graduates of 1945–1950 about students who participated in the Great Patriotic War, as well as a comparative intergenerational analysis.