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PHJ № 4 (48) 2025 — N. V. Tikhomirov “THE WORK IN THE VILLAGE IS VERY, VERY WEAK”: THE SOVIET PEASANTRY IN THE REPORTS OF STUDENTS OF THE LENINGRAD POLYTECHNIC

Previously unknown to researchers, documents containing information about the life of the Russian countryside in the conditions of Soviet modernization of the first post-revolutionary decade are being introduced into scientific circulation. The publication presents the reports of students of the Leningrad Polytechnic of Railways, prepared by them based on the results of their work in practice in the villages of the North-Western region of Russia in 1924. The records reflect various aspects of everyday life, leisure, economic relations and the mentality of rural inhabitants. These materials help to understand better the general state of the Russian peasant world during this historical period and the problems faced by the leadership of the USSR in implementing the socialist restructuring of the country. The reports reflect the contradictions that have arisen in connection with the introduction of a new taxation system, cooperative construction, the implementation of the ideas of the cultural revolution, and the training of personnel for party and Komsomol work. The publication aims to expand the scientific understanding of the participation of Soviet students in the implementation of Soviet government activities in rural areas. These reports quantitatively and qualitatively complement the existing database of sources used by historians to study the Russian peasantry in the 20th century. Their involvement in research practice will make it possible to strengthen the anthropological component of modern peasant studies and will serve as information support for scientific research in the field of rural everyday life, the everyday thinking of rural inhabitants, and contradictions in the interaction of the city and the countryside. The published materials will also be useful for clarifying the specifics of understanding the problems of rural areas by party and Komsomol activists and their tasks in solving them.

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PHJ № 4 (48) 2025 — K. A. Boldovskii. THE RECONSTRUCTION OF LENINGRAD DURING THE YEARS OF THE SIEGE — THE PRACTICE OF LABOR MOBILIZATIONS

The author conducts an analysis of the process of labour mobilisations of the Leningrad population during the Siege, with a view to restoring urban infrastructure and the economy. The population was engaged in activities contributing to the urban economy, thereby playing a pivotal role in ensuring the uninterrupted functioning of the Leningrad life support system during the Siege. The city’s leadership initiated the organisation of labour mobilisations at the onset of the war. The bureau of the City Party Committee, the Leningrad City Executive Committee and the Military Council of the Leningrad Front constituted the primary mobilisation management bodies. The resolution of the Leningrad City Executive Committee, adopted on June 27, 1941, defined the main categories of citizens who could be called up for labour mobilisation. The length of working hours and responsibility for evading labor mobilization were also determined. The administration of enterprises and institutions mobilised working residents of the city, while the management of educational institutions mobilised students. Household administrations at the place of residence mobilised non-working residents. During the initial phase of the war, extending until the spring of 1942, the majority of mobilised individuals were engaged in construction activities, including the erection of defensive structures, the execution of loading and unloading operations, the construction of bomb shelters, the remediation of the consequences of artillery shelling and bombing, the harvesting of firewood, and other associated tasks. In the initial period, there was a paucity of a clearly defined plan for mobilising the working population. By the onset of spring 1942, a functional management system for labour mobilisations had been formulated. This enabled the project to be expanded on a wide scale in 1942–1943.The most extensive measures involving the mobilisation of labour were implemented in the spring of 1942 (for the purpose of cleaning the city) and in the winter of 1942–1943 (for the purpose of clearing snow from the city and railway communications). Commencing in the autumn of 1943, the municipal administration established the primary objective of its operations as the organisation of work on the construction project. For its implementation, both mass labor mobilizations and mobilizations of certain categories of workers were widely used.

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PHJ № 3 (47) 2025 — A. V. Lomakin. FROM ILYICH TO KUMACH: THE POETIC DESIGN OF SOVIET HOLIDAYS ON THE AIR OF LENINGRAD RADIO IN THE 1950S AND 1970S

The article is devoted to specific works of fiction — poems written for the public holidays of May 1 and November 7 and played on holiday radio broadcasts in Leningrad in the 1950s and 1970s. Based on the documents of the Central State Archive of Literature and Art of St. Petersburg, the thematic diversity of festive poetry is studied, its functions in festive narratives and the Soviet holiday as a whole are revealed, special attention is paid to the motivation of writers and poets when fulfilling a state order to create poetic agitation. Poetry “on occasion”, written for the Leningrad radio committee by local poets, was most often dedicated to V. I. Lenin, the Great October Socialist Revolution, Leningrad, and the Communist Party. The poems not only complemented the announcers’ comments about the parades and demonstrations on the Palace Square, created a festive mood, but also carried a certain ideological load and performed an educational function. At the same time, these works were usually performed without specifying the authorship, and later the authors did not include them in their printed collections. The participation of poets and writers in the creation of artistic texts for radio broadcasts can be considered a kind of fulfillment of a state order, in which each individual author could have his own motivation, whether it was establishing relations with the authorities or making easy money.

PHJ № 2 (46) 2025 — A. I. Rupasov. VOTERS’ WISHES AS A SOURCE FOR THE STUDY OF THE SOCIO-ECONOMIC SITUATION IN LENINGRAD (FIRST HALF OF THE 1960S)

The article analyses the wishes of Leningrad voters expressed at meetings with deputies of the Supreme Soviets of the USSR and the RSFCR, city and district councils in the first half of the 1960s. Attention to these documents is determined by two points. First, the blurring of the general picture of the socio-economic situation in Leningrad, which occurs when dealing with historical studies of the initial period, namely the stage of “transition to the stage of completion of the foundations of the construction of communism”. Secondly, the rare use of such documents in the analysis of the socio-economic situation. The study of the above-mentioned documents allows us to highlight both the full range of problems in Leningrad in 1960–1965, and the extremely limited possibilities of the city authorities to solve them, due to the lack of financial resources and the dynamics of the city’s growth.

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PHJ №1 (45) 2025 — E. D. Tverdyukova. “BECOMING NOT ONLY TOBACCO WORKERS, BUT ALSO AMMUNITION MANUFACTURERS”: THE LETTER FROM THE DIRECTOR OF THE LENINGRAD TOBACCO FACTORY NAMED AFTER URITSKIY V. N. RUMYANTSEV TO THE V. P. ZOTOV (7.7.1942)

The published document is a primary source on the history of the 1st Leningrad Tobacco Factory named after Uritsky. It was the largest enterprise in the USSR to operate during the siege of Leningrad, supplying the city’s population and its defenders with cigarettes and tobacco. In the challenging conditions of war and blockade, smoking frequently served as means of coping with psycho-emotional distress, alleviating hunger, and acquiring a certain ritualistic significance. The factory’s activities in the initial year of the Great Patriotic War are discussed by the factory director, V. N. Rumyantsev, in a letter to V. P. Zotov, A. I. Mikoyan’s commissioner on food issues. The factory’s staff, in their efforts to substitute scarce raw materials, not only produced tobacco products but also successfully mastered the production of ammunition and medicines. The author of the letter goes on to describe his efforts to maintain the factory’s operational capacity during the first blockade winter, and characterizes the domestic characteristics of the workers.

PHJ № 1 (37) 2023 – F. K. Yarmolich. The level and quality of life of a Leningrader in the 1950–1960s (on the materials of the leisure sphere)

In the article on the basis of the materials of Leningrad of 1950–1960s such element of the everyday life of a city dweller as the leisure sphere is scrutinized. The author pays his attention to the number and geographical location of cultural institutions in the urban space, the variety of forms of recreation and their financial affordability. Having analyzed these aspects the article assesses the extent to which the altered standard of living of a Leningrader during this historical period correlated with the quality of his life. 

PHJ No 4 (36) 2022 – V.L. Piankevich. Review of the collection of documents: Blockade in the decisions of the leading party bodies of Leningrad. 1941–1944. Parts I–III. STPb. 2019–2022

The collection of documents is a continuation of the work on the publication of official documents on the World War II and the blockade. Together with published documents of personal origin, the new edition significantly expands the source base for research on the history of the defense and Leningrad blockade. This is a unique, first, complete, specific publication of the most important documents of the highest regional authorities and administration, almost all of which (98%) were previously kept in secret. The published documents make it possible to study the most important issues of military production, the supply and distribution of food, the management of Leningrad and the Leningrad Region, the economy and urban economy, etc.

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PHJ № 2 (34) 2022 — B. N. Kovalev. THE HUMAN FACTOR IN THE SOVIET STATE SECURITY: THE BATTLE OF LENINGRAD, 1941–1944

The battle of Leningrad (1941–1944) was a fierce struggle. The Soviet state security bodies were opposed by both the Nazis and their allies. The former did not always emerge victorious over the latter. This can be explained not only by the high efficiency of the Germans. The human factor played a crucial role in this confrontation: mistakes, miscalculations, individual derelictions of duty and failures of Soviet security officials. On June 22, 1943, the head of the Leningrad Directorate of the NKGB, Pyotr Kubatkin, held a training seminar for his employees. In the seminar, his deputy, Colonel Iona Ivanov, made the report “Secret agents: training and the pace of work”. It analyzed the experience gained by the KGB servicemen over the two years of the armed confrontation. Pyotr Kubatkin emphasized the following. “To make an arrest with no sufficient ground, with no adequate verification is a shame and a crime for our bodies. We should have a bare-knuckled fight with this shameful phenomenon in our ranks; we absolutely cannot put up with this crime. Our goal is to continue to work so that there are no violations of the rules”.

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PHJ № 2 (34) 2022 — I. A. Karpenko. A NEW IMAGE OF AN OLD HERO. PREPARING FOR THE FILMING OF MOVIE “ALEXANDER NEVSKY” IN 1952–1953 IN LENINGRAD

In the article the influence of state ideology on film production, on the example of preparing the script for the new movie “Alexander Nevsky” in 1952–1953, is examined. The article based on the complex of materials from Central State Archive of Literature and Art of St. Petersburg. These documents make it possible to trace how state ideological guidelines regulated the content of a work of art and ordered its authors to put ideology and clichés into the script and dialogues. The project proposed to Lenfilm by the USSR Minkino was supposed to work towards creating a correct view of both historical and contemporary events. One of the most interesting components of the documental complex is the recommendations of bureaucrats on how to understand and interpret the history of the 13th century in a historical perspective. On this basis, the filmmakers had to create a new image of the national hero.

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PHJ № 2 (34) 2022 — A. N. Chistikov. THE LENINGRAD REGIONAL COMMITTEE OF THE CPSU IN THE 1960S AND 1980S: ELECTIONS AND RESULTS

Based on published and unpublished documents, the paper analyses the process and results of elections to the Leningrad Regional Committee of the CPSU in the first half of 1960s and second half of 1970s. Relying on formal criteria proposed by Central Committee of VKP(b) in first post-war years, the author concludes about significant influence of formal approach in formation of governing party body of regional level. A degree of pre-determination increased from the first half of the 1960s to the turn of the 1970s and 1980s. In addition, a policy of quotas based on gender, job, professional, or social characteristics was put in place. At the same time, the authorities have had to respond to the demands of the times, which is reflected in particular in the clarification of educational and vocational criteria. The individual case leads to the general question: were some elements of such a policy specific to Soviet society or to the bureaucratic system of governance as a whole?