The Great Patriotic War

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PHJ № 4 (48) 2025 — V. A. Livtsov. FOR THEM, THE WAR DID NOT END IN 1945. BOOK REVIEW: KOVALEV B. N. “THE THAW” AND HITLER’S HEIRS: FROM THE HISTORY OF THE SEARCH AND PUNISHMENT OF NAZI COLLABORATORS IN NORTHWESTERN RUSSIA IN THE LATE 50S — THE FIRST HALF OF THE 60S OF THE 20TH CENTURY. MOSCOW: ISTORICHESKAYA PAMYAT, 2025. 224 P.

“The Thaw” brought liberation not only to innocent victims. Real criminals, guilty of the death of many thousands of civilians, partisans and soldiers of the Red Army, were also released. Who is to blame for it? Many war criminals found refuge in the West — both in West Germany and in the countries allied with the USSR in the anti-Hitler coalition. How could it happen? Former collaborators of the Nazis, Vlasovites and punishers were often able to successfully hide their past. They were respected as honored veterans of the Great Patriotic War. Why did it happen? The Soviet state security agencies spent decades searching for them. What did they do to ensure that justice prevailed? Answers to these questions can be found in the new book by St. Petersburg historian Boris Kovalev.

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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 — V. L. Piankevich. LIGHT AND DARKNESS IN BESIEGED LENINGRAD

As part of the study of the sensory experience of war and blockade, the article attempts to analyze sensory impressions, the experience of residents of besieged Leningrad staying in conditions of darkness for a long time, the perception and reflection of light and darkness in written and visual sources. Among them are testimonies from the war and blockade time: diaries, letters, regulatory documents of state authorities and administration, works of artists, architects, photographers, as well as transcripts of oral testimonies collected shortly after the blockade and the war, interviews and memories of city residents of a later time.

PHJ № 2 (46) 2025 — A. Yu. Stefanenko. HARVESTING VEGETABLES IN BESIEGED LENINGRAD

After the end of the first winter of the blockade in 1941–1942, the Leningrad leadership was faced with the problem of finding new sources of food. One of the most important areas became the organisation of the harvest of agricultural products, especially vegetables and potatoes. The city’s leaders launched mass campaigns to create individual gardens and send Leningraders to plant, weed and harvest crops and vegetables on the subsidiary farms of enterprises and state farms in the Leningrad region. At the same time, the authorities had to solve a number of organisational and social problems. Throughout the blockade, there was an acute shortage of equipment and supplies. The irrational use of available human resources led to the loss of vegetables through spoilage and theft. Nevertheless, the mobilisation campaigns helped to supply Leningrad with food and to prevent a repetition of the tragedy of the “time of death”.

PHJ № 2 (46) 2025 — E. Yu. Zubkova. «VICTORY AND THE GREAT FAREWELL»: COLLECTIVE MEMORY AND THE POLICY OF REMEMBERING THE GREAT PATRIOTIC WAR. 1945–1965

In the Russian context, multiple memories of the war coexist, with one type forming spontaneously as a “living” experience of what was lived through, and the other emerging as the result of a targeted state project, driven by a policy on constructing memory. To what extent did the state commemorative project take into account the public demand for remembrance of the war? Furthermore, what objectives did the state memory policy pursue in creating the image of the Great Patriotic War? In what ways did this image manifest itself in various memorial formats? The present article is devoted to these and other issues of the formation of memory of the war — from Victory Day 1945 to Victory Day 1965.

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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 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.

PHJ No 4 (36) 2022 – V.Berednikova. Materials of the Central State Archive of Historical and Political Documents of St. Petersburg as a source for the study of the partisan movement on the territory of the Leningrad Region

In article the information possibilities of the documents postponed in funds of the Central State Archive of the Historical and Political Documents of St. Petersburg which reflect the history of creation and work of the Leningrad headquarters of the partisan movement on the organization of partisan formations and control of their activity in days of the Great Patriotic War is analyzed. The analysis of archive materials will allow to estimate in a new way a role of the partisan movement in the battle of Leningrad and also degree of its efficiency, the reason of failures and disorganization at the initial stages of existence of the partisan movement and success achieved in 1943–1944.

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PHJ № 2 (34) 2022 — E. Yu. Skvortsova. LIBERATOR OF AUSCHWITZ GENERAL F. M. KRASAVIN: ORDER OF ALEXANDER NEVSKY DURING LIFE, REHABILITATION — POSTHUMOUSLY

The Order of Alexander Nevsky is the only one that existed (with some changes) in the times of the Russian Empire, in the USSR and in new Russia. To trace the fate of the holders of the Order and collect them in a single catalogue is a topic for a major study, which it seems will be done sooner or later. This is also required by the culture of remembrance as in the fates of the heroes one can trace the continuity of the country’s history. On the example of the fate of one of the awardees of the Order of Alexander Nevsky — General F. M. Krasavin — shows the reflection of turning events in the life of Russia.

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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”.