ORGANIZATIONAL EXPERIENCE OF THE EVACUATION OF INDUSTRIAL ENTERPRISES IN 1941–1942: PROBLEMS AND RESULTS

Analysis of historical experience in managing evacuation measures under conditions of military conflicts or natural disasters is relevant for solving today’s problems. The purpose of the article is to identify management practices of the 1941–1942 evacuation based on documents extracted from the archives. It is shown that the management aspect has not received full coverage in Russian and foreign historiography. The theoretical provisions of the mobilization economic model contributed to the solution of the set tasks. The article presents an analysis of the structure and functions of the Evacuation Council, shows the management practices of the regional authorities of the front-line zone in planning evacuation activities, dismantling and loading of equipment, characterizes the difficulties in transporting and storing goods along the route, and also traces organizational ways to overcome them. The article discusses the reasons for the loss and damage of equipment during the evacuation. Based on materials from declassified archival files, the peculiarities of the evacuation of workers of industrial enterprises are noted. As a result of the study, the features of managing evacuation processes were identified: the creation of emergency bodies and the expansion of the powers of existing ones, the tightening of personal responsibility for the implementation of decisions made, the use of “manual control” through the creation of an institution of authorized persons at all levels. It is concluded that there was a combination of centralized and decentralized mechanisms for managing industrial evacuation. The extreme wartime situation clearly demonstrated such features of the mobilization model as the principle of the main link, achieving the goal at any cost, including non-economic methods of coercion.