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DEMOGRAPHIC CATASTROPHE FAR BEHIND THE LINES DURING THE GREAT PATRIOTIC WAR (EVIDENCE FROM YAKUTIA)

S. Sivtseva

Abstract

The Great Patriotic War demanded an utmost exertion of powers of the whole population of the Soviet Union both in and behind the front lines. This article confirms the hypothesis of unity between the front and rear. All people of the USSR joined their forces to repulse the act of fascist aggression. And small nations, wherever they lived, were not exclusion and contributed to the Victory. New approaches to studying of demographic losses in Yakutia revealed a probable number of people mobilized to the front line, the amount of human losses among civilians. The people far behind the lines experienced an extreme need, famine that led to a sharp increase of mortality rate. This was caused by continuous collectivization (communization of cattle, horses) and creation of a network of new villages (before collectivization the indigenuous people mainly lived in so-called alases at a considerable distance from each other, since they traditionally were cattle farmers. In Northern conditions the possibilities of crop farming and vegetable gardening are close to zero) in the rural areas without taking into account specific character of the region. While collective-farm peasantry during the war was able to subsist thanks to own vegetable gardens, the Yakut collective farmers were deprived of such possibility. Death depopulated rural areas. Mortality rates in Yakutia were twice the amount of average indices in Siberia, Ural and the Russian Federation. In her calculations the author comes to conclusion that if not for the war, the population of Yakutia would have increased by a third. In the given research the author has been guided by the principles of complex approach to the studied problem as the main condition for a successful search for the historical truth, considering the phenomena and processes in their close connection with the specific historical environment, as well as with general historical analysis methods predetermined by the peculiarities of history as a science. The following methods have been used: comparative-historical, historical-genetic, historical-typological, problematic-chronological, induction, deduction, synthesis and analysis etc. The study of demographic processes and events in their historical environment has demanded the application of the methods of demographic analysis, statistical, mathematical and sociological ones. Along with the above-mentioned research methods, the author has used historical-geographic methods that enabled to perform a full analysis related to settlement, migration movement of the population, and also to demonstrate the influence of hard Northern conditions on the formation of the economic branches on which the demographic situation in Yakutia directly depended.

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