Scholarly record

GREAT PATRIOTIC WAR: MORTALITY AND MORBIDITY RATES AMONG THE YAKUT POPULATION (SIBERIA, RUSSIA)

S. Sivtseva, O. Parfenova, S. Atlasova, M. Alekseeva, T. Kurchatova

Abstract

The article “Great Patriotic War: mortality and morbidity rates among the Yakut population (Siberia, Russia)” is written to study issues of human losses in the home front – Yakut Republic – in 1941-1945 in comparison with other regions of the country. During the development of the issue the author was guided by principles of the complex approach to the issue studied as the most important condition for the search for the historical truth, overview of events and processes closely related to the certain historical circumstances as well as general approaches of the historical analysis explained by features of the historical science. Main research results: both mortality and diseases rates among the population of Yakutia was extremely high, if compared with other regions of the country. Mortality rates of the population in Yakutia were almost twice high its average rates in Siberia, the Urals, as well as in the Russian Federation. It was due to specific hard natural and weather conditions (when it was impossible to live on gardening and vegetable farming and the cattle was collectivized) combined with the command and control government system. The latter includes the total collectivization and creation of settlement – creation of the network of settlements in the countryside (before creation of the network of settlements the indigenous population used to live dispersed across the whole large territory of Yakutia, in alases – the geological formations in ever-frost conditions with usually good stand of grass. It was essential for the people traditionally occupied in cattle breeding) done before the war. The mortality rate increased due to the growth of the population's disease rate. Tuberculosis belonged to the category of diseases with the high probability of lethal outcome. Such diseases as typhoid, paratyphoid, typhus, measles, scarlet fever, whooping cough, diphtheria, flu, dysentery became wide-spread. Demographic consequences of the war, if calculated using the possible natural population growth for 1941-1945, were expressed in 48,6 thousand people. It was quite substantial loss for the population of Yakutia's residents that is less than a half of million people (419 thousand people as for 1.01.1941).

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