Scholarly record

TRANSPORT COMMUNICATIONS OF SOUTHERN RUSSIA IN THE INITIAL PERIOD OF THE GREAT PATRIOTIC WAR (1941-1942)

S. V. Vinogradov, Y. G. Eschenko, V. B. Ubushaev

Abstract

The aim of the paper is to study the role of the transport communications of the Southern Russia, especially the railroads, in the initial period of the Great Patriotic war (1941-1942). For Russia, throughout its history, transport and related logistical problems were of significant and sometimes paramount importance. This postulate is characteristic of the period of the Great Patriotic War. The Nazis, who decided in June 1941 to attack the Soviet Union, soon began to face the challenge of supplying their army. The Red Army also faced a number of difficulties. Particularly acute the question of supply of existing armies became in the summer of 1942, when the main fighting shifted to the southern regions of the USSR. There, in contrast to the West of the Soviet Union, there were few railroads and no other transport communications, fit to supply the huge armies. In those circumstances, the victory in battles of Stalingrad and the Caucasus in 1942 was won because of the Soviet Union having coped with the transportation difficulties and equipment of its army better than Germany did. One of the brightest episodes of that transport communication war was the commissioning of the Astrakhan-Kizlyar railway that was built in the uninhabited regions of Kalmykia. The road was built as soon as it became possible (summer 1941 – summer 1942), in the harsh natural conditions by the hard labour of the Soviet citizens. That transport route became an important tool in supplying Soviet troops with fuel, ammunition and food. Starting with 1943 the cargo was being actively delivered to the Red Army under the Lend-Lease Program by means of the southern branch of the Astrakhan-Kizlyar railway from Iran.

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