Scholarly record

REAR POPULATION SIZE DURING THE GREAT PATRIOTIC WAR: THE INFLUENCE OF MIGRATION AND NATURAL MOVEMENT (YAKUTIA, SIBERIA)

S. Sivtseva

Abstract

Based on the presently known demographic data for the period of the Great Patriotic War, 1941-1945, the author identifies and analyzes the aspects (mobilization to the front, high mortality rate) that have influenced on the change in the population size of the Yakut Republic and also makes a comparison with the respective data concerning the population of Russia and Siberia. The problem of the population size in the regions during wartime was studied by such scientists as V.B. Zhiromskaya, V.V. Alekseev, V.?. Isupov, D.D. Petrov and others. However, as of yet, there are no similar works dedicated to comparing those data to the Yakutia population size data. In the research the author applies the principles of a complex approach to the problem in question (as one of the most important preconditions for searching historical truth), discussing the phenomena and processes in close connection with the particular historical environment and general methods of historical analysis that are preconditioned by the peculiarities of history as science. Western regions of the Soviet Union were occupied by the fascist aggressors, hence Eastern regions served to repulse the act of aggression. Large industrial enterprises and people – mostly, women and children – were evacuated to the East. The number of people evacuated to Siberia was so large that surpassed the outflow of men mobilized to the army. In general, the number of the population of Siberia depended mostly on migration, but not on natural movement of the population – combination of mortality rate and birth rate (the level of mortality rate and birth rate). The author comes to conclusion that the population decline far behind the lines in Yakutia, on the Far East of the country in the years of the Great Patriotic War had its specific features – it depended not only on the scale of mobilization, but also on the increase of mortality rate. Complicated demographic situation in Yakutia resulted from a number of reasons, the main of which was the absence of an opportunity to subsist at the expense of vegetable gardens, personal auxiliary plots (During war, Russian peasantry was able to survive thanks to the products of personal auxiliary plots and vegetable gardens only). For centuries, indigenous people have been livestock breeders and, therefore, sustained great demographic casualties. This fills in the gap in the field of historical demography, regional demography.

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DOI resolver: doi.org/10.5593/sgemsocial2017/22/S08.040

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