To the 40th anniversary of the Great Victory

Moscow, Nauka Publ. 1982. 277 p.

Victory of the USSR and its Armed Forces in the GO rear over the rear of Nazi Germany. The Great Patriotic War had one thing-a particularly prominent role in achieving the temporary economic victory of the Soviet Union-this victory belonged to the Urals, which

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it became the main arsenal of the Red Army. It accounted for 40% of all military production in the USSR .1
During the post-war years, Soviet historians did a great deal of research on the contribution of the Ural industry to the creation of economic prerequisites for the defeat of the Nazi invaders. These problems are reflected in general works, as well as in essays on the history of individual regions and autonomous republics of this region and their party organizations, in articles and collections that reveal certain problems of the development of the Ural economy during the war2 . However, until recently there were no generalizing works on the history of industry in the Urals during the Great Patriotic War. Meanwhile, along with the thoroughly studied issues, there were also poorly or even completely unexplored problems of the development of a multi-industry industry in this most important region of the country.

The monograph by A. F. Vasiliev, a senior researcher at the Institute of History of the USSR of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, Doctor of Historical Sciences, is the first generalizing work on the development of the leading industries of the Urals in their complex, on the labor heroism of the Urals during the war as an integral part of the unprecedented feat of the Soviet people in the name of victory.

The author, of course, could not avoid in his work those problems that have already been reflected in the works of other researchers. Without covering these problems, it was impossible to give a general analysis of the development of the Urals industry during the war years as a whole. However, practically when considering any issue that has already been solved in one way or another by other researchers, A. F. Vasiliev introduces new information (gathered either in archives or in periodicals) into scientific circulation, which deepens our knowledge of the already familiar processes that took place in the Ural industry in 1941 - 1945.

This applies primarily to the history of perestroika of the region's industry in a military way. At the same time, the author focused mainly on those industries whose features of perestroika have not been covered so fully and in depth before. A large and interesting factual material is provided in the book on the issue of placing evacuated equipment in the Urals. The evacuation of industry from the western regions to the east of the country, the commissioning of displaced equipment is one of the most difficult tasks of transferring the national economy to military rails. "The purpose of the evacuation," the book says, "was not so much to save valuable industrial equipment from the enemy, although this was extremely important, as to put it in the service of the front in an extremely short time" (p.38). Having justified the total figure on the number of industrial enterprises evacuated to the Urals, the author showed with concrete material how the placement and commissioning of the arrived equipment made it possible to increase the capacity of Ural factories that produced defense products and eliminate the bottlenecks in the region's industry that existed before the war.

Providing enterprises with labor was an integral part of the military restructuring of the economy. But since this direction of perestroika, as well as the development of socialist competition, is rightly considered by the author to be well-studied, it is given relatively little space in the book. But one of the questions of the personnel problem - about the role of evacuated workers ' collectives in providing enterprises with highly qualified personnel, about their contribution to the restructuring and development of the Ural industry during the war years-remained generally ignored. Meanwhile, their quantitative and qualitative influence was great. They enriched the cadres of the industrial regions of the East with their experience, general and industrial culture, and together with them, by their selfless work, strengthened the economic power of the Soviet rear, provided the front with everything necessary for the defeat of the enemy. This issue deserved more attention.

The monograph reveals such a direction of military industrial restructuring, which is poorly reflected in the literature, as the development of new sources of raw materials in the Urals, in which scientists played a huge role.

Voznesenskiy N. Voennaya ekonomika SSSR v period Otechestvennoy voiny [Military economy of the USSR during the Patriotic War]. Moscow, 1948, p. 50.

2 Essays on the history of the Perm regional Party organization. Perm. 1971; Essays on the history of the Bashkir organization of the CPSU. Ufa. 1973; Essays on the history of the Orenburg regional organization of the CPSU. Chelyabinsk. 1973; History of the Urals, vol. 2. Perm. 1977; Essays on the history of the Chelyabinsk regional organization of the CPSU. 1917 - 1977. Chelyabinsk. 1977; and others.

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under the leadership of the President of the USSR Academy of Sciences V. L. Komarov.

Showing the results of industrial perestroika, A. F. Vasiliev provides generalized data on such quantitative and qualitative shifts in military production in the Urals and in the USSR as a whole, which allow us to state that the turning point in the work of the Soviet rear and industry occurred not in 1943, as many researchers believe, but in 1942, more precisely, from the summer of 1942 This was the time when the military restructuring of the economy, and above all industry, was completed, "as a result of which a well-coordinated military economy was created in the country, which served as the economic basis and necessary prerequisite for a radical change on the front of the Great Patriotic War" (p .90) .3
The central section of the monograph is devoted to strengthening the basic industries - the growth of ferrous metallurgy, the development of the fuel industry, and the rise of the electric power industry. Since the summer of 1942, when the restructuring of industry in relation to the needs of the front was completed and the rear was faced with the task of developing the production of defense products in the necessary sizes on the basis of a well-coordinated military economy, there was a need to increase the production of metal, primarily in the Urals. Using new materials, the monograph describes the construction and expansion of ferrous metallurgy enterprises. First of all, it should be noted here the study of the process of increasing the smelting of ferrous metals in the Ural factories due to more efficient use of aggregates and equipment. A. F. Vasiliev managed to paint an impressive picture of the successful struggle between the steelworkers of Magnitogorsk and the blast furnace workers of the Novotagil plant to increase the production of steel and pig iron through the intensification of smelting. At the same time, the book shows the organizational and mass-political work of party organizations aimed at supporting and spreading the best practices of steelworkers. In 1945. The production of pig iron in the Urals increased by 188.4% compared to 1940, steel - by 165.4%, rolled products-by 155.9%. The Urals became, in the author's words, "the main metallurgical workshop of the Soviet Union and, due to this, played an extremely important role in the material and technical support of the victory over the enemy" (p.135).

The struggle for the development of the Ural fuel industry during the war years is described in no less detail in the monograph, the reasons for the decline in coal production in the autumn and winter of 1941-1942 are analyzed, and the measures taken by state and party bodies that made it possible to stop this decline in the spring of 1942, and then significantly increase coal production. At the same time, as shown in the paper, the Ural regions made a significant contribution to providing the national economy and the front with liquid fuel.

The third of the basic branches of the Ural industry considered in the monograph was the electric power industry, which experienced extreme difficulties due to the placement of relocated equipment and the construction of new plants. The Party and the government have identified the main directions for the rise of the electric power industry in the Urals. A number of new power plants, powerful for those times, were built. As the author convincingly shows, the energy problem was also solved through the reconstruction of existing power plants, a persistent struggle to ensure timely repairs of turbines, boilers, and power grids.

The steady growth of the basic industrial sectors of the Urals after the restructuring of the economy in a military way created the necessary conditions for a further steep rise in defense output, opened up new opportunities for the widespread use of the most advanced and efficient production methods in industry. The section on the intensification of industrial production is distinguished by its novelty both in identifying its features in the conditions of war, and in the material introduced into scientific circulation, in terms of content, author's generalizations and conclusions. Neither historians nor economists have previously revealed to such an extent the peculiarities of the manifestation of scientific and technological progress in the Ural industry in the military areas, when it became one of the main factors of the future economic and military victory of the Soviet Union over nazi Germany. The book convincingly reveals the main directions of the party's technical policy aimed at improving equipment and technological processes, through rationalization and invention, and at introducing flow-based methods

3 The author made this conclusion in his earlier published works (see Voprosy Istorii, 1966, No. 6, p. 142).

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production, to fight for the rhythm of the work of factories and factories. Many forms of the movement for the improvement of machinery and technology, for saving and improving the quality of industrial products, which were first considered in such detail in the monograph, have not lost their relevance even in modern conditions.

The author pays much attention to covering the labor exploits of the Ural people. The pages of the book contain vivid data about the truly heroic work of workers and specialists who selflessly forged the weapons of the coming victory. This is one of the advantages of the monograph.

Summarizing the results of the study, A. F. Vasiliev comes to a new conclusion, which has not yet been widely published in the scientific literature (p.268), that the industry of the Urals, like all Soviet industry, went through three periods in its development during the Great Patriotic War, and not two, as most historians and economists believe. The first of them (all researchers agree on this) is the restructuring of the national economy in a military way-from the beginning of the war to the summer of 1942. Most authors extend the second one to the period from the summer of 1942 to the end of the war. According to A. F. Vasiliev, the second period, which began in the summer of 1942, ended in the summer of 1944 - this was the period of ensuring military and economic victory over the enemy, and the third-from the autumn of 1944 to the end of the war - was a period of partial reconversion of industry.

The author argues for the expediency of singling out the last period as an independent one by saying that in the second half of 1944, the actual military production in the USSR reached such a level that, in addition to fully meeting the needs of the front, it was possible to create large reserves of military equipment, weapons and ammunition. "Proceeding from this, and also taking into account the visible prospect of victory over the enemy and the urgent needs of the national economy, the party and the government considered it possible in the second half of 1944 to reduce the production rate of a number of types of defense products, switching many enterprises to the production of conventional products... Already in the first quarter of 1945, peaceful industrial production exceeded the volume of military output. Thus, in the autumn of 1944, the preparation of the necessary conditions for the transfer of the Soviet national economy, including the industry of the Urals, to peaceful rails began" (p.268).

In principle, one cannot disagree with the idea of defining a third period in the development of the Soviet economy during the Great Patriotic War. However, the initial preparation of conditions for the transition of the military economy to peaceful rails can hardly be passed off as a fundamental feature inherent in this period, when the military orientation of the economy continued to prevail, as in 1942-1943, both in the nature of the products produced and in the military methods of organizing labor and the entire life of the country. The question of the periodization of the development of Soviet industry, especially the time of the third period and its economic justification, is debatable and needs additional research.

In some cases, the author was able to provide more complete data on the development results of individual industrial enterprises and industries, since they have already been published by other researchers. Sometimes the dryness of the presentation is felt, especially when describing the technological side of production.

In general, the book deserves high praise both for the breadth and complexity of the issues considered, and for the depth of their scientific analysis and generalization. It was a notable achievement in the study of the history of the Soviet home front and the history of industrial development in the Urals. Nevertheless, this is only one of the steps towards creating a work that would comprehensively highlight the contribution of all sectors of the economy, science and culture of this region to ensuring victory over the enemy.

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