From the fight against gangs to economic recovery
What are the specifics of the liberation of the Caucasus during the Great Patriotic War, which should be taken into account in the context of modern Russian consciousness? After all historical The "pain" of several generations still makes itself felt.
From the very beginning of World War II, the leadership of the USSR clearly indicated the mission of the Red Army - the liberation of the "enslaved peoples of Europe and the USSR from Hitler's tyranny."
However, not only in countries that were former opponents of the USSR in the Second World War, but also in the states at that time allied to him (always keeping in mind the priority of their own interests, including at the expense of the Soviet Union that was exhausted in the war), since the Cold War "and to this day they prefer to rearrange accents.
There is a tendency in some Russian regions to make a slightly different assessment of a number of aspects of the history of that war, all the more so since there are difficult plots that touch upon the group, social and ethnic interests and feelings of people: problems of collaboration, including worn ethnic coloring, Stalin's deportation peoples.
These issues are especially painful in the North Caucasus - in many respects a special region of Russia, as a result of which the course of the war and the restoration of the economy destroyed by the war were different there.
And today, the North Caucasus is the most problematic region of Russia. Here, external forces, connecting with internal forces, play ethnic and confessional cards. At the same time, they strive not to build a safer and more comfortable life for the peoples, but, on the contrary, to incite them into bloody clashes with their state, into ethnic and confessional conflicts. And one of the areas of their games is history, especially during the Great Patriotic War. Obviously, it is wiser to openly look at the mistakes of his ancestors and turn the pages of history, not to rebel old wounds, but to build a positive future together. But the courage to honestly take your story, to draw self-critical conclusions and to move forward constructively from the “players” is not enough. They skillfully incite insults, manipulate ethnic pride, represent the mistakes and crimes of the virtues and achievements of their fellow tribesmen, and erode the obvious negative from the national memory, not allowing them to rationally comprehend it and draw historical lessons. But unfortunately, the lessons of history, alas, in modern life turn into blood, sometimes very large: it is not ordinary ideologists and manipulators who shed it with the mass consciousness, but ordinary people. The experience of the last two Chechen wars is clearly confirmed.
Release specifics
In the North Caucasus, the Ordzhonikidzevsky (from 1943, Stavropol) region with the Karachay Autonomous Region and the Circassian Autonomous Region, the Krasnodar Territory with the Adygei Autonomous Area, the Rostov Region, the North Ossetian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, the Kabardino-Balkarian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, the Chechen-Ingush Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic were subject to occupation.
What are the specifics of the liberation of the Caucasus during the Great Patriotic War, which should be considered in the context of the modern Russian consciousness?
Of course, this is the actual military specificity of the battle for the Caucasus, not limited to the climatic, geopolitical, and strategic conditions of combat operations. In the vast theater of military operations that covered the plains and foothills of the North Caucasus, the passes of the Main Caucasus Range, the waters of the Azov and Black Seas, the Kuban, the Red Army fought with international military force, which was based on the Romanian, Slovak and other units along with the German armies .
But not only. About 120 thousands of people (that is, about a tenth of all Soviet collaborators) fought as part of the ethnic formations of the German army, created from the natives of the Caucasus. Among them were the Azerbaijani, Georgian, Armenian, North Caucasian battalions, as a rule, created from prisoners of war. Also on the side of Nazi Germany were the Cossack units, formed from both prisoners of war and residents of the occupied territories.
Mass Desertion
Most of the national formations did not show high combat capability. With the worsening position of the Wehrmacht, mass desertion spread, the transition to the side of the Red Army, although some of the battalions fought for their Nazi masters to the end. And although most collaborators betrayed their homeland not out of ideological motives, but saving their lives after being captured by the Germans, one cannot deny the widespread anti-Soviet and separatist, anti-Russian and anti-Russian sentiments in the Caucasus during the war years. They were caused by dissatisfaction with the policy of the Soviet government, especially collectivization, which caused a number of mass armed demonstrations repressed by the power of the state. But small detachments and the anti-Soviet underground in the Caucasus operated until the beginning of the Great Patriotic War. These anti-Soviet forces saw their ally in Nazi Germany, which had attacked the USSR, and perceived the German invasion as a liberation from Bolshevism and the Soviet empire.
Such sentiments have deeply penetrated the consciousness of significant layers of the region, where, with the beginning of the war, evading conscription into the Red Army became widespread. With the worsening position of the USSR, desertion became a mass phenomenon in some of the republics. For example, the Chechen-Ingush Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic for all the years of the war gave the army only 12 per cent of the draft contingent. Many draft dodgers went to the mountains, joined gangs that fought against the Red Army, joined the parts of collaborators formed by Germany.
Mountain Rifle Regiment of the NKVD against the underground
In the anti-Soviet underground during the war years in the North Caucasus, powerful networks of organizations were created, including representatives of more 10 nations, aimed at defeating the USSR in the war, preparing a general armed uprising and naively hoping to create a federal state of the Caucasian peoples under German patronage.
The Germans used these forces to disorganize the rear of the Red Army, hoping in future for the success of the uprising and the seizure with the help of local collaborators of the region’s oil fields.
Especially in order to combat ethnic gangs and the underground, in December 1941 of the year - January of 1943, the NKVD had to deploy a mountain rifle regiment.
The general uprising failed, and the isolated demonstrations were suppressed.
In 1942-1943, the main forces of the anti-Soviet underground in the North Caucasus were destroyed.
And after the breakthrough during the war, and especially after the liquidation of the last German bridgehead in the Caucasus in the Novorossiysk region, the underground ceased to receive the same support from Germany. By the end of 1944, all the big gangs were completely eliminated.
Thus, the sources of the significant potential of the bandit underground in the Caucasus were mainly external. Ideological, organizational, material and other support for Nazi Germany, coordination of plans and actions with the Wehrmacht.
However, it is impossible to deny the mass character of the anti-Soviet movement during the war in the North Caucasus, or the fact that it enjoyed considerable support from the local population. The union of the underground with German fascism is obvious, and it was a significant negative factor for the Red Army, which liberated the Caucasus.
About Stalin's deportation and deportation to the USA
Thus, there is no reason to speak of the complete groundlessness of the Stalinist deportation of a number of nations. During World War I, similar measures were applied to the disloyal (or insufficiently loyal) population in other countries of the anti-Hitler coalition, including in the "most democratic" United States. At that time, wartime laws were in force, and eviction was a far more humane measure than the execution for anti-state activities, which threatened many thousands of participants in armed gangs.
At the same time, the decisions taken on deportation were morally questionable, as well as a manifestation of insufficient managerial competence, since many negative, including long-term, consequences for the country were not taken into account.
How to build life on
The price of the Victory was high: nearly three dozen million Soviet citizens died, the national economy was destroyed, the USSR suffered unprecedented human and material losses. Estimating the scale of these losses, Western analysts estimate that the restoration of the national economy will take several decades. But analysts were wrong. The country regained its economy mainly to the beginning of the 1950's. These results can be evaluated as an economic miracle. What are its causes? Today it is very important to consider the experience of the post-war restoration of the USSR in the previously occupied territories in the North Caucasus.
The reconstruction process can be chronologically divided into two main stages: during the war itself in the liberated territories and after the end of the war. Restoration was aggravated by the need to transfer the "war economy" to peacetime, as well as the partial re-evacuation of the enterprises displaced to the East.
After the Victory, the restoration was complicated by the outbreak of the Cold War, which required enormous defense expenditures.
Instructions and Regulations of the USSR SNK
Restoration of the territories began immediately after their release. In 1943, under the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR (SNK USSR), the Committee for the restoration of the economy in the liberated areas was established. An important place was taken by the Resolution of the Central Committee of the CPSU (b) and the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR 23 of January 1943 of the year "On measures to restore the MTS and collective farms in the areas liberated from the Nazi occupiers."
A large-scale, detailed program for the revival of the affected areas of the country was outlined in the Resolution of the Central Committee of the CPSU (B) and the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR on August 21 of 1943 "On urgent measures to restore the economy in areas liberated from the German occupation."
First of all, the enterprises of the heavy, coal, oil, metallurgical industries, power plants, which were the basis for the restoration of the entire national economy, were proclaimed, which was declared a nationwide task.
The basis of the mobilization mechanism of economic recovery was a clear understanding by the authorities of the scale and complexity of the problems, the significance of the restoration and a clear statement of the goal - the economic recovery as soon as possible.
Over the 1942-1945 years in the areas of the RSFSR under occupation, more than 47 thousands of collective farms, 785 state farms, over 1300 MTS, were restored.
The recovery process was carried out from two sides: “from above,” through state and social institutions, and from below, through the initiative of the population, which the authorities strongly supported. The solution of the tasks of the restoration of the economy can indeed be considered a nationwide feat. At the same time, during the war and the post-war years, the strengths of the mobilization model created in the 1930-s appeared.
In contrast to the market model, the Soviet mobilization model relied mainly on state and public property, used primarily not the categories of material interest, but a combination of non-economic mechanisms (primarily social mobilization).
Although non-economic coercion was in effect, it was secondary in the conditions of a patriotic upsurge during the war and post-war years.
Social mobilization tools
The main tools were ideology and agitation and propaganda based on it. Also the party, political and public organizations (councils, trade unions, Komsomol, creative unions and others) acted as tools for social mobilization; economic "cells" (factories, collective farms, organizations and their labor collectives).
Forms of social mobilization in the economic sphere were labor motives, socialist competitions and others, allowing the use of the initiative and creativity of the masses. It was an important element of labor motivation.
How to work in the Caucasus
With general patterns, the restoration of the national economy of the North Caucasus was influenced by at least several specific factors. Firstly, the agrarian-industrial nature of the region: the role of one of the country's breadbaskets required a concentration of efforts in the agrarian sector of the economy, where labor resources were of the utmost importance. But it was in the countryside that the greatest losses of the male population occurred.
Secondly, the ethnocultural diversity of the territories with different mentality, forms of economic activity, traditions, etc.
Third, there are large differences in the level and nature of the economic development of specific administrative and national state entities. Therefore, the pace of recovery processes in different territories was different.
Fourth, negative processes related to the deportation of a number of North Caucasian peoples had a significant impact. Mass ethnic deportations directly influenced the process of restoring the national economy.
However, by the beginning of the 1950s, the main sectors of the economy in the Caucasus were mostly restored. As in other regions, the defining indicators for the rapid recovery of the national economy are: a single national economic complex, capable of flexibly redistributing resources between sectors and regions; centralized planning mechanism to concentrate resources in key areas; socio-economic policy of the authorities in the interests of the majority of the population.
Thus, in the Kabardino-Balkarian ASSR during the occupation, the Nazis burned and destroyed the 20 union-republican plants and factories, 27 enterprises of various branches of local industry. The total damage that the republic suffered from the German occupation amounted to more than 2,2 billion rubles. Within only two and a half months, by March 20 1943, the population of the cities was able to restore and partially put into operation seven enterprises, including the overhead plant, the hydro-turbine plant, a meat processing plant, a confectionery factory and others.
The head of the Communists Stavropol MA Suslov, in his article “In the Liberated Territory”, published in the Pravda newspaper 26 January 1943, wrote about the labor and patriotic impulse of the workers: “A bakery, leather factory, butter factory started working in Mozdok; trains go from Makhachkala to Mineralnye Vody; in Georgievsk a flour mill began to work, two bakeries were launched, a leather factory; in Pyatigorsk, on a motor repair plant, on the third day after the liberation, repair was started for the Red Army; a bakery and a glass factory were started up in Mineralnye waters; a stranded factory was restored in the Stavropol region. ICA operates broadcasting center, restored creamery, bakery '.
In Cherkessia and Karachai, within six months after the liberation of the autonomous republics from the German occupiers, almost all industrial enterprises were restored. By the beginning of 1944, all 13 coal mines were operating at full capacity. The best miner, Stakhanovite Z. Abiyanov, mined at least 18 tons of coal for each shift, exceeding the norm several times.
The restoration of the Pyatigorsk motor-repair and Georgievsky reinforcement plants was successfully proceeding. Already in the spring of 1943, both of these enterprises began to fulfill and overfulfill plans.
Behind this small official statistics lies a large and painstaking work of the population of the North Caucasus. The launched mobilization mechanism made it possible in the most severe conditions of a shortage of material, personnel and other resources to accomplish the almost impossible thing - to restore the national economy as soon as possible.
However, since the end of the 1980s, all of Soviet history has been subjected to attacks from internal and external interpreters. The case has not been limited to focusing on the negative aspects of history for a long time, but it has come to direct falsifications. This process naturally captured the history of the economic recovery of the USSR during and after the world war.
However, the highest efficiency shown by the Soviet model cannot be refuted, and therefore it is attempted to be silenced and circumvented.
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