Activities of the state labour reserves system as an urbanization factor in after-war Ukraine (1945 – the early 1950s).

Abstract

The article is devoted to analyzing the role, scale of influence and significance of the Labour Reserves system for the post-war urbanization processes in Ukraine. The State Labour Reserves (SLR) was a Soviet centralized structure that mobilized young people, trained skilled workers, and accumulated and distributed this new personnel among enterprises in strategic industries and infrastructure. The activity of the State Labour Reserves system of the USSR became a rather specific factor that played a significant role in the urban development of Ukraine during the period of Late Stalinism. The real impact of the Labour Reserves on urbanization processes was: – the mechanical movement of a significant number of young people from rural areas to cities; – the transformation of potential workers in the agricultural sector into industrial workers, increasing the share of the working class compared to the collective and state farm peasantry; – the creating conditions for inculcating the urban way of life to young people mobilized from the countryside, their incorporation into urban society. The real reasons for the establishment of forced conscription into SLR facilities were the general militarization of the economy and society at the time, as well as the unpopularity of the hard-working jobs to which conscripts were sent, effectively using non-economic coercion. It was assumed that a significant mass of young people had to move centrally from rural areas to industrial centres (that is, urban settlements). Youth appeals to SLR facilities during the post-war reconstruction led to the organized migration of about three-quarters of a million young people from rural areas to cities. The cities of Eastern Ukraine (mostly Donbas) were the most significant areas of such centralized movement under the auspices of the Labour Reserves. Soviet labour laws of the 1940s were analyzed. It was found that fleeing Labour Reserves and illegally leaving the workplace was considered a criminal offence and punishable by imprisonment. The USSR State Labour Reserves system became one of the tools to control and regulate urbanization processes in the country for the Stalinist totalitarian regime. Mobilized boys and girls were involved in non-agricultural sectors of the economy. They were forced to quickly get used to anonymous transactions among the large population of Ukrainian cities and inevitably changed their way of life, becoming part of a new generation of urban society. The research is based on materials from the Central State Archives of Supreme Bodies of Power and Government of Ukraine and the State Archives of Sumy region.