Translation. Region: Russian Federal

Source: State University Higher School of Economics – State University Higher School of Economics –

Major socio-political events, such as collectivization, caused mass internal migration in the USSR. Tens of thousands of people moved to new places to establish their daily lives and find work. These processes significantly changed the social, national and religious composition of the population of the regions, influenced economic development and the formation of healthcare and education infrastructure. Common features and characteristics of migration in the Perm region and Tuva were discussed at the round table of the “Mirror Laboratories” of the Yasinsky scientific conference.

Internal migration in the USSR

At the anniversary XXV Yasinsky (April) Conference The HSE hosted a round table discussion entitled “The History of Migration in the USSR: Regional Aspect.” It was organized as part of the Mirror Laboratories project, which brings together scientists from the HSE Perm campus and Tuva State University. The round table was moderated by Professor Faculty of Social, Economic and Computer Sciences, National Research University Higher School of Economics in Perm Sergey Kornienko.

Vera Damdynchap, Head of the Department of General History, Archaeology and Documentation of the Faculty of History of Tuva State University, and Arzhana Nurzat, Senior Lecturer of the Department, presented a report entitled “Migration, Urbanization and Collectivization: Key Aspects of Social Transformation in Tuva (1944–1959).” Vera Damdynchap noted that Tuva’s accession to the USSR in 1944 accelerated the transformation of the economic structure.

She said that by 1944 collectivization was not completed, and a significant part of the population was engaged in personal nomadic farming. Collectivization became an important element in the formation of the social structure of the population: by its end in 1955, the share of collective farmers reached 61.5% of the rural population of Tuva.

At the same time, coal mining began in the autonomous region and enterprises in other industries began operating. This also changed the settlement structure of the population: the share of the urban population in 1944-58 increased from 6% to 33%. A particularly significant influx was recorded in the capital of the region, Kyzyl, as well as in the new cities and workers’ settlements of Chadan, Turan and Shagonar. It is significant that the total urban population increased by 1.4 times over 15 years, while its part from migrants increased by 7.6 times due to the relocation of rural residents and the arrival in Tuva of engineering and technical personnel and workers of new enterprises.

The rapid growth of the urban population exacerbated the housing problem, which they tried to solve through temporary housing and rapid construction. It is curious that about 30% of collective farmers were involved in construction, having built 1,660 houses and cultural and household facilities.

At the same time, the development of virgin and fallow lands began, which increased the role of farming in agriculture and the economy as a whole.

In the post-war years, the number of Russians and Ukrainians who came to Tuva increased approximately 4 times, and their share in the population increased to 41%.

Vera Damdynchap noted that in the autonomous region, collectivization was less dramatic than in neighboring Russian regions or, for example, in Buryatia.

The role of forced migrants

Associate Professor Departments of Humanities Anna Kimerling, a professor at the Faculty of Social, Economic and Computer Sciences at the National Research University Higher School of Economics in Perm, presented a report entitled “Social Technologies of Integrating Forced Migrants into the Territorial Community of the Molotov Region in the 1940s and 1950s,” prepared jointly with Sergei Kornienko.

She said that the study is based on archival documents and interviews, including those recorded by the German society “Renaissance”. The number of residents of the Molotov (Perm) region between the censuses of 1939 and 1959 increased by 37.5%, and the regional center – by two times. For comparison: during this period, the population of the USSR increased by 9.5%.

Among the forced migrants were about 40,000 Soviet Germans – special settlers and labor army soldiers. Until the Decree “On the lifting of restrictions on the legal status of Germans and their family members in special settlements” was adopted on December 13, 1955, they could not leave their places of residence and work.

Economic adaptation played an important role. By the early 1950s, 11% of forced migrants had built their own homes, half had vegetable gardens, and a third had small cattle. Social and cultural factors also played a significant role. The chances of adaptation were increased by the marriage of a forced migrant to a local resident or a deportee, as well as the birth of children in the new family. This and joint work at an enterprise increased the chances of receiving housing and rations, which were used not only by workers, but also by older family members.

Former forced migrants recalled that the attitude towards “Russian Germans” was wary. The local population was not always ready to help them, but in places of special settlements, where most of the residents were repressed, rapprochement was faster.

The speaker named another adaptation factor as education, cultural and human capital, or a skill valued at the place of work. A labor army soldier who knew how to operate a tractor received a good ration at the logging sites. Another exile drove the head of the settlement and, thanks to personal communication, received the position of manager of a bread store, which dramatically improved the living conditions of his family.

Over time, forced migrants played a significant role in the development of the region. For example, one of the exiled Germans later became the chief architect of the Solikamsk region, Yevgeny Wagner became the rector of the regional medical institute, and Anatoly Bartolomey became the rector of the polytechnic.

Professor of the Department of Documentation and Information Support of the Department of History of the Ural Federal University Oleg Gorbachev asked whether individual examples of successful careers of exiled settlers can be considered a reflection of the liberalization of the regime in relation to them. According to Anna Kimerling, cases of transfer to a responsible position are few and they occurred mainly in the post-Stalin period, which reflected a certain evolution of the authorities’ attitude towards the repressed.

Ethnic and religious aspects

Head of the Department of Russian History at Tuva University Zoya Dorzhu and Associate Professor of the Department Alena Storozhenko presented a report on “Migration Processes in Tuva in the 1920s-50s. Ethno-confessional Aspect”. State sovereignty and autonomy formed a special state-political context of relations with neighboring regions, which also influenced migration.

The speakers highlighted several periods of the authorities’ attitude to migration. With the establishment of the independent Tuvan People’s Republic in 1921, the authorities sought to limit the influx of Russians into its territory. Thus, checkpoints were established on the border, which, however, did not stop migration. As the country drew closer to the USSR in the 1930s, migration controls on the border were relaxed. Migration was also accelerated by the TPR authorities’ request to Moscow to send specialists. Often, the resettlements of the 1920s and 1930s were caused by the desire of some residents of nearby regions of the USSR to avoid repression and, at the same time, the desire to find a place for productive agriculture. After joining the USSR in 1944, the restrictions were lifted.

Tuvans remained in the majority, but their share in the total population of the republic and the region fluctuated significantly. In 1921 and 1931 it was about 80%, in 1945 – 85%, and by 1959 due to mass migration it had dropped to 57%.

Migration had a significant impact on the ethnic and religious composition of the population. Buddhists, shamanists, Orthodox Christians and pagans were represented in the republic. Moreover, the Old Believers, who appeared in Tuva back in the 19th century, integrated into its territory, and at the time of the creation of the TNR they constituted a third of the Russian-speaking residents of the republic.

Sergey Kornienko wondered whether it was possible to find common themes in studying the migration processes of Tuva and the Perm (Molotov) region. According to Alena Storozhenko, the Uralians made up a significant portion of the Old Believers who moved to Tuva, but it is still difficult to accurately determine their share in the number of migrants.

Organized labor migration

Associate Professor of the Department of Humanities of the Faculty of Social, Economic and Computer Sciences of the National Research University Higher School of Economics in Perm Alexander Glushkov and Master’s student of the National Research University Higher School of Economics in Moscow Kristina Kozlova presented a report “Attracting Labor Migrant Workers to the USSR in the Late 1940s – 1950s: A Comparative Analysis of Agitation (Based on the Example of Enterprises in the Molotov Region of the RSFSR).” Alexander Glushkov recalled that in 1947, organized labor migrations resumed in the USSR. In the Molotov Region, workers were attracted to work in the coal industry, in logging enterprises and collective farms.

Kristina Kozlova said that regional and republican authorities were engaged in agitation. In 1952, the regional executive committee issued a resolution defining the rules for selecting recruiters for resettlement and preparing agitation and reference materials.

Among them, visual (posters) and written materials and oral propaganda can be singled out. Films were another form of propaganda. An important role was also played by materials in newspapers and magazines, including special issues of large-circulation newspapers, as well as brochures about the region, which included information about the region, as well as letters and stories from settlers.

The recruiters’ lectures were devoted to the state and prospects of the region’s economy, as well as the international position of the USSR. Aleksandr Glushkov reported that the agitation did not cease even after the resettlement: the new residents of the region were explained the labor tasks facing them, and the authors of articles and posters also sought to reduce the number of resettlers returning home.

The speakers compared the newspapers of two large enterprises of the region — the KamGESstroy and Molotovles trusts — before and after Stalin’s death, the forms of agitation and key narratives. The analysis showed that in the late Stalin period, non-material motives stood out: prestige, the call of the party and the desire to be useful to the Motherland. After Stalin’s death, material motivation increased: workers were offered to earn money, quickly improve their living conditions, including by acquiring a new profession. Agitation aimed at securing the settlers was focused on money and privileges.

Kristina Kozlova summed up: a comparative analysis of the agitation of the late 1940s and mid-1950s allows us to identify common motives and a gradual transition to the prevalence of material incentives over ideological ones, although the latter did not disappear. This reflected the gradual transformation of Soviet society during the thaw.

AI to the rescue

Sergey Kornienko presented the report “Studying the History of Migration in the Digital Environment: Regional Aspect” (based on the materials of the joint project of HSE Perm and Tuva State University “Migration in the Socio-Economic, Demographic, Cultural and Human Dimensions”. HSE Mirror Laboratories Program, 2024-26).

He identified three areas of digital scientific humanities research: creation and organization of digital versions of historical and historiographic sources; development and adaptation of methods, technologies and tools for digital research; representation of data and research results.

During the project, its participants create digital versions of historical sources on the history of migration, including in the form of tables and data sets, information systems and databases.

The professor said that rather complex types of sources have to be converted into digital format, in particular, lists of settlers, echelon lists, as well as household books describing the dwellings, livestock and inventory of settlers. Despite the development of technology, it is often necessary to resort to manual or semi-automatic digitization. Students are involved in this work, acquiring useful skills in digitizing documents. Digitized sources are convenient for conversion into tabular and matrix forms.

Digital processing of document complexes allows us to eliminate gaps in some points of individual materials (for example, the absence of the year of birth or previous place of residence of a migrant), and to create metadata.

To study propaganda materials for settlers of the 1940s and 50s, full-text resources were created, prepared for processing by computer methods and tools. In particular, this form of processing was used for the corpus of memoirs of settlers who moved to the Kaliningrad and Molotov regions.

In addition, scientists conduct corpus studies using linguistic methods.

Sergey Kornienko emphasized that digital methods allow increasing the reliability of research, introducing elements of novelty, introducing new sources more fully and processing old ones more effectively. This helps to better understand the impact of migration processes on the social structure and other components of migrants’ lives.

The project participants will continue to use Data Science methods and apply neural network modeling – variants of artificial intelligence, the professor concluded.

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