Strength and weakness of the totalitarianism in Wartime Soviet Union

Authors

  • Mikhail Suprun Northern Arctic Federal University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.7557/5.3632

Abstract

Unlike all other countries of the Barents Area, Russia found itself in a very specific situation. At the beginning of the war it entered into the alliance with the Axis, while from 1941 it continued the war in the Anti-Hitler coalition. But the main distinctive feature of the wartime Russia was the transformation of its policy. Not a single state in the world history had reached such a degree of centralization as the Soviet Union did during the Second World War. Along with an extremely high degree of centralization of the political system, the Soviet state completely subdued the economy in order to solve the main problem of the moment – to mobilize maximum resources in the shortest period of time in order to win the war. During the war it could be done only at the expense of the population’s welfare.

As a result, during only the first months of the war the Soviet Union managed to compensate its huge losses in manpower, weapons and technology. At the same time, providing the population with food and manufactured goods had been reduced to the absolute minimum. Sometimes – less than the minimum. In some cities, e.g. Arkhangelsk, famine broke out. Soon it was followed by outbreaks of epidemics and high mortality.

In order to avoid epidemics which threatened to develop into a pandemic that could spread into the army, the authorities were forced to take drastic measures to improve the healthcare system by including almost the entire population of the country in sanitary training. Control of the epidemic situation became another domestic front for Russia.

Largely thanks to the strict centralization, the government managed to mobilize the population for victory at this "home front". At least in the Northern areas they managed to extinguish outbreaks of epidemic diseases, while several diseases were minimized or even eliminated by the end of the war. It is this particular nature of the Soviet totalitarianism and its manifestation in the North that is the research topic in Suprun’s article.

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Author Biography

Mikhail Suprun, Northern Arctic Federal University

graduated from the Pomor State University (now The Northern Arctic Federal University), then – from the Leningrad branch of the Institute of History of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, and later from the Institute of Russian History of the Academy of Sciences in Moscow, where he defended his doctoral dissertation on “Lend-lease and the Northern Convoys”. As a senior visitor he lectured and did research at the Moscow State University (1989), Oxford University (1994), George Washington University(1998–1999), Krakow Jagiellonian University (2000), Tromsø University (2003), the Institute of History of the Polish Academy of Sciences (2009). He is the author of over 180 scientific works, including 14 books, as well as the compiler, editor and author of the year-books "The Northern Convoys: studies, memoirs and documents" (Moscow-Arkhangelsk, 1991–2001) and "The Forced Labor and the Political Exile in the North of Russia" (SPtb-Arhangelsk , 2003–2010).

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Published

2015-12-30

How to Cite

Suprun, M. (2015). Strength and weakness of the totalitarianism in Wartime Soviet Union. Septentrio Conference Series, (4). https://doi.org/10.7557/5.3632

Issue

No. 4 (2015): Living the War, part 2

Section

Articles