Voennyi Sbornik

13-17

Authors: Susanna D. Bagdasaryan

The paper is focused on the formation of new leisure activities amidst South-Russian peasants by the establishment of the state system of institutions, preparing population for war, expectation of ‘world revolution’ in 1920s. The mechanism of Soviet ideological system paradigms realization, related to peasantry on the south of Russia is traced back, the first results of peasants’ leisure militarization during New Economic Policy are presented. The paper considers the matters of Soviet person mentality formation in terms of fundamental change of peasants’ leisure activities and the construction of state ideological system of the expected world revolutionary changes.

27-40

Authors: Evgeny F. Krinko, Maxim V. Medvede

The paper is concerned with the Mius-front – German defense line with the total length of 104 km, constructed during the Great Patriotic War. The major part of it ran along the right bank of the Mius River, which gave its name to the defense line. Within the fifteen months, from October, 1941 till June, 1942 and from February till August, 1943 Mius-front was the ground of sanguinary battles between the Red Army and Wehrmacht. Nevertheless, it became the subject of research only in modern historiography. Originally Mius-front was constructed as the system of field fortifications, aimed to deter Soviet winter counterattack in 1941. In 1942 and, especially, in 1943 the enemy upgraded defense fortifications. Permanent defense fortifications were built in Priasov’e and Primius’e in accordance with the military and engineering demands of the time. German Command managed to use the natural features of the site, having tied them to the system of gun, mortar and machine-gun fire. Mius-front deferred the advance of the Soviet troops, which suffered great casualties during its assault, to the west. Soviet-German confrontation in Priasov’e and Primius’e reflects the general battle actions during the Great Patriotic War to the large extent. Having gained the advantage in warfare preparation, conduction, planning and maintenance, the Soviet troops managed to breach the defensive line of the enemy. Declassified archive documents, recalls by the witnesses and field data enabled to reconstruct the history of construction and fortification features of Mius-front, reconsider its role in the Great Patriotic War.

48-60

Authors: Tatyana P. Khlynina

The paper studies the experience of living space development by the participants of the Great Patriotic War, marks the most typical ways of settling into different lodgments, both temporal and permanent. The interior morphology of different types of lodging organization, its length, amount of residents, opportunities for privacy. The article stresses that the living space in recollections by the participants of the Great Patriotic War has two sides – place, where a man used to live before the war and place, which was his/her asylum in wartime. Almost all the analyzed recollections consider war as the defining moment, which worsened housing conditions of the population and significantly increased their pre-war status.