Features of the System of Supply and Distribution of Food During the Great Patriotic War (Based on the Materials of Stavropol)

Abstract

The article analyzes the features of the food supply and distribution system as an essential element of the daily life of the population of Stavropol during the Great Patriotic War. The relevance of the study is due to the need to preserve the memory of the participants in the war and the inhabitants of the home front, to study from other methodological positions the features of survival and existence in the years of the most difficult trials of the middle of the 20th century. The practical significance of the study is expressed in the possibility of using its results in the reconstruction of the regional history of everyday life during the Great Patriotic War. The methodological potential of the study is revealed in the possibility of using its material at the level of a higher educational institution, when conducting classes in the history of Russia. The scientific novelty lies in the study, based on archival materials, sources of personal origin, of the features of catering, behavior patterns, domestic and labor daily practices of Soviet society during the Great Patriotic War, taking into account the specifics of the Stavropol region. The results of the study indicate that the food supply, organized in the form of a rationing system during the war, provided only the nutritional needs of only a small part of the population of Stavropol. The majority, the inhabitants of the village, were self-sufficient and survived thanks to their personal plots of land. In the daily existence of residents, especially young people, a constant “sign” of the war years was malnutrition, eating various surrogates, hunger, massive in some areas of the region, led to all sorts of deviations, often - theft, severely punished by the state law enforcement machine.