In the late 1940s–1950s, thousands of labor migrants arrived in Molotov Oblast of the USSR to work in the local timber industry. This process became part of a broad government campaign to redistribute labor within the country. However, the resettlement was voluntary, which inevitably led to extensive campaigns to attract personnel. For Molotov Oblast, the “donor” regions were Kaluga and Gorky Oblasts of the RSFSR, the Chuvash and Mordovian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republics, as well as a number of regions of the Byelorussian SSR. Therefore, the campaign, carried out by regional and district authorities, was primarily aimed at residents of these regions. The aim of the study is to analyze the factors influencing their choice to migrate. The article is based on a wide range of sources, which include materials from three archives (State Archive of Perm Krai, Perm State Archive of Social and Political History, and Komi-Permyak District State Archive) – decisions, protocols, memos and other office documents – that shed light on the progress of the resettlement campaign. The second group of sources is materials from periodicals, in particular, the newspaper Lesnik Prikamya [Forester of the Kama Region], the official press organ of the Molotovles plant. The third group of sources is propaganda materials on the topic of resettlement, published in Molotov Oblast in the 1950s. These materials allow us not only to draw a conclusion about the approximate number of migrants who arrived in Molotov Oblast, the scale of return migration, and the progress of improvement of forest settlements, but also to identify a number of factors that had the greatest influence on the resettlement process. First of all, this is an opportunity to improve the financial situation of the family, which was achieved both by direct benefits (payments, loans, etc.) and by high earnings at a new place of work. Secondly, although the general progress of improvement in places of resettlement did not keep pace with the development of the industry, potential migrants were not informed about this, expecting comfortable conditions for work, life and leisure. Thirdly, based on propaganda materials, we can conclude that an additional motive for resettlement could have been the desire to help the homeland: patriotic motives in the postwar period continued to play an important role in public life. Finally, we can highlight the “adventure” component of migration: the mysterious forest region from Pavel Bazhovs fairy tales, rich in “green gold”, attracted migrants from central Russia, although this could hardly serve as the main motive. The action of all of these factors was impossible without active agitation and propaganda in places where migrants were recruited; therefore, the mid-1950s in the USSR saw the peak of agitation campaigns aimed at potential migrants.
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