Evacuees and social stress on the Soviet home front: the Iaroslavl’ experience, 1941

This article examines the everyday experiences of evacuees and how Iaroslavl’ residents and authorities dealt with the resulting social stresses and challenges amidst the exigencies of total war. It does so primarily on the basis of reports and data from Iaroslavl’ district communist party organisations, held in the Center for the Documentation of Contemporary History of the Iaroslavl’ Region State Archive (TsDNI GAIaO), on ‘accommodating’ (razemeshchenie) evacuees in the region. Comparison between these reports and Sovnarkom resolutions on the way evacuees were supposed to be dealt with and the resources allocated to them reveals a wide gap between official expectations and the harsh reality of life for the evacuees, especially children. The article concentrates on the critical summer and autumn of 1941, which saw a flood of evacuees, women and children, the elderly and sick, followed by a further influx as the enemy threatened Moscow and even Iaroslavl’ itself, necessitating re-evacuations, children in particular, by water and rail.