Penza region during the Great Patriotic War: integration challenges 

Viktor Yu. Kladov, Candidate of historical sciences, deputy director for science, Penza State Museum of Local History (73 Krasnaya street, Penza, Russia), viktek79@mail.ru
Viktor V. Kondrashin, Doctor of historical sciences, professor, head of the Center of economic history, Institute of the Russian History of the Russian Academy of Sciences (19 Dmitriya Ulyanova street, Moscow, Russia); head of the sub-department of the Russian history and methods of teaching history, principal researcher, Penza State University (40 Krasnaya street, Penza, Russia), vikont37@yandex.ru
Aleksandr A. Gushchin, Candidate of historical sciences, director of the Center for the study of the history of Penza Region, Institute of Regional Development of the Penza Region (40 Popova street, Penza, Russia), Alone-87@yandex.ru

Background. The relevance of developing the problem is determined by the need to comprehend the process of glocalization – strengthening the value of local specificity, its actualization. A consistent strategy for the formation of a regional identity, a sustainable awareness of the local community within a certain spatiotemporal continuum is an intangible factor in economic growth and human development. The purpose of the work is to study the processes of administrative and economic development of the rear region during the Great Patriotic War. The consideration of the practices of everyday life, the identification of communication links between the official and everyday levels of perception of what was happening is of fundamental importance. Materials and methods. The array of historical sources involved in the analysis was made up of documents from the State Archives of the Russian Federation and the State Archives of Penza region. The study was carried out on the basis of an interdisciplinary synthesis of the methods of sociology, history and cultural studies of everyday life. The methods of hermeneutics are used, first of all, general approaches to the interpretation of a historical source: understanding the general meaning of the text and the socio-cultural context, taking into account the knowledge of the chronotope of events and everyday practices. Results. In the course of the study, the specifics of the official representation of the region’s identity were revealed and the images of extreme everyday life in the mass consciousness were reconstructed. Conclusions. For the local community, the formation (restoration) of a regional identity (the formation of Penza region as an independent subject of the RSFSR dates back to 1939) coincided with the start of the Great Patriotic War, which was a key factor that greatly complicated this process. Migration mobili-ty, the relocation of dozens of enterprises and over 150,000 evacuated citizens to Penza region, coupled with the mobilization efforts of the authorities and the most severe centrali-zation of management, deformed the familiar background of provincial everyday life.

 Penza region, region identity, regional identity, Great Patriotic War, history of everyday life

Kladov V.Yu., Kondrashin V.V., Gushchin A.A. Penza region during the Great Patriotic War: integration challenges. Izvestiya vysshikh uchebnykh zavedeniy. Povolzhskiy region. Gumanitarnye nauki = University proceedings. Volga region. Humanities. 2022;(4):79–89. (In Russ.). doi:10.21685/2072-3024-2022-4-5