USSR People’s Commissars of ammunition in the 1939–1946

Specifics of the mobilization economy model created in the USSR during the Second World War remains one of the most debatable problems in modern Russian historiography. Scientists agree that the military industry including ammunition production became an important component in achieving Victory over the enemy. Currently, there appears a need to develop this topic using various approaches, including those personal and biographical. In recent decades, interest in such scientific works is growing, since they make it possible to consider historical period through a personality, who appears in the context of ongoing events, in interaction with society and with other personalities. Thus, the main aspect in this includes specific socio-political conditions, cultural and intellectual traditions. This approach makes it possible to show personal choice, initiative of this or that person, to analyze causes and consequences of the decisions. A possibility appears to study the relationship between mass representations and individual actions. Within the framework of social biography, lives of the individual historical figures are considered as a prerequisite for historical knowledge of a certain stage in the society life. On the basis of archival sources (documents of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks and the Council of People’s Commissars of the USSR, memoirs, statistical data), using the general principles of historicism and objectivity, applying historical methods (genetic, comparative, typological, systemic), it becomes possible to explore biographies of the People’s Commissars: N.P. Sergeev (1897–1942), P.N. Goremykin (1902–1976) and B.L. Vannikov (1897–1962). The research novelty lies in reconstruction of their activities as leaders of the National Design Bureau of the USSR (1939–1946) and identification of their contribution to formation of foundations of the Soviet Military-Industrial Complex in the wartime conditions. It is concluded that graduates of the Bauman Moscow State Technical University B.L. Vannikov and P.N. Goremykin overcame the difficulties and achieved significant results in the ammunition production. The experience gained by them became the basis for solving the subsequent tasks to preserve the country’s defense capability. The research helps to understand relationship between the patterns of historical development and subjective factors that took place in the 1930–1940s period.

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