Humanities and social sciences

The present paper analyses the Soviet war planning prior to the onset of the Great Patriotic War. The focus is placed on the plans of the General Staff of the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army in the spring of 1941. The authors of the study analyse drafts of plans that were never implemented by the Soviet government. The study's conclusion asserts that military leadership possessed no intention of engaging in “an offensive” against Germany.

The formation of the partisan units in the rear of the advancing Nazi troops and the establishment of resistance in the first months of the Great Patriotic War were led by the party and Soviet authorities, intelligence departments and political administrations of the Red Army fronts and USSR state security agencies. As some leaders of the first partisan detachments noted, there was an abundance of organisers, but in reality the resistance was literally stuck at the beginning of the war. The paper studies the development and operation of the central headquarters of the partisan movement, its cooperation with the Red Army and state security agencies with the aim of improving the leadership and the effectiveness of intelligence, sabotage and combat operations of partisan units in occupied Soviet territories during the Great Patriotic War. The author points out deficiencies that existed in the organisation of the partisan resistance and draws conclusions about the positive role of the central headquarters of the partisan movement in the organisation and management of combat efforts behind enemy lines.

The paper analyses the situation of Soviet prisoners of war during World War II, explores the causes of their mass captivity and the reasons for the high mortality rate in Nazi camps. The author studies criminal commands of the Wehrmacht as “the Hunger Plan”, and the use of Soviet prisoners of war s in forced labor. The paper examines strategies for survival in captivity, including confronting the camp administration, participation in the Resistance, and collaborationism. It especially focusses on the question of the total number of prisoners and death tolls. The author addresses issues that require further research, such as camp routine, the biographies of captured Soviet generals, and the revealing the identities of dead Soviet prisoners of war and their burial sites.

The paper analyses the relations between the allies in the anti-Hitler coalition at the time of the preparation and conduct of the Nuremberg trials of Nazi war criminals. The paper examines the contradictions between the allies while discussing the legal and organizational foundations of the trial, as well as the clashes during the trial. The author points out the key problems, which the allies agreed to mention before and during the trial. The author notes the role of the USSR in the preparation and conduct of the trial.

During the Great Patriotic War, the intelligence, Main Political Directorate of the Red Army, Main Archival Administration of the USSR and other authorities organized the collection of documents captured from or left by the enemy. These documents, namely orders and reports, circular letters and communications of enemy units and subdivisions, regulations and instructions, soldiers' personal documents, letters from and to the front, photographs, all kinds of printed materials, were of military and political significance and were widely used in propaganda and the press. The paper explores the measures taken by various authorities to collect trophy documents and the difficulties they had to face in this work. These issues are poorly studied in Russian and foreign historiography, which determines their relevance.

Exemplified by the ‘Novgorod phenomenon’, the paper studies the problem of restoration of cultural monuments lost and damaged during the Great Patriotic War. The restoration began in Novgorod before the war ended, namely, as soon as the city was cleared; it was a unique project to rebuild it from its ruins. Paradoxically, the war provided a chance to implement a promising idea of turning Novgorod into a reserve city; embodied in the General Layout developed under the leadership of Alexey Shchusev (1945). The pivotal change of the city development concept took place in the late 1940s, when, amidst general changes in the state, the Novgorod administration abandoned the idea of a historical and cultural reserve and returned to the pragmatic project of a socialist city as an administrative and industrial center.