SOURCES ON THE NUMBER OF CIVILIANS EVACUATED TO WESTERN SIBERIA DURING THE GREAT PATRIOTIC WAR
M.P. Belenko1,2
1Institute of History SB RAS, 8 Nikolaeva str. Novosibirsk, 630090, Russian Federation
2Siberian Institute of Management - Branch of the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration, 6 Nizhtgorodskaya str., Novosibirsk, 630102, Russian Federation
Keywords: Великая Отечественная война, эвакуация, гражданское население, источники, статистический учет, Западная Сибирь, Great Patriotic war, evacuation, civilians, sources, West Siberia
Abstract
The article deals with the issue of the number of civilians evacuated to West Siberia. The paper notes inconsistency of the data number published up to date; analyzes sources of the published data on the size of evacuated population quantity. Based on a legal definition of “evacuated population”, the author identifies the following varieties: “refugees” and “organized population”; reveals features of their accounting and corresponding errors. The article formulates several conclusions: the exact number of people who arrived in the region during the civil evacuation can’t be established due to accounting errors in statistical data. At the same time, errors of generalizing statistical data are greater than the primary data collected by the local population accounting authorities, because the first ones accumulate errors of the second ones. Thus, to determine the evacuated population (and the population in general) size, it is necessary to rely primarily on the documents of the primary population registration, despite the complexity of this approach. Business correspondence of the accounting authorities is of particular importance in this case, as it contains information that allows taking into account the error size inherent in the statistics provided by them. It is important to consider as well, that the error in the accounting the population during the war increased significantly, its value differed significantly in various war periods and in different regions, and, consequently, should be differentiated. In West Siberia, the statistical data errors for each territorial subject (Altai, Novosibirsk and Omsk regions) was about 5 thousand people, and as for general estimates of the number of people who arrived in the region, it is advisable to specify it with an accuracy about 10 thousand people. This value is justified by the peculiarities of preparing data on the natural and mechanical movements of population, as well as the mortality rate in the region, ranging from 13 to 20 thousand people a month during the war.
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