State Defense Committee. The creation and activities of the State Defense Committee and other emergency bodies during the war years 1 State Defense Committee headed

Date of submission of the article to the editor:

07-05-2015

Publication date:

09-05-2015

Annotation.

The creation and activities of the State Defense Committee reflected the features of state administration in the conditions of the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945, in which the concentration of all resources was required to win the war. In the prewar years, the system of government of the country finally took shape, in which the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks determined state policy and actually headed the party and state administration. The creation of the State Defense Committee on June 30, 1941 fully reflected this trend and, in the conditions of the war, as an emergency party-state body, concentrated all power in the state. Declassified archival documents on the activities of the State Defense Committee create new opportunities for studying its activities. The article presents a description of the creation, composition, activities and an overview of the materials of the official record keeping of the State Defense Committee. The article characterizes the State Defense Committee, and the representation of publications of documents on activities in scientific research, indicates the possibility of attracting new materials. The latter is due to the fact that almost the entire array of documents on activities has been declassified and creates opportunities for further research into the history of GKOs.

abstract.

The creation and activity of the State Defense Committee (SDC) reflected the peculiarities of the state administration in the conditions of the Great Patriotic War in 1941-1945 during which the concentration of all the resources were needed to gain the victory. Before the war, the country’s system of administration were fully formed, and the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of the Bolsheviks defined the state politics and headed the state administration. The creation of the SDC in June, 30, 1941 fully reflected this tendency and in the conditions of the war took all the state power as an emergency Party and State authorities. Unclassified archive documents about the SDC activity give new opportunities for studying its activity. The article tells about the characteristic features of creation, structure, directions of activity and a review of materials about the official paperwork of the State Defense Committee. The article characterizes the State Defense Committee, shows the documents about the activity of scientific research, defines the possibilities to use new materials. The latter comes out of the fact that all the documents are unclassified and gives many opportunities for the further studying of the SDC history.

keywords:

The history of the Soviet state, The Great Patriotic War, public administration, emergency management agencies, party - government authorities, the military authorities, State Defense Committee, of the ICTs, organization of ICT activities, GKO order

The publication was prepared as part of the implementation of the Russian Humanitarian Foundation project No. 15-03-00624 “Source study of the history of the state and law of Russia (1917 - 1990s)

In the conditions of the Great Patriotic War in 1941 - 1945. a specially created management system operated, in which the State Defense Committee occupied the dominant position from June 30, 1945 to September 4, 1945. The history of the activities of the GKO is very interesting and indicative, since this body reflected the features and combined in its organization two principles - the party and the state, characteristic of the mechanisms of government in Soviet society. But, at the same time, it is also a unique experience in creating, organizing and providing sufficiently effective command and control in wartime.

Within the framework of this article, we will dwell on the issues of the creation and place of the State Defense Committee in the system of party and state administration during the Great Patriotic War, the features of its activities and issued acts, as well as the state of research on the issues and the availability of declassified in the early 2000s. GKO documents.

Creation of the State Defense Committeewas due to the fact that the beginning of the Great Patriotic War showed with all evidence - the pre-war command and administrative control system, even in the conditions of the military mobilization orientation of its orientation and activity, was not able to withstand the large-scale military aggression of Nazi Germany. It required the restructuring of the entire system of political and state administration of the USSR, the creation in the country of new emergency authorities capable of ensuring integrated and coordinated control over the front and rear and "in the shortest possible time to turn the country into a single military camp." On the second day of the war, an organ of the highest collective strategic leadership of the active army was created - the Headquarters of the High Command. And although the Stavka "had all the powers in the strategic leadership of the troops and the forces of the fleet, however, it was not able to exercise power and administrative functions in the field of civil administration." The headquarters also "could not act as a coordinating principle in the activities of civilian power and management structures in the interests of the army in the field, which, naturally, made it difficult for the strategic leadership of the troops and the forces of the fleet." The situation at the front was rapidly deteriorating and this “pushed the top party and state leadership of the USSR to form an authority structure that could become higher in status than not only the Headquarters of the High Command, but also all leading party authorities, state authorities and administration.” The decision to create a new emergency body was considered and approved by a resolution of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks.

The creation of the State Defense Committee issued a joint resolution of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR and the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks of June 30, 1941. It established two fundamentally important provisions: "Concentrate all power in the state in the hands of the State Defense Committee" (p. 2) and "Oblige all citizens and all party, Soviet, Komsomol and military bodies to unquestioningly comply with the decisions and orders of the State Defense Committee" (p. 2). The composition of the GKO was represented by the leadership of the party and the member states and candidate members of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks: I.V. Stalin (chairman), V.M. Molotov, K.E. Voroshilov, G.M. Malenkov, L.P. Beria. Subsequent changes in the composition of the GKO took place in the same personnel vein: in 1942, N.A. Voznesensky, L.M. Kaganovich, A.I. Mikoyan, and in 1944 N.A. Bulganin replaced K.E. Voroshilov. The State Defense Committee was abolished by a decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Council of September 4, 1945 with the wording - “In connection with the end of the war and the end of the state of emergency in the country, it must be recognized that the continued existence of the State Defense Committee is not necessary, whereby the State Defense Committee should be abolished and all of its hand over the affairs to the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR.

It should be noted that the creation of the GKO was not an exceptional phenomenon in the national history of state and law. Its organization can be viewed in the context of a certain continuity in the creation of similar emergency and special bodies in the history of our country. They existed in the Russian Empire, and then in the earlier stages of the existence of the RSFSR and the USSR. So, for example, in Russia, the State Defense Council was created on June 8, 1905 and operated until August 12, 1909, and during the First World War, a Special Conference was created to discuss and unite measures for the defense of the state (1915-1918) . After October revolution In 1917, among the political and administrative structures of the Soviet government there were: the Council of Workers' and Peasants' Defense (1918-1920), the Council of Labor and Defense (1920-1937), the Defense Committee under the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR (1937 - June 1941). ) .

The place of the State Defense Committee in the system of party and state administration of the USSRduring the Great Patriotic War, it was determined by its characteristics as a body that was complex in its political and administrative nature - it simultaneously combined both party leadership and state administration of the country. At the same time, the main issue is the preservation or refusal in the conditions of the war from the former, which had developed by the beginning of the 1940s. administrative-command system of the party-Soviet administration in the country. It was actually represented by one person - V.I. Stalin, who relied on a narrow circle of party functionaries and at the same time the leaders of the highest bodies of state power and administration that are part of the Politburo and the Central Committee of the CPSU (b).

Studies of the activities of the State Defense Committee note and focus on one of its important features, which is that the previously existing Soviet emergency bodies, unlike the State Defense Committee, did not replace the activities of party bodies during the war. On this occasion, N.Ya. Komarov emphasizes that “the emergency authorities during the years of the Civil and Great Patriotic Wars differed quite significantly, and primarily in terms of methods of activity. Main Feature Council of Workers' and Peasants' Defense was that it did not replace the party, government and military bodies. The fundamental questions of the conduct of the armed struggle were considered at that time at the Politburo and plenums of the Central Committee, at the congresses of the RCP (b), at meetings of the Council of People's Commissars. During the Great Patriotic War, no plenums, let alone party congresses, were held, all cardinal issues were decided by the State Defense Committee. The tasks of strengthening the country's defense capability, which had become acute on the agenda, were considered by Stalin in the closest unity of the political, economic and military spheres, which made it possible, from the point of view of the chairman of the GKO, to concentrate the country's political and military efforts on solving urgent problems of defense of our state, on increasing the combat capability of the army and navy. This, finally, ensured the reality of the implementation of the unity of political, economic and military leadership of the entire system of socialist social relations.

The team of authors of the latest study, “The Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945,” answers the question more convincingly. (2015). Considering the place of the "Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks in the system of strategic leadership of the country and the armed forces" in the 11th volume of this publication, the team of authors who prepared it notes: "The Politburo transferred power functions to a new emergency authority - the GKO ... I.V. Stalin and his closest comrades-in-arms, by placing all power on the GKO and becoming part of it, thereby radically changed the power structure in the country, the system of state and military administration. In fact, all decisions of the State Defense Committee, the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR, draft decrees of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR were approved by a narrow circle of statesmen: V.M. Molotov, G.M. Malenkov, L.P. Beria, K.E. Voroshilov, L.M. Kaganovich, and then I.V. Stalin decided on behalf of which body it would be advisable to issue this or that administrative document. It is also emphasized that even under the new conditions of governing the country, “the leading role in both the State Defense Committee and the Headquarters of the Supreme High Command belonged to the members of the Politburo. So, the GKO included all members of the Politburo, with the exception of N.A. Voznesensky, and in the Headquarters of the Politburo it was represented by three members of the highest party body: I.V. Stalin, V.M. Molotov and K.E. Voroshilov. Accordingly, the decisions of the GKO were in fact also the decisions of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks. ... Members of the Politburo, GKO and Headquarters, representing a single state-political and strategic center of the country's leadership, possessed all available information about the state of affairs in the country and at the front, so they could quickly resolve urgent issues. Thanks to this, the process of making important decisions was significantly accelerated, which had a positive effect on the overall situation at the front and in the rear. Despite the violation of the principles of inner-party democracy, such an approach was justified by the specifics of wartime, when the issues of organizing the defense of the country and mobilizing all forces to repulse the enemy came to the fore. At the same time, "the decisive word both in the Politburo and in the State Defense Committee remained with the head of the country."

The above allows us to speak about the party-state nature of the State Defense Committee, the creation and activities of which reflected the finally formed in the 1930s. the country's governance system, in which the VKP(b) played the leading role in the person of its General Secretary I.V. Stalin and members of the Politburo, and the Soviet state acted as a mechanism for legislative registration and implementation of the political decisions of the party. GKO was primarilyh extraordinary organ of the party leadership in the conditions of war, and his activities fully corresponded to the principles of combining the general party leadership of the country and the use of the Soviet state apparatus to implement the decisions of the party. This did not radically change the previous style of governing the country - the GKO was primarily an organ, albeit an emergency one, of the political, party leadership, a committee discussed and made decisions on the main issues of governing the country in wartime conditions at the level of a very limited number of persons vested with the highest party power - "all officials of the newly formed body were members and candidate members of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks." GKO asemergency government body was characterized by the fact that at the level of the heads of the highest bodies of state power and administration, who occupied key positions in them, the directions of organizational and managerial activity were concentrated. This was also manifested in the organization of the activities of the State Defense Committee - the entire system of military and civilian administration was involved in the implementation of its decisions. At the same time, the State Defense Committee was “the center of emergency power and control, endowed with special powers” ​​and acted as “the main structure, including in the system of bodies of strategic leadership of the country and its armed forces, whose decrees and orders were given the status of wartime laws binding on all” . At the same time, one should take into account the fair remark of military historians that “special emergency state bodies, created in connection with the urgent need for wartime, acted and changed in connection with a perceived need. Then they were formalized in the appropriate legislative order (GKO resolution), but without changing the Constitution of the USSR. Under them, new leadership positions, executive and technical apparatuses were established, in creative searches the technology of emergency management was developed. With their help, it was possible to quickly solve the most pressing problems.

Directions and organization of GKO activitiescombined the principles of collegiality in discussing issues and unity of command in making decisions, and the committee itself acted "as a think tank and a mechanism for restructuring the country on a military footing." At the same time, "the main activity of the GKO was the work on the transfer of the Soviet state from peacetime to wartime." The activities of the committee covered the most complex set of issues in almost all areas of the political and state administration of the country in wartime conditions.

In the organization and activities of the GKO, the leading role belonged to its chairman - I.V. Stalin, who during the war concentrated in his hands all the key party and state posts and at the same time was: Chairman of the State Defense Committee, Supreme Commander, Chairman of the Supreme Command, General Secretary of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, member of the Organizing Bureau of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks (b), member of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR, People's Commissar of Defense of the USSR, chairman of the Transport Committee of the GKO. I.V. Stalin and his deputy V.M. Molotov “carried out not only the management of the activities of this emergency body, but also the strategic leadership of the country, the armed struggle and the war as a whole. All resolutions and orders of the State Defense Committee came out for their signatures. At the same time, V.M. Molotov also, as People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs, directed the country's foreign policy activities "Military historians also pay attention to the advantages of unity of command in war conditions and emphasize that" having received unlimited powers, I. V. Stalin was able to rationally use them: he not only united, but also implemented huge military-political, administrative and administrative potential of state power and administration in the interests of achieving the strategic goal - victory over Nazi Germany and its allies.

Members of the GKO were assigned to the most responsible areas of work. At the first meeting of the GKO - July 3, 1941 - “seven resolutions of the State Defense Committee were approved on the responsibility for the assigned section of each member of the GKO. ... Members of the GKO G.M. Malenkov, K.E. Voroshilov and L.P. Beria, along with his main duties in the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR, People's Commissariats and the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, received new permanent or temporary assignments through the State Defense Committee. Beria in the military-industrial bloc oversaw the people's commissariats (mortar weapons, ammunition for the tank industry), and also, in accordance with the GKO decree of August 29, 1941, he was appointed authorized GKO for armaments and was responsible "for the implementation and overfulfillment by industry of plans for the production of all types weapons." G.M. Malenkov supervised the production of all types of tanks. Marshal K.E. Voroshilov was engaged in military mobilization work. As necessary, assignments were redistributed among the members of the committee.

Under the GKO, working groups and structural subdivisions were created and operated. The working groups were the first structural elements of the GKO apparatus and constituted a team of qualified specialists - 20-50. More stable structural subdivisions of the GKO were committees, commissions, councils, groups, bureaus created as needed. The committee included: a group of authorized GKOs (July - December 1941), an evacuation committee (July 16, 1941 - December 25, 1945), a committee for the evacuation of food and manufactured goods from the front-line zones (since September 25, 1941), Trophy Commission (December 1941 - April 5, 1943), Committee for the Unloading of Railways (December 25, 1941 - February 14, 1942), Transport Committee (February 14, 1942 - May 19, 1944), Operational Bureau of the GKO (from 8 October 1942), Trophy Committee (since April 5, 1943), Radar Board (since July 4, 1943), Special Committee on Reparations (since February 25, 1945), Special Committee on the Use of Atomic Energy (since August 20, 1945).

Of particular importance in organizational structure The GKO had an institute of its representatives, who, as representatives of the committee, were sent to enterprises, to front-line regions, and so on. Military historians note that “the establishment of the institution of GKO commissioners has become a powerful lever for the implementation of not only its decisions. At large enterprises, in addition to authorized GKOs, party organizers of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, Komsomol organizers of the Central Committee of the All-Union Leninist Young Communist League, authorized representatives of the NKVD, authorized by the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions worked. In other words, there was a whole army of supervisors on issues of performance discipline. It should be noted that most often authorized GKOs, who had incomparably greater rights and opportunities than the heads of enterprises, provided them with invaluable practical assistance. But there were also those who, without delving into technological processes production, acting with intimidation and threats, brought confusion. In such cases, a well-founded report to the chairman of the GKO quickly resolved the conflict situation.

The territorial structures of the GKO were the City Defense Committees - local emergency authorities, the decision to establish which the committee made on October 22, 1941. The city defense committees were created by decision of the GKO, were exclusively subordinate to it, and their most important decisions were approved by them. Researchers of the GKO activities note that “city defense committees had the right to declare a city under a state of siege, evacuate residents, give enterprises special tasks for the production of weapons, ammunition, equipment, form a people’s militia and destruction battalions, organize the construction of defensive structures, mobilize the population and transport, create or abolish institutions and organizations. The militia, formations of the NKVD troops and volunteer working detachments were placed at their disposal. In a critically difficult situation, local emergency authorities ensured the unity of government, uniting civil and military power. They were guided by the decisions of the GKO, the decisions of local party and Soviet bodies, the military councils of the fronts and armies. Under them, there was also an institution of commissioners, operational groups were created to urgently resolve military issues, and public activists were widely involved.

Giving a general assessment of the organization of the activities of the State Defense Committee, military historians emphasize: “The most characteristic features of the development of the State Defense Committee were: forced necessity and some spontaneity in the creation of its organizational and functional structures; lack of experience in the formation and structural development of such an authority; management of the structural development of GKOs by the first person of the party and the state - I.V. Stalin; lack of directly subordinated bodies; leadership of the army in the field, society and the national economy through decisions that had the force of wartime laws, as well as through constitutional authorities; the use of the structures of the highest organs of the party, state and executive power of the USSR as executive and technical apparatuses; the absence of previously officially approved tasks, functions and powers of the State Defense Committee and its apparatus” .

Decrees and orders of the GKOdocumented his decisions. Their preparation was not specifically regulated: depending on the complexity of the issues under consideration, they were resolved as quickly as possible or the problem was studied and, if necessary, written reports, information, proposals and other documents submitted from the relevant civil or military authorities were requested and heard. Then there was a discussion of the issues by the members of the committee and decisions were made on them. At the same time, V.I. Stalin. Until the end of 1942, the decisions made were drawn up by A.N. Poskrebyshev (head of the Special Department of the Central Committee), and then - the Operational Bureau of the State Defense Committee. The GKO resolutions were signed by I.V. Stalin, and other members of the committee had the right to sign operational directive documents (orders). At the same time, it should be noted that the Politburo did not preliminarily consider or approve the decisions of the State Defense Committee, although the Politburo retained the preliminary consideration and approval of draft resolutions of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, joint resolutions of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR and the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, as well as individual decisions of the Secretariat and the Organizing Bureau Party Central Committee.

The decisions and orders of the GKO were not subject to publication - they had the stamp "Top Secret", and individual acts were supplemented with the stamp "Special Importance". Only a few decisions of the State Defense Committee were brought to the attention of the population - they were published in the open press. In total, during the period of activity of the State Defense Committee from June 30, 1941 to September 4, 1945 (1629 days of work), 9971 decrees and orders of the State Defense Committee followed. “They cover all aspects of the state's activities during the war. The content of the documents, as a rule, depended on the evolving military-political situation on the Soviet-German front, in the country and in the world, the military-political and strategic goals of operations, campaigns and the war as a whole, as well as on the state of one's own economy. Decrees and orders of the State Defense Committee after their signing were sent for execution to the people's commissars, first secretaries of the Central Committee of the Communist Parties of the Union republics, regional committees, regional committees

Studying the activities of GKOuntil the early 2000s. was limited by the availability of the source base - the secrecy of the committee's documents, which also limited the possibilities of research. But even at the same time, historians and historians of law, to one degree or another, turned to the history of the State Defense Committee, illuminated, within the limits accessible to them, certain aspects of the activities of the State Defense Committee. In this regard, the studies of N.Ya. Komarov - in 1989, his article “The State Defense Committee Decides ... Some Issues of Organizational Construction and Strengthening of the Combat Soviet Army during the Great Patriotic War” was published in the Military History Journal, which outlined the principled position and highlighted the main aspects of the activities of the GKO. In 1990, his documentary work “The State Defense Committee decides: Documents. Memories. Comments".

Carrying out work on declassifying documents in 1990 - early 2000. provided researchers with access to previously closed archival documents. The latter was reflected in the increased research interest in the study of GKO - there appeared works devoted to his activities, as well as publications of documents. Among them, the work of Yu.A. Gorkova - “The State Defense Committee decides ... (1941-1945). Figures, documents” (2002), based on previously closed materials from the Archive of the President of the Russian Federation, the Central Archive of the Ministry of Defense, personal archives of I.V. Stalin, G.K. Zhukova, A.M. Vasilevsky, A.I. Mikoyan and allowing to understand the range of directions and content of the activities of the State Defense Committee. In 2015, the work of a team of military historians, unique in terms of richness of material and level of analysis, was published - “The State Defense Committee in the system of emergency bodies of the strategic leadership of the country and the armed forces”, included Volume 11 (“Victory Politics and Strategy: Strategic Leadership of the Country and the Armed Forces of the USSR during the War Years”) of the twelve-volumepublications "The Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945" in (M., 2011-2015) . Without dwelling on the characteristics of this publication, we note that the activities of the State Defense Committee for the first time received a systematic Scientific research in the context of the functioning of the entire mechanism of party, military, civil government in the country.

The potential of studying documents on the activities of GKOs is far from being exhausted. At present, the GKO materials are mostly open and are stored in the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History (formerly the Central Party Archive of the Institute of Marxism-Leninism under the Central Committee of the CPSU) - fund 644. Only 98 decisions and orders of the GKO and partially 3 more documents have not been declassified. . The website of the Federal Archival Agency of the Russian Federation contains lists of GKO documents available to the researcher.

So, the State Defense Committee was formed as an emergency party-state body that headed the system of state administration of the USSR in the conditions of the Great Patriotic War in 1941-1945. The study of his activities was reflected in the studies of historians and historians of law in the 1960s-1990s, devoted to the organization of government in the country under the conditions of the Great Patriotic War, but they were extremely limited in terms of sources - materials on the activities of the State Defense Committee were mostly classified. This limited research capacity to work with documents on the activities of GKOs was overcome in the 2000s. with the removal of the secrecy stamp, which ensured the emergence of new works and created opportunities for recreating both the history of the GKO and the picture of management in the USSR during the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945. generally.

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