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Mobilization of Civilian Labor for the Battle of Kursk, 1943

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Mobilization of Civilian Labor for the Battle of Kursk, 1943 DIGGING FOR VICTORY: MOBILIZATION OF CIVILIAN LABOR FOR THE BATTLE OF KURSK, 1943 Daniel Fitzgerald Giblin A dissertation submitted to the faculty at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of History. Chapel Hill 2016 Approved by: Donald J. Raleigh Louise McReynolds Christopher Browning Wayne Lee Anna Krylova © 2016 Daniel Fitzgerald Giblin ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ii ABSTRACT Daniel Fitzgerald Giblin: Digging for Victory: Mobilization of Civilian Labor for the Battle of Kursk, 1943 (under the direction of Donald J. Raleigh) This dissertation examines the mobilizations carried out in spring and early summer 1943, by the Red Army and civilian authorities in preparation for the Battle of Kursk, the largest tank battle in history and the turning point in the war against Hitler. This work centers on four main themes. First, it explores the initial demands the Red Army and returning Soviet civilian officials placed on a population that had just been liberated from German occupation. Even though the people had been terrorized and exhausted by eighteen months of Wehrmacht rule, the Red Army demanded that the people provide labor for its rear services while Moscow required that the collective farmers of the oblast launch a sowing campaign designed to bring in a harvest of prewar proportions. Second, it describes the elaborate propaganda campaign that Kursk’s civilian leaders organized as a means to induce the people to support the Red Army with foodstuffs and labor, while still ensuring a successful sowing operation. In this the authorities attempted to construct a relationship that characterized the people as aggrieved victims of Nazi atrocities and the Red Army as their avenging angels of death. As such the people had to devote their labor to the Soviet military, thus enabling their instrument of vengeance the means to destroy the German invader. Third, this dissertation analyzes the Red Army leadership’s decision to make a deliberate defensive stand in Kursk Oblast given the string of reckless offensives in the preceding half year of fighting. Here, one sees that the Soviet military leadership had learned that the Red Army’s two major successes in the Soviet-German War, at the battles of Moscow and Stalingrad, hinged on firm defensive stand that exhausted the German iii army followed immediately by a strong counteroffensive. Finally, this dissertation explains how the Red Army mobilized the people to prepare Kursk’s tank-friendly, open territory into a vast trap for the Wehrmacht’s vaunted armored forces that had, using its Blitzkrieg tactics, been wildly successful the preceding four summers of the war. By investigating the mobilization for the Battle of Kursk at the grassroots level, this dissertation uncovers a matrix of interactions between the Red Army, the returning Bolshevik Party leaders, and the civilian population in a time of extreme crisis. It shows that the Soviet Union, as a mobilization society, possessed an ability unique to all belligerents to commandeer the countryside’s vast labor reserves to serve immediate military necessity. A close examination of the mobilization processes at work, however, uncovers a rivalry between two state institutions trying to maximize their access to an unfree labor pool, while members of that work force protected their own interests through various forms of peasant resistance. As the Soviet state gave military commanders legal fiat to incorporate nearby civilians in their rear services and impress them into labor crews numbering in the tens of thousands, local political leaders relied on prewar networks of personal connections for mutual protection in order to execute the onerous tasks mandated by the state. While these three entities seemed to work at cross purposes, they still managed to create the first defensive structure that withstood the onslaught of the Nazi fighting force. iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The successful completion of this dissertation and my journey through grad school were made possible by the help and support of many people. First and foremost, I owe a tremendous debt to my advisor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Donald J. Raleigh, whose dedication and guidance has made me a better writer and scholar. His erudition and endless patience through dozens of drafts of grant proposals and dissertation chapters secured for me the wherewithal to carry out my project and gave me the impetus to make continual improvements in its content and style. Don’s support and his exacting standards afforded me not only a strong basis upon which I could complete this dissertation, but also have provided me an excellent model for my own scholarship as I begin my career in history. The professors at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Duke University who agreed to serve on my dissertation committee also deserve my thanks for the contributions they made to the betterment of my project. Louise McReynolds’ straightforward manner and emphasis on not losing sight of the big picture helped keep me on a tighter path. Christopher Browning, Wayne Lee, and Anna Krylova took the time to read through my dissertation and supplied invaluable feedback in the final revisions of the project. I also received excellent advice from a community of scholars at UNC and elsewhere. This group includes Chad Bryant, Richard Kohn, Jeff Jones, Wendy Goldman, Eren Tasar, and Alex Roland. Their thoughtful guidance and intellectual input contributed in a variety of ways to strengthen my dissertation and make me a better historian. All mistakes made, of course, are my own. I am thankful to the institutions that provided me the generous funding and support that allowed me to carry out my research and write the dissertation. A dissertation fellowship The v US Army Center for Military History furnished me valuable time to draft chapters 3, 4, and 5. A Title VIII Fellowship from the American Councils for International Education allowed me to work for ten months in Kursk, Russia. Many people made my time in Kursk more productive and pleasant. The directors at the State Archive of Kursk Oblast, Margarita Mikhailovna Litvinova and Nadezhda Andreevna Elagina were extremely helpful in getting me started and always finding a place for me to work when the reading room was under construction. Elena Grigorevna Artep’eva, Valentina Konstantinovna Vinogradova, and Olg’a Viktorovna Timofeenko helped me secure access to ever useful materials. I also received a great deal of assistance from Tamara Vasil’evna Mikhailova, Natal’ia Viacheslavovna Karachevtseva, Tat’iana Ivanovna Es’kova, and Antonina Nikolaevna Mal’tseva. The staff of the Party Archive in Kursk furnished me with materials vital to the project. I am grateful to Natal’ia Nikolaevna, El’ia, Natal’ia Anatol’evna, and the archive director Vladimir Ivanovich Khondar’ for their help. Chapter 3 could not have been written without the gracious assistance of the staff of the Kraevedcheskii Zal (The Regional History Reading Room) in the N. N. Aseeva Library of Kursk Oblast. I am grateful to Elena Nikolaevna, Masha, and Marina Ivanovna Kaplina. Most of all, I owe a great deal of thanks to Elena Mikhailovna Kapustina, not only for her boundless help, but also her patience, curiosity, and warm friendship. My time in Kursk benefited from guidance and friendship from Konstantin Vladimirovich Iatsenko, Georgii Dzhunglovich Pilishvili, Vera Alekseevna Sergeeva, Irina Gavrilovna Sazonova, Tat’iana Afanas’eva, and Irina L’vovna Zhirnova and her staff in the Office for International Students at Kursk State University. My first two years of graduate school were funding through Foreign Language Areas Studies Fellowships administered through Duke University. vi I could not have asked for a better intellectual home for graduate school than UNC Chapel Hill. I not only benefitted from the training of a host of amazing scholars, but I also had the support and comradery of an excellent group fellow graduate students and colleagues. Emily Baran, Adrianne Jacobs, and Mike Paulauskas have been stalwart friends and given me invaluable feedback on my writing. Emily and Mike also taught me the benefit of taking a break with trips to the NC state fair and a little gamesmanship (get them levels). I have benefitted from the friendship and editing skills of Aaron Hale-Dorrell, Gary Guadagnolo, Edward Geist, Mary- Elizabeth Walters, Ned Richardson-Little, Julia Sittmann, and Laura Brade. The cohort of Russianists and Germanists at UNC, including Andrew Ringlee, Peter Gengler, Trevor Erlacher, Styopa Riegg, Dakota Irvin, Scott Krause, and Brittany Lehman maintained an environment of lively debate on contested points in history and current events. The process of writing was made a little less daunting by my writing group cohorts of Alex Ruble, Rachel Lewandowski, Angelica Castillo, Ann Halbert-Brooks, Yukio Mishima, and Maikel Farinas Borrego. I also want to thank Beth Renne, Lindsey Martin, and Jack Coombes for their warm friendship. The UNC History Department staff was always there when I needed to file some document or application at the last minute. Thank you to Joyce, Genevieve, Diana, Renee, and Adam. But a lion’s share of gratitude goes to the two people who made the administrative work painless: Joy Mann Jones and Violet Anderson. Violet gets an extra shout out for being such a dear friend. Anya Yudina helped me decipher the scrawl and bad grammar of Kursk’s peasants in dozens of documents. More importantly, Anya and her husband, Brandon Rice, shared with me their kitchen table and limitless stimulating conversation in Moscow and Chapel Hill. Alex Jacobs, along with Adrianne Jacobs, reinforced my spirits with twice weekly meals of tasty and healthy food, surrounded by wonderful debate and kvetching, and topped off with a little vii Mariokart. Anya, Brandon, Adrianne, and Alex were instrumental in helping me celebrate the little victories and talking me through the darker days.
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