(Им)мобильность в настроениях советских людей: эвакуированные и трудмобилизованные на Урале 1940-х гг

Abstract

Mobility, as well as inclusion, is attributed by default with a positive connotation, which creates the illusion of an always subjective choice. The article discusses forced (im) mobility, which evacuated, labor-mobilized and certain other individuals were subject to during wartime and post-war periods in the Urals. The main task of this study was to figure out who these people appeared to be in the discourse constructs of their time - subjective characters or those dependent on someone else's will, agents of a socially acceptable (or unacceptable) order or hostages of the situation? The empirical base consists of certain lists of questions which were addressed to working people in 1942-1947 and available at the Documentation Center of public organizations of the Sverdlovsk region, supplemented by newspaper articles and some other documents. Analysis in terms of affective and temporal orders shows that people who were relocated to the Urals perceived their situation as temporary, what is expressed by the term "packed and ready to move". Authorities were interested in keeping personnel in those localities where enterprises were evacuated to, while fearing loss of control over the situation. This conflict is considered with regard to the subjectivity gradations of forced migrants. Three gradations are identified: zero, basic and increased degree of subjectivity. Separately illustrated is the situation of those drafted into the Trudarmee - inhabitants of Central Asia as well as Soviet Germans. It is noted that the latter's mobilization into the Trudarmee was superimposed onto their ethnically stigmatized identity; after the war, they were subject to forced inclusion through a system of special "permanent" settlements.