Women of Kazakhstan and the Great Patriotic War: Problems of Mobilization to the Front in 1941–1945

Abstract

The article highlights the study of the quantitative characteristics of the participation of Kazakhstani women on the fronts of the Great Patriotic War. The study includes variants of numerical indicators of Russian and Kazakh authors for women mobilized in the USSR and Kazakh SSR. Statistical material is based on archival documents from the archives of Russia and Kazakhstan. The author identifies the primary waves of mass mobilization of women and girls in 1942–1943 and analyzes the tasks and their implementation for the mobilization of women in the Kazakh SSR. The investigation presents the generalized data of the research group of the Karaganda University on the mobilization of girls in several regions and the Kazakh SSR as a whole. As a result of the analysis and comparison of archival documents from the funds of the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History (RGASPI), the Archive of the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan and materials of mobilizations by region, the author concludes that the number of women mobilized to the front in Kazakhstan was significantly higher than that presented in Kazakhstani historiography. Taking into account women officers and underreported mobilized women in several regions of the republic, women of the Kazakh SSR who participated in the war account for more than 9.5 thousand people, which is 0.75 % of the total number of mobilized in the Kazakh SSR.