Integral migration - far east and Siberia

"Problems of Economics", Nos. 3-4  1940

"Issues of Resettlement in the Third Five-Year Plan".

Extract

"Shifts in the distribution of industrial and agricultural production to the east, which occurred during the years of the Stalinist five-year plans, significantly influenced the distribution of the population - the country's labor resources. The "geography of the labor force" changed along with the geography of production. Planned resettlement began in the USSR in 1925. However, over only about 450,000 people, i.e., about 90,000 per year, were resettled in the eastern regions of the USSR from 1925/26 to October 1, 1929. During the first and second five-year plans, the number of resettlers increased annually (mainly through industrial migration).

From 1926 to 1939, more than 3 million people moved to the Urals, Siberia and the Far East, mainly from the central regions of the country, that is, more than 250 thousand a year. In this regard, the proportion of the population of these regions in the all-Union total increased significantly: in the Far East - from 0.8 to 1.4% and in Eastern Siberia - from 2.5 to 3.1%. In total, the population of the Urals, Siberia and the Far East during the period from 1926 to 1939 increased by more than 5.9 million people, i.e. by 33%, which is significantly ahead of the overall population growth in the USSR over this period (by 15, 9%). The proportion of the population of the Central Asian republics increased from 5.2% to 6.2%.

The change in the population of the eastern regions due to migration to these regions can also be seen from the fact that, despite its high level, the natural increase in the population in the Far East amounted to only a little more than 1/5 of the total increase over this period, and in Eastern Siberia - 1 / 3. The rest falls on mechanical gain.

During the period from 1926 to 1939, a large number of collective farmers from the central and upper Volga regions, who had a significant reserve of labor, moved not only to the eastern regions, but also to large industrial centers. So, for example, due to resettlement (mechanical growth) from other areas, the population of the Moscow region increased, for example, by 3.5 million people, Leningrad - by 1.3 million, Gorky - by 350 thousand. At the same  time, due to resettlement in other areas the number of residents of the Vologda, Kalinin, Smolensk, Yaroslavl, Ryazan, Orel, Kursk, Voronezh, Tambov, Penza, Kuibyshev regions and the Mordovian ASSR decreased by 5.5 million people.

Thus, despite the absence of a unified plan for industrial and agricultural resettlement in the second five-year plan, in fact it was carried out on a large scale. At the same time, it should be noted that agricultural resettlement in the second five-year plan amounted to a relatively small amount.

The main form of resettlement in the first and second five-year plans was resettlement for work in industry and other non-agricultural sectors of the national economy, i.e. industrial resettlement. This is confirmed by the fact that the urban population of the Far East and Eastern Siberia increased during this period (1926-1939) by more than 3 times (from 890 thousand to 2,980 thousand people), while the rural population grew by only 17.5%. , i.e. from 4 to 4.7 million people.

Where did the migration to the eastern regions come from? Partly it happened due to the qualified personnel of the enterprises of Ukraine, Moscow, Leningrad and the cities of the central part of the Union. These personnel, insignificant in proportion to the total mass of immigrants,  played a large role in the construction and development of new enterprises in the Far East and Eastern Siberia.

But basically industrial resettlement in the second five-year plan and in the first years of the third five-year plan was due to the settling of workers recruited by organized recruitment in the collective farms of the central and Volga regions. Some of these workers came with their families or wrote them out, remaining for permanent work in the east.

Over the past five years, about 2 million collective farmers have been attracted annually to the non-agricultural branches of the national economy of the USSR, mainly to seasonal branches. Of this amount, 40% is transported from one region to another.

Due to the seasonality in a number of industries (timber, peat, etc.) and insufficient work to create permanent personnel, a large number of collective farmers, after several months of seasonal work, go back to the countryside. This leads to the need for the annual delivery of workers from the center of the country to the far eastern regions: annually we import at least 100,000 workers to the Far East and Eastern Siberia. 

To streamline the organized recruitment of workers in the collective farms, the government took a number of decisions. For example, it has been established that workers can be recruited to the Far East only from the Tatar, Bashkir, Chuvash and Mordovian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republics, as well as from the Kirov, Kuibyshev, Kursk and Tambov regions; for the fish season - from the Krasnodar Territory, Stalingrad and Saratov regions. The recruitment of labor force is also strictly regionalized for other delivery zones (for Moscow, Leningrad, Arkhangelsk, the south, etc.).

The government also established that it is allowed to import labor from other regions only for the coal, timber and peat industries, loading and unloading operations of the people's commissariats of the river and sea fleets, for construction and for all existing and under construction enterprises of the Far East. The remaining branches of industry and the national economy can and must recruit labor locally.