Educational Institutions of Labor Reserves in Western Siberia at the Beginning of the Great Patriotic War (1941–1942)

The evacuation of industrial enterprises, educational institutions, and millions of Soviet citizens during the Great Patriotic War is a tragic page in the history of Russia. This complex operation involved the evacuation and placement of hundreds of schools and factory training institutions in the rear areas of the country. The article describes the scale and complexity of the restoration of the work of educational institutions of Labor Reserves in the conditions of Western Siberia at the initial stage of the war. It includes an analysis of the restructuring process of Labor Reserve schools. The author evaluates the importance of mobilization measures taken to attract young people to accelerated vocational training. The paper also features the problem of the relationship between the management of the Labor Re-serves and the industrial and transport enterprises where students had to do practical training and got employed after graduation. The research offers a comparative statistics of growth in the number of educational institutions and stu-dents.