Consideration of the citizens’ appeals in the Soviet authorities of the Mordovian ASSR during the Great Patriotic War

Background. The relevance of the topic is due to the insufficient study of the issue of the history of interaction between the government and society in Soviet Russia at the regional level. Of particular interest for research is the activity of government structures in considering citizens’ appeals during the Great Patriotic War, when the entire Soviet system of governance was mobilized for the needs of wartime. The purpose of the article is to consider the features of the work of regional Soviet government bodies with letters, complaints, and applications from citizens in 1941–1945. Materials and methods. The main source for the study was unpublished documents of the Central State Archive of the Republic of Mordovia. The article is based on the basic principles of historical science – historicism, objectivity, systemicity. The analysis of the array of archival data was carried out using historical-comparative and historical-genetic methods, when working with regulatory acts, the formal-legal method was used. Results. The studied archival documents show that the main shortcomings in the activities of regional authorities in considering citizens’ appeals – formalism, red tape, delays, lack of proper control over the movement of complaints and the implementation of decisions taken – existed even in the prewar years. An important feature for the war period was the increasing importance of appeals from certain categories of citizens (military personnel and their family members, evacuees). Complaining about difficult material and living conditions, citizens, using the existing channel of communication with the authorities, tried to influence them and in this way solve the problems that arose. Conclusions. Individual attempts undertaken at the regional level to eliminate the existing shortcomings in the organization of consideration of citizens’ letters during the Great Patriotic War were unsuccessful. At the same time, letters to the authorities retained their significance as an important element of feedback between the authorities and the population for the management system.