labor army

The article examines such a phenomenon of the Soviet socialist reality as special settling (a special regime when people are not allowed to leave the place of their living). The author studies the life of the Soviet Germans who made up the majority of special settlers. Education, the structure of German special settling, legal aspects and everyday life, reasons and peculiarities of withdrawing this regime are considered

The author explores the problems of labor use of Soviet Germans during the Great Patriotic War. During the last months of 1941 – the whole 1942. Soviet Germans, men aged 15–55 and women aged 16–45 were mobilized through military commissariats into the labor detachments, which later received the general name «Labor Army». The peculiarity of these formations was that, carrying out a variety of production activities, they were of military organization, and the camp regime of detention, that is, Soviet Germans in the detachments practically had the status of prisoners.