Saassylana Innokentyevna Sivtseva,
Doctor of Historical Sciences, Associate Professor, M.K. Ammosov North‑Eastern Federal University, Yakutsk, Russia, e-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
The Great Patriotic War in Historiography of Yakutia
DOI: 10.31518/2618-9100-2025-2-19
More than 80 years of research have allowed building a significant collection of scientific literature and popular science publications. The article gives a brief historiographical review of historical research on the Great Patriotic War conducted in Yakutia, with a particular focus on publications of recent years. Studies of the Yakut history during the Great Patriotic War began even before the end of the war, in the 1940s. The Soviet historiography included works by A.E. Mordinov, D.D. Izbekov, D.D. Petrov, and others. A new round of research from the second half of the 1980s the 1990s, beyond the scope of the Marxism-Leninism methodology, has resulted in the objective presentation of the mainly tragic pages of history. These are publications by E.E. Alekseev, I.S. Sivtsev, S.E. Nikitina, Yu.D. Petrov, S.I. Sivtseva, journalists D.V. Kusturov, D.N. Gavriliev, and others. Later works about military everyday life were published by M.E. Gryaznukhina, N.D. Vasilieva, A.D. Vinokurov, I.E. Neghenbli, S.I. Boyakova, and others. The books about the previously unknown history of cargo transportation of the gold-producing Allah-Yun have been published. One of the chapters of the third volume (20th − early 21st centuries) of the recently published three-volume edition of “History of Yakutia” is dedicated to the Great Patriotic War. The book is based on the analysis and reconsidering of the previous historiography, and introduction of a wide range of new sources into scientific circulation. Today, the preservation of historical memory is becoming a topical issue, with its coverage found in the results of scientific research and materials of conferences and round table discussions. The article attempts to outline new tasks and areas for future research on the history of Yakutia during the Great Patriotic War, including the historical demography. The numbers of people mobilized to the front, prisoners of war, and the demobilized require clarification. The history of the Yakut people’s participation in the war with militaristic Japan remains understudied. The question why the widespread famine and the resulting high mortality became possible deep in the rear remains unresolved. The number of population in Yakutia during the Great Patriotic War and, accordingly, the size of migration flows, natural population movement, calculation of the percent error of current statistical records must be updated using new materials such as the data of settlement councils. The findings of further research should shape the calculations of human losses, confirming or to refuting past research results).
Publishing: 28/04/2025
The article has been received by the editor on 29/01/2025
How to cite: Sivtseva S.I. The Great Patriotic War in Historiography of Yakutia // Historical Courier, 2025, No. 2 (40), pp. 245–257. [Available online: http://istkurier.ru/data/2025/ISTKURIER-2025-2-19.pdf]
Links: Issue 2 2025
Keywords: History; historiography; Great Patriotic War of 1941−1945; Yakutia; historical memory