Paper abstract:

Nowadays propaganda and agitation as a tool of reconstruction and interpretation of the social history of Soviet society are progressively beginning to be reflected in new works on the history of the home front. During the war years the priority role in the formation of labor behavior of Soviet citizens at enterprises was given to a massive agitation-propaganda work, which had to stimulate the labor motivation of workers.

The paper will examine the influence of the mobilization mechanism of Soviet propaganda and agitation on the labor motivation of defense industry workers in Kazakhstan during the war, the degree of involvement and motivation of the agitators themselves, and the final results of propaganda work. It would be shown that the motivation to hard work had a different nature, due to coercion and measures of material incentives for workers.

As a main group of sources in the report we will present documents from the fonds of the State Archive of the Russian Federation (Fund 6903 of the USSR State Committee for Television and Radio Broadcasting (Gosteleradio) and others) and the Archive of the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan, the former party archive (AP RK). These are documents of Fonds No. 708 (Central Committee of the Communist Party (b) of Kazakhstan) and No. 725 (Party Control Commission under the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (b) of the Kazakh SSR).