“To organize grain threshing in the Bolshevist-style!”: visit to Penza by Deputy Chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars of the USSR A.I. Mikoyan on November 24–25, 1942

Background. The relevance of the chosen topic is determined by the need for a detailed study of the problem of implementing the grain procurement policy of the Soviet state in the initial period of wartime (1941–1942) at the local (regional) level. The purpose of the study is a systematic analysis of the activities of public authorities to overcome the crisis in agriculture in the USSR and Penza region and the implementation of grain pro curementpolicy. The vision of the grain procurement crisis in the Penza region by Deputy Chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars of the USSR A.I. Mikoyan reflects the novelty of the work. Materials and methods. The article describes the regional historiography of the study of the historical experience of the mobilization model of the economy through the prism of the implementation of a set of measures to achieve the intensification of grain procurement in the USSR on the example of the Penza region, the rear territory of the period of the Great Patriotic War. The source base is based on the records of govern ment authorities and party administration, as well as materials of personal origin. The work is based on an analysis of the contents of the archival information of the secretariat of the Deputy Chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars/Council of Ministers of the USSR A.I. Mikoyan, kept in the State Archive of the Russian Federation, which allow an analysis of A.I. Mikoyan’s visit to Penza in the period from November 24 to November 25, 1942. These data are supplemented by documents from the Russian State Archive of Socio Political History and the State Archive of Penza region. The theoretical principles of re search on the history of Soviet society are based on a systematic approach and interdisciplinary synthesis. Results. The substantive aspect of the study includes the identification of cause-and-effect relationships between the unsuccessful course of grain procurements in Penza region, an analysis of the current situation, as well as a description of the measures taken by the authorities to remedy the situation and their implementation. Using the exam ple of Penza region, the relationship between unsatisfactory indicators in grain procure ments and organizational and personnel decisions regarding the top officials of the region made at the level of the Central Committee of the CPSU (b) in 1942 is traced. Conclusions. Penza region, along with the regions of the Volga region, the Urals and Siberia, has become a priority area for the forced and urgent intensification of grain procurement. This was primarily due to the loss of the grain-producing regions of the USSR due to their occupation by the nazi invaders. The distortion of statistical reporting on grain procurements, mytholo gized theses about hiding grain in collective farms and state farms, as well as the growth of false information and failed figures for grain harvesting in the Penza region became the object of close attention of the Central Committee of the CPSU (b). Administrative repressive measures, the change of the leadership of the region and the appointment to the Penza re gion of persons with experience in the Central Committee of the CPSU(b) did not become a key solution to overcome the crisis situation in the field of grain procurement. The real change in the situation in the agricultural sector occurred due to the adaptation of rural workers and the entire agricultural sector of the USSR to available resources, as well as against the background of a civic patriotic upsurge, synergetically caused by successful op position to the enemy and an active counteroffensive.