Lukinova L. The labour activity of the youth of Ukraine under conditions of war 1941-1945 (according to the materials of Donbas region)

The labour activity of youth as an active part of wide-spread labour front of Ukraine during the Great Patriotic War on the basis of the broad range of sources has been analyzed. It has been revealed that patriotic feelings, moral and economic motives, conditions of life were the main sources of the youth labour activity. The labour productivity of the young workers has been proved to be irrespective of their organization-membership. The ways of joining the labour groups by the youth have been found. It has been proved that the educational and manufacturing basis of the labour reserve system since 1943 had transformed into significant source of helping the front. The conclusion has been made, that Komsomol-youth brigades appeared to be an effective form of young workers' labour organization. It has been stressed that a great need in personnel generated an initiative of youth to master new kinds of professions, to work directly at the factory, to introduct a simultaneous operation of a number of machine-tools, to combine different kinds of specialties; as to the efforts of the young workers to increase the labour productivity they manifested themselves at the movement to encourage the operation of a number (hundred or thousand) of machines simultaneously. It has been emphasized that the overfulfiling of the work quota settings was often reached by working at unfixed hours.