Rolling East and Resettlement
The transfer and resettlement of millions of people, including children, invalids, and elderly, posed a vast challenge to public health officials, factory managers, and local soviets. People crammed into freight and cattle cars, and their journeys were often derailed by bombing, illness, and death. Child measles and typhus took a deadly toll. Evacuees from Leningrad during the siege were often in no condition to travel. Families left their dead at unknown stations along the way. The exhausted people who reached their destinations were billeted with other families, in barracks, and in earthen dugouts. Newcomers and natives clashed. Construction crews built their own shelters before laying new electricity, water, and railway lines, and erecting structures for the evacuated factories. Factories too were ordered to merge and share space. Along with new hazards, new, more efficient methods of production emerged. The war proved a powerful crucible, forcing every branch of administration to confront challenges of epic proportions.