The article presents the main stages of the re-evacuation of the institutions of the USSR Academy of Sciences to Moscow and Leningrad. Since December 1942, the first attempts to return a number of institutes locally had begun. On March 13, 1943, the Council of People’s Commissars of the USSR issued a corresponding resolution, after which the re-evacuation began to gain momentum, albeit with numerous difficulties. Analysis of personal sources and documents from the funds of the Archive of the Russian Academy of Sciences, some of which are being introduced into scholarly circulation for the first time, allows the entire process to be seen in greater detail. The re-evacuation was carried out in three stages, in accordance with the calendar plan, with authorized persons appointed to ensure the move. Scientific institutions were moved from Kazan, Sverdlovsk, Tashkent, AlmaAta, and Frunze back to Moscow and Leningrad, which caused various organizational and everyday difficulties. Among the main problems were the unpreparedness of the premises to receive the institutes and difficulties in providing food. Nevertheless, by mid-1943, the ongoing re-evacuation was considered satisfactory and continued. The return of scientific institutes to Leningrad had its own specifics, given that some of them never returned but were redirected to Moscow. The highly centralized network of scientific academic institutions that had developed in the pre-war years suffered greatly during the war and was partially “broken up” or reformatted. Moreover, military conditions clearly showed that the concentration of scientific developments in two key scientific centers was not the most effective way to preserve the country’s scientific potential. Consequently, the situation with the forced and hasty evacuation, and subsequent re-evacuation, contributed to a further rethinking of the methods of developing science and organizing scientific work in the post-war period.
Academy of Sciences of the USSR; Great Patriotic War; re-evacuation; Moscow; Leningrad; academic institutions.