Soviet partisans of 1941–1945: ways and possibilities of the phenomenon scientific analysis

We propose the first attempt at scientific sociography of the Soviet partisan movement as the most complex phenomenon of the Great Patriotic War social history. At most historic study was possible, first of all, due to the formation of publicly accessible electronic databases with tens of millions of personal records with dozens of information parameters in each. The complex processing of coherent representative information of various electronic databases on long continuous lines allows you to “gather” a collective social portrait of Soviet partisans as a complex of formative signs and compare it with collective portraits of other groups of social activists 1941–1945. Among these features-traits: the general and particular time and place of birth of future activists of the great war period, their social origin and pre-war social status, gender and age structure, national composition, interwar migrations, the status in the Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army and the nature of participation in the war. We pay special attention to the social and historical anthropology of activism during the great war. The work is abundantly provided with graphical results of the study.