Seventy Years Since GKO Order No. 1281ss

"On Mobilizing Germans- Men of Conscript Age from 17 to 50 Years, Permanently Living in Oblasts, Krais, Autonomous and Union Republics."

Resolution of the GKO USSR No. 1281 ss from 14 February 1942.

The State Committee of Defense Resolves:

1. All Germans - Men of the ages from 17 to 50 years, capable of physical labor, permanently living in Arkhangelsk, Vologoda, Ivanova, Molotov, Penzen, Svedlovsk, Tambov, Chita, Cheliabinsk, Chkalovsk, Yaroslav, Kirov, Novosibirsk, Omsk, Kubyshev, and Irkutsk oblasts, Primore, Khabarovsk, Altai, and Krasnoiarsk krais, Bashkir, Mordvin, Mari, Tatar, Udmurdt, Chuvash, Buriat-Mongolian and Komi ASSRs, Kazakh, Turkmen, Tadzhik, Kirgiz and Uzbek SSRs - are to be mobilized into work columns for the entire duration of the war and handed over to the NKVD USSR for use in the construction of rail roads.

The carrying out of the mobilization is to be entrusted to the NKO (comrade Shchadenko) together with the NKVD USSR. The mobilization is to be completed by 25 March 1942.

2. Requires the NKPS and the Administration of military communications of the NKO to provide transport to the mobilized Germans with accountable delivery of them to their place of work as announced by the NKVD USSR not later than 30 March.

3. Distribute the order of mobilization and upkeep of the mobilized Germans, established by the resolution of the GKO from 10 January 1942 No. 1123 ss points 2,3,4, again to all mobilized.

4.  Requires the Peoples' Commissariat of Food Industry, Peoples' Commissariat of Meat and Milk Industry, Peoples' Commissariat of Procurement, Peoples' Commissariat of Fish Industry to assign for the month of March and second quarter to the GULAG NKVD USSR at their expense the remaining food goods from these industries, according to the addendum.  Forward to the Peoples' Commissariat of Trade of the USSR the provision of food and industrial supplies for the mobilized on the basis of point 6 in resolution of the GKO No. 1123 from 10. 1. 42.

5. People's Commissariat of Finance USSR together with NKVD USSR are to provide for in the finance plan of the NKVD USSR the necessary funds to pay for the transport of the Germans and other expenses to the officials in charge of providing their supplies.

Chairman of the State Committee Defense

I. Stalin

Source: A.A. German, T.S. Ilarionova, I.R. Pleve, Istoriia Nemtsev Rossii: Khrestomatiia (Moscow, MSNK Press, 2005), pp. 272-273.

Translation from Russian to English by J. Otto Pohl