Abstract
Labour was one of the key aspects of the relationship between power and society in the Soviet Union. The ideology of a conscious attitude to labour was an important component of socialist working discipline. However, with the outbreak of World War II and the challenges it posed, including economic crisis, starvation and devastation, the problems of labour discipline in the work collectives became more pronounced. Under wartime conditions, workers were sometimes forced to take extraordinary measure to solve their problems. Despite the fact that the orders and decrees of the Soviet leadership testify to the strict regulation of the life of Soviet society on the home front, violations of labour discipline expose many structural problems of the Soviet system of management. Numerous forms of labour discipline violations were documented at industrial enterprises during the war. The study of the peculiarities and problems of labour organization at enterprises evacuated to Kazakhstan provides an opportunity to understand the nature and features of the functioning of the Soviet mobilisation system within the war years. The study of labour discipline of workers at defence enterprises during the war also allows us to go beyond established ideological frameworks. The main group of sources includes documents extracted from the fonds of the Archive of the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan (AP RK), the State Archive of Western Kazakhstan Region (GAZKO), the State Archive of Almaty city (GA Almaty).