Activities of the Councils of Workers' Deputies in Military Conditions
The Councils of Workers' Deputies also reorganized their work in accordance with military conditions. This reorganization brought some changes to the structure and methods of work of local government bodies, as well as their organizational forms, with the aim of maximizing the adaptation of the Councils' activities to the fulfillment of military mobilization and economic-organizational tasks dictated by the war.
In peacetime, in accordance with the Constitution of the Kyrgyz SSR, local Councils and their executive committees had departments for: public education, culture, health care, finance, agriculture and communal services, local industry, trade, and social security. During the war, a number of new departments were created, in particular, departments for state support and household arrangements for the families of front-line soldiers and for the employment of evacuated populations.
Since the elections of 1939, there have been changes in the number of deputies in all levels of the Councils. As of February 1943, out of 284 previously elected deputies of the Supreme Council of the Kyrgyz SSR, only 182 deputies remained within the republic, or 60% of the total number elected; 57 deputies were serving in active and rear units of the Red Army, and 45 deputies were outside Kyrgyzstan.
The composition of the local government deputies was particularly reduced. For example, out of 51 deputies of the Jalal-Abad Regional Council, only 21 were registered in 1943; out of 272 deputies of district councils, 205 remained, and out of 1598 deputies of rural councils, only 843 were left. In total, during the war (up to January 1945), 48% of deputies of regional councils, 53.3% of deputies of district councils, 56.7% of deputies of city and urban district councils, and 56.6% of deputies of rural and settlement councils of workers' deputies of the Kyrgyz SSR were serving in the active army or working outside the republic. As a result, sessions had to be convened based on the available number of deputies. Where it was impossible to hold sessions due to the extreme scarcity of deputies, the Councils of Workers' Deputies held general citizen meetings, and their resolutions were equated to the decisions of sessions and were considered mandatory for execution in the given administrative territory.
Local authorities relied on the broad masses of workers in their military mobilization, economic-organizational, and cultural-educational activities by involving them in the work of permanent commissions, whose activities covered the most important issues of economic-political and cultural construction. As of January 1, 1943, there were 489 permanent commissions (military-defense, local industry, agriculture, budget-financial, school, health care, cultural-educational, communal services, trade, and public catering) in the Jalal-Abad Regional Council, 10 district councils, and 72 rural councils, which included 699 deputies and 740 Soviet activists; a significant portion of these activists were women.
Under the guidance of party bodies, local councils and their permanent commissions provided real assistance to military enlistment offices in organizing the accounting of military personnel, training the population in military affairs and civil defense, mobilizing conscription ages, forming and sending reinforcements to the front, and supplying the active army with material and food resources.
Local authorities did a lot to fulfill their economic-organizational function. They actively participated in converting the national economy of the republic to military footing, in the rapid relocation of evacuated enterprises, and in providing them with premises, labor force, and transportation means.
Rural, aiyl, and settlement councils of workers' deputies assisted collective farms in the timely and organized conduct of sowing, feed procurement, and harvesting, as well as in the development of pasture livestock and increasing the production of agricultural products.
Creation of an Extraordinary Leadership Body — The State Defense Committee (GKO)