VNIIM during the Great Patriotic War. Evacuation. Siege. Memory

Abstract

The article covers different aspects of the life of the All-Union D. I. Mendeleev Institute for Metrology (VNIIM) during the years of the Great Patriotic War: history of evacuation of part of measurement standards and laboratories and creation of VNIIM’s filial branch in Sverdlovsk in April 1942, personnel appointments caused by the wartime condi-tions, activities of the Science Council of VNIIM in the Sverdlovsk Filial and sieged Leningrad. The factors are reflected that allowed to organize in the siege winter of the 1941-1942 years work of a number of laboratories including the reference and the tower clocks and to save lives of many employees: the precise work of the Local Air Defence, the obtaining of electric energy due to the placing of radio-transmitter for connection with the Big Land, accommodation of employees on the territory of the Institute etc. The article also tells about keeping the memory of the wartime events in VNIIM and the institute employees that fell on the front and during the siege. The article was written on the base of investigations made in archives of Saint-Petersburg and memories of VNIIM employees, that are stored in the funds of the Metrological Museum. The article is timed to the 75th anniversary of the Victory in the Great Patriotic War.