About the Work of NIVIT Military Departments during the Great Patriotic War
The article examines the activities of military departments of the Novosibirsk Institute of Military Railway Engineers (NIVIT) during the Great Patriotic War. On the basis of archival documents, the structure, staffing, quantitative and qualitative composition of teachers of military departments of the Institute is presented, the department activities dynamics during the period under study is reflected. The publication provides for the first time the full names of military disciplines that were taught at that period. Special attention is focused on the analysis of new forms of training, generated during wartime: field military games, military training in the military communications army units and in the rear. The analysis of the educational process in NIVIT allowed the author to conclude that in the war years, the issues of training officers-to-be for the VSO system, the railway troops of the Red Army and the Main Directorate of Military Reconstruction Works (GUVVR) began to occupy a priority place both in the activities of the university management and among students. The annual reports of the Institute allowed us to get a fairly complete and objective picture of the role of military departments in the NIVIT personnel social and political life. Teachers of military departments actively participated in scientific, technical and methodological conferences held in the university, they initiated the conference of Novosibirsk universities military departments. The publication reflects the activities of the deputy head of the institute for military training, major general of the technical troops A. V. Kotyukov, his active role in adapting the research to the real needs of the front and the rear. The study of this topic clearly showed that during the war, the activities of the military departments of the Institute were entirely aimed at completing the main task - training the Red Army commanders-to-be able to ensure the operation of railway transport under war conditions, to organize necessary railway repair and restoration work. As the practice showed, the military departments of NIVIT successfully coped with the task, as evidenced by the battle honours awarded to the university's graduates and their teachers.