"Who are you following, comrade...?" (The role of queues in the mass consciousness of Leningraders in the second half of the 1930s and in the activities of government agencies)

The article examines the phenomenon of the Leningrad queue in the second half of the 1930s and the measures that the authorized state bodies took to combat them. Based on the reports of the Leningrad Regional Committee of the CPSU (b), reports of the NKVD, and personal memoirs of residents of Leningrad and the Leningrad region, the causes of queues and the scale of this phenomenon are shown, and the role that queues played in the mass consciousness and culture of residents of the city and region is reflected. Special attention is paid to the aggravation of the situation of the population of Leningrad and the Leningrad region during the Soviet-Finnish war and the aggravation of the problem of commodity shortages and queues. The article shows how, against the background of the deteriorating situation at the front and the lack of objective information, queues in Leningrad and the Leningrad region become a source of all kinds of rumors. The publication reflects the main measures that were taken to combat queues by both the state and political leadership of the city and the region, as well as law enforcement agencies, and concludes that the proposed measures to combat queues are futile in the face of increasing commodity shortages on the eve of the Great Patriotic War.