1941-1945
The attack of Nazi Germany on the USSR on June 22, 1941 broke the peaceful life of our country.
Parfinsky plywood plant No. 2 was considered strategic - plywood was used to build aircraft and was used in submarines. Therefore, urgent measures were taken to evacuate the enterprise to the rear of the country: partly to the city of Zelenodolsk of the Tatar Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (now the Republic of Tatarstan), partly to the Urals, to the city of Tavda in the Sverdlovsk (now Yekaterinburg) region.
The equipment, which was delivered from Parfin and other evacuated plywood factories, was installed on the sites of the new workshops within a month. This made it possible to fully equip the technological and energy base of the Tavda plant. But the main asset was the people. It must be said that it was the Parfino people, more than 500 workers and their families who arrived in Tavda in August, who formed the backbone of this enterprise, trained the local population, installed and adjusted the equipment.
The production managers and mentors of the team were the first director of the plant, Vladimir Pavlovich Olesko, the first secretary of the district party committee, Nikolai Mikhailovich Kuznetsov, the chief engineer, Lev Pavlovich Myasnikov, and the head of production, Timofey Georgievich Gratsev.
During the four war years, the Tavdinsky Plywood Mill produced 19.3 thousand cubic meters of aircraft plywood, 4332 tons of wood-laminated plastics and 4900 cubic meters of aircraft veneer. This product, according to experts, was enough to produce 30 thousand aircraft.
The honest, selfless work of the plywood workers was highly recognized by the government. High awards were given to peelers N. Trapeznikov, N. Varfolomeev, sorter N. Bykova, mechanic S. Artemyev, head production T. Gratsev, chief engineer L. Myasnikov and director V. Olesko.
The settlement of Parfino was liberated from the fascists on February 9, 1942. The settlement and plywood factory No. 2 presented a gloomy picture - the ashes of burnt-out dwellings, two factory chimneys and piles of bricks from destroyed workshop buildings.
Until 1944, the settlement was located in the front line and was often subjected to artillery shelling and bombing. Power in the settlement was exercised by the military command. In 1944, the front rolled back from Parfino to the west. On February 17, 1944, the settlement council began to operate, which was again headed by its pre-war chairman, Maria Georgievna Kotina.
The kindergarten building was the first to be restored. A bakery began operating there, then a store and a canteen. Already in 1944, classes at the school were resumed.
On May 23, 1944, Resolution No. 5948 of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR was signed together with the State Defense Committee on the restoration of the Parfino plywood plant No. 2, on the basis of which it was planned to create a house-building plant. The plant was aimed at producing standard panel houses, furniture, fiberboard, and planned to continue producing plywood.
The work of plywood workers in the rear and their participation in the fight against the fascists invaders at the front are inscribed in history as heroic pages.
The Book of Memory of the Parfino District contains 1,723 military people, partisans and underground fighters who died and went missing during the Great Patriotic War. 1,190 of them are listed as missing. To this list we must also add the number of civilians who died during the evacuation in the rear and during the occupation. 429 residents of the settlement went to the front in the first days of the war, 120 of them did not return from the battlefields. Many former workers of plywood factory No. 2 fell in battle for their homeland. The chronicles of the war record a lot of the exploits of the Parfino people, including examples of self-sacrifice.
More than 700 workers of the plywood mill were awarded the medal “For valiant labor during the Great Patriotic War of 1941–1945.”