In the hierarchy of human needs, food takes fi rst place. Therefore the relevance of this topic during the intransient shocks. The article discusses the complexity of the food problem during the Great Patriotic War (on materials of the Vladimir region). The author examines the strategies for solving the food problem, the inhabitants of which were used in the edge of the war years. The material for the study is based on documentary sources of local supplies and memoirs of contemporaries. The author has reviled that supply of urban population with food conducted by cards, and all the inhabitants were divided into categories with different supplies. The card system is not fully secure the large mass of the population needs in food, but because they had to look for different ways of obtaining additional products. Special attention is paid to the creation of individual farms residents and farms businesses that became essential for survival of the people of that time. The study of the problem historian draws attention to other ways to ensure yourself of food the population of the region. These include assistance for the inhabitants of the cities from rural relatives, exchange things for food and work in the collective farms, that is a tempo-rary move from the city to the countryside. It was a process of reverse trend to mobilize the So-viet authorities on youth enterprise in the city. Permanent deterioration of the food situation in the war years becoming a signifi cant part of the population on the brink of survival. The author has come to the conclusion that the country’s leadership could only provide a minimum level of survival for people with any serious deterioration of the situation at the front could lead to the most dramatic consequences in the rear.