In June 1941 the German army invaded the Soviet Union in defiance of the 1939 non-aggression pact between the dictators. Over the next few months the Soviet government implemented long-standing contingency plans for the evacuation of Moscow. Eleanore Pieck had married Josef Springer in 1939. In October 1941 she was evacuated, along with most or all the members of the Comintern apparatus, to Ufa in Bashkortostan, presumably accompanied by her husband, whom she had met through the Comintern. Her father was also among those evacuated to Ufa. During 1941/42 she was enrolled as a student at the Kushnarenkovo Comintern school which had opened up (disguised as an Agricultural College) when the Comintern evacuees had arrived from Moscow.