Children of War: on the issue of providing assistance to children evacuated to the Stalingrad region in 1941 – early 1942.

Merkureva Vera Sergeevna PhD in History Associate Professor, Department of National History and Local History Education, Volgograd State Socio-Economic University 400005, Russia, Volgograd region, Volgograd, Lenin Ave., 27, office 1304 merkuvera@yandex.ru

The Great Patriotic War is the most important heroic page in the history of our country; the time when all forces were thrown to protect the country from the enemy. However, even at the initial stage of the war, despite all the difficulties, the country's leadership understood the need to protect civilians and provide targeted social assistance to the most vulnerable categories of the population, primarily women and children. The system of social protection of children, which operated in the USSR by the beginning of the 1940s, was tested for strength during the Great Patriotic War. At that time, a significant number of normative legal acts appeared regulating the evacuation of children from frontline and occupied areas, the placement of orphaned children in families or state guardianship institutions, the fight against child homelessness, neglect and juvenile delinquency, assistance to large families and single mothers.The issues of social policy of wartime were considered in their works by Burdina D.A., Popenko P.V., Kulemina L.B., Chesnokova Yu.V. and others ^{[7, 9, 11, 12]} The authors conclude that the legal foundations and mechanisms for the implementation of social policy of the state changed in response to the requests of wartime.

The specificity of the Stalingrad region lies in the fact that during the years of the Great Patriotic War, the mechanisms for implementing social policy underwent a significant transformation, having passed three stages in their development. In the conditions of the rapid advance of the Germans in the initial period of the war, evacuation from the western regions of the country had to be carried out as soon as possible, and the civilian population, industrial enterprises and children's institutions had to be sent as far as possible to the east of the country. However, the Stalingrad region in 1941-early 1942 was considered as a rear region and was able to receive and accommodate a significant number of evacuees on its territory. During the Battle of Stalingrad, the main task was the speedy evacuation of civilians and children's institutions from the areas of hostilities to the Zavolzhsky districts of the region and further East. In April 1943, the Stalingrad region became the first region where the recovery period begins - according to approved plans, issues of social protection of the population, the return of children's institutions, the placement of orphans were also important.During the Great Patriotic War, too often children found themselves on the front line.

Important issues related to the evacuation of children from the frontline western regions of the USSR were on the agenda already in 1941. It was then that the Resolution of the Central Committee of the CPSU (b) "On evacuation" was adopted, according to which children had to be taken out of combat areas as soon as possible. ^[6] This task was solved literally from the first weeks of the war – by the forces of local authorities, children united in children's institutions, under the supervision of teachers and educators, were sent to the rear areas of the country.  One of the first was the resolution of the Central Committee of the CPSU (b) of August 22, 1941 "On evacuated children from Moscow and Leningrad". ^[6]Thus, from the first days of the war, the problem of child protection was solved at the highest level.

Mass evacuation was carried out from the combat areas. At the same time, the process of saving children was fraught with a number of difficulties. For example, it could happen that parents died in an encircled or captured city, and the children had nowhere to return. The care of tracing the relatives of these children and their further arrangement was entrusted to the NKVD workers. Through their efforts, in the shortest possible time, the necessary receiver-distributors and evacuation centers were created, and then a wide network of orphanages was deployed. At the same time, there was a process of evacuation of existing orphanages to the eastern regions of the country. Later, in order to eliminate the identified shortcomings, the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR decided on March 24, 1942, "On measures to improve the work of evacuated children's institutions." ^[2]

In 1941 – early 1942, the Stalingrad region, at that time considered a rear region, received evacuated children's institutions from the western regions of the country.  In total, more than 50 thousand evacuated children from different regions of the USSR arrived in the Stalingrad region. All these children were part of children's institutions - 68 orphanages from Ukraine, Belarus and the Baltic States, as well as three Spanish orphanages. More than 700 service personnel arrived with children's institutions - teachers, educators, medical workers, accompanying persons. All evacuated children's institutions were placed on the territory of the region in premises transferred for these purposes (as a rule, they were placed in sanatoriums, rest homes, pioneer camps). Another 10 thousand evacuated children were placed in 70 orphanages originally located in the region.^[3]

 All evacuated orphanages were placed in specially allocated premises for this purpose in various districts of the region. Additionally, 9 million rubles were allocated from the budget of the Stalingrad region to provide material assistance to evacuated children left without parents.

Realizing that the material base of the evacuated institutions is in a deplorable state, the local authorities have addressed this problem. According to the resolution of the regional committee of the CPSU (b), a collection of warm clothes and money among the population was organized in Stalingrad and the region. Komsomol members are actively involved in this work. Attaching the utmost importance to providing assistance to evacuated children in the Stalingrad region and considering this work as a contribution to the common cause of defeating the enemy, the bureau of the Komsomol Regional Committee of December 16, 1941 made a decision obliging Komsomol organizations to start collecting things and funds for evacuated children as soon as possible, to provide them with shoes, clothing, food, to assist in the organization of the educational process, to prevent the facts of homelessness and neglect among children.

By the decision of the regional committee of the CPSU (b) and the executive committee of the Regional Council of December 29, 1941, the initiative of Komsomol members to collect clothes, underwear, shoes, hats and other things among the population for evacuated children was supported and approved, and a commission was established to guide and conduct this work under the chairmanship of the secretary of the regional committee Vodolagin. ^[5] By the same decision, district commissions were established in the districts of the region under the leadership of the chairmen of the executive committees of district councils. The work was well organized. The regional commission for collecting things for evacuated children sent a special instructive letter to the district commissions, forms of the receipt and expense book for collecting things, receipts. In the cities, district centers of the region, special points for collecting things were opened, heads of points were appointed. The newspaper Stalingradskaya Pravda widely covered the issues of collecting things for evacuated children, published the addresses of points for receiving things and phone numbers for which it was possible to leave a request for the delivery of things right at home.

This appeal resonated with the residents of the city. Labor collective meetings were held at factories, schools, enterprises, and collective farms, where issues of providing assistance to evacuated children were discussed. And the population of Stalingrad and the region really provided such assistance. Over the next three months, more than 30 thousand of the most necessary things and 207398 rubles were collected. ^[5]

Certain problems have arisen with the organization of meals in children's institutions. In this regard, an important event to assist evacuated children's institutions was the decision of the regional executive committee on the organization of children's canteens. In most areas of the Stalingrad region, canteens were opened by April 1, 1942. So, according to 22 rural districts of the region, 25 canteens were organized, in which 5,637 children received meals daily. For example, the children's canteen in the Leninsky district served 800 children daily. ^[4] At the same time, the quality of food was quite satisfactory, despite the difficulties of wartime supply. Good throughput was noted in children's canteens in the Mikhailovsky district – 500 people, Frolovsky - 500 people, Sredneakhtubinsky – 600 people. In Stalingrad, 5 children's canteens were opened and operated in the spring – summer of 1942 with a total coverage of 3,863 people (Kirovsky district – for 913 children, Traktorozavodsky district – for 850, Barricade district – for 550, Krasnooktyabrsky district – for 850, Ermansky district – for 700). ^[5]

The patronage of collective farms over orphanages, initiated by the Komsomol, has been widely developed in the Stalingrad region, which is of great importance both in organizing the supply of food to children's institutions and in organizing the labor education of children from orphanages. As a result of the work carried out, the collective farms also undertook to provide assistance to the evacuated children. For example, 4 collective farms took patronage over the Nizhne-Chirsky orphanage (the Novo-Maksimovsky collective farm decided to sow 10 hectares of grain crops to the orphanage and allocated 2 cows, 15 sheep, 15 quintals of rye, 8 quintals of millet and 2 quintals of mustard; the Verkhne-Chirsky collective farm decided to sow 6.5 hectares of grain and melons for the orphanage, allocated 3 cows, 2 sheep, 3 pigs and 10 chickens; the collective farmers of the Yeretsky farm put 2 pigs intended for an orphanage for fattening). Almost all collective farms of the Nekhaevsky district, when approving annual reports for 1941, decided to deduct 2-3 workdays from each collective farmer for evacuated children. In the whole district, this amounted to 800 quintals of bread.

In 1942 , the executive committee of the regional Council allocated 600 thousand rubles for the organization of subsidiary farms for orphanages . ^[5] In addition, the district executive committees allocated plots for crops for orphanages and pets from the fund of evacuated livestock.

Many evacuated children who found themselves in the Stalingrad region in 1941-1942 lost their parents and became orphans. Most of them lived in orphanages. Living conditions in state care institutions during the war were extremely difficult – orphanages were often overcrowded, there were not enough qualified educators. However, the population of the country was very sympathetic to the children who lost their parents during the war. Work was underway to transfer children to patronage, as well as custody and adoption. In the first quarter of 1942, 830 children were registered in the Stalingrad region, transferred to families under a patronage agreement.  Among them: 330 children in Stalingrad, 100 children in Astrakhan, 400 in rural areas. ^[4]

The initiative of the workers of the Moscow plant "Krasny Bogatyr" found a warm response among workers and employees of factories and enterprises throughout the country. In their statements, the workers and their wives asked to arrange for children to be adopted. ^[10] Stalingrad was no exception. Here, the work on the adoption of orphans from among the evacuated children began already in 1941. So, the workers of the Stalingrad Metallurgical plant "Red October" adopted 18 children aged 3 to 5 years, at plant No. 221 – 9 children. Workers of institutions and enterprises of Stalingrad took 87 children for upbringing. 23 children were adopted by the workers of Dubovsky and Nikolaevsky districts, where preschool orphanages are located. In total, 145 children were adopted, according to incomplete data. Commissions created from representatives of social security, public education and health authorities conducted regular inspections of the condition of children in foster families, provided assistance if necessary. In the first half of 1942, over 100 applications were submitted with a request to take orphans into families for upbringing.

At the initial stage of the war, while the Stalingrad region was still considered a rear region, children's institutions were evacuated here from the western regions of the USSR – Ukraine, Belarus, the Baltic States. Also, orphanages for Spanish children were placed on the territory of the region. The task of the leadership of our country was not just to save foreign children from military operations, but also to arrange their lives in children's institutions, to provide education and upbringing until they were able to return to their homeland. In order to improve the living conditions of Spanish children in orphanages in the Stalingrad region, orphanage No. 12 for 136 pupils, located in Leninsk, in April 1942, it was decided to transfer and place in the village of Archedinka of the Mikhailovsky district. To solve this problem, it was necessary to prepare and equip the appropriate premises, providing for the allocation of separate buildings for a medical isolation ward, laundry and production workshops. The Regional Department of Public Education prepared the orphanage for transfer without disrupting the educational process.

A series of radio broadcasts about children evacuated from Lithuania to the rear regions of the USSR was planned for the population of the Baltic Soviet republics occupied by the Germans in 1941 – early 1942. Representatives of local authorities prepared and provided to the Komsomol Central Committee detailed material on the situation of Lithuanian children in a particular area. In the material it was necessary to highlight the following issues:

1. how children's meals are organized – a detailed description of the daily diet (breakfast, lunch and dinner) with an indication of the daily allowance of bread – white and black, fats, sugar, vegetables and confectionery;

2. what is the situation with providing children with clothes, shoes, bed linen);

3. medical care – is there a doctor, nurses, isolation wards. How many children are sick and what, how their treatment is organized, whether children are vaccinated;

4. sanitary condition of the orphanage premises – placement of children in bedrooms, cleaning of premises, laundry, whether there are baths, how are they provided with soap;

5. how children's studies are organized in their native language, how many classes have been created, whether all children study, whether there are textbooks, how many teachers are in the orphanage, how children study.

6. how children spend their leisure time; how children's amateur art and children's creativity are organized, what national songs children sing, what books they read, what clubs there are.

Members of specially formed commissions, which included representatives of health and public education authorities, had to personally visit orphanages for Lithuanian children, talk to children about the situation at the front, about the fight against the Germans, about parents who remained in the occupied territories (these radio broadcasts were organized for them). The children were advised to write letters about their lives, about how they were met by the Russian people and, without naming the names of their parents and relatives, to address them so that the latter would recognize their children in them by the episodes and signs described by the children in the letters. All these letters were planned to be read on the air.

Similar materials were prepared in the Stalingrad region. They have been preserved in the Documentation Center of the Modern History of the Volgograd region. Thanks to these materials, we can analyze the situation of evacuated children from Lithuania who were in the All-Union Pioneer camp "Artek" evacuated to Stalingrad. ^[4]

The group of evacuated Lithuanian children numbered 22 people and was divided by age into 3 pioneer detachments, where Lithuanian children were together with pioneers of other nationalities: Russians, Estonians, Latvians, Ukrainians, Belarusians, Moldovans. The camp has been evacuated for 9 months: part of the time the children are in the sanatorium "Mtsyri" near Moscow, 3 months in the village of Nizhne-Chirskaya on the Don, 5 months in Stalingrad. Meals were organized in accordance with the standards that are the same for all evacuated orphanages. Food was combined from the products of those collective farms purchased in the summer at selling prices, which the guys helped with harvesting (part of canned vegetables and cheese). Additional dietary meals were organized for children in need for medical reasons. During the entire period of the children's stay in the Stalingrad region, no infectious diseases (typhus, dysentery, diphtheria, scarlet fever, etc.) were recorded, with the exception of several cases of mild mumps – without complications. A doctor worked in the camp, who was assisted in his work by sandruzhina, organized from the pioneers themselves. The supply of medicines and dressings was carried out in sufficient volume. The pioneers of the camp were vaccinated against typhoid and smallpox.

The Lithuanian group with the pioneers of the Artek camp was located on one of the floors of the children's evacuation center, in 5 rooms. The sanitary condition (despite some crowding of children) was generally satisfactory. The children regularly visited the bathhouse, changed bed and underwear. The children were taught in Russian. Due to the fact that it was not possible to find a Lithuanian language teacher in Stalingrad, the children studied in their native language independently. Educational work was organized at a high level. Pioneers from Lithuania, like most Soviet schoolchildren at that time, wrote letters to the front, took care of seriously wounded soldiers, collected a lot of dishes and books for hospitals. During the holidays, the children visited theaters and cinemas, performed at chef's concerts. In particular, Lithuanian schoolchildren organized and conducted several performances in the hospital. National songs and dances performed by the guys were offered to the attention of the wounded soldiers.

In the spring and summer of 1942, the front line was approaching the borders of the Stalingrad region and a large-scale evacuation of children to the Trans-Volga regions of the Stalingrad Region began from the combat areas (the border of the Stalingrad and Voronezh regions). According to the 1941 resolutions, local authorities developed evacuation plans, but due to lack of time and resources, this work was often carried out in an unorganized manner. The departure of children's institutions had to be carried out as soon as possible, as the situation at the front was rapidly deteriorating. There was not enough transport to ferry children to the left bank of the Volga, it was impossible to collect enough food, dishes and necessary household equipment. Most of the rear areas also did not have time to prepare for the reception of children, so there were cases when evacuated children did not receive hot food for several days, were not provided with boiled water. It was not always possible to fully provide medical care for children, so in the summer of 1942 infectious diseases often spread among children. In July-August 1942, after the beginning of the Battle of Stalingrad, the leadership of the region tried to evacuate the majority of children in orphanages in the region.

Pupils of children's institutions were sent to the Sverdlovsk region, the Altai Territory, the Bashkir ASSR, the Uzbek SSR and other rear regions. Orphanages for Spanish children were evacuated to Ufa.So, despite all the difficulties of wartime, the Soviet state and society showed the most diverse care for children.

Evacuation of children from combat areas, as one of the main tasks at the initial stage of the war, was combined with the strengthening of material support for children's institutions and families who took orphaned children into care. It should be noted that a similar situation was observed in most areas of the USSR. Evacuation of children from the frontline and occupied territories, their accommodation and care for them was one of the priorities of the local authorities.In the most difficult years, the state did everything to ensure that as few children as possible suffered from the war.

Along with this, assistance to large families and single mothers was significantly expanded, the state assumed a significant part of the costs associated with raising a child. Thus, during this period, measures were already taken aimed not only at the placement of children left without parents, but also at the prevention of social orphanhood, when a mother is forced to abandon a child she cannot support. The historical analysis of legislative acts and numerous social policy measures at different stages of the historical development of our country allows us to conclude that the problem of child protection has never been ignored by the state and society. The system of social and legal protection of minors, created by the Soviet state for the placement of children during the Great Patriotic War, developed and changed after its end, meeting the needs of the time.