Children from Orphanages in Chuvashia on the Eve and During the Great Patriotic War

DOI: 10.33876/2311-0546/2025-2/7-22

Abstract

The fate of children during the war is one of the most difficult trials that all participants in armed confrontations have to go through. For the peoples of the USSR, it was fully manifested in the days of the Great Patriotic War of 1941–1945, during which the number of children who already were homeless or neglected increased significantly as a result of the call of the adult population to the army, the deaths of soldiers and officers, and the evacuation of millions of families to the rear areas of the country. Those areas launched activities to receive and to ensure the life and upbringing of minors. One of them was the expansion of existing and the creation of new educational institutions, orphanages in particular. The article examines how this work was done in the Chuvash Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, which did not have serious material and financial resources, while the main efforts of the authorities were aimed at providing comprehensive front-line needs. Archival documents show the almost extreme conditions in which the children in orphanages found themselves, especially in the first half of the wartime period. The shortage of warm clothes, shoes, interruptions in food supplies, firewood storing, insufficient equipment for educational and residential premises, diseases among children, many of whom were experiencing separation from their families for the first time, and other circumstances – all this had to be solved by the staff of educational institutions, employees of the local Ministry of Education, and heads of the party and Soviet organizations in cities and districts of Chuvashia. Joint efforts had made it possible to overcome the main difficulties, to save the lives of children, and to ensure their education and upbringing.