The authors analyzed social policy related to the protection of motherhood and infancy in the 1918—1920s in one of the regions of Russia. The research is based on a wide range of archival materials. It was found that, despite the conceptual and theoretical progressiveness, social policy in the first years of Soviet power did not achieve its results. The main reason is the lack of an effective local government system and a structured financing algorithm. Particularly vulnerable were liberated women who had to perform labor duties, and social guarantees for pregnant women, nursing mothers and women with small children were not universally respected. The efforts of regional authorities were aimed at overcoming
the catastrophic consequences associated with famine and war. For this reason, high rates of child homelessness were not due to a new sexual morality that proclaimed the liberation of women from domestic slaver, but to a sharp drop in the socio-economic standard of living of Russian urban families. An examination of the documents of orphanages showed that a significant part of the children were sent to these institutions by the mothers themselves, who were trying to save their children‘s lives in this way. Read in PDF
Acknowledgments: this work was supported by the Russian Science Foundation under grant № 22-28-00625 Parenthood in the context of family and reproductive policy in the modern history of Russia: socio-historical, medical-anthropological analysis, https://rscf.ru/en/project/22-28-00625/.