The history of orphanages in Central Kazakhstan in the 1940–1950s.

Abstract

In thearticle the functioning of orphanages in Central Kazakhstan during the war and the first years after it based on archival materials and memoirswas analyzed. The focus of the study is orphanages and children/adolescents who were left without families and placed in public care for various reasons (famine, deportations, the Great Patriotic War, evacuation, political repressions and arrests of parents, death of parents, etc.). The children’s contingent and their composition in the regional orphanages, highlighting the main sources of children's enrollmentwere studied by the authors. Authors analyzed children’s material, housing, sanitary and hygienic living conditions. Special attention was paid to health issues and the quality of medical care, problems of nutrition and supply of food and non-food products, education. The authors concluded that a sharp increase in the number of children in orphanages in Central Kazakhstan occurred in the 1940s. The situation in orphanages was extremely difficult: high overcrowding, unsanitary conditions, hunger, diseases, abuse, etc. Detectable improvements were noted only by the mid-1950s. They were explicit in the enhancement of the orphanages’ material conditions: quality of food, clothing, education and general appearance of orphanages and the inmates themselves.