Labor to the rear during the war. Home front during the war

It has become the most ambitious in humanity. She claimed many lives both in the firing line and outside the theater of war. But at the front, life bordered on death most of all. Front-line 100 grams, of course, allowed a little distraction and overcome fear, but, in fact, from morning until late evening during active military clashes, soldiers and officers did not know when it was their time to leave this world.

Whatever the quality of modern weapons, there was always a chance to get hit by a stray bullet or die from an explosive one. What can we say about hastily assembled units at the beginning of the war, when the machine gun was given for three people, and you had to wait for the death of your comrades to arm yourself. They slept in dugouts and dugouts, ate there or in the fresh air, a little away from the fighting. Of course, the rear was located nearby. But the hospitals and the location of the units seemed to be a completely different world.

Life in the occupied territories

It was absolutely unbearable here. The likelihood of being shot for no apparent reason was high. Of course, it was possible to adapt to the laws of the occupiers and run their economy tolerably - to share with the occupiers what they asked, and they would not touch. But everything depended on the human qualities of certain soldiers and officers. There are always simple ones on both sides. Also, there are always scum, which is difficult to call people. Sometimes the locals were not particularly touched. Of course, they occupied the best huts in the villages, took away food, but they did not torture people. At times, some invaders shot for fun for the sake of old people and children, raped women, burned houses with living people.

Difficult life in the rear

Life was extremely difficult. Women and children were doing hard work in factories. They had to work for 14 or more hours. There was not enough food, many peasants fought, so there was no one to feed the country. In some regions, for example in Leningrad, during the Great Patriotic War, life was simply unbearable. During the blockade, thousands were dying of hunger, cold and disease. Someone fell dead in the streets, there were cases of cannibalism and corpse-eating.

Relatively quiet life

Even during such large-scale wars as World War II, there were people who led a completely safe life. Of course, there were countries that supported neutrality, but this is not so much about them. Representatives of the highest echelons of power of all the belligerents did not particularly live in poverty during the most difficult periods of the war. Even in besieged Leningrad, the city leaders received food parcels that could only be dreamed of in more well-fed regions.

Recently, they have been spoken of exclusively as a social category. They list the privileges they are entitled to, periodically complain about the lack of benefits. However, to someone embittered, on the contrary, it seems that these ancient old people and old women receive too much from the state, and indeed have healed in this world. But to spite the ill-wishers, these middle-aged people are still here, with us, although every year their number is inexorably decreasing. Who are they, home front workers?

A bit of terminology

Russian legislation classifies persons who have worked in the rear for at least six months in this category, which has been confirmed in their documents. Those who were awarded orders and medals of the USSR for their labor activity during these years also fall under the definition of "home front workers" - this saves them from the need to prove the fact of their work in a different way.

A bit of arithmetic

The war against fascism ended almost 70 years ago. The same figure determines the average. In other words, most of those who were born at the end of the war are no longer alive. How many of them are left, those who were not just born earlier, but also could work during the war, forge, sparing no effort, a great victory?

Probably, for a long time there are no heroic women in the world who, instead of the men who left to fight, went down into the mines or tried to plow the frozen Siberian soil in order to then bake bread for the fighting soldier. For the most part, those who raised military factories, who, exhausted and half-starved for days, did not leave the machines to provide the army with weapons, also left this world. Most often, the definition of "workers of the rear of the Great Patriotic War" means children. More precisely, who was a child in those terrible years, but did not just live an ordinary child's life (however, then it was impossible), but worked in factories, on state farms, in hospitals, trying to contribute to the overall victory over the enemy.

About the peculiarities of teaching

In the Soviet Union, considerable attention was paid to the patriotic education of young people on the examples of heroic peers. Every Soviet schoolchild could, as they say, call at least a dozen names of pioneer heroes (Valya Kotik, Lenya Golikov, Zina Portnova, etc.) and tell in detail about their feat. After the collapse of the USSR, a lot has changed: both the views on individual events, and the teaching methodology, and the very thing has disappeared. Probably, a certain restructuring of views was really needed.

For example, who is he, is he really a hero? Or a traitor to his own family? Or just a snotty, unreasonable boy, entangled in difficult adult games?

Schoolchildren need to say that childhood is not only carefree. It is important to tell that there were also such children - home front workers, whose contribution to the overall victory over the enemy is incommensurate with their small age and is truly enormous. If this lesson of history is not learned well, then angry young scumbags will continue to appear in considerable numbers, bullying and deceiving the elderly. And later they will grow up as adults, reproaching old veterans with their penny privileges.

By the way, about the benefits

In the USSR, civilians working hard in the rear during wartime were called differently - war veterans (those who took a direct part in the battles were called participants of the Second World War). By the end of the 1980s, the total number of participants and veterans of the war had decreased so much that the difference in benefits assigned to one category or another gradually vanished. In 1985, former partisans who fought in the occupied territories were also ranked among the war veterans. Like the direct participants in the battles of the Second World War, the home front workers enjoyed certain and rather substantial privileges. The list of these benefits and the procedure for obtaining them were the same for all republics of the USSR.

What happened next?

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, each of the former republics itself formulated its attitude towards the veterans, itself made a decision about the privileges due to these people. The worst of all was for those war veterans who ended up on the territory.They not only lost all available benefits - the new authorities called Soviet soldiers invaders, and some of them even faced prosecution. In most other republics, no one disputed the heroism of the veterans, but their standard of living was significantly reduced. Inflation, rising prices and rent, problems with medical care - all this seriously affected the well-being and real opportunities of middle-aged people.

How is it in Russia?

In Russia, the greatest merits of Soviet soldiers (home front workers) are not only not questioned, on the contrary, from year to year the significance of their feat is emphasized more and more, and the victory over fascism itself is celebrated more and more magnificently each time. But haven't we forgotten behind this abundance of beautiful words and festive fireworks those to whom, in fact, we owe this victory?

Few members of the labor front who are still living are offended. Although formally the definition of war veterans in Russian legislation has been retained for all those who forged victory, the concept of “home front workers” that appeared in 2000 significantly narrowed the benefits of the latter. Gone are, in particular, the substantial pension supplement, as well as the benefits in the provision of medical care and the purchase of drugs.

It would be untrue to say that these people are not cared for in Russia at all - they are entitled to certain payments and other privileges. But a significant part of the benefits is provided not from the federal, but from the municipal budget, and its capabilities in different regions may differ significantly. And the payments to veterans are not too high. Heroic work could have been appreciated more - the country would hardly have become impoverished!

From memories

Historians and ethnographers rarely, but remember these people. They talk to them, ask about life at that difficult time, then publish memories of the war. What do the veteran home front workers tell us?

Dozens of workers' battalions worked on the approaches to the defensive lines of Stalingrad. A participant in one of them, A. V. Osadchaya, recalled how she and her friends had to work in the most difficult conditions, hammer the frozen ground, building anti-tank ditches. Young bodies froze from the cold and scanty food, covered with abscesses. They had to spend the night right there, in dank dugouts, and in the morning they had to go back to work, because there were not enough working hands. Another participant, M.P. Uskova, told how the home front workers in the fierce Stalingrad winter washed their hands in blood, digging trenches and clearing the railroad tracks from snow drifts.

You can hear thousands of similar memories. The importance of what these people were doing is difficult to overestimate, just as it is impossible to imagine the full severity of the trials they endured. In 1996, in Samara, a monument was erected to the Minors of the Home Front 1941-1945. Grateful Samara ". In this city, which during the war years was one of the main forges of the country, they are well aware of the contribution that ordinary children made to the common cauldron of victory.

Conclusion

When only social workers think about the elderly, and even they are forced, it is very offensive. Old age is not a pause before death, but an inevitable stage of life, and it must be lived fully and with dignity. The elderly have done a lot for the prosperity of society, the younger generations owe them a lot, and decent people still try to pay off their debts.

One of the important criteria by which the state is judged is whether it is good for the old people. Unfortunately, neither Russia nor its neighbors - the countries of the post-Soviet space - can boast of special care for the older generation. As we can see, this category of pensioners is not too spoiled - home front workers. And in relation to them to be indifferent and indifferent is simply criminal.

Chipigina Varvara

Work about the workers of the rear of the village of Novonikolaevka, Yaya district.

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The time of war brought you up "

Work for the III district research conference

“The first steps in science

Chipigina Varvara

Grade 3 student

MBOU "Novonikolaevsk school"

Supervisor:

Miroshnikova Nadezhda

Alexandrovna,

Primary school teacher

MBOU "Novonikolaevskaya

School" "

with. Novonikolaevka, 2015

Introduction ……………………………………………………………………………. 3

Chapter 1 . D neti-war - home front workers ………………………………………… ..4

Chapter 2. Difficult years of military childhood .... ………………………………… ... 5

Conclusion ………………………………………………………………………8

Literature ………………………………………………………………………..9

Applications ……………………………………………………………………...10

Introduction

Our country is preparing for the 70th anniversary of the Victory in the Great Patriotic War. It was the most cruel and terrible test that befell the Russian people in 1941-1945. War spares neither adults nor children. She claimed millions of lives, ruined millions of talents.

We, the children of today, know little about the events of the Great Patriotic War. There is no family that has not been touched by the war.

I never asked my grandfather about his childhood and I don't know anything about my great-grandmother and great-grandfather. And I don't know about how people lived at that time. I thought that children and war - two words should not stand side by side. And I was shocked to hear the story of the guide of our museum about children who were 7-10 years old during the war, and they worked on an equal basis with adults in factories, fields, farms. They were still too small to hold weapons in their hands, and, of course, they were not taken to the front, but they provided great assistance to the adults in the rear. With their feasible work, they tried to bring the victory closer. We say - these are "children of war".

Each of them has its own war, its own exploits, its own history. I would like to know more and tell about these people who made an invaluable contribution to the Victory over fascism, working in the rear.

The theme of my work " The time of war brought you up. "

Purpose of work: Learn about the life of children during the Great Patriotic War

Wars.

Tasks:

Explore historical sources dedicated to the lives of children in years

Great Patriotic War.

Identify who is called "Home Front Worker".

Collect and record the memories of my fellow villagers who have the status of "Home Front Worker"

Replenish the exposition in the school museum;

Project object: The life of children during the Great Patriotic War.

Project subject : The life of children living in the village of Novonikolaevka during the Great Patriotic War.

As a hypothesis it can be assumed that the fate of my fellow countrymen is inextricably linked with the fate of the country.

When choosing research methodsused meetings and conversations with home front workers, studied archival materials.

Every year there are fewer and fewer home front workers, and if their memories are not written down now, they will simply disappear along with people, leaving no well-deserved trace in history.

Therefore, I wanted to learn from living witnesses about the life of children during the Great Patriotic War.

Practical significance:All collected material can be used on class hours. It will be transferred to the school museum.

The educational research work consists of an introduction, two chapters, a conclusion, a list of references.

Chapter 1 War Children - Home Front Workers

And no one suspected that pleasant chores, perky games, and many lives would be crossed out by one terrible word - war.

That distant 1941 is the most tragic, but also the most heroic in the centuries-old history of our Fatherland.

Blood and pain, bitterness of loss and defeat, death of relatives, people, heroic resistance and sorrowful captivity, selfless labor in the rear. All people, both old and young, stood up to defend their homeland.

An entire generation, born from 1928 to 1945, had their childhood stolen. "Children of the Great Patriotic War" - this is how today's 70-80-year-olds are called. And it's not just the date of birth that matters. They were raised by the war. From the very beginning of the war, children worked on an equal basis with adults. Children stood at the machines in factories and plants, replacing the men who had gone to the front. Schoolchildren collected mittens, socks, warm clothes for soldiers,helped the wounded in hospitals,collected medicinal plants, sent gifts to the front,wrote letters to soldiers to maintain their fighting spirit.There were many such boys and girls who helped adults during the war years.

In the villages, it was necessary to cultivate the fields so that there was bread. And there were no horses, and then women and children were harnessed to the plow and plowed the land in order to plant and grow grain for the front. They knew that a hungry soldier would not win.

In the cold winter, children had to get up a little light, go to help their mothers, sisters, grandmothers. Some helped on farms, some in the field. The production rates were huge in the fields where boys and girls worked, thousands of hectares of mown grain, thousands of bundled sheaves, thousands of threshed grain.

The children understood that the power of our army consisted of the connection between the front and the rear. A soldier will not have clothes, food will not be able to fight.

I cannot imagine that children, the same age as me, worked on an equal basis with adults.

The Motherland highly appreciated the exploits of the children who worked in the rear during the war. Immediately after the end of the war, tens of thousands of workers in industry, agriculture, culture were awarded a commemorative medal "For Valiant Labor in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945". They were awarded the title "Home Front Worker". (Annex 1)

They are the children of war - home front workers, who received their first award for helping to restore the destroyed economy, for the restoration of roads, cities, villages. Raised by labor and valor, they grew up early, replacing their dead parents with their brothers and sisters.

Conclusion: The heroic work of everyone, including children, contributed to the victory over the enemy.

Chapter 2 Difficult years of military childhood.

For those who were born after the war, it is difficult to understand what the war generation went through. One can only read or listen to the stories of those who survived, and try to realize, try to feel what they have experienced. Memories of the Great Patriotic War will excite us in 100 and in 200 years. This topic is relevant, because the further in time the years of the Great Patriotic War move away from us, the more important are all the details, all the details of those great events that their direct participants can tell about.

In our village there are people who during the Great Patriotic War defended our Motherland from enemies and those who worked in the rear. The youngest home front workers were 7-10 years old.

In the village of Novonikolaevka at this time there are 10 people left living in the rear. Here are some of those with whom I met and talked about life during the war. (Appendix 2)

This is what she told me in her short interview.Lapteva Tatiana Yakovlevna“In March 1941, we moved to the village of Novonikolaevka for permanent residence. I was 15 at the time. When the war began, my father was immediately drafted into the army. It was very difficult to live without a dad.

Mom was at work all the time, all the work was done by women. On the collective farm, the land was plowed on horses and they were very much taken care of. And at home, people plowed their plot themselves: women gathered and harnessed to the plow and dragged it. So they plowed in turn: first at one, then at another, and so on. We lived together.

Then they received grain, ground it themselves in the mills and baked bread in their ovens. There was little grain, so the bread was baked with grass. " As children, they went to the meadows and collected clover heads, quinoa, wild onions, sorrel, and dug the bulbs of locusts. Small children mostly grazed cattle, sometimes harrowed, and drove manure.

During the war she worked on the collective farm "Stalin's Way", on the farm until 1943. In 1944, at logging on the Black Lake. In 1945 she worked as a foreman of the 1st field brigade until 1946. Now on a well-deserved rest. (Appendix 3)

Born on August 10, 1931. In the family of a collective farmer. Mother and father were ordinary people. The family had three children - an older brother, Ivan and a sister, 8 years younger than him. His brother, Ivan Grigorievich, was in the army before the war, he fell ill, returned sick - disabled and died in 1946. Father, Ivan Grigorievich, worked on a collective farm on the preparation of hay. Here is what Ivan Grigorievich recalls: “We went to mow in the village. The warm river of the Izhmorsky district and my father took me with him for the whole summer. It was there that they learned that the war had begun. In the fall of 1941, my father was taken to the war. When the war began, I was only 10 years old then I had to do all the work. There was no time to study. Need to work. Beginning in spring, they harrowed on horseback, in the summer they worked in the mowing hay, mowed, rowed, folded, dragged drags.

They went to the mowing far beyond Izhmorka and lived there for weeks, after the harvester they tied the sheaves and carried them to the haystacks, and after harvesting they plowed the chill. In winter, they threshed these sheaves, and also went to logging to Lake Chernoe. A narrow-gauge railway was laid there, a small steam locomotive passed along it, which worked on wood, we loaded it with wagons with wood and he took it to the banks of the Golden Kitata River. In the spring we were sent to dump the forest into the river. All work was done mainly on horses, and they still had to be fed and watered. Then help my mother at home - apply water from the river, get firewood and much more. It was very hard and difficult. There were still children I wanted to play, but I no longer had the strength. In the fall of 1944, a funeral for his father came. Our childhood years were not easy during the war. " (Appendix 4)

I was waiting for victory with great desire. On Victory Day, May 9, 1945, I was at work, harrowing. The brigadier came to the field and said that the war was over. Victory! They were given one day off, and before that there was no day off. In 1951, Ivan Grigorievich was taken into the army, returned and still lives in our village.

Romashova Natalia Vasilievnawas born in 1921. During the war she lived in the village of Lomovitsa, Maltsevsky s / s. She recalls: “During the war, almost all the men from the village were taken to the front. There are old people, women and children left ”. Natalya Vasilievna, like all women during the war, worked in the rear. She was then 20 years old. During the day, all the women, old people and children worked in the fields. They manually reaped rye with sickles, knitted sheaves, stacked, threshed the sheaves with a "fold", sowed flax, weeded weeds in the fields, and worked as a beekeeper at night. As in all of Russia during the war, people in Lomovitsa were starving. Everything that was removed from the fields was given to the state. The workers were given 200 grams of bread a day. The potatoes remaining in the fields were collected secretly and baked from them into flat cakes. She worked until her retirement at the Pobeda collective farm. For her work during the war and after the war she received the Order of the Badge of Honor and the Veteran of Labor medal. Now he lives in the village of Novonikolaevka. (Appendix 5)

Dubinin Mikhail Yakovlevichstudied at the Novonikolaevsk primary school, finished only 3 classes, the war interfered with his studies. He says the children worked hard. After work we ate bread, frozen potatoes, drank tea from carrots. Even the peeling of potatoes was not thrown away, but used to make pancakes. At the age of 10, he already went to the assistants of the tractor driver, and at the age of 14 he got on the tractor himself. We plowed day and night, seven days a week, until the suffering ended. We slept four hours a day.

After harvesting, Mikhail Yakovlevich received grain for the first time for workdays. Mom cried with joy, kept stroking him on the head and saying: "You have become quite an adult." Childhood was swallowed up by the war, youth - by the post-war devastation and hunger. " He served in the army, took part in the Victory Parade on Red Square.

Awarded with medals and the sign "Home Front Worker". (Appendix 6)

Gunko Matryona Yakovlevnaremembers when n The Great Patriotic War began to take men to the front. The old and small remained in the village. Life has become hard. There was no one to harvest. Children worked on a par with adults. Everyone dragged the sheaves, threshed them with flails, gathered bread and handed over almost all of them to the state. They worked as milkmaids. The cows were milked by hand.
It was hungry, there was no bread, they gathered frozen potatoes in the fields, cooked cabbage soup from quinoa.

My grandfather , Chipigin Mikhail Yakovlevich, induring the war he was small and did not have to fight. But the memories of how badly they lived then, how they had to work for the front and for victory, how they waited for news from the front from their relatives, and after the soldiers returned home - this he remembered for the rest of his life. At the age of seven I already had to work, I went to be a shepherd's assistant. After the war, my grandfather was 10 years old, and he was already working on a horse. I had to deal with harrowing the soil, removing manure, delivering hay.

My grandmother's name is ChipiginaMaya Dmitrievna.She was not at the front. When the war began, she was only 4 years old. But she was already working on the collective farm: she collected spikelets in the fields, potatoes. She says it was very difficult for everyone. I always wanted to eat, but there was almost nothing to eat, because everyone was sent to the front to win.

Now, from the stories of my fellow villagers, I know how difficult it was for people not only at the front, but also in the rear during the Great Patriotic War.

I listen and understand - this will never be forgotten. This memory is sacred and eternal. The courage and heroism of the people who brought the Victory closer have no statute of limitations. The stories of the home front workers, like a distant echo of the war, remind us: there was a war, but don't let it repeat itself!

Conclusion: All home front workers are united by the same past: a constant feeling of hunger, lack of sleep, unbearable child labor and faith in victory.

Conclusion

The years of the Great Patriotic War go farther and farther into the past, fewer and fewer witnesses of those terrible events remain alive. And the more precious for us are the memories of the children of the war. We will not find their names in any book. But we must remember them.

What heart does not burn the memory of the fiery years, which became a severe test for millions of Soviet children, who are now over seventy. It was they who selflessly worked in the rear, helping the front with everything they could. During the war years, thousands of centners of bread, meat, milk, wool and other agricultural products were shipped.

The home front workers made a significant contribution to the common cause of the victory over fascism. Not only the heroism and courage of the soldiers, but also hard, sometimes exhausting work in the rear in the name of victory helped our grandfathers and great-grandfathers withstand this terrible and cruel war that claimed millions of lives. The children of the war believed in victory and, as best they could, brought it closer, they believed in a bright, happy future.

In the course of my work, I got to know the workers in the rear of our village. Meeting with them, I realized that many of them find it very difficult to remember those terrible years. They seem to relive that time. After all, many of them lost their closest relatives and friends in the war.

As a result of my work, I came to the following conclusions:

1. Home front workers made a significant contribution to the victory over fascism.

2. Most of them are women, old people and children from 7 years of age.

3. They built facilities, were engaged in agriculture, transportation of goods, production of weapons for the front, etc.

The work done helped to understand that the war childhood of our great-grandparents was very difficult, They gave their childhood for what we have today.

The memory is still alive in descendants
Those heroic times -
To all home front workers
Our low bow to earth!

Literature

1. Alekseev, S.P. A book for reading on the history of our homeland [Text] .- M .: Prsveshenie, 1996.-214s

2. Lavrina, V.L. The Great War [Text] / V.L. Lavrina // History of Kuzbass in stories for children from ancient times to the present day.- Kemerovo: Kuzbass, 2004- P. 68-74

3. Shuranov, I.P. Difficult bread of the village [Text] / I. P. Shuranov // Kuzbass: everything

For the front. - Kemerovo: "Skif", 2005 -. S195 - 211

4. Wikipedia - the free encyclopedia [Electronic resource] Wikipedia

Home front workers during the Great Patriotic War

Https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9F%D0%B0%D0%BC 11.2013

Memories and photographs and documents from personal archives:

1. Krasnoshlykova I.G.

2. Laptevoy T. Ya

3. Dick I. Ya

4.Gunko M. Ya

5. Chipigina M. Ya

Annex 1

Appendix 2

Appendix 3

Lapteva Tatiana Yakovlevna

Appendix 4

Krasnoshlykov Ivan Grigorievich

Appendix 5

Romashova Natalia Vasilievna

Appendix 6

Dubinin Mikhail Yakovlevich

Appendix 7

According to well-known statistics, the Great Patriotic War claimed about 27 million lives of citizens of the Soviet Union. Of these, about 10 million are soldiers, the rest are old people, women, children. But statistics are silent about how many children died during the Great Patriotic War. There is simply no such data. The war crippled thousands of children's lives, took away a bright and joyful childhood. The children of war, as best they could, brought Victory closer to the best of their own, albeit small, albeit weak, forces. They drank a full cup of grief, perhaps too big for a little man, because the beginning of the war coincided with the beginning of life ...

Hundreds of thousands of boys and girls during the Great Patriotic War went to the military registration and enlistment offices, added a year or two to themselves and left to defend the Motherland, many died for it. Children of war have often suffered from it no less than the soldiers at the front. Childhood, trampled by the war, suffering, hunger, death made the children adults early, having brought up in them childish fortitude, courage, the ability to self-sacrifice, to feat in the name of the Motherland, in the name of Victory. Children fought on a par with adults both in the active army and in partisan detachments. And these were not isolated cases. There were tens of thousands of such guys, according to Soviet sources, during the Great Patriotic War.

Here are the names of some of them: Volodya Kazmin, Yura Zhdanko, Lenya Golikov, Marat Kazei, Lara Mikheenko, Valya Kotik, Tanya Morozova, Vitya Korobkov, Zina Portnova. Many of them fought so hard that they deserved military orders and medals, and four: Marat Kazei, Valya Kotik, Zina Portnova, Lenya Golikov, became Heroes of the Soviet Union. From the first days of the occupation, boys and girls began to act at their own peril and risk, which was indeed fatal.

The guys collected the rifles, cartridges, machine guns, grenades left from the battles, and then passed all this to the partisans, of course, they were at serious risk. Many schoolchildren, again at their own peril and risk, conducted reconnaissance, were liaison in partisan detachments. They rescued the wounded Red Army soldiers, helped arrange the escape of our prisoners of war from German concentration camps for the underground workers. They set fire to German warehouses with food, equipment, uniforms, fodder, blew up railway cars and steam locomotives. Both boys and girls fought on the "children's front". It was especially widespread in Belarus.

In units and subunits at the front, teenagers of 13-15 years old often fought along with soldiers and commanders. Basically, these were children who had lost their parents, in most cases killed or driven by the Germans to Germany. Children left in the destroyed cities and villages became homeless, doomed to death by starvation. It was terrible and difficult to remain in the territory occupied by the enemy. Children could be sent to a concentration camp, taken to work in Germany, turned into slaves, made donors for German soldiers, etc.

In addition, the Germans in the rear were not at all shy, and dealt with children with all their cruelty. "... Often, because of entertainment, a group of Germans on vacation arranged a relaxation for themselves: they threw a piece of bread, children ran to it, and after them automatic turns. How many children died because of such fun of the Germans throughout the country! Children swollen from hunger could Take something, not knowing something, eatable from a German, and then there is a turn from the machine. And the child has eaten forever! " (Solokhina N.Ya., Kaluga region, town of Lyudinovo, from the article "We are not from childhood", "Mir novostei", No. 27, 2010, p. 26).
Therefore, the Red Army units passing through these places were sensitive to such guys and often took them with them. The sons of the regiments, the children of the war years, fought against the German invaders on an equal basis with adults. Marshal Baghramyan recalled that the courage, courage of adolescents, their ingenuity in performing tasks amazed even old and experienced soldiers.

"Fedya Samodurov. Fedya is 14 years old, he is a pupil of the motorized rifle unit, which is commanded by the Guard Captain A. Chernavin. Fedya was picked up in his homeland, in the destroyed village of the Voronezh region. Together with the unit he participated in the battles for Ternopil, with a machine-gun crew, kicked the Germans out of the city. When almost the entire crew died, the teenager, together with the surviving soldier, took up the machine gun, firing long and hard, detained the enemy.
Vanya Kozlov. Vanya is 13 years old, he was left without relatives and for the second year he has been in a motorized rifle unit. At the front, he delivers food, newspapers and letters to soldiers in the most difficult conditions.
Petya Tooth. Petya Zub chose a no less difficult specialty. He has long decided to become a scout. His parents were killed, and he knows how to settle accounts with the accursed German. Together with experienced scouts, he gets to the enemy, reports his location on the radio, and artillery fires at their orders, crushing the fascists. "(Argumenty i Fakty, No. 25, 2010, p. 42).

A pupil of the 63rd Guards Tank Brigade Anatoly Yakushin received the Order of the Red Star for saving the life of the brigade commander. There are many examples of heroic behavior of children and adolescents at the front ...

A lot of such guys died and went missing during the war. In the story "Ivan" by Vladimir Bogomolov, you can read about the fate of the young intelligence officer. Vanya was from Gomel. His father and sister were killed in the war. The boy had to go through a lot: he was in the partisans, and in Trostyanets - in the death camp. Mass shootings, cruel treatment of the population also caused the children to have a great desire to take revenge. Getting into the Gestapo, the teenagers showed amazing courage and resilience. Here is how the author describes the death of the hero of the story: "... On December 21 of this year, at the location of the 23rd Army Corps, in the restricted area near the railway, the rank of the auxiliary police Yefim Titkov was noticed and after two hours of observation was detained a Russian, schoolboy 10-12 years old who lay in the snow and watched the movement of trains on the Kalinkovichi - Klinsk section ... During interrogations he behaved defiantly: he did not hide his hostile attitude towards the German army and the German Empire. 43 at 6.55 ".

The girls also actively participated in the underground and partisan struggle in the occupied territory. Fifteen-year-old Zina Portnova came from Leningrad to her relatives in 1941 for a summer vacation in the village of Zuy, Vitebsk region. During the war, she became an active participant in the Obolsk anti-fascist underground youth organization "Young Avengers". While working in the cafeteria of retraining courses for German officers, she poisoned food at the direction of the underground. She took part in other acts of sabotage, distributed leaflets among the population, and conducted reconnaissance on the instructions of a partisan detachment. In December 1943, returning from a mission, she was arrested in the village of Mostishche and identified as a traitor. During one of the interrogations, grabbing the investigator's pistol from the table, she shot him and two more Nazis, tried to escape, but was captured, brutally tortured and on January 13, 1944, shot in the prison of Polotsk.

A sixteen-year-old schoolgirl Olya Demesh with her younger sister Lida at the Orsha station in Belarus, on the instructions of the commander of the partisan brigade S. Zhulin, blew up fuel tanks with magnetic mines. Of course, the girls attracted much less attention from the German guards and policemen than teenage boys or adult men. But the girls were just right to play with dolls, and they fought with the soldiers of the Wehrmacht!

Thirteen-year-old Lida often took a basket or bag and went to the railroad tracks to collect coal, extracting intelligence about German military echelons. If the sentries stopped her, she explained that she was collecting coal to heat the room in which the Germans lived. Olya's mother and younger sister Lida were seized and shot by the Nazis, and Olya continued to fearlessly carry out the partisans' assignments. For the head of the young partisan Oli Demesh, the Nazis promised a generous reward - land, a cow and 10 thousand marks. Copies of her photograph were distributed and sent to all patrol services, policemen, headmen and secret agents. Capture and deliver her alive - that was the order! But they failed to catch the girl. Olga destroyed 20 German soldiers and officers, derailed 7 enemy trains, conducted reconnaissance, participated in the "rail war", in the destruction of German punitive units.

From the first days of the war, the children had a great desire to help the front in some way. In the rear, children did their best to help adults in all matters: they participated in air defense - they were on duty on the roofs of houses during enemy raids, built defensive fortifications, collected black and non-ferrous scrap metal, medicinal plants, participated in collecting things for the Red Army, worked on Sundays ...

The guys worked day and night in factories, factories and industries, standing behind the machines instead of brothers and fathers who had gone to the front. Children also worked at defense enterprises: they made fuses for mines, fuses for hand grenades, smoke bombs, colored flares, and assembled gas masks. They worked in agriculture, grew vegetables for hospitals. In school sewing workshops, the pioneers sewed linen and tunics for the army. The girls knitted warm clothes for the front: mittens, socks, scarves, sewed pouches for tobacco. The guys helped the wounded in hospitals, wrote letters to their relatives under their dictation, put on performances for the wounded, arranged concerts, causing a smile from adult men exhausted by the war. E. Yevtushenko has a touching poem about one such concert:

"The radio was turned off in the ward ...
And someone stroked my hair.
In the Zimin hospital for the wounded
Our children's choir gave a concert ... "

Meanwhile, hunger, cold, disease in no time dealt with fragile little lives.
A number of objective reasons: the departure of teachers to the army, the evacuation of the population from the western regions to the eastern, the inclusion of students in labor activity in connection with the departure of family breadwinners to the war, the transfer of many schools to hospitals, etc., prevented the deployment in the USSR during the war of a universal seven-year compulsory training begun in the 30s. In the remaining educational institutions, training was conducted in two, three, and sometimes four shifts. At the same time, the children were forced to store firewood for the boiler rooms themselves. There were no textbooks, and due to lack of paper they wrote on old newspapers between the lines. Nevertheless, new schools were opened, additional classes were created. Boarding schools were created for the evacuated children. For those young people who left school at the beginning of the war and were employed in industry or agriculture, schools for working and rural youth were organized in 1943.

There are still many little-known pages in the annals of the Great Patriotic War, for example, the fate of kindergartens. “It turns out that in December 1941 in besieged Moscow kindergartens worked in bomb shelters. When the enemy was driven back, they resumed their work faster than many universities. By the fall of 1942, 258 kindergartens had opened in Moscow!

More than five hundred educators and nannies in the fall of 1941 dug trenches on the outskirts of the capital. Hundreds worked in the logging area. The educators, who only yesterday led a round dance with the children, fought in the Moscow militia. Natasha Yanovskaya, a kindergarten teacher in the Bauman region, heroically died near Mozhaisk. The educators who remained with the children did not perform feats. They simply rescued babies whose fathers fought, and mothers stood at the machines. Most of the kindergartens became boarding schools during the war, children were there day and night. And in order to feed children in a half-starved time, to protect them from the cold, to give them at least a bit of comfort, to occupy them with the benefit of the mind and soul - such work required a great love for children, deep decency and boundless patience. ”(D. Shevarov“ World of news ”, No. 27, 2010, p. 27).

"Play now, children
Grow free!
That's what red is for you
Childhood is given ", - wrote N.A. Nekrasov, but the war also deprived the kindergarteners of their "red childhood". These little kids also grew up early, quickly forgetting how to be naughty and capricious. Convalescent soldiers from hospitals came to children's matinees in kindergartens. The wounded soldiers applauded the little actors for a long time, smiling through tears ... The warmth of the children's holiday warmed the wounded souls of the front-line soldiers, reminded them of home, helped to return from the war unharmed. Children from kindergartens and their teachers also wrote letters to soldiers at the front, sent drawings and gifts.

Children have changed their games, "... a new game - in the hospital. They played in the hospital before, but not like that. Now the wounded are real people for them. But the war is played less often, because no one wants to be a fascist. They are carried out by trees. They shoot snowballs at them. We have learned to help the victims - those who have fallen and bruised. " From a boy's letter to a front-line soldier: “We used to often play war too, but now much less often - we are tired of the war, it would sooner be over so that we could live well again ...” (Ibid.).

In connection with the death of their parents, many street children have appeared in the country. The Soviet state, despite the difficult wartime, nevertheless fulfilled its obligations to children left without parents. To combat neglect, a network of children's receivers and orphanages was organized and opened, and the employment of adolescents was organized. Many families of Soviet citizens began to take orphans to their upbringing, where they found new parents. Unfortunately, not all educators and heads of children's institutions were distinguished by honesty and decency. Here are some examples.

"In the fall of 1942 in Pochinkovsky district of the Gorky region, children dressed in rags were caught stealing potatoes and grain from collective farm fields. It turned out that the inmates of the regional orphanage were" harvesting "the crops. And they did not do it out of a good life. Investigations local militiamen uncovered a criminal group, and, in fact, a gang, consisting of employees of this institution. In total, seven people were arrested in the case, including the director of the orphanage Novoseltsev, accountant Sdobnov, storekeeper Mukhina and others. 14 children's coats, seven suits, 30 meters of cloth, 350 meters of manufactory and other misappropriated property, which was allocated with great difficulty by the state during this harsh wartime.

The investigation established that by not supplying the due norm of bread and food, these criminals only during 1942 stole seven tons of bread, half a ton of meat, 380 kg of sugar, 180 kg of biscuits, 106 kg of fish, 121 kg of honey, etc. The employees of the orphanage sold all these scarce products on the market or simply ate them themselves. Only one comrade Novoseltsev received fifteen servings of breakfast and lunch for himself and his family members every day. At the expense of the pupils, the rest of the attendants also ate well. The children were fed "dishes" made from rot and vegetables, citing poor supplies. For the whole of 1942, they were given only one candy each for the 25th anniversary of the October Revolution ... And what is most surprising, the director of the orphanage Novoseltsev in the same 1942 received an honorary diploma from the People's Commissariat of Education for excellent educational work. All these fascists were deservedly sentenced to long terms of imprisonment "(Zefirov MV, Dektyarev DM" Everything for the front? How the victory was actually forged ", pp. 388-391).

“Similar cases of crimes and teachers' failure to fulfill their duties were also detected in other regions. So, in November 1942, a special message was sent to the Saratov City Defense Committee about the difficult material and living conditions of children in orphanages ... , children are not provided with warm clothes and shoes, as a result of non-observance of elementary social and hygienic rules, infectious diseases are observed. Because of the lack of teachers and lack of premises, studies were long abandoned. In boarding schools in the Rivne region, in the village of Volkovo and others, children also did not receive bread for several days at all. " (Ibid. P. 391-392).

"Oh, war, what have you done, vile ..." Over the long four years that the Great Patriotic War lasted, children, from toddlers to senior schoolchildren, have fully experienced all its horrors. War every day, every second, every dream, and so on for almost four years. But the war is hundreds of times more terrible if you see it with the eyes of children ... And no time can heal wounds from war, especially children. "These years that were once, the bitterness of childhood does not allow to forget ..."

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To this day, they remember the soldiers who defended our homeland from enemies. Children born in 1927 to 1941 and in the subsequent years of the war were those who found them in these cruel times. These are the children of war. They survived everything: hunger, death of loved ones, backbreaking work, devastation, children did not know what fragrant soap, sugar, comfortable new clothes, shoes were. All of them are old people for a long time and teach the younger generation to value everything that they have. But often they are not given due attention, and for them it is so important to pass on their experience to others.

Training during the war

Despite the war, many children studied, went to school, whatever they have to.“Schools worked, but few studied, everyone worked, education was up to grade 4. There were textbooks, but there were no notebooks, the children wrote on newspapers, old receipts on any piece of paper they found. The ink was the soot from the oven. It was diluted with water and poured into a jar - it was ink. They dressed for school in what they had, neither boys nor girls had a certain shape. The school day was short as it was necessary to go to work. Brother Petya was taken by his father's sister in Zhigalovo, he was one of the family who finished 8th grade ”(Fartunatova Kapitolina Andreevna).

“We had an incomplete secondary school (7 classes), I already graduated in 1941. I remember that there were few textbooks. If five people lived nearby, then they were given one textbook, and they all gathered together at someone's house and read, prepared their homework. They gave one notebook per person to do their homework. We had a strict teacher in Russian and literature, he called to the blackboard and asked to recite a poem by heart. If you don’t tell, they will ask you for the next lesson. Therefore, I still know the poems of A.S. Pushkin, M. Yu. Lermontov and many others "(Vorotkova Tamara Aleksandrovna).

“I went to school very late, there was nothing to wear. Poverty and lack of textbooks also existed after the war "(Kadnikova Alexandra Egorovna)

“In 1941, I finished the 7th grade at the Konovalov school with an award - a piece of chintz. I was given a ticket to Artek. Mom asked me to show on the map where that Artek was and refused the voucher, saying: “It's far away. What if there is a war? " And she was not mistaken. In 1944, I went to study at the Malyshevskaya secondary school. We got to Balagansk by walk, and then by ferry to Malyshevka. There were no relatives in the village, but there was an acquaintance of my father - Sobigray Stanislav, whom I saw once. I found a house from memory and asked for an apartment during my studies. I cleaned the house, washed, and thus worked for the shelter. Before the new year, there was a sack of potatoes and a bottle of vegetable oil. It had to be stretched out until the holidays. I studied diligently, well, so I wanted to become a teacher. The school paid great attention to the ideological and patriotic education of children. In the first lesson, for the first 5 minutes, the teacher talked about the events at the front. Every day, a line was held, where the results of progress in grades 6-7 were summed up. The elders reported. That class received the red challenge banner, there were more good and excellent students. Teachers and students lived as one family, respecting each other. ”(Fonareva Ekaterina Adamovna)

Nutrition, daily life

During the war, most people faced an acute problem of food shortages. We ate poorly, mainly from the garden, from the taiga. We caught fish from the nearest reservoirs.

“Basically, we were fed by the taiga. We collected berries and mushrooms and prepared them for the winter. The most delicious and joyful was when my mother baked pies with cabbage, bird cherry, potatoes. Mom planted a vegetable garden where the whole family worked. There was not a single weed. And they carried water for irrigation from the river, climbed high up the mountain. They kept cattle, if there were cows, then 10 kg of oil per year was given to the front. They dug frozen potatoes and collected the spikelets remaining in the field. When dad was taken away, Vanya replaced him for us. He, like his father, was a hunter and fisherman. In our village the Ilga river flowed, good fish were found in it: grayling, white-haired, burbot. Vanya will pick us up early in the morning, and we will go to pick different berries: currants, boyarka, wild rose, lingonberry, bird cherry, pigeon. We will collect, dry and hand over for money and for preparation to the defense fund. Collected until the dew disappears. As soon as it comes down, run home - you need to go to the collective farm haymaking, row the hay. The food was given out very little, in a small piece, if only there would be enough for everyone. Brother Vanya sewed “Chirki” shoes for the whole family. Dad was a hunter, he got a lot of fur and handed it over. Therefore, when he left, a large amount of supplies remained. They grew wild hemp and made pants from it. The elder sister was a needlewoman, she knitted socks, stockings and mittens ”(Fartunatova Kapitalina Andreevna).

“Baikal fed us. We lived in the village of Barguzin, we had a cannery. There were brigades of fishermen, they caught various fish both from Baikal and from the Barguzin River. Sturgeon, whitefish, omul were caught from Baikal. In the river there were fish such as perch, soroga, crucian carp, burbot. The canned food was sent to Tyumen, and then to the front. The weak old people, those who did not go to the front, had their own brigadier. The foreman was a fisherman all his life, had his own boat and seine. They called all the residents and asked: "Who needs fish?" Everyone needed fish, since only 400 g was given out per year, and 800 g per employee. Everyone who needed fish pulled a seine on the shore, the old people swam into the river in a boat, set up a seine, then brought the other end ashore. On both sides, a rope was evenly chosen, and the net was pulled to the shore. It was important not to let the joint out of the motny. Then the foreman divided the fish for everyone. So they themselves fed. At the factory, after they made canned food, they sold fish heads, 1 kilogram cost 5 kopecks. We didn't have potatoes, and neither did we have vegetable gardens. Because there was only a forest around. Parents went to a neighboring village and exchanged fish for potatoes. We did not feel strong hunger ”(Tomara Aleksandrovna Vorotkova).

“There was nothing to eat, we walked across the field to collect spikelets and frozen potatoes. They kept cattle and planted vegetable gardens ”(Kadnikova Alexandra Yegorovna).

“All spring, summer and autumn I walked barefoot - from snow to snow. It was especially bad when we worked in the field. On the stubble, my feet were pricked in blood. The clothes were like everyone else's - a canvas skirt, a jacket from someone else's shoulder. Food - cabbage leaf, beet leaf, nettle, oatmeal talker and even the bones of starved horses. Bones steamed, and then sipped salted water. Potatoes, carrots were dried and sent to the front in parcels "(Fonareva Ekaterina Adamovna)

In the archive, I studied the Book of orders for the Balaganskiy Raizdrav. (Fund No. 23, inventory No. 1 sheet No. 6 - Appendix 2) I found out that there were no epidemics of infectious diseases among children during the war years, although by order of Raizdrav dated September 27, 1941, rural medical obstetric stations were closed. (Fund No. 23 inventory No. 1 sheet No. 29-Appendix 3) Only in 1943 an epidemic was mentioned in the village of Molka (the disease was not indicated)., Health questions Sanitary doctor Volkova, district doctor Bobyleva, paramedic Yakovleva were sent to the outbreak site for 7 days ... I conclude that preventing the spread of infection was a very important matter.

The report at the 2nd district party conference on the work of the district party committee on March 31, 1945 summarizes the work of the Balagan district during the war years. The report shows that 1941, 1942, 1943 was very difficult for the region. The yield dropped dramatically. Potato yield in 1941 - 50, in 1942 - 32, in 1943 - 18 centners. (Appendix 4)

Gross harvest of grain - 161627, 112717, 29077 centners; received for workdays of grain: 1.3; 0.82; 0.276 kg. Based on these figures, we can conclude that people really lived from hand to mouth. (Appendix 5)

Hard work

Everyone, young and old, worked, the work was different, but difficult in its own way. We worked day after day from morning until late at night.

“Everyone worked. Both adults and children from 5 years old. The boys drove the hay, drove the horses. Until the hay was removed from the field, no one left. The women took young cattle and raised them, while the children helped them. They took the cattle to the watering place, asked for food. In the fall, while studying, children still continue to work, being at school in the morning, and at the first call they left to work. Basically, the children worked in the fields: they were digging potatoes, collecting spikelets of rye, etc. Most of the people worked on the collective farm. They worked in a calf shed, raised cattle, worked in collective farm gardens. We tried to quickly remove the bread, not sparing ourselves. As the bread is removed, the snow will fall, they are sent to logging. The saws were ordinary with two handles. They felled huge forests in the forest, chopped off branches, sawed them into chunks and chopped firewood. The lineman came and measured the cubic capacity. It was necessary to prepare at least five cubes. I remember how they brought firewood home from the forest with my brothers and sisters. Carried on a bull. He was big, with a temper. They began to slide down the hill, and he carried it off, foolishly. The wagon rolled and the wood fell to the side of the road. The bull broke the harness and fled to the stable. The cattlemen realized that this was our family and sent their grandfather on horseback to help. So they brought the firewood to the house already after dark. And in winter, wolves came close to the village, howling. Livestock was often bullied, but people were not touched.

The calculation was carried out at the end of the year according to workdays, some were praised, and some remained in debt, since the families were large, there were few workers and it was necessary to feed the family for a year. They borrowed flour and cereals. After the war, I went to work on a collective farm as a milkmaid, they gave me 15 cows, but in general they give 20, I asked to be given like everyone else. The cows were added, and I overfulfilled the plan, I drank a lot of milk. For this they gave me 3 m of blue satin. This was my prize. A dress was made from satin, which was very dear to me. There were both hard workers and lazy people on the collective farm. Our collective farm has always exceeded the plan. We collected parcels to the front. Knitted socks, mittens.

There were not enough matches, salt. Instead of matches at the beginning of the village, the old men set fire to a large log, it was slowly burning, smoke. They took coal from her, brought it home and fanned the fire in the oven. " (Fartunatova Kapitolina Andreevna).

“The children worked mainly on the preparation of firewood. Students of grades 6-7 worked. All the adults were fishing and working in the factory. We worked seven days a week. " (Vorotkova Tamara Alexandrovna).

“The war began, the brothers went to the front, Stepan was killed. For three years I worked on a collective farm. First, as a nanny in a manger, then at an inn, where she cleaned the yard with her younger brother, drove and sawed wood. She worked as an accountant in a tractor brigade, then in a field-crop brigade, and in general, went wherever she was sent. Harvested hay, harvested crops, weeded the fields, planted vegetables in the collective farm garden. " (Fonareva Ekaterina Adamovna)

Valentin Rasputin's story "Live and Remember" describes a similar work during the war. Identical conditions (Ust-Uda and Balagansk are located nearby, stories about a common military past seem to be copied from one source:

“- And we got it, Liza said. - Right, women, got it? Sick to remember. Work on a collective farm is okay, it's yours. But we will only remove the bread - snow, logging. Through the grave of my life, I will remember these logging. There are no roads, the horses are torn, they do not pull. But you can't refuse: the labor front, help for our peasants. In the early years they left the little guys ... And whoever didn’t have children or who had older ones, they didn’t climb from those, went and went. However, she did not let Nasten pass through more than one winter. I even went twice, throwing the kids at my aunt. Pile up these scaffolding, these cubic meters, and a banner with you in the sleigh. Not a step without a banner. It will bring it into a snowdrift, then something else - turn it out, babonki, push. Where you turn it out and where you don't. He will not let Nasten be ripped off: in the winter before last, a praying mare rolled downhill and at a turn did not cope - sleigh into negligence, on one side, the mare was almost knocked off. I fought, fought, I can't. I was exhausted. I sat down on the road and cry. Nastena drove up from behind - I roar in a stream. - Tears welled up in Lisa's eyes. - She helped me. I helped, we went together, but I can't calm down, I roar and roar. - Even more succumbing to memories, Liza sobbed. - Roar and roar, I can’t help myself. I can not.

I worked in the archives and looked through the 1943 book of the workdays of collective farmers of the collective farm "In Memory of Lenin". Collective farmers and the work they performed were recorded in it. In the book, records are kept by families. The teenagers are recorded only by their last name and first name - Medvetskaya Nyuta, Lozovaya Shura, Filistovich Natasha, Strashinsky Volodya, in total I counted 24 teenagers. The following types of work were listed: logging, grain harvesting, hay harvesting, road work, horse care and others. Basically, the following months of work are indicated for children: August, September, October and November. I associate this working time with hay making, harvesting and grain threshing. At this time, it was necessary to carry out a harvest before the snow, so everyone was attracted. Shura has 347 complete workdays, Natasha has 185, Nyuta has 190, Volodya has 247. Unfortunately, there is no more information about children in the archive. [Fund No. 19, inventory No. 1-l, sheets No. 1-3, 7.8, 10,22,23,35,50, 64.65]

The decree of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks dated 09/05/1941 "On the beginning of the collection of warm clothes and linen for the Red Army" indicated a list of things to collect. Balagansky district schools also collected their things. According to the list of the head of the school (surname and school not established), the parcel included: cigarettes, soap, handkerchiefs, cologne, gloves, a hat, pillowcases, towels, shaving brushes, a soap dish, underpants.

Holidays

Despite hunger and cold, as well as such a hard life, people in different villages tried to celebrate the holidays.

“There were holidays, for example: when all the bread was harvested and the threshing was over, the“ Threshing ”holiday was held. On holidays they sang songs, danced, played different games, for example: small towns, jumped on a board, prepared a kochulyu (swing) and rolled balls, made a ball out of dried manure, took a round stone and dried the manure in layers to the required size. And so they played. The older sister sewed and knitted beautiful outfits and dressed us up for the holiday. At the holiday everyone, both children and old people, had fun. There were no drunks, everyone was sober. Most often, on holidays, they were invited home. We went from house to house, since no one had a lot of food. " (Fartunatova Kapitalina Andreevna).

“We celebrated New Year, Constitution Day and May 1. Since the forest surrounded us, we chose the most beautiful tree and put it in the club. The inhabitants of our village carried whatever toys they could to the Christmas tree, most were homemade, but there were also rich families who could already bring beautiful toys. Everyone went to this tree in turn. First graders and pupils of 4th grades, then from 4-5 grades and then two graduation classes. After all the schoolchildren, workers came there in the evening from the factory, from shops, from the post office and from other organizations. On holidays they danced: waltz, krakowiak. Gifts were given to each other. After the festive concert, the women had drinks and conversations. On May 1, demonstrations take place, all organizations gather for it ”(Tamara Aleksandrovna Vorotkova).

The beginning and end of the war

Childhood is the best period in life, from which the best and brightest memories remain. And what are the memories of the children who survived these four terrible, cruel and harsh years?

Early morning of June 21, 1941. The people of our country sleep quietly and peacefully in their beds, and no one knows what awaits them ahead. What torments will they have to overcome and what will they have to accept?

“We removed stones from the arable land with the whole collective farm. An employee of the Village Council rode in the role of a messenger on horseback and shouted "The war has begun." Immediately they began to gather all the men and boys. Those who worked directly from the fields were collected and taken to the front. They took all the horses. Dad was a foreman and he had a horse Komsomolets and he was also taken away. In 1942, the funeral for the Pope came.

On May 9, 1945, we worked in the field, and again an employee of the Village Council rode with a flag in his hands and announced that the war was over. Who cried, who rejoiced! " (Fartunatova Kapitolina Andreevna).

“I worked as a postman and here they call me and announce that the war has begun. Everyone cried hugging each other. We lived at the mouth of the Barguzin River from us further downstream there were many more villages. From Irkutsk, the Angara ship went to us, it could accommodate 200 people, and when the war began, it gathered all future military personnel. It was deep-water and therefore stopped 10 meters from the shore, the men sailed there on fishing boats. Many tears were shed !!! In 1941, everyone was taken to the front in the army, the main thing was that the legs and arms were intact, and the head was on the shoulders. "

“May 9, 1945 I was called and told to sit and wait until everyone contacted. They call “Everyone, Everyone, Everyone” when everyone contacted, I congratulated everyone “Guys, the war is over”. Everyone was happy, hugging, some were crying! " (Vorotkova Tamara Alexandrovna)