Nursery for Field Working Mothers

Photograph

By: Underwood & Underwood

Date: c. 1919–1930

Source: © Underwood & Underwood/Corbis.

About the Photographer: Underwood & Underwood was a stereograph company, producing high-quality images from 1882 through 1920. The stereograph technique involved taking photographs using two cameras positioned slightly apart; the resulting images, when viewed correctly, took on a three-dimensional aspect. The photograph is now a part of the Corbis Corporation's collection.

INTRODUCTION

By the end of 1917 in Russia, the former monarchy was abolished and the Bolshevik Party came into power. The Russian Revolution led to a complete overhaul in Russian government and society. A civil war between "Reds"—Bolsheviks who advocated strong Marxist ideals in reshaping society—and "Whites"—more moderate socialists, monarchists, and conservatives who disagreed vigorously with the rigid changes desired by the Bolsheviks—ended by 1922. The Reds won, and immediately set forthwith a plan to restructure Russian society with Communist ideals in mind.

The civil war had devastated Russia, with more than 15 million killed and the economy gutted. With the civil war so close on the heels of World War I, the Bolsheviks faced a country that had spent nearly a decade at war, and famines as well as peasant work stoppages caused severe disruptions in the food supply.

The communist ideal for the Russian family focused on the mother and the father as workers for the state; with the weight of personal economic responsibility lifted, according to the communist ideal, the family could be bonded to one another via common affection, rather than as an economic unit. Mothers as well as fathers were expected to work in factories, farms, and offices. To meet this end, a nationwide network of children's nurseries—creches, were formed by the Soviet Government's Institute for the Protection of Women and Children to manage the child care of infants and small children.

The creches were widespread. Each creche held approximately one hundred children, and parents were not guaranteed a spot in the creche for their children; in the early years after the revolution and civil war there were waiting lists for children to enter the creche. The creche was located on the farm where parents worked or close to factories, in part so that breastfeeding mothers could take breaks to nurse their children.

When a mother entered the creche with her child, she undressed the child, then handed him or her to a nurse—the child's "home clothes" were not permitted in the creche. The nurse, specially trained to work with children in the nursery, then took the child, dressed it in approved clothes, and started the day's schedule. Ill children who were contagious were not permitted in the creche, and, if a mother brought a child with fleas or bugs, the mother and child were sent home, an official inspected the home, and the family was reprimanded until the home was clean and the child was free of bugs.

Children were separated by age, bathed, dressed, and fed immediately after being surrendered by their mothers, and kept to a strict schedule each day. As this photograph shows, in many instances nursery workers maintained the creche outdoors, to give the babies as much fresh air as possible.

PRIMARY SOURCE

NURSERY FOR FIELD WORKING MOTHERS

See primary source image.

SIGNIFICANCE

Creches were instruments of the state. In Soviet Russia the government slowly assumed many functions previously performed by the family, such as child care, eldercare, maternity care, and child socialization. In addition, Soviet reorganization led to the breakdown of the traditional, patriarchal, multi-generation house-hold. As urbanization increased, and the government focused on rapid industrialization, the new family that emerged was a small, two-parent family of creation, without older relatives living in close proximity.

The creche workers focused not only on caring for the children, but also counseled mothers on proper child care at home and worked to indoctrinate mothers with Soviet ideals. Equality for men and women was an important tenet in Soviet Russia, and mothers who expressed extreme attachment to their children were counseled on their role as a worker in society, and the contribution they made for the glory of communism and Soviet progress. In addition, creche workers taught mothers that the creche was better than home life: The children received proper nutrition; were made to exercise vigorously for muscle development; were taught to live on a strict schedule in such a way as to foster good factory, military, or farm work habits; and were provided with medical care by the doctors and nurses on staff at creches who caught illness before it became too severe. With this counsel, the creche served to spread Soviet propaganda, reduce child mortality, and help with the transition from family life under the old monarchical system to the ideal Soviet society, with women, men, and children serving the interests of the state through conformity, hard work, and equality.

By freeing women from the tasks of motherhood so that they could work for the state, the Soviet ideal of the family conformed to Frederich Engels's ideal in his 1884 book The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State: private household and child care functions would become a societal, rather than personal, responsibility, allowing the state to manage and raise the children. Each Soviet infant was assigned to a creche ideally, though shortages of slots for children was a problem in the early Bolshevik years. By raising children as members of the state rather than as private citizens under parental supervision, and by training mothers to relinquish control over their child's basic child care and to follow creche guidelines for care at home, the emerging Soviet state sought to break the pre-Soviet family pattern and establish a new paradigm for family and societal relations.

FURTHER RESOURCES

Books

Clements, Barbara Evans. Bolshevik Women. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1997.

Engels, Fredrich. The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State. Hottzingen-Zurich, Germany, 1884.

Goldman, Wendy Z. Women, the State and Revolution: Soviet Family Policy and Social Life, 1917–1936. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993.

Heywood, Colin. A History of Childhood: Children and Childhood in the West from Medieval to Modern Times. Oxford and Cambridge, U.K.: Polity Press, 2001.

Withrow, Alice. Protection of Women and Children in Soviet Russia. New York: E.P. Dutton, 1932.

Wood, Elizabeth A. The Baba and the Comrade: Gender and Politics in Revolutionary Russia. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001.

Zelizer, Viviana. Pricing the Priceless Child: The Changing Social Value of Children. Princenton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1994.