Using the experience of World War I in saving children during the Great Patriotic War: problems and contradictions

Abstract

The paper describes the problems and contradictions of how the experience of World War I in saving children’s lives and health was used during the Great Patriotic War. In 1914-1918, many Russian journalists wrote on the impact of the war on children: for example, Brusyanin showed the necessity of diverting them and their forming consciousness from war cruelty. The works of well-known pedagogical authors Zvyagintsev, Zen’kovskiy, and Levitin were presented in the list of methodical literature, recommended to preschool teachers in 1944. Some papers of the journal “The Early Childhood Education” (“Doshkol’noye vospitanie”) show that the formation of hatred for the enemy as the aim of education was recommended by the Preschool Department of the RSFSR People's Commissariat for Education. At the same time, in most of the methodical instructions of 1943-1944, the admiration of heroism was suggested to be used. That is why educational activity was to form children's sense of love and compassion to wounded soldiers or other children. Active interaction of children and the wounded in hospitals in purpose of the formation of children’s humane motivations was organized under the direction of the Herzen Leningrad State Pedagogical Institute academic Evgeniya Zeiliger-Rubinstein and was highly estimated by American journalists in 1944. However, the experience of World War I in saving children’s lives and health could be used more effectively during the Great Patriotic War, if international human rights were more developed.