Support for motherhood and childhood in solving demographic problems of Soviet society in Donbass at the final stage of the Great Patriotic war

the article is devoted to the analysis of the policy of supporting motherhood and childhood in solving the demographic problems of Soviet society in Donbass at the final stage of the Great Patriotic War. During this period, one of the priorities of the Soviet leadership was the development and implementation of a special direction of social policy, the main goal of which was to create all conditions for increasing the birth rate of the population. This task was especially relevant for such industrially developed and strategically important regions as Donbass. The article examines the main directions of state support for motherhood and childhood in the context of solving demographic problems in Donbas in 1944-1945. In particular, the author pays attention to economic, propaganda, and administrative-legal measures. Based on the analysis of archival sources, the effectiveness of the implementation of these measures in Donbass at the final stage of the Great Patriotic War is considered. As a result, the author comes to the conclusion that during the period under study, the Soviet leadership applied an integrated approach to solving demographic problems, including in the Donbas. At the same time, the limited effectiveness of the implementation of these measures was due to the ongoing war, lack of resources, the scale of destruction, and others. Nevertheless, despite the specifics and limitations, this historical experience should be taken into account when solving modern demographic problems in the context of the ongoing military conflict.

motherhood and childhood, birth rate, demographic problems, Donbass, state support measures, the Great Patriotic War