“Every collective farmer must become a fighter for a bountiful harvest”: nursery services for the rural population of Penza region during the Great Patriotic War

Background. The current demographic situation in Russia requires the urgent implementation of diverse measures to support families with children. Among them, ensur-ing a sufficient number of places in kindergartens, nurseries and medical institutions is of particular importance. The need to solve this problem determines the relevance of under-standing the historical experience of the formation and implementation of the policy of the Soviet state in the field of maternal and child health, including the activities of preschool institutions in the extreme conditions of the Great Patriotic War. The purpose of this work is to consider the features of the deployment and nature of the activities of the rural nursery network of Penza region in 1941–1945. Materials and methods. The research was carried out on the basis of the involvement of documentary materials of the State Archive of the Russian Federation, the Russian State Archive of Economics, the State Archive of the Pen-za region and materials of the periodical press of the war years. The realization of research tasks was achieved through the use of a systematic and integrated approach to the consider-ation of the organization of the system of protection of motherhood and infancy during the Great Patriotic War. Results. The analysis revealed the need to organize the life support of infants in rural settlements of Penza region during the war years through nursery escort. The dynamics of the deployment of rural pre-school institutions of nursery type is consid-ered. Diverse difficulties in the organization of life, nutrition and medical care for nursery contingents are identified, practices for overcoming them are described. Quantitative indi-cators of nursery care coverage of the child population have been determined. The favora-ble impact of nursery construction on reducing the acuteness of economic, medical and de-mographic problems in the region has been established. Conclusions. In the period 1941–1945 a sharp decline in the number of male able-bodied population determined the need for the total inclusion of female labor in agricultural production. The main tool for solving this problem was the development of a network of nurseries, which also made it possible to es-tablish regular medical monitoring of the health of a significant part of children in the first three years of life. The leading place in the work of the nursery in this direction was occu-pied by measures to prevent childhood morbidity and infant mortality, the implementation of which was entrusted to assigned medical workers. The deployment and functioning of the nursery was carried out by the efforts of a number of different departments, institutions and business entities and was accompanied by problems associated with insufficient fund-ing, personnel, material and economic support, indifferent attitude and lack of initiative of local leaders. However, despite the significant costs, in the most difficult wartime condi-tions in Penza region, it was possible to organize and maintain a fairly developed network of rural nurseries, the vast majority of which were seasonal in nature and made it possible to cover from 23,000 to 70,000 children with nursery care in some war years. In our opin-ion, the activity of nurseries has become an important circumstance, which, together with other factors, contributed to the stabilization of agricultural production and the reduction of infant mortality in the region by more than 2 times compared to the pre-war level.