VIOLENCE AGAINST CHILDREN IN SOCIAL EDUCATION INSTITUTIONS OF THE USSR DURING THE HOLODOMOR OF 1932–1933

Abstract

The article analyses the precedents of violence against children committed by education workers during the Holodomor of 1932–1933. The famine was the total violence organized by the Stalinist regime. At the same time, physical violence, abuse, bullying, and harassment were used in soviet educational institutions along with the famine. The purpose of the article is to identify and characterize the types of violence that, along with the famine, were practiced by employees of state social education institutions of the USSR against children during the Holodomor-genocide. Conclusions. During the Holodomor-genocide, violence against children became an undeniable fact. Most of the children who managed to survive the Holodomor experienced physical and moral violence and pressure. In soviet social education institutions, a clear gradation of children was recorded according to ideological criteria: pioneers abused children of non-collective farmers, harassing and insulting them; party teachers resorted to violations of ethics and morality, humiliating and even whipping students. Sometimes cases of using physical force on children became so regular that they attracted the attention of district and regional leaders of educational affairs. However, we note an eloquent fact: provided that representatives of the educational and pedagogical staff of social education institutions belonged to the party-komsomol structure of the communist party, they managed to avoid serious punishments for abusing children; usually, the higher management limited itself to a reprimand or transfer to work in another institution. Characterizing the types of violence that occurred in soviet institutions of social education, we have cited only individual precedents of bullying, abuse, physical, gender and sexual violence. However, the facts of bullying of children, cases of physical and psychological violence, pressure became everyday models of behavior of the pedagogical and educational staff of institutions. Moreover, they transformed into a stable practice that took root in the Soviet education system. Over time, this led to the formation of a complex of problems in children raised in communist orphanages, which combined post-genocide syndrome, intergenerational trauma, destructive-conformist model of individual behavior in society. All this ultimately made it impossible for children to develop harmoniously, and, accordingly, affected the mental health of the nation.