Organizing Social Support for Families of Front-Line Soldiers in Krasnoyarsk Krai During the Great Patriotic War

The article analyzes the mechanism of formation of specific practices to meet the basic needs of families of front-line soldiers who found themselves in a difficult life situation in the remote Siberian region. The period of the Great Patriotic War chosen for the study is of interest from the point of view of the nature of changes in the Soviet system of social protection of the population caused by military factors. Documents from the State Archive of Krasnoyarsk Krai and published sources were used to show that the scope and content of social support measures for soldiers' families at the local level were carried out in accordance with the all-Union legislation, public organizations were widely involved, decentralized funds were sought for the needs of families of front-line soldiers, members of soldiers' families were employed, subsidiary farms were organized, etc. Locally, there were cases of indifference and formal attitude to the needs of this category of population. Limited resources (material and technical) in the sphere of social assistance and services required conducting campaigns, Sunday fundraisers for soldiers' families, organizing patronage over soldiers' families in urgent need, providing them with one-time assistance, etc. However, the lack of a clear personnel policy at the initial stage in the region led to numerous miscalculations, mistakes, and insufficient effectiveness of the activities carried out. It is concluded that the separation in 1943 of special departments of state support and household arrangement of soldiers' families from the social security bodies made it possible to improve the effectiveness of legislation: to establish records of families of front-line soldiers, to pay pensions and benefits in a timely manner, to form commissions from among soldiers' wives that interacted with local authorities to solve problems, to satisfy complaints from soldiers' families, to create the necessary working and living conditions for families whose breadwinners performed military duty at the front, to survive the deprivations of wartime.

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