The Great Patriotic War swept through the Soviet Union with a destructive skating rink. Under the fire of the fascists, villages and cities were literally wiped off the face of the earth, factories and factories were destroyed, roads and bridges collapsed. But most importantly, the war devoured people, sparing no one. The USSR lost about 27 million people! The Soviet government became concerned with this problem already in 1944. The Red Army was just pushing the Nazis on the borders of the Soviet country, and the Kremlin was already preparing a state project to strengthen the institution of the family. On July 8, 1944, a decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR was issued, dedicated to the protection of motherhood and childhood. The Soviet formula for the growth of demography is simple: more marriages, fewer divorces, encourage "shock workers", punish "enemies of the hymen" with a ruble.
War benefits
In the decree of July 8, 1944, measures were prescribed to support families with children, including single mothers, and for the first time, measures were introduced to encourage shock women of this great work - the upbringing of a new generation. The very understanding of having many children has changed: if earlier the allowance was given to mothers who gave birth to at least seven children, then from 1944 it was supposed to make payments, starting with the birth of the third child.
The size of the state allowance for mothers with many children and single mothers has been increased. Payments were made in a lump sum and monthly, starting from the second year of the child's birth and up to his fifth birthday. With the birth of each next baby, the allowance increased. For example, when the fourth child was two years old, the mother received 1,300 rubles once, and then every month - 80 rubles. The mother of ten children at the birth of the eleventh and each next received five thousand rubles once and 300 rubles a month.
“When determining the state allowance for large families, children who died or disappeared at the fronts of the Patriotic War are taken into account,” the decree said.
The state helped single mothers, that is, not married: they received 100 rubles for one child per month, 150 rubles for two children, and 200 rubles for three. Moreover, this allowance was paid until the children were 12 years old. Single mothers with three or more babies received this allowance in addition to payments for large families.
Benefits for expectant and young mothers were also expanded: the authorities increased maternity leave and the rate of additional food rations, obliged enterprise managers to provide pregnant and lactating mothers with additional products from subsidiary plots. Women from the fourth month of pregnancy received "immunity" from overtime work, and nursing mothers were forbidden to engage in night work. Low-income parents of three or more children were given a 50 percent discount on kindergarten and nursery fees.
The fight against termination of pregnancy and abuse of motherhood began. Thus, the prosecutor's office was instructed to prosecute those responsible for "illegal abortion, forcing women to have an abortion, insulting and humiliating a woman-mother, and malicious non-payment of child support."
Glory and honor to mothers-heroines!
Of course, the state sought to encourage the impressive feats of its citizens to enhance the country's main value - its citizens. For this purpose, three state awards for mothers with many children were instituted in the USSR at once.
Each of them was awarded depending on how many children the woman gave birth to (or adopted) and raised.
Number of children Award Degree of the Order Five or six "Medal of Motherhood" II and I Seven, eight or nine Order "Maternal Glory" III, II and I Ten and more Title of Honor and the Order "Mother Heroine" -
Each of these awards was presented at the moment when the last of the children reached the age of one year and only on the condition that the other children were alive. However, no awards were taken away for the upbringing of the heroes: when awarding the award, children who died on the fronts of the Great Patriotic War, in the performance of other military duties, or in the performance of the duty of a citizen of the USSR to save human life or protect socialist property were taken into account.
For the first time, the title "Mother Heroine" was awarded on October 27, 1944 to fourteen women. Anna Aleksakhina received the order number one, having raised 12 children - ten sons and two daughters. The award was presented to her in the Kremlin on November 1, 1944. Anna Savelyevna was 58 years old at that time.
She was born into a large peasant family in a small village in the Ryazan province, where she met her husband, the peasant Fyodor Ionovich. The first son Aleksey was born in 1909, and by 1917 there were already six children in the Aleksakhin family. In the 30s, a large family moved to the Moscow region: the husband got a job as a carpenter on the construction of the Moscow-Volga canal. There they met the Great Patriotic War.
Eight sons of Anna and Fyodor Aleksakhin went to defend their homeland. The oldest, Alexei and Sergei, died on the Western Front in the first months of the war. The 29-year-old son Alexander was killed in Karelia, and Georgy, who was barely 21 years old, was burned to death in a tank on the Kursk Bulge. Two of the four sons who returned from the war were awarded awards: Ivan was nominated for the Order of the Red Star and the Order of the Patriotic War of the II degree for his distinction at the front in Poland and Konigsberg, and Mikhail carried food along the Road of Life to besieged Leningrad and received a medal "For Military Merit ".
431 thousand women have received the title of "Mother Heroine" in the entire history of the award. In 2006, in a conversation with the Ryazan journalist Alexander Kondrashov, the youngest son of Aleksakhina, Yevgeny, said: "The day she learned that she became the first holder of the order" Mother heroine”, our family often remembered. Already after dark a man knocked on the barrack and asked: "Who will be Anna Aleksakhina here?" The neighbors pointed to the kitchen. Among the boiling pots, the stranger handed his mother a stamped paper with the imprint of the Kremlin."
Anna Savelyevna Aleksakhina died at the age of 69 from lung cancer. Her order "Mother Heroine" was first kept at home as a family heirloom, and then was transferred to the State Historical Museum for safekeeping.
Divorce is a state matter
In those difficult years, it was clear that the revival of the country's human capital is impossible without a strong institution of marriage. At the state level, all sorts of measures of influence on the population began to be fixed, inclining to create reliable and loyal "cells of society".
The decree of July 8, 1944 introduced a new norm: all the rights and obligations of spouses protected by law apply only to formalized relations. At the same time, a solemn ceremony of marriage registration was introduced. Women were forbidden to go to court for recognition of paternity and recovery of alimony from men with whom they were not legally married.
The war introduced a large imbalance between the number of men and women in the country. Boys and men in the prime of life went to the front. Some experts associate the low rate of marriages and the weakening of the strength of concluded marriages in the Soviet country precisely with the shortage of men.
Considerable efforts have been made to solve the latter problem. Divorce began to be made publicly, through the courts. Only in some situations, by a court decision, such cases could be considered behind closed doors. The filing of an application for divorce was charged with a duty of 100 rubles, one or both spouses paid another 500 to two thousand rubles when drawing up a divorce certificate.
Alexander and Elena Shishkin from Voronezh are raising 20 children of their own. Today they are considered the largest family in Russia.
In the application for divorce, the spouse had to indicate the reasons for his decision. The case was not accepted for consideration in court, if this was not reported in the local newspaper, and the spouse, who decided to end the marriage, had to pay for the advertisement.
"The People's Court is obliged to establish the reasons for filing an application for divorce and take measures to reconcile the spouses, for which both divorcing spouses and, if necessary, witnesses must be summoned," the decree said.
Singles pay more
For people who do not care about procreation, the Soviet authorities increased economic pressure. Bachelors, lonely and childless citizens have paid taxes before. From July 1944, this tax was also imposed on singles with one or even two children. It was paid, as before, by men aged 20 to 50, women - from 20 to 45 years. The tax itself has grown.
Category Old tax New tax (from 8 July 1944)
Workers subject to income tax
5% of income For childless people - 6% of income. With 1 child - 1% of income. If you have 2 children - 0.5% of income. Collective farmers and citizens who are part of individual peasant farms 100 rubles a year For childless people - 150 rubles a year. In the presence of 1 child - 50 rubles per year. If you have 2 children - 25 rubles per year. The remaining 60 rubles per year For childless people - 90 rubles per year. In the presence of 1 child - 30 rubles per year. If you have 2 children - 15 rubles per year.
As before, servicemen and their wives, students of technical schools and universities up to 25 years old were exempted from the tax. They were also supplemented by disabled people of groups I and II, women receiving state allowances for the maintenance of children, as well as citizens whose children died or disappeared on the fronts of the Patriotic War. But pensioners and people for whom childbirth was contraindicated were excluded from the tax exemption.
