The Social Welfare of Soldiers' Families in Yenisei Province (1914–1917)

• Main Authors: Olesya M. Dolidovich, Evgeniia N. Starovoitova
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Sochi State University 2017-03-01
• Series: Bylye Gody
• Subjects: a wife of a soldier («soldatka»); guardianship organizations about families of mobilized; soldiers' families; social welfare; the First World War; women's riots («bab'i bunty»); Yenisei Province
• Online Access: http://bg.sutr.ru/pdf.html?n=1488817064.pdf

Authors examine the question of the types, scale, efficiency of public aid and social support of soldiers' families in Yenisei province during the First World War. Particular attention is paid to the activities of cities and urban guardianship organizations that have paid to families of the mobilized amount exceeding the amount of state benefits. It is shown that in the rural guardianship organizations did not have more money. They failed to organize labor help with the agricultural work. Soldiers' families reduced tillage, many of them wanted to move to the provincial center. Siberian city were not a major commercial and industrial centers, their budgets have been modest. Siberia had no zemstvo institutions, therefore, the city suffered heavy costs for the solution of many other problems caused by wartime (the organization of assistance to refugees and the injured, the fight against the high cost and lack of, the development of cooperatives, and others), they were making regular payments for all-Russian charitable societies. The flow of donations to urban guardianship and charitable organizations has decreased dramatically in 1916, and the number in need has increased significantly, the municipal government began to curtail payments to soldiers' families. The discontent of the soldiers' wives resulted in the pogroms of malls and attacks against members of municipal self-government bodies of Minusinsk, Krasnoyarsk, Kansk in 1916–1917.