World of children's daily life during the occupation of the North Caucasus

The paper is devoted to the reconstruction of the experience of children and adolescents' daily life in the tempo­rarily occupied zones of the North Caucasus during the Great Patriotic War. Oral interviews with the "children of war" carried out in 2008-2009 in Krasnodar and Stavropol regions became the main sources for the study. According to the stories members of families and friends played the main role in children's lives. The ambivalent image of the enemy is also presented in the narrations. The interviews reveal that a child remained to be a child even in extreme situations, such as war or occupation period. The games changed; the time, spent outside home without adults, was greatly decreased; feeling of care for family members appeared. However, the laws of war and occupation regime, as it was presented in the analyzed interviews, could not prevent the fact that children, at least for a time, were just kids.