Space of children's daily life of the Soviet Russia of the 1920s-1930s (on the example of Kurgan and Shadrinsk districts)

The paper aims at studying the space of children's daily life in the pre-war Soviet Russia as an important part of the child's life during the formation of the new Soviet man, at comparing the provincial children's space and the allRussian space, and at tracing the impact of the material component of the space on forming the future builders of the Soviet empire. The author considers the diversity of the space, which includes social relations, intellectual and emotional life, but focuses on the material aspect, showing its «subversive» and «counter-revolutionary» role in the process of constructing a new world and new values. Based on the works of the leading researchers of the history of childhood, archival documents and oral sources, the author shows the influence of the spatial factor on the attitude of children to the family, study, opposite sex, ideology, and the image of the desired future. The article emphasizes the role of the human factor in forming the space, which is often stronger than the establishment of power. Home, orphanage, school, street, and pioneer camp as the toposes of childhood are analyzed. The author concludes that, in most cases, poverty and disorder that surrounded the Soviet child formed not asceticism, but inflated claims and led to the obsession with unattainable material things.