Departmental preschool institutions in Soviet Russia in the 1920-1930s: topical problems of study

The article is devoted to a little-studied aspect of the history of Soviet childhood - the problem of forming and functioning of a network of departmental preschool institutions. Based on a wide range of sources, many of which are being introduced into scientific circulation for the first time, the author reconstructs the process of creation and reform in the 1920s-1930s а network of departmental institutions for preschool children. Smirnova also shows the diversity of this network and its complex structure. The main attention is paid to departmental children's institutions in the city of Moscow, where the network of kindergartens and nurseries at various enterprises, organizations and societies was especially developed and diverse. Methods of research. To solve the problems, the author relied both on traditional methods of historical research (historical-genetic, historical-comparative, statistical, retrospective, chronological), and on techniques and methods developed by Russian and foreign historiography of the last decades within the framework of the history of everyday life, historical anthropology, microhistory.