Development of the Soviet Nursery System in 1930–1940 yy.

The results of historical and medical research of development of nursery system in 1930–1940 in the Soviet Union are presented in this publication. Large-scale involvement of women to creation of socialist society has demanded to get rid of house work, care of their own child, and as a result creation of network of maternal and child health institutions. The nurseries have become the most common. Thanks to dynamic building and construction work of child care facilities in 1932–1933 yy up to 80% of children had places in nurseries in large industrial centres, and up to 66% of children had places in seasonal nurseries in collective farms. The increase of nursery capacity in the USSR in1938 for previous two years was 30.5%. Despite massive success in the field of nursery network creation, there were some mistakes during construction and some drawbacks in health services for ill and healthy children were revealed. For instance: irrational nursery space planning, inability to isolate one group from another during quarantine in case of childhood infection, massive morbidity with childhood infection in nurseries, incompetence of medical staff, insufficient nurseries capacity management in case of high necessity of nursery care. High importance was given to creation of nursery isolation hospitals for patients and children on a quarantine for solving these problems