Leasure of Children and Teenagers During the Great Patriotic War: Content, Resources, Peculiarities

The appearance of new conceptual approaches and trends in modern historiography, changing the contents and the source base on the history of the Great Patriotic War created new opportunities for the study of the history of everyday life, the “human dimension” of the war. As part of the article the war daily life is considered through the prism of one of the stories of the children’s and teenagers’ life in militarized space – the reality of consolidated pastime. Daily practice of this social category is the least studied in the historical literature. Leisure activities occupied a significant place in the structure of everyday life of children and teenagers during the war. Its organization both for military and peacetime was formally regulated along with informal and personal time. Changes in the structure and filling the free time of students in a militarized space appeared in the content and the intensity of certain forms of leisure time, destructive tendencies, limited material and time resources. The greatest amount of free time of the younger generation was in the informal, unregulated practice of leisure, the solution of domestic problems and housework. Due to objective circumstances of the wartime the role of the family, educational, cultural and entertainment establishments in the life of children and adolescents significantly fell. Thus, during the war a street became the center of their “leisure routine,” including asocial orientation. Free time proceeded among coevals; there was a formation of personality and values. Partly the formal structures responsible for leisure activities of students, in particular, hobby clubs, is a tool for their inclusion in the process of providing possible assistance for front and rear and give them the skills necessary in combat. At the same time unauthorized, individual leisure had a relaxing effect contributed to the displacement of negative emotions, lifting the state of anxiety and fear caused by military reality