Fellow 2024

INDEX-IWM - Autumn 2024 4 September – 4 December 2024

Project: Fostering Tomorrow: Orphan Care in Early Soviet Ukraine, 1920-1930th

Care for homeless children in early Soviet Ukraine was an important component of social policy. During the 1920-1930s, the roots of the problem were seen in the consequences of the “imperialist” war. The masses of orphans who filled the spaces of large cities looked like a threat to the inhabitants, and at the same time were perceived as potential participants in the construction of the future. Attention to the system of orphanages provides an opportunity to examine the policy towards children in its quintessence, and the study of the residents and staff of the shelters themselves gives us an important cross-section of the social policy of Soviet Ukrainian society.

The focus of the study – the orphanages of Kharkiv and Kyiv – large cities of Soviet Ukraine, adds a moment of rich social and national diversity, where peasants and townspeople, residents of different regions of Soviet Ukraine – Poles, Jews, Armenians, Ukrainians, but also immigrants from Soviet Russia, the Caucasus – mixed. Sources from archives here complement the rough layer of scientific and educational literature around the then popular topic.

A less visible topic, partly due to the lack of sources, is how the children themselves perceived these intentions and actions on the part of the “adult world,” how they saw the very space of the city around them? The answer to these questions and the combination of these stories make it possible to offer a more complete picture of how a society for which the formation of “tomorrow” was a priority experienced turbulent times.

Artem Kharchenko

Artem Kharchenko, historian, lecturer at the I. P. Kotlyarevsky Kharkiv National University of Arts. Affiliated researcher at the Center for Urban History, Lviv. Working on the monograph "The Jewish Community in the Space of the Imperial City, 1859–1923" and the project "Childhood on the Street, 1920s-1930s."

From 2019 to 2023, he was a lecturer on the history of the Holocaust at the university partnership program Claims Conference at the National Technical University "KhPI". Co-founder of the public organization "Center for Interethnic Relations Research in Eastern Europe" (2011). He was a participant in educational programs in the USA, France, and Germany. He was a visiting researcher at the Simon Dubnov Institute in Leipzig, the New European College in Bucharest, the University of Jerusalem, and CERCEC research center in Paris.