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Пансионы трудовых резервов: формирование системы школ-интернатов в 1954—1964 годах
This article discusses the history of large-scale Soviet boarding schools at the start of their existence. Her basic hypothesis is that the boarding schools were meant to provide answers to some of the most pressing questions of the time: what are the limits of the Soviet citizen’s personal and political freedom, what are his/her basic obligations to the state, what is the state prepared to offer in return for fulfillment of these obligations, what kind of resources exist for the country’s accelerated economic development, given the anticipated arrival of mature communism within twenty years, etc. Maiofis suggests that Nikita Khrushchev thought of the boarding schools as an unprecedented act of liberation of Soviet citizens, who had borne the burden of war and the immediate post-war troubles; at the same time, the boarding schools were meant to be an equally unprecedented act of en-serfment (or enslavement) of Soviet children. And though Khrushchev’s project was realized only in part, today’s Russian boarding schools still show a family resemblance to their predecessors.