University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations 2018 It Takes A Union To Raise A Soviet: Children's Summer Camps As A Reflection Of Late Soviet Society Iuliia Skubytska University of Pennsylvania, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations Part of the European History Commons Recommended Citation Skubytska, Iuliia, "It Takes A Union To Raise A Soviet: Children's Summer Camps As A Reflection Of Late Soviet Society" (2018). Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations. 2935. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/2935 This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/2935 For more information, please contact [email protected]. It Takes A Union To Raise A Soviet: Children's Summer Camps As A Reflection Of Late Soviet Society Abstract This dissertation examines the functioning of Soviet children’s summer camps throughout the period from 1953 to 1970. Researchers conceptualize these years marked by the rule of Nikita Khrushchev and Leonid Brezhnev as the time of transformations of Soviet state and society. The goal of my project was to closely analyze how these transformations affected Soviet children using the example of children’s summer camps. Khrushchev’s ascendance to power changed summer camps from being the institutions which combined rest and education to purely educational ones. All the summer camps’ resources had to be mobilized to fulfill the task of Soviet children’s political indoctrination. Soviet leadership saw summer camps as ideal spaces that immersed children in a special way of life most appropriate for the future builders of communism. Typically for the USSR, by far not all the camps created this type of environment and routine for the young. Yet, there were model institutions, like Artek camp in the Crimea, which represented the Soviet vision of utopian children’s world that educated the younger generation as politically active Soviet citizens devoted to the Communist Party. Analyzing a unique body of sources that include archival records, oral history interviews, camp guidelines, diaries, and photographs I demonstrate that summer camps played an important role in Khrushchev’s reform of children’s education aimed at making manual labor a shared experience for all the Soviet youth. My research also highlights the paradoxes of this project. Owned by Soviet enterprises and organizations and administered by their trade unions, instead of creating a shared experience, summer camps reflected hierarchies that existed within the Soviet society between people belonging to different workplaces as well as between rural and urban populations. Run by trade union officials, summer camps also allow scholarso t examine the process of negotiation between the Communist Party, the Soviet state, and society over the model version of the Soviet childhood that summer camps had to create. I also see children as very important actors who shaped the work of summer camps by choosing to involve, disengage, or openly contest the way of living that these institutions involved them into. Degree Type Dissertation Degree Name Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Graduate Group History First Advisor Benjamin Nathans Keywords Artek, childhood, Khrushchev, oral history, trade unions, USSR Subject Categories European History This dissertation is available at ScholarlyCommons: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/2935 IT TAKES A UNION TO RAISE A SOVIET: CHILDREN’S SUMMER CAMPS AS A REFLECTION OF LATE SOVIET SOCIETY Iuliia Skubytska A DISSERTATION in History Presented to the Faculties of the University of Pennsylvania in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2018 Supervisor of Dissertation Graduate Group Chairperson ______________ _________________ Benjamin Nathans Benjamin Nathans Associate Professor of History Associate Professor of History Dissertation Committee Peter Holquist, Ronald S. Lauder Endowed Term Associate Professor of History Ann Farnsworth-Alvear, Associate Professor of History Kevin Platt, Edmund J. and Louise W. Kahn Term Professor in the Humanities IT TAKES A UNION TO RAISE A SOVIET: CHILDREN’S SUMMER CAMPS AS A REFLECTION OF LATE SOVIET SOCIETY COPYRIGHT 2018 Iuliia Skubytska This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/ For my parents III ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The completion of this dissertation would have been impossible without the help of many people, whom I feel deeply indebted to. First and foremost, I would like to thank my adviser Benjamin Nathans for all the work he has put in guiding me through the challenges of the graduate school and dissertation writing process. Thank you for superb feedback that I received on my writing, thank you for challenging me, and thank you for always being there when I needed your support or advice. I could not have wished for a better adviser. Of course, the rest of my dissertation ncommittee has also contributed a great deal to the successful completion of my dissertation project. I would like to thank Kevin Platt for pushing me to think outside of the box and supporting my various academic initiatives. I am very grateful to Ann Farnsworth-Alvear for her sharp comments that helped me think about my topic in gloabl perspective and brought transnational aspect into my writing. Finally, I want to thank Peter Holquist for asking me big questions that helped me reflect on the place my project occupies in Soviet historiography. My committee has always stood by my side when it came to both academic and administrative matters. Under any circumstances, I knew that I could count on their advice, support, and understanding. The generous support from the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Arts and Sciences has been crucial for the successful completion of this dissertation project. As for the research process itself, the staff of the State Archive of Kharkiv Region, the Central State Archive of Supreme Bodies of Power and Government of Ukraine, the Russian State Archive of Social and Political History, and the State Archive of the Russian Federation helped me access the countless sources that shaped the core of my dissertation and I am IV very grateful for their help. I owe a debt of gratitude to my parents Vladimir Skubitskii and Elena Skubitskaia for not only supporting me thoughout the research and writing process, but also for helping me find interviewees for my project. I would also like to thank Larisa Bugaenko and Natalia Martinkus, two of my interviewees who helped me as much as they could searching for people who were interested in telling me about their childhood. Without the help of Antonina Kanygina and Maria Protasevich, my stay in Moscow would have been much less enjoyable. Thank you for making this city feel like home. My passion for interdisciplinary research in the humanities developed when I was an undergraduate student at the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy thanks to the incredible teaching of Oleksandr Ivashyna. Yet, I would have never even thought of applying to the graduate school in the US had I not taken a course at the University of Toronto with Lynn Viola. Lynn’s faith in me, as well as her amazing teaching have created a foundation for my pursuit of graduate-level education outside of Ukraine. Another important person, who guided me through the aplication process, helped me move to Philadelphia and start my life in the US is Jared McBride. He and his family welcomed me to the US and helped me adjust to this new country, when I arrived. Another family who welcomed me in a new place was the Ring family, whom I met through my graduate school friend Courtney Ring. I am very grateful to them for exposing me to American traditions and helping me develop a feeling of belonging to this country. The years 2013-2014 mark one of the most difficult periods of my life as I had to watch the development of war in Ukraine, my home country. The fact that I still managed to make progress as a graduate student during this time is largely due to the support of V Benjamin Nathans, Ann Farnsworth-Alvear, Jonathan Steinberg, Roger Chartier, Courtney Ring, Andrea Thomson, Kelsey Salvensen, Kelsey Rice, and Evgenia Shnayder-Shoop. I am very grateful to them for understanding the difficulties I faced and helping me For their suggestions to read and proofread various parts of my dissertation, my thanks go to Courtney Ring, Kelsey Norris, Yakov Feygin, Hannah Anderson, Sarah Winsberg, Julia Kolchinsky-Dasbach, Veronica Aplenc, and Kelsey Rice. I would like to thank all of them for being wonderful friends and supportive colleagues. Throughout my research process Ilya Kukulin and Maria Mayofis were always ready to help me with various types of scholarly advice, and I am very grateful to them for being so generous in sharing their knowledge. My graduate student life in Philadelphia would have been bleak without the presence of Alissa Klots, Andrea Thomson, Courtney Doucette, Kelsey Salvensen, Evgenia Shnayder-Shoop, and Tina Irvine. In Ukraine, there was also a group of friends who have been encouraging me in my graduate school endeavor. I would like to thank Nadia Koval, Anna Pronskaia, Svetlana Tsurkan, Ilya Smolkin, Lilia Risovannaia, and Lidiya Lozova for helping me stay in touch with my homeland, supporting my scholarly work and making me forget about it for some time. Thank you. VI ABSTRACT IT TAKES A UNION TO RAISE A SOVIET: CHILDREN’S SUMMER CAMPS AS A REFLECTION OF LATE SOVIET SOCIETY Iuliia Skubytska Benjamin Nathans This dissertation examines the functioning of Soviet children’s summer camps throughout the period from 1953 to 1970. Researchers conceptualize these years marked by the rule of Nikita Khrushchev and Leonid Brezhnev as the time of transformations of Soviet state and society.