THE LEGAL STATUS OF CHILDREN IN THE UKRAINIAN SSR DURING THE SECOND WORLD WAR

Abstract

The aim is to shed light on the situation of children in the Ukrainian SSR during the Second World War and to provide a comprehensive historical and legal assessment of it, based on an analysis of three interrelated phenomena, namely: the physical extermination of children by the Nazi occupation regime, their recruitment into the partisan movement and regular military formations, and the alteration and loss of children’s identity as a result of adoption, deportation and Germanisation. Methods. In writing this article, the following methods were employed: historical-legal, formal-legal, systemic-structural and hermeneutic, as well as analysis and synthesis. It is precisely these methods that form the methodological basis of the study. Thus, the historical-legal method was used to establish the interrelationship between wartime circumstances, state policy and the situation of the child. The formal-legal method enabled an analysis of the provisions of legislative acts, whilst the method of legal retrospection allowed for an assessment of historical practices through the prism of contemporary standards of children’s rights, without mechanically applying them to relationships that arose prior to the adoption of the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child. Results. It has been established that children constituted a distinct category of victims of the Nazi policy of extermination. It has been found that joining a partisan unit during the Second World War was a means of physical survival for some children, primarily Jewish ones. The USSR’s policy regarding the participation of minors in the war was contradictory: on the one hand, the presence of children at the front was formally prohibited; on the other, the image of the child soldier was promoted. Children were used as scouts, messengers and saboteurs, but the decision to deploy them was taken directly by the military commander. It has been established that there was a degree of institutionalisation of military service for boys aged 12–17. It has been established that, at that time, there were two models of change in a child’s identity. In the first, certain elements of an adopted child’s identity were legally altered in accordance with Soviet legislation; in the second, the original identity of children deported and ‘Germanised’ by the Nazi regime was effectively destroyed. Conclusions. Based on the results of the study into the issue in question, the following conclusions have been drawn. Under military regimes, children were not recognised as independent holders of rights. Thus, Nazi Germany (or, more precisely, the Nazis), in promoting the dominance of a single race, made every effort to Germanise children and turned them into targets for extermination, whilst the Soviet authorities subordinated their protection to military needs, gradually involving them in combat operations. At the same time, no comprehensive mechanism for safeguarding children had been established in the USSR. Identifying the distinctive features of these models of identity – namely, the legal replacement and the de facto destruction of identity – has made it possible to assess more accurately the various interventions in a child’s origins, family ties and cultural affiliation, which differed in their aims, methods and consequences.