Public custody during the World War I between charity and social policy (historiography of the problem)

The article compares historiographical approaches to the coverage of social support practices during the World War I, assessing their place in the context of social sphere development in the Russian Empire. Special attention is paid to assessing the state’s participation in social assistance and determining the ratio of state-related and non-state institutions. This issue lies in the course of studying the impact of war on public relations. The author notes the insufficient attention given by the present historiography of the Russian rear of the World War I to the socio-managerial aspects and the uncertainty of the terminology used, resulting incomplete theoretical ideas about the essence of charity and social policy, which leads to the extensive use the concept of charity and insufficient attention to the processes of expanding state presence in the social sphere. Based on the application proposed by M.V. Firsov’s algorithm for studying the historical evolution of subjects, objects and ideologues of social assistance concluded that the beginning of the transformation the forms of social assistance from charity and public charity to state social policy was based on the example of organizing support measures for soldiers’ families, orphans and war invalids. The organizational basis of the pre-revolutionary stage of this process was the All-Russian quasi-state structures patronized by members of the imperial family, who coordinated and partially financed assistance to the affected categories of the population. 

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