Our Notes & References

Propaganda postcards introducing basic rules of childcare to Soviet parents, using a rather classic but clear design.

Pregnancy and childcare were considered important work for the good of Soviet society; in the 1920s, to fight the very high mortality of infants, state-run child counselling centres were set up across the country to spread useful recommendations for improving healthcare of infants and to combat the misconceptions about childcare from previous eras.

These two postcards by the artist Aleksei Komarov (1879-1977) were issued by the Museum Exhibition for the Protection of Motherhood and Infancy in Moscow. One shows a child in a cradle in the shape of a boat with a mast wide open with a message “Protect the child!! Don’t let him be wrecked on the reefs. Enable him to sail on the wide path of life full of health and strength”. The reefs around the boat are labelled: “dark room”, “feeding with cow’s milk”, “unsanitary maintenance”, “bad care”, “stifling, stale air”, “chewed pacifier”, and “early weaning with gruel (before 6 months)”.

Another postcard warns: “Don’t forget to give your child boiled water without sugar during the heatwave!”, demonstrating that people water their plants, give water to their pets and drink a lot of it in hot weather, while infants get as thirsty as adults, “so give your child […] clean water 2-3 times a day but by no means an extra bottle of milk”.