Begging and vagrancy in everyday life in the South of Ukraine in the 1920s

In: Hrani: naukovo-teoretyčnyj alʹmanach, Band 24, Heft 3, S. 62-70

Abstract

The insufficiently studied perspective of regional history related to the identification and characterization of essential features, socio-economic factors and features of the spread of begging and vagrancy as organic components in the structure of deviant phenomena of everyday life in southern Ukraine during the NEP actualizes and analyzes in the article. On the basis of modern theoretical and methodological approaches and methods and representative sources (including archival) it is proved that the most powerful catalysts of their then surge were the devastating consequences of the First World and Civil Wars, total devastation, famine of 1921–1923, migration, without migration. Relevant statistical data have been processed and published. The kinship (common roots) of begging and vagrancy caused by the long-lasting and all-encompassing crisis of society, total and rapidly growing impoverishment and marginalization of the population, the emergence of large masses of disadvantaged people in the South of the republic, deprived of basic social support by the Soviet authorities and the public.The author emphasizes that despite all the shortcomings, miscalculations and contradictions of the then Bolshevik steps to clean the "social bottom" in the region and reincarnate its bearers in the course of normal, full life, this instructive historical experience has not lost some of its relevance today, and therefore could be useful in the development and implementation of appropriate social programs in Ukraine, where under the influence of deep transformation processes, intensive property stratification of society, progressive poverty of the majority of citizens, a fairly high level of such anomalies is consistently recorded.