To the origins of social education in Ukraine (the 1920s): humanism or prole-tarian expediency?

. The paper analyses the phenomenon of social education (herein after abbr. sotzvykh) in Ukraine in the 1920s as a purpose of Soviet power to change the previous imperial system of education. In general, at that time sotzvykh reﬂected the aspiration of power for upbringing the new generation of educated proletarians with communist views, but in reality, there were e ﬀ orts to feed, clothe and provide the elementary medical care to the host of di ﬀ erent types of children and teenagers under 15. Until the early 1930s, the sphere of education in Ukraine developed di ﬀ erently than in Russia. The emphasis was placed on the imminent death of the family as a social institution, and therefore the education of children and youth should have become the task of the society. In addition, professionalization of school education was recognized as a priority. The aim of the article is to highlight the ﬁrst in the world’s education history phenomenon (sotzvykh) – both the pedagogical and social – of organising life of children in the post-war country. The goals and ways of implementation Ukrainian sotzvykh in the context of social, ideological and pedagogical aspects of the time are analysed. It is considered that sotzvykh carried out both political and life-saving pedagogical tasks of protecting the child population. Within the framework of sotzvykh in the conditions of poverty and ruin of the post-revolutionary period the general 7-year school education and elimination of illiteracy were carried out.


Introduction
Turning to the history of the formation of the phenomenon of social education (hereinafter referred to as "sotzvykh") in Ukraine, it is necessary not to miss the main factor that gave rise to it -the collapse of the Russian Empire (1917), whose part Ukraine was.The establishing of Soviet power on the lands of Ukraine (1918)(1919)(1920)(1921) took place in difficult conditions of Civil war, instability of power, material deprivation and economic decline.Despite this, the Ukrainian Bolsheviks declared a difficult for realization task -to fundamentally change all the political, economic and cultural institutions of the previous imperial power that implied the creation of a new, socialist in spirit, educational system.It was based on the idea of replacing the upbringing of the younger generation "in a semi-patriarchal family and school" with "social upbringing" [1].It meant the upbringing in collectivistic ideology oriented towards the interests of the working class.Until the mid-1920s the issue of the dying out institutions of family and school in their original forms in the proletarian state was being actively debated.However, the traditional approach to the important role of the family in the upbringing of the child prevailed.
The purpose of education and the task of the Soviet state "to educate in children institutions of sotzvykh har-moniously developed members of the collectivist society under construction" [2] was proclaimed.
We'd like to emphasize that in 1918-1923 the sotzvykh in Ukraine was "simultaneously" a means of protection of a child and included "education, upbringing, providing food and clothing" [1] for children and adolescents who suffered the consequences of war.
As early as in 1920 O. I. Popiv, one of the inspirers of the pedagogical process' renovation and the ideologist of the sotzvykh in Ukraine, wrote the program work, that formed the basis of the state document "The Declaration of the People's Commissariat of the Ukrainian SRR on Social Education of Children", outlining the intentions of the workers' and peasants' power: "The educational system of social education (sotzvykh), sets the task of fulfilling the pedagogical dream: to embrace the entire life of each child with a properly organized upbringing" [1].
This in many aspects innovative and humane document, although rather utopian one, was called by M. M. Kuzmenko "a specific program for implementing the basic principles of modernization of cultural and spiritual life" [3].
Another important feature of the sotzvykh was the official proclamation of protecting all children (under 15 years) as a concern and commitment of the state.The implementation of the first-ever state governing bodies, such as the People's Commissariat of Education of the Ukrainian SRR (hereinafter referred to as PCE) and the People's Commissariat of Health Care of the Ukrainian SRR (hereinafter referred to as PCHC), which was recorded in the Code of Laws on Education of the Ukrainian SRR (1922) [2].Note: this decision had no analogues in the political history of the state, had an indisputable humanistic focus, although, as time showed, it largely remained an idealized project.

Research aims and methods
The purpose of our article consists of several goals.
Firstly, to spread knowledge about the historical and cultural processes in Ukraine, as the educational sphere is a vivid reflection of the nation's image and intellectual history of the country.
Secondly, on the basis of a discursive analysis of authentic sources and documents of the 1920s, to reveal the presence in the history of the Ukrainian education such a phenomenon as "sotsvykh" ("social education/upbringing"), having no analogues in the world history of pedagogy.Authorities proclaimed the necessity to cover all over the child population of Ukraine with possible social care, elementary education, despite the extremely difficult post-war social and economic circumstances.It was proclaimed as the task of the authorities at the level of stateapproved laws and regulations.It was conducting the initial quantitative and age child and youth population count for organizing different types of state institutions for primary medical, psychological and pedagogical help according to the vital needs of children.For the first time, the upbringing, education, treatment, care of "defective children" (now -children with special needs) were recognized as a state task, not an individual philanthropist's affair.
Thirdly, the studied phenomenon "sotsvykh" ("social education/upbringing") concerned the origins of those processes in education that are defined as humanistic.Let's remember: experimental studies of the child's nature began only from the second half of the 19th century), and the historical and genetic reconstruction of the phenomenon "sotsvykh" at the same time makes it possible to reflect the movement of humanistic ideas and their practical realizations: from sporadic philanthropic examples of assistance to various types of disabled children (19th cent.early19th cent.) to state differentiating care and education of them (1920s), the origin and development of such branches of science as defectology (special education) (1920)(1921)(1922)(1923)(1924)(1925)(1926)(1927)(1928)(1929)(1930), social rehabilitation, and finally transition from high-level differentiation of disabilities  to the recognition of inclusive education as the most humane approach to solving the problem of children with special educational needs.
Research methods: the study adopts the method of document analysis, analysis of texts terminology in connection with discursive analysis [4]; narrative method, a structural method according to which the studied phenomenon is broken down into components for the attempt to search links between them which are not always explicit.

The roots of social education (sotzvykh)
It is worth noting that the key ideas of education reforming were not an absolute innovation in the humanitarian sphere of Europe.The problem of protecting children in broad general pedagogical context has been raised repeatedly, especially after the start of the First World War.For example, the founder of genetic psychology, E. Claparède, in a report at the Congress of the League of Psychological Hygiene (Paris, 1922) introduced the following provisions to the resolution, which were unanimously adopted by delegates, namely: "... 4. The school should protect the nature of childhood.... 6. School must awaken activity.It should be a laboratory rather than an audience.7. School must evoke the love of labour" [5].
The above-mentioned conceptual ideas were reflected in the first Soviet documents of Ukraine on education [6,7], which determined the strategic directions of social education, child protection, and the creation of a general labour school.
Also at the very beginning of the 20th century both in Europe and imperial Russia they raised the issue of a "mentally impotent and morally dangerous child" [8,9], which was connected with the growth of juvenile delinquency and the need for its "social treatment", as well as with the problem of protecting the mental health of children.In 1910, at the III Congress of Russian Psychiatrists, V. P. Kashchenko described 4 types of defective (disabled) children: mentally retarded at various degrees, children with mental instability, epileptics and mentally ill children.And emphasized that "... organizing assistance to children of all these types it is important to observe the principle of differentiation.One needs hospital or family care (guardianship), another needs both care and treatment, and for others, specially organized upbringing and training is necessary" [8].In the imperial time the mentioned social and pedagogical problems did not find a solution at the state level.
In the 19th -at the beginning of the 20th century the term "defective childhood" was officially used by European psychologists (C.G. Jung [10], E. Claparède [11]) in relation to children with subnormal intelligence or behaviour, as well as in relation to juvenile delinquents and even street children.In relation to the last two group of children, the more specific term "morally defective" was also used.Such views were based on the biologizing theory of "moral defectiveness" or "moral insanity" (J.C. Pritchard [12], P. G. Belsky [13], A. N. Graborov [14], G. Ja.Troshin [15]), according to which such abilities as learning and fulfilment of moral standards were considered innate.Behavioural deviations, violations of the law were considered as the result of genetically determined degenerative processes, which can be intensified or weakened under the influence of environmental factors.Similar views led to the fact that the term had a broad interpretation, and the category of "morally defective" included the juvenile criminals and hundreds of thousands of children who were "in the street" due to social disasters.After 1925 the term "morally defective" is not fixed in Ukrainian publications.Consistent with the specific of historical ap-proach to the analysis of the past, the term "defective children" and its derivatives are used in our text.
To the prerequisites and movers of the organization of the Ukrainian differentiated sotzvykh we relate, firstly, the development and significant achievements of the national experimental pedagogic, begun as far back as at imperial time.The foundation was laid for the implementation of scientifically grounded differentiation of children, taking into account the physiological and age characteristics of the formation of their organisms, their ability to learn, the peculiarity of temperaments and characters.The individualization of the education and upbringing of children at that time became widespread in the form of the psychologisation of the educational process [16] due to the research of V. M. Bekhterev [17], A. F. Lazurskiy [18], N. N. Lange [19], P. F. Lesgaft [20], A. P. Nechaev [21], N. E. Rumyantsev [22], I. A. Sikorskiy [23,24], as well as the works of A. Binet [25], E. Claparède [11], E. Meumann [26], G. S. Hall [27], whose ideas were actively disseminated and introduced into Ukrainian educational practice.The subjects covered in their studies concerned the individual physiological, mental, socio-psychological features of the child's development and its adaptation to the learning process; identifying child's genetic opportunities; specificity of the upbringing of children with impaired psychophysical development and the possibilities of their compensatory education.
Although a lot was done in investigation and implementation of the results of experimental psychological and pedagogical research on the issues mentioned, the efforts of individual scientists lacked systematization and coherence.

Protection of childhood as an important attempt to realize the Utopian project in the field of Ukrainian sotzvykh
Note that in the early years of the Soviet power in Ukraine an attempt was maid to solve a titanic complex problemto involve every child under the age of 15 in education and provide social protection to everyone who was left out of family care or needed a specialized medical and pedagogical approach.That is, almost from scratch, the state system of social protection of the most disadvantaged part of the child population was created.The urgency of introducing the system of revolutionary activities in Ukraine's education in the context of social protection of children was due primarily to the socioeconomic consequences of the First World War and Civil War, such as: destruction of families, famine (especially tragic in the Volga region in 1921, from which the masses of the hungry rushed to the southern Ukrainian lands), devastation.As a result, numerous orphans and half-orphans from poor families, refugees without shelter, that is, a large number of homeless and neglected children in need of help and protection appeared.For example, in the Poltava newspaper "Voice of Labour" dated November 28, 1922, noted: "There is information about the plight of starving children from various counties.Their mass extinction is threatening" [28].
According to official data (primarily the 1920 census) [29], children under 11 years made up 11.7 per cent of the population (approximately 2,860,000 people), there was also a significant decrease in the "junior cadres of the population (six years or less)" [29], which is the evidence of extinction from hunger and disease of the most vulnerable category of children -pre-schoolers and infants.
The uniqueness of the multidimensional idea of child protection as the leading component of educational and social state policy in the young Soviet Ukraine is seen in the fact that childcare was recognized as possible only through the combined efforts of teachers and doctors.Such an approach was supposed to promote mass qualified distribution of children in accordance with of their physical and mental health in order to provide each category of children with appropriate medical and psychological assistance and education in relevant educational institutions.
The diversity of the contingent of children and the importance for them to get targeted assistance dictated the need to keep records of child's population.Such inventory was also considered as the "task of social protection of minors" [2], course made it possible to conduct an initial examination of large masses of children, identify problems and deviations in their development of various kinds in order to further distribute children to various types of educational institutions -for normal children, for children with vision and hearing problems, mental disorders, as well as for child offenders.
Since 1924 in line with sotzvykh general (primary) education of children was legislatively introduced in the Ukrainian SSR [29].According to official data (primarily the 1920 census), children under 11 years old accounted for 11.7 per cent of the population (approximately 2.860.000children), while there was a significant decrease in the "younger cadres of the population (from six years old or less), which should have been to go to school during the period of general education" [29].This indicated a high mortality rate for children under school age.
The educational policy of the authorities, which discard the possibility to "move towards general education in a natural way" [30], was oriented not at all toward "schoolage children, not at a gradual increase in the percentage of school-age children, but at their most complete and differentiated education coverage".Therefore, at the same time as 8-year-old children, 9-10-year-old children, who for some reason had not yet attended school, were accepted into the first grade.It planed to do so "each subsequent school year" [29].However, in the official report of the Ukrainian deputy People's Commissar of Education (PCE) A. Ganjiy (data as of 1925) it was noted that "the school in Ukraine never served more than 50 per cent of the total number of children", and therefore the older contingents of 10 years old and older children left out of school should have been covered by the system of illiteracy liquidation (herein after abbr.likbez) [29].
In the 1920s penal facilities for juvenile delinquents were changed to educational and labour institutionslabour colonies or labour communes.Some of them were open-type facilities but most of them were closed-type ones. A. S. Makarenko became one of the founders of the Soviet Penitentiary Pedagogy.Note that the term "penitentiary science" was used already in the 1920s, for example, in 1923 the monograph "Foundations of Penitentiary Science" by S. V. Poznyshev was published [31].
Within the implementation of the Laws on Social Education special establishments on "investigating and distributing minors" were created in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic.These special establishments included reception centres or temporary 24-hour shelters for homeless children under 15 who required social protection or who committed misconduct.According to the appointment of the juvenile commission, children were sent to the reception centres or handed over to their parents or guardians.In such centres, where children were kept for up to 5 weeks, "the children were studied individually with the aim to resolve the issue of their further distribution" [2].In accordance with official documents there were three types of reception centres, namely: for normal children who were to be sent to orphanages, for juvenile delinquents and for mentally retarded children of all categories whose upbringing had to be provided by special orphanages [2].Before sending children from the reception centre to the next social and educational institution, they had to be examined in medical and pedagogical departments (or treatment and prophylactic centres).
In accordance with articles 255-261 of the Law Code the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic on Public Education, the aim of the Treatment and Prophylactic Centres was to provide "the proper organization of social education and the promotion of ideas and achievements of social education" [2].Treatment and Prophylactic Centres were to provide the necessary "state assistance to mentally retarded children" and had to serve appropriate institutions for mentally retarded children as research and support institutions of social education, namely: "1) to investigate physical and spiritual nature of the children who enter the consulting room; 2) to develop research questions on practice and organization of institutions for mentally retarded children" [2].The tasks of Treatment and Prophylactic Centres also included training for the staff of social and educational institutions concerned aimed at proper understanding of the nature of mentally retarded children and developing "methods and manuals" [2].
Thus, the main responsibility for the correct placement of children with differentiated needs within the different categories was laid on Treatment and Prophylactic Centres, considering the fact that both in reception centres and in collecting centres the primary medical and pedagogical selection was carried out by their representatives.
The analysis of documents and materials on educational practice in the first decades of the Soviet regime leads to the conclusion that in fact social education was gradually identified with the education provided by the state.
According to the mentioned articles of the Code, four regional Treatment and Prophylactic Centres were opened throughout the republic -in Kharkiv (at that time -the capital of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic), in Kyiv, in Odessa and in Dnipropetrovsk.Their activities, firstly, influenced the way of implementing and dissem-inating the pedological approach aimed at investigating childhood among educators in the region concerned, initially -children with special needs; secondly, these activities differed on priority directions of scientific and practical work.But what was more important was that in the 1920s Treatment and Prophylactic Centres became the implementers of an innovative, socially significant idea of individualizing the approach to the organization of children's lives in Ukraine [32,33].
From the legislative and guidance materials of the Ukrainian SSR in the mid-1920s, in particular from the operational plan of the Department of Social Education of the People's Commissariat for Education of the Ukrainian SSR for 1925-1926, it appears that they had a separate section "Auxiliary School", which stated that "one of the moments which determine the normal functioning of schools, is the formation of a network of auxiliary schools" [34].Considering Western European statistical estimates, children who required such schools made up 3 per cent which meant that at that time there were more than 50,000 children who required them in Ukraine [34].The document also singled out the category of children who were "between norm and pathology and who could not be called abnormal in the literal sense [34], but when they started attending a mainstream school, they hindered the "normal flow of labour".
The authors of the document emphasized that at the end of the 19th century in Western Europe, and later in Russia special classes at schools and even separate schools for such children began to appear, and "since 1914 in Ukraine a network of such schools not only did not develop, but even a small number of these schools which existed before the World War I in Kyiv and Kharkov disappeared by 1922" [34].That's why, acknowledging the urgent need for organizing special classes at schools at the state level, "the Department of Social Education considers it necessary and possible to start organising auxiliary classes as of the next year, and in large centres to start organising entire schools -for about 7,500 children" [34].But due to the lack of funding, this task "at the local level" was not fully fulfilled.
And the Ukrainian Psychoneurological Institute (UPI) in Kharkiv became the centre for scientific and practical activities in the field of psychoneurological pedology in the Ukrainian SSR.Together with People's Commissariat for Health UPI was responsible for organising and disseminating a special psychoneurological network of children's institutions -schools-sanatoriums for psychoneurotics, schools-hospitals for children with epilepsy, schools-departments for mentally ill children and profound oligophrenics at psychiatric hospitals, out-of-town schools-labour colonies for antisocial psychopaths, speech therapy schools etc. [35].This way, the differentiation of children with disabilities was deepened in order to provide them with possible medical and rehabilitative assistance in a specially organised health and educational environment.
The activity of Ukrainian pedagogical and medicaland-pedagogical state institutions, which first of all cared for the primary differentiation of the child population on the basis of its examination and identification of children with normal and abnormal development also involved: the purposeful development of medical and pedagogical support, protection and laying the foundations of scientific and pedagogical study of abnormal children, contributing to the formation of the domestic branch of pedagogy -defectology; making recommendations on organising education and socialization, adequate to the peculiarities of the development and opportunities of children and adolescents; spreading new psychological and pedagogical ideas among teachers and educators and forming a view on an abnormal child not only as a person who needs care, but also as a person with his/her own individual and social needs that can and should be socialized.Due to scientific research, first of all, of representatives of Treatment and Prophylactic Centres and the Ukrainian Psychoneurological Institute, a professional division in the training of specialists in the areas of children's developmental anomalies -deaf pedagogy, typhlopedagogy, oligophrenic pedagogy gradually began to be introduced in Ukraine.These newly established medical and pedagogical institutions significantly supplemented, and sometimes replaced the activities of higher education institutions concerning the process of training, and especially the retraining of defectologists (educators of children with special education needs hearing impaired child [36]. Socially significant and, first of all, humanistic was the deepening in the process of implementing the project of mass education (for all citizens) in the Ukrainian SSR, especially in the 1930s, the differentiation of abnormal children into categories in terms of determining the degree of their disabilities.Thus, after the resolution "On the Introduction of General Compulsory Education for Physically and Mentally Disabled and Speech-Impaired Children and Adolescents" [37], the annex to which provided special explanations concerning the categories of late deaf and hard of hearing children, the latter fell into three categories, depending on the degree of deafness -mild, moderate, severe.Since their education was planned within general secondary schools, pedagogical work was based on general principles and methods used in these schools.At the same time, recommendations on considering the peculiarities of their education and the requirements for attending short-term courses on "facial reading and speech correction and constant supervision of ear specialists" [38] were developed.While implementing the project of mass education, one of the aspects of differentiating education began to be embodied -an attempt to cover the education of all children with hearing problems was made; on the basis of existing diagnostic approaches, children were divided into hard of hearing children, deaf and mentally disabled children, and hard of hearing children were taught in separate classes which increased the efficiency of learning and the possibility of their full-fledged socialization.
We strongly believe that report devoted to the state of childhood in Ukraine at the beginning of 1924 at the meeting of the Board of People's Commissariat for Education of the Ukrainian SSR by doctor Feder was an example of the eloquent evidence of the situation connected with social education.He participated in a special study covered "44 regional and 9 provincial centres".The conducted study revealed the "image of extremely difficult state of childhood" [39], in particular, only 50 per cent of orphanages were housed in adapted buildings with minimum sanitary standards, and the worst situation was in Katerynoslav (Dnipropetrovsk region) and Donetsk region [39].It was also noted that 46 per cent of orphanages were extremely overcrowded, along with "extreme overcrowding and oxygen starvation there was a problem of chronic malnutrition," so there were 36.2 per cent of starveling children who suffered from anaemia and pretuberculosis".Comparing the functioning of children's boarding schools and schools providing labour education, the situation concerning children from orphanages was recognized as much more difficult.
On the example of the review of children from "boarding schools of normal type" (500 people) conducted in Katerynoslav the following conclusion was formulated: "Children of normal intelligence -64.9 per cent, mentally disabled children -45.2 per cent" [39].Moreover, according to the data obtained, 6-9 year-old children (70 per cent) fell into the group which presented the largest percentage of mentally disabled children.Experts believed that the adverse circumstances of life of young citizens, first of all related to inadequate sanitation, malnutrition and disease had a direct impact on the deterioration of their mental health (increase in the number of nervous children) and on the reduction of their ability to learn school subjects [39].

"Defective children"
Among scientists of that time who were studying the problems of childhood, it was widely believed that "the study of the children's problems should begin with the most essential, with the most crying question -with defective (disabled) children and homeless" [40].It was believed that the data on the development of a subnormal child were needed in order to better understand the patterns of development of a normal child (I. A. Sikorskiy [23,24], A. F. Lazurskiy [18], V. P. Kashchenko [41]).
Describing the overall state of affairs with children's defectiveness in the Russian Empire, psychiatrist and pedologist I. Levinson wrote in 1923 that for the solution of this problem: "The best representatives of psychiatric science and pedagogical knowledge for decades led a stubborn struggle, advocating the creation of a system of educational and special institutions for various categories of "special" children.... study of such children is practically an untouched field for diverse educational and medicalpsychological activities" [42].
According to his approximate calculations, the number of defective children and those "balancing on the brink of abnormality, morally degenerated under the influence of heredity and adverse social conditions and yielding a significant number of juvenile offenders" reaches several million [42], and all of them need "individualized methods of education".
In June 1920, the Ukrainian government adopted the resolution on the coordination of functions of PCE and PCHC related to the care of children with developmental disabilities.It said: "Nervous, mentally ill, mentally immature, and physically disabled children (deaf-mute, blind and crippled) are brought up in the appropriate special institutions of the PCHP (sanatorium schools, schoolhospitals, auxiliary institutions).Education of morallydisabled adolescents is carried out at the relevant institutions of PCE and PCHC (centres for observation and study, colonies for treatment and upbringing and health care of disabled children)" [43].
Subsequently, these provisions were specified in the Code of Laws of the Ukrainian SRR (1922).To clarify, the PCE was engaged in the social development of normal children under the age of 15, and the PCHC patronized children up to 4 years old.
As we have already indicated, in the early 20th century the term "defective (disabled) children", as well as "difficult children", "moral defective children', "abnormal children" denoted a large different-type group of children, whose development and behaviour for various social and psychophysical reasons did not fall under the generally accepted norms.Such children were characterized either by antisocial behaviour, or they experienced difficulties in socialization, or in learning the curriculum, etc.In 1930 there was created in Kharkiv (Kharkiv was the capital of the Ukrainian SRR till 1934) the first in Ukraine Scientific Research Institute of Defectology, which studied the problems of children with anomalies of psychophysical development [44].It was headed by I. A. Sokolyanskiy, who later became widely known for his development of methods of correctional education and training blind-deafdumb children.
Note that, starting from the 1990s, the more humane term "children with special educational needs" began to be used in relation to such children in the Ukrainian pedagogy.

Homeless children
In the 1920s economic disruption and drought, famine, epidemics and difficult political situation exacerbated the problems of homelessness and caused a significant increase in juvenile delinquency.There were about a million orphans and street children in Ukraine in 1922-1924 [45,46].
On the whole, the realization of the goals of sotzvykh was complicated primarily by the presence of large-scale children's homelessness, which could not be quickly eliminated, as evidenced by official materials.Thus, the Decree of the All-Union Central Executive Committee and the Council of People's Commissars of the Ukrainian SRR dated November 23, 1927 "On measures to combat child homelessness in the Ukrainian SRR" stated: "Homelessness has not yet been eliminated" [47], but "to the homeless who are under 18 years old and in living conditions that are dangerous for their physical and socio-labour development, the state applies ... measures of social and legal protection, material assistance and education" [47].
The organization and controlling of sotzvykh was carried out by the sector of the Ukrainian PCE -the Main department of sotzvykh (Golovsotsvykh).It was responsible for developing "the main provisions of the social edu-cation system and planning the activities for each type of children's institution, depending on the nature of the various groups into which the child population was divided" [2].
According to the level of development of the pedagogical, psychological and medical ideas of that time, there were distinguished: a) children hard in educational sense, b) juvenile offenders, c) homeless children (street children) in Ukraine [35].Such division led to application of the different psychological, pedagogical and legal methods of influence, taking into account the life and educational needs of these groups of children's population, and therefore to organization of the relevant specialized educational institutions [48].
The Ukrainian practice of social education in the 1920s testified that "attempts to incorporate socially neglected children (even in small numbers) into the groups of normal childhood... did not produce the desired effects: homeless children were negatively affecting other children, but were little exposed to good influence themselves, or ran again outside to the street life" [49].
At the initial stage of social development in Ukraine there was no clear idea how to organize the life of homeless children, orphans and offenders, so that it did not look like the "old-fashioned" models, but obeyed the ideas of socialist education.The most common options to organize the life of such children became the orphanages, agricultural child labour colonies and labour communes [50].There were also reformatories as a facility for "the reeducation of juvenile offenders" [51] who have committed the serious crimes.They also were the part of general network of sotzvykh in Ukraine [52].
At the I All-Ukrainian meeting on the "fight against juvenile delinquency" (October 1924) [52], A. S. Makarenko [53], the head of Poltava labour colony for juvenile offenders named after Russian writer M. Gorky, was the co-reporter of inspector of the Main committee of sotzvykh I. A. Sokolyanskiy -the prominent Ukrainian researcher in the field of training, educating blind deaf-mute children in 1930-1950s [54]. A. S. Makarenko was defending pedagogical expediency of organizing work of the labour colonies for offenders not on a craft approach, as sotzvykh proclaimed, but on the basis of creation of the "considerable enterprises" where youth would be involved in producing the products for the benefit of themselves and society.He advocated creation of the atmosphere of play and cheerfulness in the communes' activity.The main condition for success in the re-socialization of the young offenders A. S. Makarenko identified pedagogical tact -ignoring the illegal past of children, refusing coercion to stay in a colony and even using the terms "criminal", "juvenile offender", complete separation of the communes from guardianship by all the punitive and judicial authorities [53].
As for the number and social composition of homeless children and adolescents in Ukraine and according to N. Veletska who was the pedologist and the employee of the Kharkiv district reception centre, although in 1927 the number of such young people decreased greatly compared to 1921-1922, according to various sources, it still num-bered from 6000-7000 to 23000 homeless children and adolescents [55].However, the author emphasized that these figures were very raw, and there were no exact figures on the number of homeless children in Ukraine in 1921-1922 [55].According to the M. I. Levitina, there were about 100,000 homeless children in Ukraine in 1924 [56].
N. Veletska came to the following conclusion: although "the state strengthened, and war, famine and destruction stayed in the past", there was a significant number of homeless people in Ukraine who continued to pose a complex social problem, considering the fact that about 59,000 children lived in boarding schools [55].
Summarizing the reasons for the emergence of homeless children in Ukraine N. Veletska reached the important conclusions that were essential for understanding the origin and spread of this antisocial phenomenon.She stated that "homeless children who became delinquents because there was no other way to live, were replaced by children who had families and who studied at schools, and it became much more difficult to raise homeless delinquents" [55].According to her, the number of such children -about 60 per cent -exceeded the "hungry" homelessness, which reached only 38 per cent [55].Therefore, she strongly believed that social education should be focused on two areas -"the elimination of the heavy legacy of large homelessness and the prevention of new homelessness" [55].
Among the main reasons for emergence of a negative social phenomenon, the researcher called conflicts in the family (father's drunkenness, indifference to raising children, conscious abandonment of children, family instability), lack of "proper care", false "labour education" which in fact was an exploitation of child labour and caused the escape "on the loose" [55], "excessive mobility of children", caused by the fact that "during the huge challenges and changes in life mental health of both adults and children get used to them, ... shifts in public life cause a tendency to change in personal life as well" [55].However, N. Veletska did not single out such significant sources of homelessness and delinquency as unemployment and starvation in peacetime, about which M. I. Levitina (Maro) wrote back in 1924.According to her study, concerning the state of homeless childhood in Ukraine, the percentage of offences committed by children depended on their parents' earnings and the largest number of illegal actions was committed by children whose parents were unskilled workers [57].Similar data were given by A. N. Graborov [58].

Education code of the Ukrainian SRR and the differentiation of the child population as a realization of sotzvykh
As it follows from the text of the Code on Education of the Ukrainian SRR (1922), three main groups of children were distinguished -normal children, juvenile offenders, defective (disabled) children, resulting in creation of various types of educational institutions in the system of sotzvykh.The classification determined the individualized vectors of life organization and teaching children.So, normal children should have attended a children's home-boarding school, a day-time children's home, a general 7-years labour school, a kindergarten (summer playgrounds, clubs); juvenile offenders against the law (or "moral-disabled children"), later the homeless children who committed minor offenses in order to somehow survive) had to attend the main orphanage, an auxiliary orphanage, labour colony, labour home for girls; children with developmental defects were sent to the main orphanage ("for children from 4 to 18 with noticeable deviations from the norm in the moral or mental sphere, capable of being influenced by pedagogical measures for development" [2]).The Code separately stated social institutions for deaf and blind children.
Note that the reflected in the Code idea of dividing all children in the country into certain groups had also been recorded in the earlier document "The System of Social Upbringing of Children of the Ukrainian SRR" dated June 25, 1921, according to which, along with institutions for normal children in the Soviet republic, institutions were established for physically, mentally and morally-disabled children, because "normal and defective children should be brought up in institutions of various types" [2].The need to ensure the interests of representatives of each of the above groups of children was noted as well.
It seems undeniable that the declared approach meant taking into account the diversity of children's characteristics and ensuring social interests of children and adolescents in established educational institutions.Planning to reach the child with "social and educational influence" [1], the organizers of the Soviet educational system considered that "meeting the diversity of the vital needs of children is the goal of the educational process" [2].Therefore, the idea reflected in the "Declaration of the PCE of the Social Education of Children" that care should be provided to all children, including the sick, defective, "juvenile offenders" and all groups of children in need of a special educational approach, became crucial [1].
The mentioned provisions of the early Soviet legislative documents are considered as the intentions of the authorities to implement an individualized approach in education, which we consider positive.Using the definition of "positive", with which we subjectively assess the essence of the phenomenon, we want to emphasize that at that time there were manifestations of a "negative" differentiated approach in the organization of education or social development.So, with the establishment of Soviet power in Ukraine, the course was set for class differentiation of the population and it found its reflection in school education.
In particular, already in the Resolution on the organization of a general 7-year labour school (June 1920) stated: "When distributing vacancies among those who want to go to school, the decisive factors are: 1) growth; 2) gender (to ensure equal distribution between boys and girls, 3) class and social position (priority is given to children of the proletariat and the poorest families; 4) belonging to professional and political associations that stand on the platform of Soviet power; 5) level of knowledge" [6].
Article 18 of the Code of Laws on Public Education stated legally: "For the full implementation of the general compulsory upbringing and education, the proletarians and the poor are credited to cultural and educational institutions" [1].
Consequently, in the Ukrainian socialist state legislatively fixed the differentiation of students according to class basis, which we attribute to the negative aspects of a socially differentiated approach in education.
Under the conditions of the first years of creation of a proletarian state, circumstances arose that were favourable for conducting not local but mass psychological and pedagogical experiments surveying the nature of normal and anomalous childhood, studying various children's groups, with the approbation of new teaching methods.But this is a topic for a special paper.

Conclusions
In the historical period under consideration in Ukraine, for the first time at the state level, such important large-scale educational initiatives were proclaimed and implemented as the introduction of "general, compulsory, free education" [6] in the institutions of sotzvykh; accounting of the total child population of the republic; providing protection (social and pedagogical aspects) to all categories of children, including those with deviations in the psychophysical and moral-legal spheres, for which they actively created new educational institutions for various categories of children and adolescents.The nature of those undertakings was distinguished by humanism and a desire for pedagogical innovation.For the scientific support of those activities in 1926 in Ukraine, for the first time in its history, there was created "a special state scientific institution, called upon to carry out systematic, targeted research in various areas of pedagogy" -the Ukrainian Research Institute of Pedagogy [62].
But the idealized, populist ideas proclaimed by the first Ukrainian Soviet documents, which did not take into account the difficult financial and economic situation of the country, as well as the underestimation of the complexity of the pedagogical issues raised, made it impossible to fully implement the ideas that the Bolsheviks proclaimed [63].For example, A. Handzhii, one of the leaders of the Ukrainian PSE, wrote about the introduction of general 7years education in 1926: "The enthusiasm of the first revolutionary era in educational work was reflected not only in the transformation of the educational process, but also in an excessive increase in the number of sotzvykh institutions, including labour schools.... But the iron laws of economics quickly stopped this spontaneous growth of the school network, and not only stopped, but also rolled back the educational cart beyond the achievements of the pre-revolutionary era" [63].
At the same time the organizational, medical and pedagogically reasonable foundations were laid in the 1920s to ensure individualization in the education and take care of various categories of children, although in the spirit of proletarian collectivism.We are convinced: "The reflection on educational past is never finished" [64].