Poverty: Everyday Life of Women and Family Values in Conditions of Deportation: Polish Mothers in Kazakhstan (1930s and 1940s)
Poverty: Everyday Life of Women and Family Values in Conditions of Deportation: Polish Mothers in Kazakhstan (1930s and 1940s)

Summary/Abstract: The misguided policy of the Soviet authorities forcibly deported more than 60 ethnic groups in the 1930s–1950s to Siberia, Central Asia, and Kazakhstan, regions that were geographically and ethnically completely different from their historical homelands. One of the nations that had suffered such a tragic fate and had been deported to Kazakhstan were the Poles, who are the subject of this research. The deportation process carried out in the Soviet Union changed the peaceful life of the Poles who were exiled against their will. They were forcibly removed from their ancestral homeland, deprived of the property they had accumulated throughout their lives, and forced to adapt to the new conditions of the places of exile. Many of the deported Poles were women, elderly people, and children. Since the 1990s, deportations in the Soviet Union have attracted considerable attention from both domestic and international scholars, resulting in extensive research on deported ethnic groups and Soviet repressive policies. However, despite this substantial literature, the gender dimension of deportation remains largely unexplored and has not been systematically examined in domestic historiography by either historians or sociologists. The main purpose of this article is to examine the history of deportation and family values under deportation via focusing on Polish mothers in Kazakhstan within the period of 1930s–1940s through the lens of everyday life history. The study is based on the memoirs and recollections of deported women and their descendants, recorded over different years. The materials were collected through the interviews conducted within research projects by domestic scholars, as well as from sources published within internet. During preparation of this article, various general scientific methods have been applied, including historical methods (the comparative-historical method in studying and analyzing the recollections of deported women, macro and micro-historical approaches, etc.), empirical research methods, theoretical cognition methods, and general logical methods and techniques of research. The application of analysis and synthesis methods makes it possible to examine and characterize the everyday life of deported women. The scientific novelty of the article lies in the theoretical analysis of excerpts from the recollections of Polish women, mothers who managed to preserve family values in deportation. The article examines the events of forced resettlement, as well as the processes of adaptation and survival in an unfamiliar environment. As a result: first, the concept of the “mother’s role in the family” is revealed; second, the importance of maternal upbringing in shaping the child’s personality is clarified; and third, the role of the mother as the keeper of the family hearth and bearer of the family’s sociocultural values is demonstrated.

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