ABSTRACT
As noted in Chapter 3, socialist societies generally are far better disposed toward group care than Western communities have been. The ideological foundations for such care were laid by Marx and the first Soviet feminist, Aleksandra Kollontai. Considerable stresses of war, rapid industrialization, and severe housing shortages in urban areas also have predisposed East European societies and the families that comprise them toward a more friendly view of group care. It is thus not surprising that in the Soviet Union some 20-30 percent of preschool children are in day centers and several hundred thousand in boarding schools. The actual number of children in this program cannot be determined with any degree of certainty, and in any event it has fluctuated considerably over the last two decades, but day care capacity clearly is increasing. Boarding schools have had a more mercurial history. In a comprehensive treatment of the subject Weeks traces the life history of the shkola-internat (boarding school).
