The honorary title "Mother Heroine" and the order of the same name were introduced in the USSR in 1944 and disappeared from circulation with the end of the era of the Soviet Union. Together with them, there were no numerous benefits for mothers who gave birth and raised ten or more children. Seventy years later, in Russia they started talking about returning the title and real benefits to mothers with many children, reducing the number of children required to receive them by half.
Parental Glory
Russia, having become the legal successor of the Soviet Union, for some reason forgot about mothers with many children and really remembered relatively recently, faced with a demographic crisis called "Women do not want to give birth", caused primarily by the difficult economic situation. Replaced "Mother-Heroine" with the Order of Parental Glory, which is awarded, unlike the Soviet counterpart, to both parents. Another distinction of "Glory" is that it is awarded to families in which not ten, but four children. And, most importantly, it is complemented by not the most serious, according to experts, benefits and allowances.
So, keeping several children, their parents have the right to pay 50% of the amount of utilities and a landline phone, to unschedule the installation of the latter, to reduce the amount of taxation of income, to retire earlier (albeit, subject to the development of a certain length of service), to preservation of work experience for mothers. For children, a 50% discount is provided for paying for kindergarten, free travel on municipal public transport, free treatment and examination in public medical institutions, free summer vacations in children's camps and some privileges when entering universities. That, given modern realities, often remains on paper. True, the regions have their own programs to help large families. For example, in the Altai Territory, parents do not need to pay for the purchase of medicines intended for preschoolers in pharmacies. Children from such families also have a priority right to enrollment in a kindergarten and vouchers to a country holiday camp.
Will Mother Heroine be returned?
In 2013, the State Duma of the Russian Federation began to consider the bill providing for the restoration of the title and order of Mother Heroine in Russia. The document, in particular, provides that the main reason for their delivery will be the presence in the family of at least five children aged from one to five years. And benefits for mothers with many children will have to become, according to one of the authors of the bill, Mikhail Serdyuk, no less significant than those in the Soviet Union.
We started with the letter "A"
The heroic title and the order attached to it appeared in the USSR on July 8, 1944, almost a year before the end of the Great Patriotic War. Having irrevocably lost millions of men, most of whom were young, the country then also found itself on the brink of a demographic abyss. The way out of it could be to stimulate Soviet women to give birth as often as possible, including providing them with serious social benefits. And in the fall of 1944, an award ceremony was held in Moscow for the first 14 mothers who gave birth and raised at least ten children.
At the same time, it is symbolic that the order at number 1 was awarded to a woman whose name and surname began with the letter "A" - a resident of the Moscow Region Anna Aleksakhina, mother of 12 children. Eight sons of Anna Savelyevna became participants in the Great Patriotic War, half of them did not return home. Subsequently, her children donated the Aleksakhina Order to the State Historical Museum. By the way, at the same time with the Order of Mother Heroine, two more awards for Soviet women with many children appeared - the Medal of Motherhood (for the birth of five or six children) and the Order of Maternal Glory (from seven to nine).
Seven Simeons
In addition to their own children, including those killed or missing during hostilities, serving in the army or the police, when saving a person's life or those who died due to occupational illness and work injury, the state also took into account those whom mothers adopted. The Soviet government should be given its due, it strictly fulfilled its material obligations. All women who were awarded the title “Mother Heroine” were allocated separate multi-room apartments in cities or houses in rural areas, and were paid monthly cash benefits. And their children had the opportunity to get a good education and profession for free.
At one time, the state's attention was not deprived of, for example, the Ovechkin musical family of Irkutsk residents. The heroine mother Ninel Sergeevna, who headed it, raised 11 children alone, who created the family ensemble "Seven Simeons", famous for almost the entire Union. That, however, did not prevent them, almost in full force, from committing a particularly dangerous crime and trying to hijack a civilian plane abroad.
Historians claim that the last awards to Soviet mothers in November 1991 were presented by the President of the USSR, which was leaving for oblivion, Mikhail Gorbachev. However, from time to time, the Russian media publish materials that cite a completely unique and not very believable-looking fact that in the early 90s another person was encouraged with the Mother Heroine Order. Moreover, a man named Veniamin Makarov, who brought up in his Yekaterinburg four-room apartment, received just in the form of a state benefit, several dozen adopted boys from the street and from orphanages. By the way, Makarov is now suing one of them because of this apartment.
