Elena Vadimovna Burlutskaya,
Doctor of Historical Sciences, Orenburg State Pedagogical University, Orenburg, Russia, e-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Leisure in Children’s Daily Life in the Public Space of Post-Reform Orenburg Based on the Materials of the Orenburg Press (the Second Half of the 19th – Early 20th Century)
DOI: 10.31518/2618-9100-2021-1-8
Based on a wide range of published sources, the article highlights the problem of organizing children’s leisure in the public space of Orenburg in the second half of the 19th – early 20th centuries. Newspaper publications, memoirs, fiction are used in the article to reveal the diversity of forms of leisure and their main functions in relation to urban children. The article presents the testimonies of contemporaries and eyewitnesses, which allow us to identify the domestic, behavioral and psychological components of leisure in children’s everyday life during the post-reform era. The sources used in the article allow us to state that in the consciousness of the provincial society at the end of the 19th century, childhood was recognized as a special period in the life of a person which played a fundamental role in the formation of personal qualities necessary in adult life. It is established that different forms of leisure were available to various categories of children, and they were determined by the prevailing ideas about childhood in society in general and specific tasks for learning, upbringing and development in different social groups. Educational maxims were the main content of all leisure activities. The article analyzes various forms of children’s leisure activities outside the home, such as balls and dance evenings, Christmas celebrations, trips to the circus and zoo, walks, and sports. Children’s leisure activities organized in post-reform Orenburg are compared with the forms of children’s leisure in other provincial and capital cities of the Russian Empire. The leisure of children from the upper and middle urban classes is compared with the leisure of children of the urban lower classes with specific examples.
Publishing: 28/02/2021
The article has been received by the editor on 15.12.2020
How to cite: Burlutskaya E.V. Leisure in Children’s Daily Life in the Public Space of Post-Reform Orenburg Based on the Materials of the Orenburg Press (the Second Half of the 19th – Early 20th Century) // Historical Courier, 2021, No. 1 (15), pp. 83–95. [Available online:] http://istkurier.ru/data/2021/ISTKURIER-2021-1-08.pdf
Links: Issue 1 2021
Keywords: Keywords: daily life; city; public space; children; leisure; press