Figure 1.--These unidentified Russian boys, presumably brothers, wear their primary school uniforms, we think in the 1950s. They are dressed identically except for their headwear. The older boy wears a beret and the younger boy the peaked cadet cap. We would have guessed that the older boy would have got the cadet cap, but we have no idea about the family dynanmic. The school apparently tolerated the non-uniform beret. We know it is the boys on the way to school or just after because we can see the older boy's bookbag strap. Click on the image for another family image with their little sister..

We have some informatiom on Russian schoolwear including headwear. Our first inmages are from the 19th century. But mostly we have 20th century images. This includes both Tsarist ( -1917) and Soviet (1917-91) images. We only see military styles in the 19th century. This is probanly because the 19th century photographic record in the 19th century is primarily composed of the wealthy and urban middle class--a relatively narrow strata of Tsarist society. So we have picures of boys in their school uniforms. They wear various styles of military uniforms, always with peaked caps. We don't know much about the schools, but the only caps we see are peaked military caps we see are these peaked military caps. There are differences in the detailing, but the basic choice was always the same -- the peaked military cap. This continued until the Revolution (1917). After the Revolution and the Civil War (1918-21), the Bolsheviks began building Soviet society. A major effort was to expand the the school system. We see many more children going to school. We can think of few achievements of Soviet society, but expanding public education certainly was one of them. There was some effort at requiring unifirms, but the poor economic conditiions because of socialist econmics made that difficult. Interestingly there was some contunity between the Tsarist and Soviet styles, especially the peaked military cap. And World War II undid much of the economic gains that have been made. Conditions improved after the War and the cap boys wore was the peaked military cap (1950s). They were not as universal as was the case before the Revolution. We see brothers at the same school wearing different caps. We are not sure why this was. The only thing we can think of is that the schools tolerated differences because the caps were expensive. These military style caps seem to have gradually disappeared in the 1970s, but we do not yet have details.

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Created: 2:17 PM 12/23/2018
Last updated: 2:17 PM 12/23/2018