for use in robbery and prostitution. Similar practices are still carried out in some third world countries nowadays. As time moved on and we reached the middle 19th century, the first child protection organisations were set up. The House of Refuge in America was opened in the early eighteen hundred; the idea was for children to have somewhere to escape the abuse and neglect of their home life and society. Even these were not taking the child's care and well-being into account; they were used to stop children from becoming an economic burden on society; the children were abandoned and neglected by being placed in these institutions. In the 19th century, the industrial revolution was growing fast, and many people were leaving the land to work in factories. Until then, farm life bound families together not by love but by economic necessity; children were a crucial source of labour for the family and provided for their parents when they reached old age. Childhood in the 20th century, and with the surge in industrialisation, children were no longer seen as an economic need. As a result, children became economically redundant, and people began to see them as costly to raise. The Russian Revolution and First world war resulted in large numbers of orphans in the Soviet Union. By the early 1920s, Russia had millions of orphaned and abandoned children. There was a loss of 16 million lives within the Soviet Union, and millions of those were children, with an estimated seven million homeless youth. In the Russian famine of 1921, the children suffered again and were abandoned, and many died from starvation. After 1945 there were 2.5 million homeless children placed in orphanages. Children were the first to be left throughout history when a crisis struck. Childhood under Stalin 1930s was the most educated generation of Russians, the most literate and the healthiest. Stalin believed that the youth were the future. He provided educational and recreation opportunities that improved their lives and forged their socialist minds. They responded with unquestioning loyalty to the party, state, and leader. Here children were conditioned to follow the Socialist beliefs. The second world war, 1939 -1945, was a time of significant upheaval for children in Britain. Attempt to save the children, over a million were evacuated from towns and cities, and they had to cope with the trauma of separating from their family and friends. Many of those who stayed suffered bombing raids, were injured, or were made homeless. They had to deal with the threat of gas attacks, air raids, rationing, changing school, meeting their adopted families and making new friends. Disruption and shortages continued after the war, and all this had a lasting impact on children's lives. Boys aged 17 and over had to join the Home Guards to help defend towns and villages against enemy invasion. The work, the children, had to do was very dangerous. Evacuees who stayed in the country did not see their families for many years; many had lost their fathers and family members, and some were made homeless and would never be the same again. In the past, the world viewed children as expendable and of less value, so we now are taught our importance and given a chance to be educated, learning from the events of history 66 | G ateway <strong>Chronicle</strong>
67 | G ateway <strong>Chronicle</strong>