The honorary title "Mother Heroine" and the eponymous order were introduced in the USSR in 1944 and disappeared from circulation with the end of the era of the Soviet Union. Along with them, there were no numerous benefits to mothers who had given 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, having halved the number of children needed to receive them.
"Parental Glory"
For some reason, Russia, having become the successor of the Soviet Union, immediately 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" order "Parental Glory", awarded, unlike the Soviet counterpart, to both parents. Another distinction of “Glory” is that it is awarded to families in which there are not ten, but four children. And, most importantly, it is not supplemented by the most serious, according to experts, benefits and allowances.
So, having several children, their parents have the right to pay 50% of the amount of utility bills and a landline telephone, to install the latter in an extraordinary way, to reduce the amount of income taxation, to retire earlier (though, subject to a certain length of service), retention for mothers of work experience. For children there is a 50% discount for paying for kindergarten, free travel in municipal public transport, free treatment and examination at state medical institutions, free summer holidays in children's camps and some privileges when entering universities. Which, given modern realities, often stays 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 drugs in pharmacies intended for preschool children. Children from such families also have the primary right to enter kindergarten and trips to the suburban holiday camp.
Will Mother Hero be returned?
The bill providing for the restoration of the title and order of Mother Hero in Russia began to be considered by the State Duma of the Russian Federation in 2013. The document, in particular, provides that the main basis for their delivery will be the presence in the family of at least five children aged from one year to five years. And the benefits to 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.
Started with the letter "A"
The heroic rank and the order attached to it appeared in the USSR on July 8, 1944, almost a year before the end of World War II. Having irretrievably lost millions of men, most of whom were young, the country then also found itself on the edge of a demographic abyss. A way out of this could be to encourage Soviet women to give birth as often as possible, including providing them with serious social benefits. And in the autumn of 1944, the first 14 mothers who gave birth and raised at least ten children were awarded.
It is symbolic at the same time 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, the order of Aleksakhina, her children handed over to the State Historical Museum. By the way, at the same time as the Mother Hero Order two more awards to Soviet women with many children appeared - the Maternity Medal (for the birth of five or six children) and the Maternal Glory order (from seven to nine).
