Figure 1.-- This Soviet school portrait is undated. We would guess it was tyaken in the 1960s. Note that most of the girls, but not all wear white pinafores. Several wear hairbows. Most, but not all of the children wear red Young Pioneer scarves.

Children wore school uniforms, both in the Tsarist and Soviet era. Boys wore military-style uniforms, basically a cadey uniform. We note some differences from school to school. I'm not sure what girls wore in the Tsarist era, but girls' education was generally neglected in Tsarist Russia. After the Revolution, girl's education was significantly expanded. Boys uniforms contginued to be military uniforms, but more standardized than furing the Tsarist era. The girls wore blue dresses, often with white pinafores. White hair bows were also common. The dresses appear to be stazndard dark blue dresses with long sleeves. While dark blue seem to be the most common color, we have seen other colors such as brown. The white pinafores were done in many different sttyles. The white pinafores and hair bows were especially common on special occassions, but we also see them on regular school days. One reader writes, "The thing that caught my eye was the fact that the more modern Soviet school portraits taken in the 1980s showed the girls wearing almost mini-skirted dresses which seem in sharp contrast to the traditional pinafores. This indicated, I think, that these had been chosen by the girls themselves, and this was possibly the first suggestion of the coming rebellion against the traditional uniform." After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, uniforms were dispensed with, in part because the children stopped wearing them. We note that on special days the girls dress up in the old uniforms, including the white pinafores and hair bows. We are not sure how common this is.

Created: 12:09 AM 9/14/2004
Last updated: 12:10 AM 9/14/2004