The dissertation is dedicated to the historical and legal research of the legal actions of the Soviet authorities geared to overcome child homelessness and neglect in the western regions of the USSR in the 1940s-1950s. The paper systemises the sources discovered in the course of the study, including those never published before, and reveals practical aspects of the operations of homeless shelters and boarding schools for children without parental care in the western regions of the USSR in 1940-1950. It is established, in particular, that it is expedient to divide the existing theoretical basis of the problem of child homelessness and neglect and feature of its solution in the Soviet period into four stages: (1) 1920-1930s; (2) 1940-1950's; (3) 1960-1980's; (4) after 1991, the first three refer to the Soviet period and are characterized by ideological commitment and by the existence of political patterns whereby child homelessness is recognized as a relic and consequence of capitalism, and its appearance in the USSR is explained by the usual socio-economic reasons that were temporary. After the collapse of the URSR in 1991, there started a departure from the trending stereotypes and patterns. Post-Soviet and modern scholars have paid a particular attention to both problems of Bolshevik rule functioning in Ukraine and the facts of respect for the rights of the child. Instead, there are no studies that characterize legal acts regulating the issues of homelessness and neglect. Having determined the legal aspects of the incorporation of the western Ukrainian regions into the USSR in 1939, salient features of the Sovietization policy and the implementation of the Soviet legislation were singled out. Comparative characteristics of the historical and legal causes of child homelessness and carelessness during the interwar period on the territory of the Soviet Ukraine and Poland, that comprised the western Ukrainian lands, allowed to distinguish specific features for combating this social phenomenon and its reflection in the axiological approaches to family values, human and children rights, the process of education of juvenile homeless and neglected persons, as well as children who committed administrative and criminal offenses. The research of archive sources leads us to believe that during the Second World War, large-scale policy was undertaken in the USSR by central and local authorities to arrange orphaned children and to overcome child neglect and homelessness, which made it possible to take complete control of these phenomena by the beginning of 1946 and prevent them from spreading further. The decrees «On Strengthening Measures to Combat Child Homelessness, Neglect and Hooliganism» (1943) and «On Policy to Combat Child Homelessness and Neglect in the Ukrainian SSR» (1944) were also indicative. As a result of the research, it was proved that the main forms of combating child homelessness and neglect were the creation of permanent commissions to combat child neglect and homelessness, the restoration of the network of orphanages and boarding schools, the formation of counting tables, children’ reception rooms in the Militia district departments. The main forms of public participation in these activities were guardianship, patronage, adoption and care. As patronage and guardianship are known to be collective and individual, adoption and care are solely individual approaches.
