Going Coed

When the Soviets occupied Lithuania, they put new rules into place. Churches closed, lessons shifted to the Russian language, and Communist ideology serpented through every textbook.

A smaller educational change prompted less resistance. The occupiers abolished many single-sex high schools, and they eased the rules about mandatory uniforms. Students still could wear the uniforms if they preferred, but they also could attend class in civilian clothing.

Perhaps the occupiers found single-sex, uniformed education too bourgeois.

Kaunas, Lithuania, late 1940 or early 1941. Here's Mom's new, coed class. She's in the second row, on the far right, wearing the light, patterned dress with the Peter Pan collar. In front of Mom, a girl wearing bows collapses in laughter. At least three of the young women still wear the old uniforms.