The article reveals the organization of the state aid to homeless and neglected children in the Ukrainian SSR of the 1920s. It is proved that the main task of the authorities of the USSR and the regulations adopted by them in the social sphere at the beginning of the studied period was the urgent assistance to children who spent most of their time in the street. The resolution “On measures to fight children’s neglect” was aimed primarily at ensuring the legal protection of children who had a family, but were deprived of the parental care. Regulations passed during the famine of 1921-1923 introduced the initiative to place such individuals into the families with the purpose of the individual patronage and teens’ employment. These activities met two main needs of homeless and neglected children - the material support and the adult supervision. The most common form of the assistance to the homeless and neglected was internment. Owing to the consolidation of the legal basis for the collective patronage of enterprises and firms over children’s institutions, the possibilities of state bodies to create new orphanages and maintain existing ones were expanded.

In 1951, the communist governments of Poland and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics concluded an agreement to exchange some territories. Poland transferred lands located in the Hrubieszów and Tomaszów counties in the Lublin Voivodeship in the upper Bug basin (the so-called Grzęda Sokalska). The USSR gave up the area in the Bieszczady Mountains east of the upper reaches of the San River, including the town of Ustrzyki Dolne. The mentioned areas were part of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. Areas of 480 km2 for each side were exchanged. Poland and the USRS had to evict their citizens from the ceded areas and take away their movable property. Soviet Ukraine resettled 32,066 people. Poland over 14 thousand its citizens. Both sides had to provide care and state assistance to the displaced population. However, the grief for the lost „small homelands” remained among Poles and Ukrainians. Only a few managed to return to their hometowns in the Bieszczady Mountains after 1957, including: to Łobozewo, Teleśnica Oszwarowa and Polana. The return involved a change of citizenship. The exchange of some territories is sometimes referred to as “Action H-T”, from the first letters of the names of the Hrubieszów and Tomaszów counties from which Polish citizens were expelled. In turn, the term “Action-51” appears in Ukrainian literature. The border change made in 1951 was the largest in the post-war history of Poland.