This is Kindergarten № 10 Cheburashka, located in the 5th microdistrict of the city of Pripyat. The kindergarten is well preserved, there is a lot of furniture, children’s toys, books and dolls. The building was abandoned when Pripyat was evacuated, a day after the Chernobyl disaster.

The design of the preschool was a standard project named ‘Типовой проект 214-2-72‘. Still today the building plans of this project can be downloaded. You can see the design in many other cities.

Cheburashka is an iconic Russian classic cartoon character. It started as a character in children’s literature, from a 1966 story by Soviet writer Eduard Uspensky. Cheburashka is an animal unknown to science, with large monkey-like ears and a body resembling that of a cub, who lives in a tropical forest.

The Pripyat Kindergarten was built in 1970. The city of Pripyat had many educational buildings. There were many young families in Pripyat, the average age of the people was 26. Under communism, women, especially married mothers, broke through traditional ideas of women’s participation in paid, skilled, labour. For example, the Jupiter factory employed many woman. For this reason, there were 15 kindergartens in the Pripyat area.