At certain periods the Soviet state had to deal with large numbers of orphans and other kinds of street children — due to a number of turmoils in the history of the country from its very beginnings. Major contributors to the population of orphans and otherwise homeless children included World War I (1914–1918), the October Revolution of November 1917 followed by the Russian Civil War (1917–1922), famines of 1921–1922 and of 1932–1933, political repression, forced migrations, and the Soviet-German War theatre (1941–1945) of World War II.
Abandoned children, 1918–1930
By the early 1920s, Russia was home to millions of orphaned and abandoned children, collectively described in Russian as besprizornye, besprizorniki (literally "unattended").Alan M. Ball, And Now My Soul Is Hardened: Abandoned Children in Soviet Russia, 1918–1930 (London: University of California Press, 1994), xi.Siegelbaum, 1921: Homeless Children By 1922, World War I, Russian Revolution, and Civil War had resulted in the loss of at least 16 million lives within the Soviet Union's borders, and severed contact between millions of children and their parents. At this time, Bolshevik authorities were faced with an estimated seven million homeless youths.Orlando Figes, A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution 1891–1924 (New York: Penguin, 1996), 780.
The Russian famine of 1921 killed some 5 million people.Ball, And Now My Soul Is Hardened, 9; Figes, A People's Tragedy, 775. Many children were abandoned or left home of their own accord.Vladimir Zenzinov, Deserted: The Story of the Children Abandoned in Soviet Russia (London: Herbert Joseph, 1931), 62–63. By mid-1921, starvation had become so extreme that from June 1921 to September 1922 the state evacuated 150,000 children to lessen the burden placed on institutions and clinics in affected regions. Foreign relief organizations fed nearly 4.2 million children, with the American Relief Administration handling 80% of this total. Altogether, including the state's and foreign organizations' distribution of food, close to 5 million youths received meals. Millions of others received no assistance.Ball, "State Children," 232–233.
Most besprizornye were beggars.Ball, And Now My Soul Is Hardened, 60. Public response varied, and the media discouraged giving the children any money, recommending donations to charitable organizations instead. When alms grew scarce, children with more experience and energy sought money through selling small items such as flowers or cigarettes. Some were recruited by tobacconists or newspapers to sell their products.Ball, And Now My Soul Is Hardened, 52–54. Besprizornye also performed tasks for pay, such as carrying luggage at the train station or holding a place in line at the theatre. Some entered restaurants in hopes of obtaining scraps. Competition for locations was fierce.Ball, And Now My Soul Is Hardened, 46–47. Thousands of children, particularly girls but also many boys, turned to prostitution. Of 5,300 street girls aged 15 and younger surveyed in 1920, 88% had worked as prostitutes. This means of support was more common in the winter, when begging outdoors was more difficult.Ball, And Now My Soul Is Hardened, 56–57.
The existence of millions of homeless youths led to widespread juvenile delinquency throughout Russia. When street children looked beyond begging and petty trade, they turned to stealing.Ball, And Now My Soul Is Hardened, 60. Juvenile crime rose rapidly during World War I with its growth rate increasing during the famine of 1921–1922. Minors arrested by the Russian police stood at 6% of all people apprehended in 1920, and reached 10% by the first quarter of 1922.Ball, And Now My Soul Is Hardened, 61–62. More than any other factor, hunger prompted waifs to steal. Abandoned children arriving from the countryside were often slower to embrace thievery than those from urban backgrounds, but in general, the longer a child was left astray, the more likely he or she was to succumb to crime.Ball, And Now My Soul Is Hardened, 63. Gangs would operate in groups as large as thirty to assure successful pickpocketing and other forms of robbery.Ball, And Now My Soul Is Hardened, 71. Tobacco, drug, and alcohol addictions were common, and the first half of the 1920s saw the influx of a larger supply of cocaine as well as the development of a more extensive network of drug dealers. Urchins lived and worked in the midst of this network and drug expenses spurred on juveniles' thefts.Ball, And Now My Soul Is Hardened, 76. The street introduced large percentages of its inhabitants to early sexual activity. Waifs generally began their sex lives by the age of fourteen, many girls as early as seven. Many contracted sexually transmitted diseases, and rape was common.Ball, And Now My Soul Is Hardened, 78. Crime, drugs, sex, and the harsh nature of life on the street had a lasting impact. Besprizornye developed qualities considered undesirable by the rest of society, and had a range of mental and physical health issues.Ball, And Now My Soul Is Hardened, 80–83.
Following the October Revolution the new Bolshevik government proposed that the state should take on the task of raising not just orphans but all the nation's children.Ball, And Now My Soul Is Hardened 87. Communist pedagogy aimed to create a "vast communistic movement among minors."Zenzinov, Deserted, 32. Narkompros (People's Commissariat of Education) was tasked with providing for homeless children and managing orphanages. Children were provided with necessities, received education (including in communist doctrine), and were expected to help with chores and decision making. The orphanages were inaugurated in a spirit of revolutionary idealism, but were soon overwhelmed by the need to feed and house millions of homeless children.Ball, "State Children," 230–231.
By the mid-1920s, the Soviet state was forced to realize that its resources for orphanages were inadequate, that it lacked the capacity to raise and educate the USSR's stray children. The Soviet government now initiated new policies. The state reached out to society for assistance. Foster care by private families was promoted as a partial solution.Ball, And Now My Soul Is Hardened, 149. Night shelters were used in some locations.Ball, And Now My Soul Is Hardened, 150.
During the second half of the 1920s, the conditions of orphanages improved significantly, but deficiencies remained. The Soviet state succeeded in saving stray children, but its mission of socialist upbringing stagnated.Ball, And Now My Soul Is Hardened, 174.
In the aftermath of the Russian Revolution and Russian Civil War, Anton Makarenko established self-supporting orphanages for street children.
Children of "enemies of the people", 1937–1945
The mid-1930s witnessed the peak of persecution of perceived political enemies, with millions of Soviet citizens imprisoned and hundreds of thousands executed.John A. Getty, Gabor T. Rittersporn, and Viktor N. Zemskov, "Victims of the Soviet Penal System in the Pre-War Years: A First Approach on the Basis of Archival Evidence," The American Historical Review 98 (1993): 1017. Up until 1937, there were no specific guidelines on how to treat the children of these "enemies of the people". Yet after the Great Purge there were "...at least several hundred thousand children [who] lost their parents". Now the government was forced to confront the problem of managing this new category of orphans.Corinna Kuhr, "Children of 'Enemies of the People' as Victims of the Great Purges," Cahiers Du Monde Russe 39 (1998): 210.
In 1937, the Politburo decided to accommodate children of the enemies of the people in normal orphanages administered by the Narkompros. Educational staff underwent training by the NKVD (People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs), and the orphans' names were kept on record.Kuhr, "Victims of the Great Purges," 211-12.
There were no official orders to discriminate against children of enemies of the people, yet orphanage staff often beat, underfed, and abused such pupils.Kuhr, "Victims of the Great Purges," 216.Kelly, Children's World, 238. Any misbehavior was understood as the product of a counter-revolutionary upbringing, and punished harshly.Kelly, Children's World, 328. Treating children like budding criminals had diverse effects. In some cases, the induced "class guilt" inspired orphans to prove their loyalty to the ideals of Communism, but in other cases abusive treatment incited resentment toward the state.Kuhr, "Victims of the Great Purges," 209-15.
If judged to be "socially dangerous," the NKVD sent orphans to either a colony for young delinquents or a Gulag labor camp.Kuhr, "Victims of the Great Purges," 211. The tendency was to place all difficult orphans in colonies, which sought to re-educate children using a labor regime.Kelly, Children's World, 233. Children over fifteen were liable for at least five years in camp for being a "family member of a traitor to the motherland".Kelly, Children's World, 237.
War orphans, 1945–1953
With World War II came a new wave of orphans. After 1945, the NKVD was responsible for accommodating 2.5 million homeless children.M. R. Zezina, "The System of Social Protection for Orphaned Children in the USSR," Russian Social Science Review 42.3 (2001): 49–51. However, the war softened attitudes towards bereaved children, a shift which eventually led to the improvement of the welfare system. The public regarded war orphans as innocent victims rather than subversives, and many citizens dedicated themselves to providing relief. There was a reversal of the previous era's stigma; adults caught in occupied zones did not pass their criminality on to their children. The state nurtured these children alongside other war orphans.Kelly, Children's World, 243-46.
Orphanages now focused on making children feel at home. Special orphanages were built exclusively for children of officers and soldiers.Laurie Bernstein, "Communist Custodial Contests: Adoption Rulings in the USSR after the Second World War," Journal of Social History 34 (2001): 843–61. Soviet trade unions and the Komsomol supported these homes with additional funding.Zezina, "System of Social Protection," 53. In 1944, the government placed legal protection on the property of orphans.Kelly, Children's World, 243-44 Developments like these reflect the leverage of children orphaned by war. In the words of one girl, "We used to dwell on our rights… we're not to be blamed for having lost everything in the war!"Marina Balina and Evgeny A. Dobrenko, Petrified Utopia: Happiness Soviet Style (London: Anthem, 2009), 13. In 1949, the Council of Ministers of USSR created the decree "On Measures to Further Improve the Operation of Children's Homes" to provide the appropriate funds to orphanages.Zezina, "System of Social Protection," 54. Wartime shortages meant that most orphanages were still undersupplied, but children fostered a sense of patriotic sacrifice as opposed to resentment towards the state.Kelly, Children's World, 247-50.
Adoption as well as long-term fostering and short-term fostering became popular during the war. From 1941 to 1945, 200,000 children were adopted in the Soviet Union.Bernstein, "Communist Custodial Contests," 844. 'Model workers' featured in propaganda were often adoptive parents.Kelly, Children's World, 243. Courts preferred to place children with families, taking into account the importance of love, security, and happiness in childhood.Bernstein, "Communist Custodial Contests," 845. The population of homeless children declined in the years after the war, largely due to the public's participation in the foster care system.Zezina, "System of Social Protection," 56.
German children in Kaliningrad region annexed in 1945 didn't obtain state help during some period; some of them survived in Lithuania.
Orphans after Stalin, 1953–1991