The Homeless Children of the U.S.S.R.
VISITORS to Moscow during recent years have come home with tragic stories of the hordes of dirty, ragged, homeless children in the streets of the city. It is easy to account for these children. One has only to re- collect the three million casualties sustained by the Rus- sian Armies in the Imperial War, and the deaths, number- ing some ten million, which occurred during the revolution and the famine, to understand that hundreds of thousands of children were orphaned in Russia between 1914 and 1921. In 1922 there were a million homeless Children ; in 1927 there were not more than 150,000. These children, of varying ages from seven to seventeen, lived in cellars, under old city walls, slept on -window sills, by hot tar barrels in the roads, in railway stations, and in any hole or hovel which would give them shelter. Children of all types belonged to this band of fearless, ruthless bezprizorni ; short, sturdy, flat-faced Mongols,. sleek-haired, yellow-skinned Tartars and dere- licts from all the other hundred and forty-five nationalities of the U.S.S.R. In honour of the October celebrations last year, it was decided to liquidate (as the Russians say) this pathetic memento of the past, and six weeks ago it was rare to see a vagrant child in the streets. In fact, I only saw one child who was obviously one of the bezpri- zorni—a little eager-faced 'girl with long petticoats and lank dark hair, who ran after me one day in Revolution Square, begging for a packet of cigarettes I carried in my hand.
The problem of these homeless children—not peculiar to Russia—is a very grave one. It is difficult enough to catch these children, who will resist coercion and restraint to the utmost—except in the winter when the lure of warm clothes and shelter makes them more amenable. It is then the fashion for these vagrants to stay in a comfortable State home in a town, escaping in the spring for the summer season in the Caucasus. When the child is caught it is even more difficult to keep him and to transfer his energies and wits from destructive to constructive channels. But this is what is being done, at any rate in Moscow, to-day.
A child, when caught by the militia or by an ordinary citizen, is first taken either to a receiving centre, or direct to an observation home, known as a " collecting station." Here he stays for about three months while his case is investigated. If he is found to he physically and men- tally normal, he is sent to an ordinary State boarding- school ; if he is too old for a school, then he is sent to either a Labour Colony or to one of the many Agricultural Communes where he can learn a trade, or be apprenticed to a peasant. There are also special homes for mentally defective children, for difficult children and for cripples. Besides these institutions there is a Children's Juvenile Commission, consisting of a doctor, a magistrate, and a teacher, to which children are brought who are neglected in their homes or to which parents can come for advice about their children.
I visited one of the four experimental collecting stations in Moscow, a large, rambling old house enclosing a yard or playground, where boys were having a game of cricket, playing musical instruments, or simply lying in the sun in pyjamas. The home was surrounded by large walls, barricaded so that the children could not escape. I was first taken to the room to which stray children are brought. Two dirty, ragged boys were being questioned ; one had already been in two different homes but had run away from them. On the walls there were photographs of boys, sent by anxious parents who were trying to discover the whereabouts of their children. If a child (this collecting station was for boys only) is found to have parents or a home he is sent back to them. If not, as is usually the case, he is given a bath, a hair-cut and clean clothes. Then he is thoroughly medically inspected at this station by a woman doctor. If the child is found to be suffering from any severe disease he is sent to a hospital, but the slighter cases are dealt with in the sanatorium of the Rome, where there is an isolation department with a skull and cross-bones painted on the door. Every child is also mentally examined in the psychological depart- ment connected with the Institute. Of the 577 children who passed through this home in 1927, 198 were normal, 278 difficult, 5 insane, 18 epileptic, 13 hysterical, and 18 physically defective (dumb, blind, &c.).
With an ever-growing escort of jolly boys I was taken from the carpentry room where cupboards were being made, through the workshops where fretwork, bookbind- ing and metal work are taught. The children are divided into age groups. Each group spends part of the day doing lessons and part in the workshops. I saw the second group, boys of thirteen and fourteen, happily engaged in painting iron bedsteads, an order from a hospital. All the rooms and passages are gaily decorated with propaganda posters, mostly the work of the children. I was amazed at the high standard of the drawings done by these little vagabonds, who had had no instruction and yet seemed to have a definite idea of technique. There was one poster of a large pink pig. Much to the amusement of the party, I asked its significance, and was informed that it was a moral poster. Underneath the pig was written : " If I spit, I am a pig." On the classroom walls there were also wall sheets,—large pieces of paper on which are pasted contributions of various kinds from the boys ; sometimes they are devoted to some special subject—for instance, the Red Army ; and sometimes to more intimate subjects. The children with me were anxious that I should not miss their own contributions, particularly their illustrated life-stories. How I wished I could read Russian, and was not dependent on an interpreter ! Everywhere there were, of course, pictures of Lenin. I was wearing a ring with a cameo portrait of Socrates on it, and several fingers were pointed at it with exclamations of " Lenin ! "
One room was used as a zoo. There were pigeons, rabbits, guinea-pigs, tortoises, dogs, and goldfish, each looked after by one of the inmates of the home. There was a library, a playroom, and a theatre for the older boys. It was really a delightful place and typical of the other State homes for vagabond children which I visited. At these homes an attempt is made to instil into the children the idea that life in an organized society might have attractions equal to those excitements of their former wandering life, and in this way to hold them by moral suasion rather than by force.
CELIA SIMPSON.
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