Orphans in the Soviet Union
By the early 1920s, Russia was home to millions of orphaned and abandoned children, collectively described in Russian as besprizornye, besprizorniki (literally "unattended").
[5] 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.
Altogether, including the state's and foreign organizations' distribution of food, close to 5 million youths received meals.
[7] 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.
[8] Besprizornye also performed tasks for pay, such as carrying luggage at the train station or holding a place in line at the theatre.
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.
Besprizornye developed qualities considered undesirable by the rest of society, and had a range of mental and physical health issues.
[17] 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.
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.
[20] 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.
[citation needed] The mid-1930s witnessed the peak of persecution of perceived political enemies, with millions of Soviet citizens imprisoned and hundreds of thousands executed.
Educational staff underwent training by the NKVD (People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs), and the orphans' names were kept on record.
[26] There were no official orders to discriminate against children of enemies of the people, yet orphanage staff often beat, underfed, and abused such pupils.
"[39] 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.
[40] Wartime shortages meant that most orphanages were still undersupplied, but children fostered a sense of patriotic sacrifice as opposed to resentment towards the state.
[43] Courts preferred to place children with families, taking into account the importance of love, security, and happiness in childhood.
[44] The population of homeless children declined in the years after the war, largely due to the public's participation in the foster care system.
The Communist Party lauded such schools for combining education with labor regimes to produce hardworking Soviet citizens.
[53] During the second half of the 20th century, there was a shift in Soviet law enforcement, from pure punitive and "resocialization" approach to crime prevention, which also targeted social orphanhood.
