CHILDREN OF THE SOVIET

Evening Star, Issue 18137, 29 November 1922, Page 10

CHILDREN OF THE SOVIET

' " "" RUSSIAN SCHOOL HORRORS. HUNGER AND NEGLECT, “We must remove the children from the baneful influence of the family; to pm, it plainly, we must nationalise them. From the earliest days of their life they must be reared in the beneficial atmosphere of the Communist kindergarten and school. The task before us ns to forco the mothers to .give up their children to the .Soviet State. This (says a correspondent of tho I/on don ‘Times') is a typical declaration of the Soviet educational woman specialist Liana, and tho appalling tragedy of childhood in Soviet Russia, which results from (his attitude, is told in one of the Russian emigrant journals by the Russian woman teacher Tatiana Varshcr, win studied conditions at close range in Soviet Russia. , , . _ Lilina’s fear of the baneful influence of tho familv, writes Tatiana Varshor, is groundless, (or the family has been destroyed in Soviet Russia. Its principal mainstay, the mother, has been deprived of tho right to exorcise her natural duties. " The mother carries loads of wood on her hack. cleans out cesspools, pumps water from the cellars, and stands in endless queues waiting to obtain permits to buy a frying pan." Everything which was formerly considered wrong and immoral especially ;n a child, is encouraged in Soviet Russia. A bay steals some fuel, and is praised for his cleverness; lie sjwculatcs by buying and selling cigarettes and makes a profit, and is told "that if he goes on in that way lie will surely succeed. If he manages to swindle he is told ho is a clever 1 fellow. Children in Soviet Russia are either relegated to the street or are caught in the clutches of the Soviet boarding schools. In the interest of the child, says Tatiana Vn.rsher, there can ibe no two opinions of which is preferable .(he street is less demoralising than the school 1 Tatiana Varsher visited a model children's school in Moscow. It was housed in (he requisitioned luxurious villa of a former Moscow millionaire merchant. Built in the style favored by Moscow merchants, not only the floors, but the walls, were of parquet. The villa was surrounded by broad marble terraces, and stood in a park. This was a school in which forty children were brought up. A staff of" teachers, nurses, and housekeepers were in attendance on tho children.

The visit was paid on a hot summer’s day. The children wore loose, one-piece garments—the boys blue, the girls pink. Thev had just had'a copious meal, with plenty of milk and sweetmeats, and were resting on easy chairs. This school was a “show” school. Frequently motors brought parties of foreigners to view it, accompanied by Soviet officials. Had the foreigners walked five or six houses higher up the street they would have seen a somewhat different picture. They would have seen children in filthy surroundings, unkempt, and crying because they were hungry, KEPT IN BED TO SAVE FOOD,

In several schools that she visited Tatiana Varsher found that the children were put to bed at 8 in the evening, and not allowed to get up till 2 the following day, as by this system it was hoped that they “ would ask for food loss persistently.” To illustrate the Soviet child’s mental condition she tells the following story : Bekhtereff, the psychiatrist, a persona grata with the Bolsheviks, founded an institution for the study of the brain in the former palace of the Grand Duke Nicholas. In this institute Tatiana Varsher heard a remarkable lecture given by a, woman doctor who had examined over 2,000 children who had passed through the Soviet distributing station. This distributing station was boused in the former Hotel de I’Europe in Petrograd. Children were placed there for a period of six weeks, were examined, and then, according to their individual capacities, placed in one or another of the Soviet boarding schools. The woman doctor's lecture created a sensation.

The outlook of the. present-day Russian child, she said, was formed entirely under the influence of hunger as the dominating factor. A little ten-ycar-old girl whom she was examining had said to her: “It. was nice in the village; tho masters did not lock up. tho hreari; I could get all 1 wanted.” This little girl had served as a nursemaid in a rich peasant family. She was often beaten until she became unconscious, and her arms and hands had swollen through tho constant carrying about of a heavy baby. But all these hardships were forgotten. Tho only fact that she had retained was that she had not suffered from hunger. A .Soviet child's intelligence, the lecturer said, could not be tested by the system of Binet, who declared that if a six-year-old child could carry out three easy errands its development was normal. A. five-year-old Soviet child could be given a number of complicated errands. It would stand in a, queue, buy bread, obtain a food card; it would manage it all quite well; and yet it was quite abnormal. A Soviet child could only define an object by determining its use. Asked “ What’is vour mother?” it would reply ; “ Cooks, takes me to the kinema.” Asked what a horse was, it would reply “ One rides on it,” and asked to define_a hammer it would reply “To knock in nails. Such answers were given by children of twelve to fourteen years old. The Soviet child was completely devoid of imagination. Tho lecturer had made a largo number of experiments in this direction. She had told children of fairies, imaginative little stories which give delight to normal children. She would then ask them: “Now, imagine that a wood fairy asked you what you wanted. What would you say?” The usual answer was “ bread,” “ a piece of sugar,” sometimes “a hat,” sometimes “ boots.” DESTRUCTION OF THE WILL.

She had also found) that the children had completely lost the desire to read anything good thorn solves. All that they were capable of reading, and did) read when they could got it, was sensational, detective, and often pornographic street-corner literature. As lar as learning was concerned, the lecturer declared, there was none. Tho children showed an abnormal apathy, and tho teachers were top much preoccupied with their own hardships and misfortunes to take any interest in tho children’s development. So the child’ was bored, for it had no toys, no books, no work; and boredom destroyed its will. The will of «, ten-year-old child was like that of a normal child of three; that is to sav, entirely subjugated to tho will of another. At the distributing station the children were divided into groups of twenty-five, and if a strong-willed child got ‘in their midst ho immediately “bossed” them; a ten-year-old boy, Tania, compelled a whole group of children, whose behaviour had been good before, to do a lot of thoroughly naughty things. They attacked tho nurse, knocked her down on the door, covered the walls with, filth, set light to the mattresses, and did other things of that kind. Tatiana Vareher refrains from repeating all the horrors which tho lecturer related concerning life. in the .Soviet boarding schools. Although she had made, a, very careful study of the life of children in Soviet Russia, she could not affirm that the conditions in all the schools were the same. Very much depended on the head mistresses -and) masters. .But, although a certain number of former teachers had kept their posts in the day schools, they had been entirely replaced by new elements in tho boarding schools, and) from these new teachers only one quality was demanded— fidelity to ' Communist principles ' In a group of boarding schools 50 per cent, of the children became infected through some unknown cause with venereal disease. The Soviet educational specialist, Lilina, asked a woman doctor of much experience to undertake an investigation. This woman set zealously about, her task, but after she had 1 informed Lilina that in one of the boarding schools the head mistress was a former professional prostitute, and' Lilina. had retorted, “The woman is trying to change her profession and you pul spokes in her wheels," the doctor gave up further investigation in despair.

True indeed, Tatiana Yarsher writes/ ■vvero the words of tb® old schoolmaster, who, after tho lecture at the Bakhtereff Institute, exclaimed,, with tears in. his eves: “It needs a. second Dostoievsky's pen to describe the sufferings of a normal intelligent child, especially of gentle birth, who has become an inmate of a Soviet boarding school,”