WOLF-CHILDREN

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XVII, 5 September 1927, Page 3

WOLF-CHILDREN

ANOTHER BOLSHEVIK SCANDAL TRAVEL ABOUT IN PACKS. The scandal of Bolshevist Russia's wolf-children has not abated (states an English writer). It is true that two years ago the Soviets threw dust in the eyes of Europe by encouraging a “Society of Children's Friends,” the only private enterprise tolerated for social relief. The Pravda opened a subscription list, and large sums were collected, but the society has now been wound up because all the funds were misappropriated by the officials. These Russian children are in the habit of laying on the pavements just like the pariah dogs of Oriental cities, sleeping on the pavements or under arches. And like the dogs, they have established a sort of organistion which has developed into primitive secret societies, with a jargon and passwords and punishment for informers.

The children are known as besprisorni, or outlaws, and may be seen travelling about the packs along the highroads, or drifting down rivers in stolen barges, and when they come to a village they attach it like locusts and carry off all the food and clothes they can find. Indulgent railway officials usually allow them to travel on trucks with coal, or other merchandise.

On rare occasions, when they have become a nuisance to important Bolshevists, they may be collected in carts with lassos, like stary dogs, and brought before a magistrate. Professor Gernet, editor of a scientific review entitled “Questions of Narcology,” has succeeded in interrogating 102 of these “wolf children.” He says that all but two were addicted to tobacco and spirits; even cocaine when they could procure it. The girls were usually worse than the boys.

A few months ago, the Government made an attempt to deal with the scandal. A property which formerly belonged to a prince was allocated as a colony for 350 of the pariahs. It consists of one country house with forty-four rooms, and two more with twenty-five rooms. A report on the colony translated from an article by a Bolshevist leader in the Komosomolskaia Prava, states: “The children have gone barefoot all through the winter. Their clothes are all in rags. They sleep huddled together two or three in a bed. All the children are always ill. Twelve per cent, are tuberculous. In cases of infectious diseases there is no attempt at isolation. Never a smile is seen, never a note heard of the merriment associated with childhood. No wonder that attempts to escape from this living hell are constantly recorded.”