RUSSIAN WAIFS

Taranaki Daily News, 16 July 1929, Page 7

RUSSIAN WAIFS

LIVE AS BEST THEY CAN. COMMIT EVERY KIND OF CRIME. In a recent issue of the Revue des Deux Mondes, Count Kokovtzoff, the former Prime Minister of Russia, describes the plight of the bexprisorni, the homeless children of Russia. The number of these waifs, who in 1921 were counted by millions, has now been reduced, according to Soviet statistics, to some hundreds of thousands. But these statistics, as Count Kokovtzoff’ points out are complied and controlled by the Government, and conflict not only with the observations of foreign visitors, but with statements in the Soviet Press. The problem, moreover, cannot be said to be a legacy of the war. During the Russian retreat, many children were indeed abandoned, and still more were rendered homeless. In the mass migrations which accompanied the Civil War, many thousands ot children were, deserted by their parents, and in the famine thousands more were left orphans. But a recent inquiry showed that nearly onesixth of tlie homeless children in Russia to-day were under seven years of age, while over half the remainder were from eight to thirteen years old. The present situation must therefore be accounted a direct consequence of the Soviet regime.

The life of these homeless children is already well known. By far the greater number are the children of workmen or peasants. In some cases they have left homes where their parents, owing to unemployment and the low standard of life, are unable to provide for them; in others they Lave been allowed to run wild, or abandoned. Soviet precepts denounce the family, and Soviet law makes the dissolution of a home a trivial and often unnecessary formality. Once on the streets these children live as best they cam They beg or sell matches and cigarettes during the daytime; at night they steal from unguarded premises, or rob lonely passers-by. For shelter they have ruined houses, disused factories, and the refuse heaps of the city. They commit every kind of crime. According to an official publication of the Commissariat of Justice of the R.S.F.S.R., in one year they committed over 29,000 serious crimes, including 118 murders, in Russia proper alone. Drug-taking, drinking, gambling and unnatural vices flourish among them. As soon as spring comes they leave the towns for the seaside or the mountains, anywhere where they can sleep in the open-air and live on stolen fruit and vegetables. This periodical migration makes it difficult either to control them or to keep any check on their numbers. Two private organisations, the “Save the Children League” and the “Council for the Defence of Children,’ did succeed for a few years after the Revolution in providing for a great number. Both were dissolved by Dzerzhinsky in 1921. Since then the Soviet Government has made fitful attempts to remedy the evil. Their activities are now reduced to the less violent crimes, and those of them who can be rounded up are put into homes maintained by the State. The condition of one of these homes was described, in part, by Komsomolskaya Pravda early this year: “A little room full of lots without blankets; dirty clothes take the place of linen. Each bed is used for two children. The mattresses are made of rotting and evil-smelling straw. Near the windows are puddles of melted snow. The children were taken to the baths in spring and have not been there since. There are no wash-basins in the house, and at seven o’clock every morning, even in the severest cold, the children run out naked into the street to wash at the public tap. The teachers? Here is one who had to be dismissed because of his conduct towards the girls. Several children have committed suicide. Here is another teacher, a Communist. He abuses the children and beats them. With the cloth provided for them he makes clothes for himself and his family. The children .go around dressed only in their shirts, with neither suits nor boots.” Both in extent and in nature the problem created bj these children is such as no civilised country has ever had to face, even in the darkest periods of history. But the Soviet Government, Count Kokovtzoff declares, is making little at-

tempt to face it. Its one remedy seems to be the creation of more homes, and even for these no adequate financial provision is made, while the first cause of the evil, the destruction of morality, is not even touched. In the meantime, some millions of future citizens- are being allowed to grow up half-starred, un educated, and in conditions which would prove a severe test for the morality of the most civilised European, v -