Soviet horror stories of children

[IHateCorporations]

I have a friend who lived in the USSR in the 1980s, during the time of Gorbachev and perestroika. She told me about how the state run orphanages were absolutely terrible. According to her, they didn't have enough food or money and often went without electricity. Apparently the caretakers would also beat the children if they did wrong. I thought corporal punishment was illegal in the USSR.

I realize that this was during the time when the Soviet economy was going haywire, and I am wondering if it was better before. I am also wondering what this says about the ideology of the USSR.

Please give me your opinions on this matter. I especially value the opinions of those who lived in the Soviet Union.

Thanks

[DecDoom]

I realize that this was during the time when the Soviet economy was going haywire, and I am wondering if it was better before.

I can't say I know anything about Soviet orphanages at any time during their history, but, as I understand it, the standard of living for everyone in the Soviet Union went down in the 80s. The Soviet Union had slowly been heading down a capitalist road for years prior (not being socialist, but not really being capitalist either), but Gorbachev more or less took it and shoved it down the USSR's throat. It's not surprising that orphanages would be one of the things affected by the sudden and abrupt onset of capitalism.

[BIG BROTHER]

I have a friend who lived in the USSR in the 1980s, during the time of Gorbachev and perestroika. She told me about how the state run orphanages were absolutely terrible. According to her, they didn't have enough food or money and often went without electricity. Apparently the caretakers would also beat the children if they did wrong. I thought corporal punishment was illegal in the USSR.

I realize that this was during the time when the Soviet economy was going haywire, and I am wondering if it was better before. I am also wondering what this says about the ideology of the USSR.

Please give me your opinions on this matter. I especially value the opinions of those who lived in the Soviet Union.

Thanks

Well the Soviet Union well by that time was not only a degenerated worker's state but it was also implementing capitalist restoration.

Its really no surprise that the party burocracts didn't give a shit about orphans while they became the new Russian millionaires.

[Dire Helix]

Those are some serious exaggerations right there. State institutions from kindergartens to orphanages kept being supplied with food up until the very end, even when food suddenly disappeared from store shelves late into the Perestroika. Corporal punishment was outlawed in the USSR. Could violence towards children have some place in Soviet orphanages? - Obviously it could, but not to the point where it became a major national problem like in today`s Russia where children are 20 times more likely to become targets of violence than in the USSR circa 1989.

Soviet orphanages may not have been the nicest places on Earth but they generally got the job done. Children were fed, educated and provided with employment and free housing upon leaving them. None of that exists anymore.

If your friend thinks things were bad then, she should probably visit modern Russia and witness the actual "horror".

[Kiev Communard]

The USSR standard of living had indeed been on the decrease then, and I have to say that currently in Ukraine the problems of orphaned and homeless children are far more aggravated that any time in the USSR save for post-Civil War and post-Great Patriotic War epochs.

[Os Cangaceiros]

The situation in the USSR's children's homes wasn't exactly peaches and cream even during the "salad days" of Russian socialism:


With outrage the team points out the outrageous condition of the only medical children's home-the Dzerzhinsky isolation ward with a capacity of 350, accepted just four months ago by the Moscow City Health Department from the city board of public education (the isolation ward's director is Comrade Brunshtein).

As of the day of the survey, the isolation ward housed 446 children, of whom 377 were ill (287 with trachoma, 71 with herpes, 51 with syphilis) [presumably some patients had more than one disease]; the rest of the children were completely healthy, including 54 preschoolers who were compelled to be around the patients and 33 children who had recovered but had not been removed from this children's home [again, there appears to be some overlap]. As a result, there were 29 recurrences of illness among the 33 children who had already recovered. The healthy children include some who are mentally retarded and deaf-mute. In addition, children who have recovered and are difficult to handle live in the comprehensive school for up to three years and have not been moved to the appropriate institutions.

The school premises are in an exceptionally neglected condition, filthy and unsanitary. Many windows have no glass in them, and there are no tanks for drinking water. The baths are in a cellarlike, filthy area, which has only thirty small tubs.

The Dzerzhinksy school sent two pupils who had ostensibly recovered to children's home no. 3 at the Pravda station, even though they had not been completely cured. As a result, nine pupils at children's home no. 3 contracted herpes.

The school's internal staircase has no railings. On 29 September of this year Vitia Kiselyov, a seven-year-old boy, started walking down from the third floor, but he fell off the staircase to his death. Yet even on 13 October, when our team visited the isolation ward, railings had still not been built around the staircase. The isolation ward has a shortage of clothing and shoes for the children. There are no dishes, and the children drink tea from deep plates with tablespoons. No child-rearing work is done. Children who disobey are undressed and sent to sit naked in a seperate room. Such "practices" result in the fact that even sick children are forced to run away from this isolation ward. The greatest number of these escapes-58 (since July)-occured after this institution had been turned over to the city health department.


The unsatisfactory performance of the children's homes of Narkompros is borne out by the following fact: the Procurator's Office of Krasnodar Krai has cited the krai's children's homes for serious violations of the law: an inadequate supply of clothing, shoes, and food for children, unsanitary accommodations for them, and in several homes, the embezzlement of state funds that were allocated for the maintainance of the homes. Children's home no. 39 in Plastunka Raion had no fuel; the room in which the children slept was cold and dirty, and the air temperature was so low that the water in the washbasins froze and the children could not wash themselves. The business manager of the children's home, Serliuk, corrupted young girls, raping a girl named Alaeva (he has been sentenced to five years imprisonment).

Similar situations were common in medical facilities and institutions for homeless children* all over Russia at the time, mainly due to lack of funds.

*Homeless children represented a very significant problem for the USSR prior to the second world war.

[BIG BROTHER]

Perhaps I read the first post wrong but perhaps ihatecorporations friend was saying how the situation rather than improving was a lot more horrible in USSR as it got closer to restoring capitalism.

[IHateCorporations]

Those are some serious exaggerations right there. State institutions from kindergartens to orphanages kept being supplied with food up until the very end, even when food suddenly disappeared from store shelves late into the Perestroika. Corporal punishment was outlawed in the USSR. Could violence towards children have some place in Soviet orphanages? - Obviously it could, but not to the point where it became a major national problem like in today`s Russia where children are 20 times more likely to become targets of violence than in the USSR circa 1989.

Soviet orphanages may not have been the nicest places on Earth but they generally got the job done. Children were fed, educated and provided with employment and free housing upon leaving them. None of that exists anymore.

If your friend thinks things were bad then, she should probably visit modern Russia and witness the actual "horror".

I was wondering if my friend was exaggerating. I asked her if this was during Gorbachev's reign or after; she said 'it doesn't matter . . . that was Communism.' I had no idea about the promised benefits you mentioned. This makes me wonder why she would exaggerate or if she was a special case.

[Das war einmal]

Not to diminish the bad state of USSR orphanages, but there are some pretty horrific stories to about Dutch orphanages and summer houses run by Christian organisations. Not so long ago there was a documentary about orphanages in Bulgaria, that are horrific aswell although the socialist regime disappeared more then 20 years ago. Suffice to say that societies in a whole don't really seem to care much about what happens in orphanages but when the shit brakes out it's always someone else's fault.

There was a lot of mismanagement in the USSR and it does not come as a surprise that orphanages could be one of the victims of this. The fault of the ideology? Hardly so.

[Apoi_Viitor]

Well, I know the problem you are referring to hasn't stopped. There are still reports of horrific abuse from Russian orphanages. However I do believe that Russia is experiencing an even greater problem now, because after the USSR collapsed, funding for state orphanages has rapidly diminished.