Figure 1.--Here is a 2005 photo of orphanage children in modern Russia, just after visiting church. You can tell because all the girls' heads are covered. Te children here look well cared for. This may be an orphanage sponsored by a religious group. I don't know if the children at state orphanages are taken to church. A HBC reader writes, "It is worth noticing that the boys and girls all wear tights in this orphanage. The tights seem to be the modern replacement for the long stockings that were almost always worn back in the 1960s. It is also interesting that the boys all wear short pants even though it is clearly a chilly day."

Russia in the 20th century has done tumultuous events and changes, including World War I, the Communist Revolution, the Civil War, post-War famine, Stalinism, collectivization, the Gulag, World War II, socialist stagnation, collapse of the Siviet Union, and economic failure. Childern along with their parents had to pay the consequences of the resulting chaos and economic problems. Large numbers of children were prphaned or abandoned by their parents. And this was not just in the early years in the aftermath of World War I. While orphanages have disappeared in most of Western Europe and America, large numbers of children in Russia are being cared for in orphanges. Most are spartan uninviting places with poorly paid and trained staff. For the children with disabilities, conditions are even worse and the institutions do not provide even the barest minimal standards of care. This situation continued throughout Soviet history. And the problem even increased in the last years of the Soviet Union which finally imploded (1991). Russian institutions in the late-1990s were bursting with abandoned children, who now total more than 600,000 children who are defined by the state as being "without parental care. During the late 1990s, more than 113,000 children have been abandoned, reflecting a breathtaking rise from 67,286 in 1992. Another 30,000 are reported to run away from troubled homes each year, clogging the urban railway stations and metros, sometimes ending up in shelters and orphanages.

Soviet Era (1917-91)

We do not have much information on Soviet orphanages. We do not fully understand the numbers of children cared for in Soviet orphanafges or the quality of faclities and care. We know that the Soviet authorities had a huge problem with abandobed childen after the Revolution (1917) and Civil War (1918-21). We have limited informations on how Soviet authorities addressed the problem and know do not have a lot of information on Soviet orphanages. We note street children picked up and put into orphanages during 1928. Ukranian peasant children caught up in the famine were denied entry to orphnages. The collectivization progrm must have also created many displaced and orphaned children. Many seem to have died rather than being put into orphanages. The impact of the millions of adults arrested and committed to the Gulag is more difficult to assess. Often only one parent was arrested and thus the children would hve been cared for by family. But sometimes bith parents were arrested or the single parent (usually but not always the mother) would have had difficulty raising children on her own. And of course there are the normal events such as accidents or illnesses or child abuse that can lead to children bring abandoned or turned ver to the state. Of course after World War II there would have been latrge numbers of displaced children. A reader tells us that one Russian image on HBC was taken in an orphange during the 1970s.

Aftermath of Soviet Rule

Since the collapse of Soviet rule in 1991, these children have become the jetsam in Russia’s stormy economic transition. Their families are often poor, jobless, ill, and in trouble with the law; this burgeoning class of abandoned children has come to be called "social orphans" indicating that 95 percent of abandoned children have a living parent.

Abandoned Children

Official statistics on abandoned children abound, and the figures gathered from various official sources often do not correspond. The institutions that care for children span three government ministries, and the categories listed in statistical tables either overlap or are so vaguely defined as to make a fine breakdown of numbers extremely difficult.

Extent of Problem

According to compilations published by UNICEF in 1997, some 611, 034 Russian children are "without parental care." Of these, 337,527 are housed in baby houses, children's homes, and homes for children with disabilities. According toa Russian expert in their field, the latter figure includes children living part-time at home, and the full-time orphan population in institutions is closer to 200,000. Of these, at least 30,000 are committed to locked psychoneurological internaty for "ineducable" children, run by the Ministry of Labor and Social Development. The remaining number, according to government tables, are placed in alternative custody, including group homes and other guardianship perhaps with members of a child’s extended family. Although some tables list foster care as one of the alternative forms of custody, an international child development specialist told Human Rights Watch that there are only several hundred children living in family-sized settings, and that the standard foster care involves larger groups. Human Rights Watch commends the few pilot programs in foster care that have begun in Russia and urges speedy development of further projects that provide humane alternatives to large institutions.

Types of Institutions

It was beyond the scope of this report to conduct a full investigation of the many categories of institutions. But based on reliable sources most familiar with custodial care for abandoned children, Human Rights Watch has focused on three classes of institutions for this report: 1) dom rebyonka, 2) dyetskii dom, and 3) psychoneurological internat. Orphans in Russia are herded through a maze of state structures operated by three government ministries, which compete for limited state funds and overlap in their mandates for certain categories of orphans and children with disabilities. The Ministry of Health is charged with the care of abandoned infants from birth though four years of age, and houses them in 252 baby houses which are called "dom rebyonka," housing from 18-20,000 children.

Baby houses/dom rebyonka

All abandoned infants spend their first three to four years in a baby house, and are then distributed to institutions under the control of either the Ministry of Education or the Ministry of Labor and Social Development.12 Among those under the Ministry of Education, one group of children is deemed to have no disabilities, and the second group contains children diagnosed as lightly disabled, and officially termed "debil."

Children's home/dyetskii dom

The most common institution for the "educable" children is called a dyetskii dom (children's home), which generally houses boys and girls. They generally attend regular Russian public schools for the compulsory 9 years, where they can earn a secondary school diploma, or they can leave school at the age of 15 years.

School-internaty

Abandoned children may also live in school-internaty hich I think means internal schools. Here the children receive their education inside the institution where they live.

Post secondary education

Following secondary school, these children in the care of the Ministry of Education may receive 2 to 3 years of further training in a trade, which they pursue at another boarding institution under the Pedagogical Technical Directorate (PTU). While studying skills such as carpentry, electricity, masonry, and stuffed-animal making, among others, the children are housed in dormitories staffed by the Ministry of Education.

Orphan Stipend

Under Russian law, the state must provide all orphans leaving the care of the Education Ministry with an initial stipend, housing and employment. But the economic crisis since the introduction of market reforms and privatization of apartments makes this increasingly difficult. Indeed, the prospect of life in the outside world is a source of great worry to the orphans and child welfare experts alike.

Handicapped/Disabled Children

As bad as conditions are for Russian orphans. The situation for handicapped chilren is much worse. At the age of 5 years, the second group of orphans under the Education Ministry's purview "the debily" is channeled to spets internaty (or "auxiliary internaty"), where they reside while taking a significantly abbreviated course of education totaling only 6 years, far short of a high school diploma. They are also offered vocational training, but their program and residence are generally segregated from the non-debil orphans. The Ministry of Labor and Social Development takes charge of orphans who are diagnosed by a board of state medical and educational reviewers as having heavy physical and mental disabilities at the age of 4 years. Officially labeled 'imbetsil' or 'idiot', they are committed to closed institutions which often resemble Dickensian asylums of the 19th century. There they remain until the age of 18 years if they survived. Those who survive to that age are transferred to adult psychoneurological internaty, or asylums, for the duration of their lives. Fragmentary statistics on the mortality rates in the institutions under the Ministry of Labor and Social Development indicate that these orphans are at significant risk of premature death. One leading child welfare advocate in Moscow told Human Rights Watch that estimates from government figures indicate the death rate in these internaty is twice the rate in the general population. He also knows one internat where he said that the death rate rose to as high as three and a half times the rate in the society outside its walls. The Chernobyl disaster created a new group of hndicapped children (1986).

Soviet Mindset

The Soviet Union is gone, but the Soviet-era policies and practices persist in Russian institutions. Renowned for its centralized control, the sprawling system of internaty for abandoned children was inspired by the Soviet philosophy favoring collective organization over individual care, and the ideal that the state could replace the family. Regimentation and discipline were integral to this philosophy, and restricted access to the institutions apparently permitted the director and staff to operate with impunity.

Overseas Adoptions

Soviet officils for propagand reasons did not permit pverseas adoptions, especilly to Americsn families. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the orphan problem increased and conditions in Russian orphanages declined. Post-Soviet Russian officials basically continued the Soviet ban, but began allowing the adoption of handicapped infants and children. New legislation enacted by the Russian government authorized overseas adoptions of healthy infants and children by foreign families. An adoption agegency reported, "Two groups of children are typically available for an international adoption from Russia, babies relinquished in the hospital at birth to orphanages, and older children who are removed from their families because of neglect. There are over a million orphans in Russia, the majority of which are true orphans, or have parents who were unable to provide for them. Most major cities have several orphanage-type facilities called baby houses which house children from birth to approximately 4 to 5 years of age. Older children ranging from 5 to 18 years of age are frequently held at boarding schools or other facilities called orphanages." [IAP] Rusian orphanages, however, began doctoring medical records to disguise medical problems of children being offered for adoption by foreigners. President Vladimir Putin returned to the Soviet policy of banning overseas adoptions. Press reports described the change in policy. "MOSCOW — President Vladimir V. Putin signed a bill on Friday that bans the adoption of Russian children by American citizens, dealing a serious blow to an already strained diplomatic relationship. But for hundreds of Americans enmeshed in the costly, complicated adoption process, the impact was deeply personal." [Herszehorn and Eckholmdec] Apparently this ban has since been relaxed, but we do not yet have details.

Temporary Orphans

While most Russians who left their children in state care during the late Soviet period did so for such reasons as poverty, illness, and family problems, a certain proportion of children came from working parents and students who used the orphanages as weekly boarding institutions and retrieved their children during the weekend. This was considered normal practice, according to the long-time director of a Moscow baby house, who told Human Rights Watch how university students would house their infants with her sometimes for 2-3 years: "We had families who had three kids who stayed here, then the parents finished studies and picked up the kids and left to go back home with them. We actually considered it to be fine. They were normal parents. They came and breast-fed them. In only one case the mother threw away (gave up) her child after six months." The contrast between the doctor's attitude toward children who had parents to visit them and those who were fully abandoned, illustrated the deep bias against orphans and their parents that endures today.

Variations in Standards

Orphan care varies broadly across Russia, making it very difficult to draw conclusions about cities, regions, or even classes of institutions. For much of this century, for example, Moscow has been a world apart from anywhere else in the sprawling country, and this gulf has widened dramatically with the lifting of market controls in recent years. In matters of public funding, children's institutions in the capital and several other main cities enjoy higher levels than those in the regions of Mordovia, Tver' and Smolensk. But even the USSR, in its idiosyncratic way, was a land of exceptions. Orphanage directors, like the bosses of factories and vast collective farms, enjoyed considerable discretion over their domains. The director's personal commitment to children's welfare worked to the favor or to the detriment of the orphans. Human Rights Watch learned of compassionate, energetic directors with imagination and pluck who sought out child welfare information from the West, and took the initiative to improve their institutions by raising money locally and training their staff. The result today is a hybrid of the former centralized system and low-grade anarchy, which also applies to the uneven enforcement of laws and standards protecting children introduced by the Russian Federation since 1991. This is complicated by the process of decentralization generally unfolding in the government ministries that oversee the institutional care and the diagnosis of children. Among the positive consequences of the transitional period of the 1990s has been the initial access to institutions by charities and professionals, bringing assistance and information. The most marked improvement in the physical conditions is seen in the baby houses, which have received substantial assistance from international adoption agencies.

Orphanage Clothing

HBC at this time has little information on the clothing worn in Russian orphanages. We do know that resources at these institutions are very limited and most have difficulty properly clothing the children. Usually parents adopting children commonly have to being clothes on the day of adoption so the prphanage can retain the clothes the child is wearing. We have noted the following accounts:
The Morrison family (1994): "Our son David Eugene was adopted from Perm, Russia, in December of 1994. He was smaller than I expected, and was wearing shorts and what looked like Mary Jane shoes. His legs were skinny and bent back at the knees in hyperextension... We took him into the director's office where I had to undress him from his Russian clothes and put him into the American clothes that I had brought for him.
McCarthy family (1993): A Lot of Love: Adopting 3 boys from Russia was hard but worth it. Harriet McCarthy and her husband, Gene, adopted the first of three Russian boys in 1993. Gene heard a radio report about Russian adoptions coordinated by a Washington group called Cradle of Hope and the couple was offered a 6-1/2-year-old boy. She and Gene traveled to Russia to pick up their son, Leonty, who had been in an orphanage from infancy. The McCarthys didn't know how thin and sickly Leonty was until they saw him. He was wearing shorts, tights and Mary Jane shoes and weighed only 38 pounds.

Sources

Herszehorn, David M. and Erik Eckholmdec. "Putin signs bill that bars U.S. adoptions, upending families, New York Times (December 27, 2012).

International Adoption Help (IAP). "Children available for adoption from Russia," (2017).

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Created: November 7, 2000
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