One in Two Million

By one estimate, there are some two million homeless children in Russia today. Two million. Approximately equivalent to the population of Arkansas or Kansas.

But these are only numbers. One story in two million, in all its tragic and gory details, is enough to send shivers of disgust and anger through your being...

Seryozha (Sergei) was a six-year-old boy with the face of an angel and the mouth of a devil when his great-grandmother (only in her late 60s) brought him to the Moscow orphanage Dorogu k domu (A Road Home). She had read about the home in the newspaper Trud.

Seryozha’s parents never worked anywhere. One could only guess how they got money. For when they got some, they spent it, needless to say, on vodka. On top of this, Sergei’s father was a drug addict. Once, when “high,” he fell from a fifth floor balcony, suffered for 7 days in hospital, then died. His 24-year old wife, Seryozha’s mother, went on drinking. New “fathers” would drop by with bottles. Drunken orgies and horrible sexual games raged every night, even in the presence of little Seryozha ...

Step-by-step, Sergei’s mother tumbled to the lower depths of existence. Little Seryozha was left to his own devices and was forced to go knocking on neighbors’ doors to beg for food; his mother spent his meager social welfare benefits (53 rubles – $8.50 – a month) on vodka. When Seryozha was just four, one of his mother’s “bedfellows” threw him against the wall, causing a concussion and a broken nose. “They would all get drunk and fall asleep,” Sergei later recounted to a nurse at the orphanage. “Then I would tiptoe to the table, trying not to make noise, and take whatever was left and eat it. Sometimes I would even get unfinished beer or wine, or find an unfinished cigarette butt and smoke it. And in the morning, they would wake up, find out about the losses and beat me up.”

His great grandmother was his only solace. But whenever she showed up at his mother’s apartment, she would only be allowed to take Seryozha away after she had “paid” with a bottle or with a pack of cigarettes. Without this “currency” it was all pointless. “Babushka, please don’t come here too often,” Sergei would tell her. “They are evil people, they will kill you.” (Alcohol consumption in Russia averages 18 liters of pure alcohol per capita, the highest level in the world.)

Seryozha’s great grandmother said she would gladly have taken Seryozha in permanently, but she is at an advanced age, is handicapped, and her pension is tragically low. So, when out walking with Seryozha, she collected empty bottles for their deposits – to buy some bread ...

On several occasions, the great grandmother was offered the chance to give Seryozha to an orphanage for good; foreigners from America and Belgium have also offered adoption. In the end, he found himself at this orphanage on Moscow’s Profsoyuznaya street.

Seryozha said he feels better here, because they “feed him, there are lots of other kids, there are toys.” He said he wants to become a serviceman and join the Suvorov Military School (originally founded for Russian orphans and children left homeless after the Great Patriotic War). “He has a good, easy-going character,” his great grandmother said. “You ask him to do something and he would salute you like a serviceman and do it.”

The ruthless, perpetual cycle of drunkenness is at the root of 90% of cases like Seryozha’s. In addition to his parents, both Sergei’s grandmothers, as young as they are, are jobless drunks. One sold her apartment to pay for vodka, the other is on her way ... One grandfather served time in jail and lost his arm in a drunken accident. The other died from alcoholism. His 18-year-old uncle had repeated drinking bouts and is now serving time in prison for robbery.

As for Seryozha, he recently told his great grandmother, “I beg you, make a real person out of me. So that I don’t end up falling from a balcony or in jail!”

For now, the six-year-old, orphaned by vodka and abuse, is getting used to his new environment. He smiles more often. Not long ago, he whispered into his great grandmother’s ear: “I want to find a good mom and a good dad here...”

— Alexander Klimov