State of the Wards

Vyacheslav was 13 when his mother was diagnosed with cancer. Shortly thereafter, she was hospitalized and he had no relatives to take him in. As a result, he was sucked into Russia’s sprawling system of children’s homes.

Today, Vyacheslav (who asked to be identified only by his first name) is 25, yet he must struggle daily to overcome the stigma and consequences of his five years inside the system.

“This system simply teaches children to adapt and survive,” Vyacheslav said. “We were given a comfort zone, but within that comfort zone you have to become spineless.”

Russia’s recent ban on adoptions by Americans, which went into effect January 1, has focused a spotlight on the country’s huge orphan problem, prompting mass demonstrations and encouraging both critics and supporters of the law to speak out.

Critics have said that the new law will abandon thousands of orphans to children’s homes, where their chances of receiving a decent education and leading fulfilling lives are drastically reduced. Defenders, meanwhile, argue that Russian children should only be adopted by Russian parents, and vow that they will open wide government coffers for adoptive and foster families.

Yet experts like Boris Altshuler, a veteran rights defender and head of Rights of the Child, warn that no amount of money will solve Russia’s orphan problem. What needs fixing is the entire social welfare system for low-income families, foster families, and parents who need medical or psychological assistance. For when these families find themselves in dire straits, he said, they come face to face with child services, which “solves their problem” by feeding their children into the orphanage system.

“This system we call Rossirotprom is extremely expensive,” Altshuler said,* coining a Soviet style acronym that could translate as RussOrphInd to stress that it is a massive industrial enterprise.

“This corporation is always in need of children,” the dissident and member of the watchdog Public Chamber added.

Russia’s vast system of orphanages (over 1,300 institutions, according to government data) dates back to the early Soviet period, when many orphans (bezprizorniki) roamed the streets following the Civil War. The new communist leaders thought they were fixing a societal ill when they set up large orphanages and integrated them into their educational system.* But they were only creating a huge institution with its own bureaucratic appetite that has done little to tackle the roots of the problem.

Today, Russia has about over 650,000 registered orphans. Of these, some 370,000 are growing up in state institutions, according to figures that the Russian government presented to the United Nations in 2011. The rest are in foster care or adoptive families, which may include extended family.

“A similar number of orphans was registered after World War II, but their parents had died. Today, most of the orphans’ parents are alive,” Altshuler said.

Two thirds of children in today’s orphanage system (or perhaps as many as 95 percent, the estimate made by the Russian Children’s Welfare Society) are so-called “social orphans,” meaning one or more of their birth parents are alive. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, alcoholism, drugs and other destructive addictions have fed an increasing supply of children into the state’s system. In recent years, up to 120,000 new orphans have been added to state rosters each year.

Prior to entering the care of the Russian state, Vyacheslav studied at an ordinary school, but tests detected that he had learning problems. Therefore, instead of being sent to a regular orphanage, he was placed in a special boarding school for children with learning disabilities.

Further testing showed that he was capable of studying at a regular school, but Vyacheslav said his school’s director rejected this option. She wanted him to stay: Vyacheslav was far too useful for the school.

“I remember how she hugged me and said: ‘How can we give Slava away? He is so handsome, so nice, so talented...’” He now believes that he and several other bright children were purposely kept at the special school so that they could meet official delegations and represent the institution at national and regional competitions and festivals. Their higher than average performance helped the director score points with her superiors.

Some tried to run away from the facility, located in central Moscow, Vyacheslav said, but they were quickly caught and then punished by being sent to a psychiatric hospital. “After three months in that hospital, they would come back different people: staring with empty eyes and sleeping most of the time,” he said.

Special institutions such as the one where Vyacheslav spent several years of his life offer a limited educational program of just six grades. This rules out any chance of admission to college, so Vyacheslav and his friends were sent to a vocational school, or PTU, which offered training in just a handful of trades.

When orphans reach the age of 18, they are “graduated” from the system without being told how to live outside its walls. Instead, they are given housing, benefits, and a stipend – “the so-called gift of khalyava” as Vyacheslav put it, meaning the gift of living off handouts.

“We were offered no alternative. The state needs a working class and that’s how they get it,” Vyacheslav said. “The state gives us apartments, money, but no choice.”

Olga Tikhomirova, director of Step Up, a nonprofit organization that helps orphanage graduates continue their education, said many of those leaving the system “have no motivation to either study or work.” Many are not interested in getting a proper education or a regular, long-term job, she said, because they are used to free state benefits. Many turn to alcohol and drugs (see page 33). Those who look for a job and fail often suffer from depression.

“It’s a pitiful and humiliating approach that offers no compassion,” Tikhomirova said.

Unlike many of his friends, Vyacheslav wanted to study and took evening classes, enrolled in college, and found a job, all with considerable effort. He is expected to earn a degree in public relations this year, yet he still doesn’t want people to know that he grew up in an orphanage.

Vyacheslav recalled how 10 years ago he and his friends at the orphanage watched the Nikita television series and dreamed of becoming spies. Instead, he said, many have become alcoholics. Others died of AIDS or went to jail. There have been few success stories. And no spies.

During a press conference in December, President Vladimir Putin defended the new adoption ban, calling for more Russians to adopt. Since then, Russian officials have toed the Kremlin line, saying that orphans and orphanages should become a thing of the past. But activists who have been studying the system for years are not optimistic.

According to Boris Altshuler, each day some 250 children are added to the ranks of orphans. Some things can be done to improve their situation, he said, without drastically increasing the cost, but the institutions receive tens of billions of rubles from the state each year and have many employees who don’t want that flow of money to diminish.

“It would be perfect not to have orphanages, but it’s simply impossible,” said Daria Alexeyeva, who works closely with several NGOs dealing with orphans. Orphanages have simply become too ingrained in the Russian economy, she said. Many facilities are located in small towns and may be one of the only reliable employers. Their closure would be devastating to local economies and workers.

“For them,” Alexeyeva said, “orphanages are jobs that they don’t want to lose.”

Alexeyeva first encountered the orphan system six years ago when volunteering with the grassroots group My s Vami (We Are With You). She visited an orphanage in Moscow Oblast and quickly realized she would be coming back.

“First we arrived with a bunch of gifts, but later we realized this was a destructive practice,” she said, explaining that no toys could improve the children’s living conditions. The group then organized birthday celebrations and raised money for tutors, to help about 25 children catch up with their studies.

Then last year Alexeyeva became a foster mother to a 15-year-old boy from the orphanage, after he was sent to a psychiatric clinic for bad behavior, in preparation for moving him to the same sort of special institution Vyacheslav described. Alexeyeva said she was surprised to learn that the boy had a wealthy grandmother living in the same small town, along with several other relatives, none of whom wanted to take care of him.

In the wake of the new adoption ban, officials said they would cut taxes and increase monthly remunerations in order to boost incentives for Russians to take in foster children and eventually adopt them. For her part, Alexeyeva said that additional money would not be an incentive. Furthermore, if she adopted her foster son, he would no longer be eligible for a free apartment once he turns 18.

“I don’t think I need more money to take care of him,” she said. “I receive around 20,000 rubles ($730) a month and that’s plenty to cover his needs.”

But Alexeyeva, 23, has to struggle with the psychological strain of being a single mom to a teenager, reporting to social services, and repeatedly apologizing for his acting out at school. And while Alexeyeva said she has no regrets, plenty do: each year thousands of foster or adoptive parents change their minds and return their charges to the system, causing additional trauma.

“First of all, the state should offer psychological, medical and legal assistance in the home for both birth parents and foster families,” Altshuler said. Many families, he said, especially those with more than one child, are often in need of help, but don’t know where to go or don’t have time during working hours to apply for it.

In the orphanage Alexeyeva visits, eight out of twelve adopted or fostered children were returned, including one girl who begged her adoptive parents to return her after she found it difficult to satisfy their expectations.

Older kids, Alexeyeva said, get used to the orphanage system; it decides everything for them and they find it hard to live in a normal family.

Deputy Prime Minister Olga Golodets recently estimated that in 2011 as many as 4,600 children were returned to orphanages by their adoptive or foster parents (nearly seven percent of the 67,500 domestic cases that year). “The number is huge,” she said, and the trauma is crushing, as “the child has twice been orphaned.”

Another shortcoming of Russia’s orphan system is its institutions for children with disabilities. It does not matter whether a child has cerebral palsy, Down syndrome, or autism: they may all be placed in a single institution, studying together without individualized attention to their widely varying developmental challenges. In addition, according to a 2004 report by the Moscow Helsinki Group, mental disability as diagnosed in orphanages is often a result of poor education and care, rather than a deeply rooted mental disorder.

During a visit to an orphanage for disabled children in Pskov region two years ago, a journalist found the facility’s corridors reeking of disinfectant and sweat. Girls and boys wandered the halls in ill-fitting clothes and nearly identical, short, boyish haircuts.

Among the over 90 inhabitants were several wheelchair-bound children, yet the building had no elevator. These children were therefore unable to get to the second floor, where the government had set up a classroom filled with expensive new Mac computers.

Most of the residents could not read and write, but their abrupt speech was full of obscenities. During the summer months, they had little to do. If the weather was hot, they had to sit in stuffy classrooms watching soap operas with their caregivers. If they were allowed to go outside, they had to stay in a fenced yard, unless a caregiver decided to take them for a walk.

The most capable children master various skills: wood carving for boys and knitting for girls. When visited by outsiders, many of the younger children would rush to grab their hands, because they are otherwise so deprived of real human contact.

Most children with mental disabilities also “graduate” from their orphanages when they turn 18. If there is no one to take care of them, they will move to the next stage of the state system: nursing homes, or as they are often called – homes for the elderly (doma prestarelykh).

Once confined to nursing homes, and if a medical commission considers them incapable of living independently or requiring psychological treatment, the orphans may remain behind closed doors in overcrowded wards until their death.

The irony is that orphans in the nursing home system often end up with bloated savings accounts that they cannot access, thanks to monthly stipends from the state. Children with severe health problems who end up in institutions because they have no family to take care of them receive regular deposits in their name, but the institutions often have no staff to attend to their individual needs and provide adequate medical or psychological care. With millions of dollars circulating in and out of the orphanage and nursing homes, observers say the current system has no motivation to graduate orphans into the real world, to make them active participants in Russian society or the job market.

“This is a system that gobbles up orphans and money,” said activist Boris Altshuler. RL

* 70 billion rubles ($2.4 billion) per year.

* For a harrowing insight into the early years of the Soviet orphanage system, see Eduard Kochergin’s book Christened with Crosses (recently released in English by Glagoslav). Kochergin was placed into an orphanage in the early 1940s, after his parents were declared enemies of the state. The book relays his journey through the system, ultimate escape, and trip through Russia back to Leningrad, where he reunited with his mother, a survivor of the Stalin prison camps, and went on to become a noted theater director.

In 2011, Russia had 1344 institutions for orphans, including 1094 orphanages (“children homes”) and 207 special orphanages for children with serious health issues.

While orphanages per se no longer exist in the US, there are many institutional group homes (children’s homes, group care facilities, residential treatment homes, residential charter schools, etc.), and one study found that, in 2011, of the 542,000 children then in foster care, some 56,509 children were living in institutional settings, or roughly 10% of the foster child population. [“A Return to Orphanages,” Madelyn Freundlich, et al, 2004]

ABOUT THE PHOTOS

Photographer Dmitry Markov has spent years capturing the lives of Russia’s orphans with his camera, while working as a volunteer and teacher in Pskov region.