The tumultuous decades between the revolution and the Second World War in Soviet Russia were characterized by nationwide famine, war and economic despair. Starvation, extreme poverty, war and displacement drove thousands of working class and peasant parents and single mothers to abandon their children. Homeless children fled the countryside to cities and large towns in search of food and shelter. For homeless children, finding shelter in boarded ditches, wooden garbage bins, abandoned buildings and in other semi-sheltered areas was not as much as a challenge as it was for finding food. Most of these abandoned children resorted to begging—a method of acting to impress middle class adults to give food and money.
Favourable Areas for Homeless Beggars
Homeless children typically gathered in large cities or towns, crowded with citizens carrying money and other necessities. Train stations and markets were the most favourable areas for homeless beggars, as they offered them the opportunity to earn sufficient money to pay for food and shelter through begging. Homeless children also congregated around busy stores, cinemas and nightclubs to implore middle class citizens for coins and pieces of food. Often, many abandoned children made their way to Churches on Saturdays, Sundays and holidays with the hopes of finding larger and more charitable crowds of people. Entrances of restaurants, cafes, taverns and snack bars were also crowded by homeless beggars on a daily basis. In many cases, these beggars entered the eateries to implore diners for food and money.
Treatment of Homeless Beggars
Homeless beggars were not always received very well. Some waiters mercilessly threw food at the children. In taverns, homeless beggars were the butt of crude jokes and abuse. Often, they were forced to act in a foolish manner, recite obscene quotes or drink considerable amounts of liquor before they were given any money or food. The abuse, nevertheless, helped these children learn new skills and techniques in the art of begging.
Methods of Begging
Children came up with new and effective methods of begging. Some children passively sat on street corners or stood in the path of passing citizens with forlorn expressions on their faces and upturned palms. Bolder beggars approached shoppers and shop owners and pleaded relentlessly for money. Others performed charitable services for citizens, such as opening shop doors. Some beggars even faked illness and injury in order to illicit sympathy from middle class citizens. The bravest homeless beggars performed songs and dances in public to gain money from a compassionate crowd of shoppers.
In most circumstances these methods worked. Shoppers and shop owners passing by the abandoned and homeless young beggars on the street were moved by the children’s dire conditions. However, in some cases, they were not. On city trams, beggars performing songs were often harshly evicted from vehicles before they were given any money from sympathetic viewers.
Dealing with the large number of Abandoned and Homeless Children in Soviet Russia
After the revolutionary triumph, the new Bolshevik government sought to take the ever growing numbers of abandoned and homeless children off the streets, improve their lives and turn them into productive working citizens. In 1918 and 1919, the government instructed local and central agencies to organize the distribution of food to abandoned children from schools, restaurants and other food outlets. Throughout the Stalin era and in the decades that followed, the communist government developed a network of homes to take in, raise and educate abandoned children. However, the extreme poverty caused by the famines of the early 1920s and mid 1930s undermined the communist government’s reforms when thousands more children were abandoned and driven to the cities’ streets.
Sources
Alan M. Ball, And Now My Soul Is Hardened: Abandoned Children in Soviet Russia, 1918-1930. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994.
Joan Neuberger, Hooliganism: Crime, Culture, and Power in St. Petersburg, 1900-1914. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993.
