Adult Stigmatization and the Hidden Power of Homeless Children in Russia¹

Clementine Fujimura
United States Naval Academy

Citation Note: Fujimura, Clementine. “Adult Stigmatization and the Hidden Power of Homeless Children in Russia.” Children, Youth and Environments 13(1), Spring 2003. Retrieved [date] from http://colorado.edu/journals/cye.

Abstract

Abandoned by their families and the state, Russian homeless children have found power in the culture of street life. This study uncovers the hidden strength abandoned children feel in the context of Russia’s social instability and neglect of orphans. Traditional means to care for orphans and street children have not helped these children to succeed in Russian society. It is the belief of this author that marginalization of abandoned children will end when their emotional as well as physical needs are met appropriately and their true spirit is acknowledged.

Key words: Homeless children, orphans, juvenile delinquency, marginalization, Russian culture

Introduction

This article focuses on the plight and hidden power of homeless children in Russia, adult attitudes towards them and the main cultural hurdles they have to surmount in order to survive in Russian society. It is a project that developed as a result of earlier research conducted on the Russian concept of childhood (Creuziger 1996) and attitudes towards orphans (Creuziger 1997). This research indicates that Russian parents and educators believe in certain principles of education that apply to all children; however, in practice, not all children are valued as equals. The ideal concept of childhood, as a stage in life untainted by adult problems, does not apply to all children. Even though Russian parents and educators view childhood as potentially the most joyous time of life, many children, abandoned by families, are victims of Russia’s social crisis and barely survive on a day-to-day basis. Relatively few adults concern themselves with the future of these children and so the infrastructure to support these children is lacking and, in some cases, absent. As a result, a rising number of children seek solace amongst themselves, in groups and gangs.

However, amidst what appears at first blush to be a tragic victimization, given the level of suffering and hopelessness of homeless children, there is a power that comes from the children themselves. In a recent article addressing cultural synthesis of poverty stricken people, Metcalf suggests that, in studying poor countries, anthropologists have tended to emphasize the relative powerlessness of individuals in changing political and economic realities, thereby neglecting the power such individuals have in constructing “their own worlds in cultural terms.” Metcalf points out: “Indeed, they not only can figure out for themselves what sense to make of a world full of rootlessness, alienation, cultural pastiche, and the rest, they must do it themselves” (Metcalf 2001). Amazingly, homeless children in Russia are very much like adults in poor countries around the world in that they too experience power in agency, that is, strength in their ability to survive and in helping others like them to survive by creating for themselves a culture beyond the adult world, a world which offers little more than rootlessness and alienation to them.

The mistrust and contempt that exists between homeless children and the adult world can be traced back to the 1920s when, due to hunger and abandonment, thousands of children took to the streets as they do today. Many of these children spent little time begging and quickly discovered benefits in stealing. According to Ball, one study conducted from 1925 to 1928 found that the likelihood for children to take to theft largely depended on whether or not they came from the city: “… those who had engaged in begging only briefly before moving on to stealing came much more often from urban families than from peasantry” (Ball 1994, 63). The longer a child remained homeless, the more likely he or she was to become a petty thief. Marked as potential thieves, homeless children were viewed by adults as despicable.

Homeless children, in turn, had little faith in their surrounding society. As Ball explains: “Time and time again, in their actions, interviews and reminiscences, homeless youths expressed aversion for a surrounding citizenry that represented to them only potential victims or persecutors” (Ball 1994, 82). Already in the 1920s, these children had lost their childhood to society. No longer open to adult care and no longer hoping for true empathy, street children found power in paying back the adult world, which only hindered their potential. Homeless children believed in, as they do now, the reproach proclaimed in one of their songs entitled: “And Now My Soul is Hardened” (Ball 1994, 82).

The fact that homeless children have found power in each other’s company is not to suggest that they do not desperately need help. The problem is that in the past, help offered by the Russian government has been less than a small bandage to cover a deep wound. These children need more than a cold room, hard bed and minimal food. These children function on a much deeper level and have chosen power in street culture over the life offered in institutions. Only with a better understanding of these children on a cultural and psychological level, can proper care be instituted.

Some Facts

This generation of abandoned children may already be lost to a life of pan handling, narcotics, petty theft and prostitution. As Stoecker points out in her recent article: “Homelessness and juvenile crime are related phenomena, and many criminologists and sociologists call homelessness the “mother” of juvenile crime” (Stoecker 2001, 320). According to Stoecker, the bleaker the situation of the child, the more serious the crime he or she is likely to commit: “Simply put, hunger causes theft of food; lack of shelter and food leads to serious theft; and lack of shelter combined with unemployment is a precursor of prostitution among girls” (Stoecker 2001, 320). Statistics show that in one region of Russia, Primorskii Krai, “one out of every ten youths becomes homeless” (Stoecker 2001, 322). While statistics on homelessness are hard to come by anywhere in the world, it is likely that in Russia, the rising number of homeless is correlated to the rising number of children committing crimes.

In jail, children are hardened by the adult criminals around them: “… occasionally these youths are placed in closed institutions with those who have committed more serious crimes, even rape or murder” (Stoecker 2001, 332). According to an informer who spent a number of months in prison on a drug conviction, the victimization of youths in prisons is inevitable. Due to overcrowding, prisoners spend their days in a large hall, with fewer beds than people. A hierarchy exists which makes it clear who gets to use the beds and when. If a prisoner is at the low end of the totem pole, he becomes the “girl” for those higher in rank. Youths are thus likely to be raped in prison.

While homeless children are aware of the consequences of crime, they are also aware that, by playing into the hands of adults, by allowing themselves to be committed to shelters and orphanages, their quality of life is diminished to the extent that it is worth taking a risk and joining those living on the streets. Many homeless children are not willing to accept help from shelters, which offer little to no emotional comfort and little more than a roof, bedding and mediocre food: “I earn more on the streets, get better stuff…” Alec proclaims (Alec interview 1999). Instead, they use the shelters in times of dire need, returning many times, but always leaving again. These children have learned to take only as much as they want and need from adults, leaving any other comforts, such as love or physical and emotional warmth to be Retrieved [date] from their world of homelessness.

A child’s view of the choice to live on the streets as opposed to living in shelters is different from that of adults. A director of a Moscow shelter explains the adult view:

Of course, we cannot keep addicted kids. Since they are already so addicted, they are unwilling to be helped. We cannot help those that do not want to be helped, so we only take them in when it is really cold or wet outside and send them out again the next morning. We only have so many beds, which we keep for those who want our help (Mulaevich 1999).

The children I spoke to, on the contrary, felt they were not “rejected” from the shelter as much as they were “released.” The adult world does not accommodate the world of the addicted homeless child and, once “set free” from the shelters or other institutions, the only roofs these children may find, besides those of train stations and abandoned buildings, are prisons.

Many homeless children interviewed differ from their adult counterparts in that they still have hopes of a better future. This “better future,” however, does not include a mainstream ideal. While they dream of making it big, of earning a lot of money and of being respected, the children I spoke with have their own ideas of how to achieve that goal. Young girls are lured by America and offer their bodies for prostitution in return for a ticket to what they think will be freedom. One option some of the boys I spoke with believe in is to become a hired killer, preferably by an American. America, to them, is the ideal country for such criminal activity. Alec, an eleven-year-old homeless child, reminds me: “In America life would be better: I could go to Disney Land” (Alec interview 1999).

Such a difference in opinion of what a good future entails has much to do with what society has made available to them in terms of life stories that can work for homeless children. Bourdieu describes how dominant groups may justify their dominance and in turn, the inferiority of others. The justification is perpetuated as a social myth. This social myth is ingrained in the people's minds via the education and socialization they receive. Bourdieu explains: “A large part of social suffering stems from the poverty of people's relationship to the educational system, which not only shapes social destinies, but also the image they have of their destiny…” (Bourdieu 1998, 43). Dominant groups, through schools and other media, may perpetuate myths that give members of a society ideas of what may be accomplished in a life, depending on one's status in that particular society. While to the dominant group these myths may be enabling, to the dominated, they are limiting. Russian homeless children, in reaction to the negative image of their destiny given to them by the adult world, have taken it upon themselves to beat the system by turning to crime.

Still other children are caught in a complex situation out of which there is no escape. At the age of ten, Dima, for example, was forced to flee with his family from Kyrghyzstan. His baby brother died en route, and with little money and nowhere to go, his father left the family. After many days of living in various train stations, the mother began drinking and attacked a man for his money. She was given a sentence of seven years in prison. Dima, with no papers to allow him into an orphanage in Moscow and no future in his home town, has nowhere to live. He spends his nights in a shelter, hoping for a miracle.

Perhaps Dima is lucky that no Russian orphanage will have him. In general, orphanages today do offer adequate shelter and food. However, children are often left to fend for themselves when it comes to making emotional attachments to people or objects. Toys and other personal belongings are not kept long, since other children will, in all likelihood, steal or break them. Personal relationships experience a similar destiny: they are difficult to maintain, since many children move away and others are mistrusted.

The supervisor of a class in school or in an institution does not have the time or energy each individual child requires and psychological counseling, if available, is often poorly developed. Amongst each other, children often feel in competition with one another for short supplies of food, toys, compassion and love. The experience of the orphanage is one reason why many older children, adopted into western families, exhibit an inability to attach to their new families.

Official child institutions do not prepare children for life in society and much less in families. In orphanages, children live a regimented life, one in which they are discouraged from making personal decisions. Moreover, children in orphanages are not encouraged to participate in creative activities or to socialize with the outside world. In a study conducted in 1992, Dement’eva concluded that orphans do not know how to realize themselves through relationships due to their regulated environments in the orphanages (Dement’eva 1992).

Many children adopted from Russian orphanages have been assessed as having serious emotional problems. Specifically, Attachment Disorder is one common result of a life lacking a deep relationship with a caregiver. Symptoms of Attachment Disorder include: an inability to give and receive affection, lack of eye contact, indiscriminate affection for strangers, extreme anger, manipulative behavior, stealing, hoarding or gorging food, preoccupation with fire or gore, lack of impulse control and cause and effect thinking, learning and speech disorders, lack of conscience, lying, lack of friends, incessant chatter or being inappropriately demanding or clingy.²

The problem with the institutions like orphanages, boarding homes and shelters, is that they do not meet the needs of the children in question. There are, however, a few shelters and programs in Moscow that do reach out to the youths in ways that allow the children to flourish not only physically, but emotionally as well. While the stories homeless children have to tell are sad and frightening, some children have found help in such special shelters and daytime programs. These institutions are run by adults who are involved because they actually care. Unlike the orphanages, they are less dependent on the government for funding; indeed, the government chooses to pay them less, thus forcing the shelters to seek help elsewhere. While lack of funding hampers their ability to give the children all they need, it also allows them to treat the children in ways that surpass the treatment children receive in regular orphanages. Adult volunteers and workers in one shelter unanimously agree that traditional orphanages and internaty (child boarding homes) are not the best solution for abandoned children.

One shelter in particular, “Shelter of Childhood,” unlike orphanages around Moscow, tries to create a home-like atmosphere by giving the children more personal attention and affection than traditional orphanages provide. Children in this shelter do not fear their teachers and enjoy frequent hugs. Increasingly, shelters are providing children with basic psychological counseling, promoting their return to their families and, when this is not feasible, placing children in foster care, rather than allowing them to vanish in the social vacuum of orphanages.

Grass-roots programs like “Maria’s Children,” an art rehabilitation center for orphans, are few. Maria Yeliseyeva founded this program through which orphans gain a sense of worthiness and belonging. Due to lack of funding and educational training, programs providing psychological and emotional support are still rare in Russia, but are very important if these children are to be given an opportunity to survive in the adult social world.

From the Perspective of the Child: Kolya’s Story

You know, for us in Moscow, it is impossible to relate to the majority of the Russian population. They have nothing to work towards and cannot imagine what there might be to look forward to beyond the next vodka bottle… Since Perestroika, even with changes in leadership, nothing has changed in the lives of the average Russian. In Moscow, perhaps. But overall, people struggle for food and warmth, especially in the winter. And once that is achieved, they await their pay, which perhaps comes once a year…. And when the pay comes, they don’t think about what to do with it. You and I may consider investing in a mobile phone, or something useful, or something for the future, but such thoughts do not enter their minds. Their pay is invested in vodka. And once that vodka is bought, everything is taken care of: warmth has been obtained, and hunger has been appeased. Life has improved immediately with that vodka. That is their future (Oleg interview 2000).

From the perspective of many Russian adults, although addicted to alcohol, being able to destroy physical and emotional pain with vodka is, in fact, taking control of ones own life.

The need for immediate gratification, measure of control, and immediate cessation of distress is true not only for adults, but for homeless children as well. Like these adults, homeless children are empowered by their ability to meet their physical needs. It all begins with their ability to survive from one day to the next and, on cold days, from one hour to the next. The children take what they can get and devour what they have. Once they have taken care of their most basic physical needs, that is, food and shelter, they look for something to take away the emotional and other physical pain. Drugs and alcohol are of course, a common solution. These take the children to a warmer state of being, detached from their pain. At one point, the emotional needs overwhelm the physical, and drugs and alcohol take first priority above food and shelter. The desire for immediate gratification is one force which drives the lives of the homeless children.

On one level, Russian homeless children are comparable to people in poor countries, who, as Metcalf points out, appear to simply deal with circumstances that are not in their control and who merely “look out for opportunities when they appear on the horizon” (Metcalf 2001, 167). However, like adults in these countries, homeless children, even in the context of Russian social chaos, are also able to construct their own world and, as Metcalf points out: “in this, they are very far from powerless” (Metcalf 2001, 167).

Kolya (12) told me about his experience on the streets of Moscow and more often, at the Yaroslavskii train station. At the train station, he made his living selling flowers through which he was able to make enough money to satisfy his physical hunger:

I’d take them [flowers] from an old lady [babushka] and at the end of the day, giving her the money of which she gave me some. I used to earn more than my mother. There were days when I earned sooo much! One day I started late and I earned about 600 rubles (approximately $22.00)! I took myself out to McDonalds, bought myself fries, in short, everything! (Kolya interview 2000).

From these words, we learn that Kolya feels anything but powerless. In fact, he feels he comes out ahead, and takes great pride in making more than is needed for immediate gratification.

Kolya is a very proud boy and feels he has his life more together than anyone in his family. Life was rough, but throughout our conversations, he never pitied himself. In fact, compared to other homeless children, he feels he was quite lucky: “There was a six year old with a family. They’d eat the food and give him the rind. I felt sorry for him” (Kolya interview 2000). Kolya feels lucky that he not only got more than a rind from his family, but that he had a family to begin with. He is very close to his sister, who can do no wrong. Even when caught prostituting herself, Kolya denies her activities.

Kolya, like many of the children I spoke to, refuses to see himself as a victim. Only when remembering the real loss of a loved one does he show sadness, like when his dog was killed: “In the summer sometimes, we lived in a specific park. I had a dog, a pure breed. He was very attached to me. But the police shot him” (Kolya interview 2000). At this point in the conversation, Kolya becomes quiet and it is hard for him to say much more. We resume our conversation another day.

When not confronted by the powerlessness he feels at the loss of a loved one, Kolya feels strong and intelligent. He feels he is the man with the solutions for his family. In describing his life before Moscow, when he lived in a shack with no running water and no heat, he is adamant that he understands how to save money and live better than his mother:

We did not always live in Moscow. We had a dacha in Ryazan- small, but we lived well. But my mama eats so much, we had to come to Moscow to make money. My mama may be crazy: she always has to eat meat, which is expensive! I told my mother over and over again to buy a cheap house so we could live normally. But no, she wants to save money for an expensive house, so instead, she spends money on meat and again we are left without a place to live! And we have little food! When mama gives me a plan on how to sell flowers, it never works, but when I make the plan, I make a lot (Kolya interview 2000).

In this last monologue, Kolya identifies himself as the wise one in his family and in a sense, its leader and believes contributing his plan on how to survive is vital to his family’s survival. In fact, Kolya is the youngest of three and was unable to save his sister from prostitution and drugs, his brother from drugs and petty theft, and his mother from alcoholism.

Cultural Constraints in Helping Homeless Children in Russia: Notions of Svoi, Chuzhoi and Victimhood

These feelings and attitudes have developed over time, the result of enculturation and socialization. Negative sentiments towards street children are the outcome of a complex web of teachings under the Soviet regime, a stigma placed on that which is different, foreign, and “not-one’s-own,” and a cultural-religious sense of martyrdom.

Historically, the average Russian citizen has been discouraged from proactive engagement in social issues. Under the Soviet regime, becoming involved in social problems only disclosed the fact that they existed. Instead, orphans and children with disabilities were confined to institutions. Indeed, many of the adults interviewed were convinced that under the Soviet regime, orphans and disabled children barely existed. Since the collapse of the Soviet regime, Russians have not been given much reason to believe that their vote counts. Instead, they once again feel victimized by the socio-economic crisis and helpless in the face of social and political turmoil. Even with money and an education in hand, few feel they have the power to make a difference in society.

“Why do Americans want to adopt our children?” Is a question I often encounter while studying orphans in Russia. Before I even begin to answer this question, the person will probably add: “Most of our orphans have all kinds of physical and psychological problems! And why do Americans want a child that is not theirs, neither by birth nor by nationality?” When asked whether they would ever consider adopting, a common response is: “Perhaps if there was no way I could have my own. But even then, I would have to think about it. One’s own is always better.”

One’s own: Svoi. A value-laden concept that underlies not only day-to-day individual and family decisions, but social and political trends as well. Not ones own, ne svoi, will never understand and feel the way svoi would.

Ne svoi is closely related to chuzhoi, which means strange or foreign. Many Russians feel they can never really integrate foreign blood into their society. From a Russian’s perspective, he or she who is chuzhoi will never fully become Russian, even if he or she was born and raised on Russian soil. It is in their blood to be different, just like orphans have it in their blood to be different.

Russian adults approach orphans with trepidation since such children remain stigmatized. To this day, adults interviewed agree that an orphan potentially has bad genes and is a threat to society. The argument frequently made is that the parents of these children were incapable of raising the children and therefore the children are likely to have inherited these negative qualities. As under the Soviet regime, today adults are afraid to adopt. Those who do often do not tell anyone that their children are adopted, including the children themselves.

This is not to deny the fact that many of the orphans have physical or emotional problems. Indeed, fetal alcohol syndrome for example, continues to plague many of the children forced into orphanages. However, as many adoptions in the West have demonstrated, it is frequently the absence of a stable family life, love and opportunities to succeed, and not their genetic makeup, which force the children to become social outcasts.

Of course, exceptions are made. Being different may sometimes be better. Sergei, a doctoral candidate in Russian literature and a strong believer in the strength of Russian culture, tells of an orphan who was different, but truly special:

He was adopted by my relatives. We all knew, but of course, no one ever told him. He grew up in our dark-haired family and his blond hair and blue eyes were a striking contrast. He was like an angel, both in looks and in character: such a good person. Then, just as he entered his youth, he was shot. As if he was not meant long for this human world… (Zhozhikashvilii interview 1999).

Even in the situation where an adopted child is loved and appreciated, the difference, the ne svoi, is still pointed out.

Another hindrance to helping homeless children and orphans comes from a sense of continuous hardship and martyrdom. “Kakaya nasha zhizn’ tyazhiolaya” or “How hard life is” is a phrase one can hear every day in homes, casual conversation or even in public spaces. Even when life seems to be going particularly well as, for example, you just bought a new apartment, were given a well-paying job and your tourist visa to the United States came through, (as was the case with one of my Russian acquaintances), you may still begin your day with a deep sigh and proclaim: “Kakaya nasha zhizn’ tyazhiolaya!”

Sergei adds that Russians and Americans simply do not view life the same way: “The difference between Americans and Russians is that an American may walk by a beggar and think ‘Indeed, how sad. How hard life is.’ And walk on, sparing perhaps a kopek or two. The thought of truly helping this person never occurs” (Zhozhikashvilii interview 1999). Most Russians, according to many interviewed, do not feel they have any power to help. Life is too overwhelming, complicated and oppressive. For those who have the financial means to help, the issues do not appear as important to the country. One businessman, upon my arrival in Russia and questioning him about the homeless situation responded: “Homeless children? We don’t have them anymore” (Boris interview 1996).

Conclusion

Answering questions about their dreams and desires, homeless children in 1999 do not want, as they did before, nice clothing, toys, books. They do not hope to be adopted and do not want help with finding homes. Today’s homeless are tougher, less trustful and pore pessimistic (RAN 1999, 324).

Instead of reaching to the adult world, homeless children, taking their own initiative, have figured out how to cope. In doing so, they have shown “remarkable resiliency” (Panter-Brick 2000, 11).

Recent psychological literature suggests that rather than perceiving street life as a problem and reacting by trying to “normalize” the behavior of the children, one needs to understand and respect the children’s culture and worldview:

Instead of attempting to put children back into…mainstream society with the hope of ‘normalizing’ their behavior, the way forward may be to recognize the strengths that street children have developed and build upon their survival skills.

Thus, one may come to see these children’s lives not as “pathological”, but as signs of resiliency.

Until we recognize the hidden power of homeless children, they will remain, in a sense, at war with the adult world in which they live. Adults, whether from western charity organizations or hired by the Russian government, nurture this war, by rounding up homeless children and trying to force them to grow up in prison-like institutions. This war will be lost on both ends, if adults do not take the initiative as they have in past wars, to “understand the enemy”. Homeless children need to be understood and taken care of beyond their physical requirements. They need to be respected differently from children who have been nurtured in families. They need to be seen as extremely able and empowered by their experiences, while simultaneously being marginalized by the world in which they live.

It is the hope of this researcher that via an anthropological contextualization of the reality orphans face on a daily basis, those reaching out to homeless children will come together and touch these children on a deeper level than in the past, thus ending the rift that exists between the Russian adult and homeless children’s worlds.

Endnotes
1. Reprinted with permission from Demokratizatsiya (winter 2002) 10(1): 37-47. Reprinted with permission of the Helen Dwight Reid Educational Foundation. Published by Heldref Publications, 1319 18th Street NW, Washington, D.C. 20036-1802. Copyright 2002. www.heldref.org/html/dem.html.
2. See The Attachment Center at Evergree’s web page for more information.

Clementine Fujimura earned her Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology from the University of Chicago in 1993 and published her dissertation, “Childhood in Russia: Representation and Reality” in 1996. Most recently her research has focused on orphans and children’s rights. She received a Title VIII fellowship from the Kennan Institute in 1997 and spent two years (1999-2001) in Moscow conducting fieldwork on homeless children. Articles on this subject have appeared in journals such as Childhood and the Anthropology of East Europe Review, and Demoktratizatsiya. She is currently completing a book on abandoned children. At the United States Naval Academy, Dr. Fujimura is an Associate Professor teaching courses in Russian Language and Culture, German and Anthropology.

References

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Dement'eva, Irina. (1992). Sotsial'nye Problemy Sirotstva. Moskva: Rossiskaya Akademiya Nauk, Institut Sotsiologii.

Interview with "Boris". Moscow, June 1996.

Interview with homeless boy, Alec. Moscow, October, 1999.

Interview with homeless boy, Koyla. January 2000.

Interview with Sapar Mulaevich, Director of "Way Home" Homeless Shelter. Moscow, December 1999.

Interview with Sergei Zhozhikashvilii. Moscow, November 1999.

Interview with worker "Oleg". Moscow, April 2000.

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Stoecker, Sally. (2001). "Homelessness and Criminal Exploitation of Russian Minors: Realities, Resources and Legal Remedies." Demokratizatsiya 9(2): 319-336.

Veale, Angela, Max Taylor and Carol Linehan (2000). "Psychological Perspectives of 'Abandoned' and 'Abandoning" Street Children." In Panter-Brick, Catherine and Malcolm T. Smith, eds. Abandoned Children. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 131-145.