3. From You I Can Expect No Pity

To those who are used to angels’ twitter,
I say: ponder the words of besprizornye bitter.

We’re against you, and you’re against us!

“Rarely does one encounter two phenomena so closely linked, one proceeding so directly from the other,” asserted a provincial author, “as the phenomena of ‘juvenile besprizornost’ ’ and ‘juvenile crime.’ ” Certainly no one should have been surprised that the creation of millions of homeless youths led year by year to extensive juvenile delinquency. “Besprizornost’,” the saying went, “is the mother of crime.”^[1] Reports from around the country—especially at the beginning of the 1920s, but also later in some cities—spotlighted waifs, far too numerous for institutions to absorb, as the source of sharp local surges in thefts by minors.^[2] A number of authors observed that abandoned children did not merely expand the ranks of young offenders; they represented the large majority in the first half of the decade, with the most incorrigible hoodlums the most likely to have spent time on the street.^[3]

As more youths found themselves deprived or neglected during the course of World War I, juvenile crime assumed ever larger proportions in Russia—and hardship associated with the Civil War and War Communism only furthered the trend. According to one source, while the number of residents five to eighteen years of age in St. Petersburg/Petrograd plunged from 400,000 in 1910 to 175,000 in 1920, property offenses committed by minors more than tripled in the city during the same interval.^[4] By all accounts, though, the volume of juvenile crime grew most rapidly—and reached its peak—during the period 1921–1922, when the famine created additional millions of bereft children.^[5] In the Russian Republic (excluding Moscow, Petrograd, and certain other regions), during a six-month period in 1921, the number of youths appearing before Juvenile Affairs Commissions (boards that determined what to do with most delinquents) soared 161 percent compared to a similar period the previous year. In Krasnodar, Moscow, and Rostov-on-the-Don, the volume of cases handled by commissions in 1921 swelled by 27 percent in the first two cities and by 143 percent in Rostov.^[6] Juvenile crime may well have increased not only in absolute terms but also more rapidly than adult crime. Minors arrested by the Russian Republic’s police in the first quarter of 1920 reportedly amounted to 6 percent of all people apprehended; a year later the total jumped to 8 percent, and by the first quarter of 1922 it stood at 10 percent. The juvenile share of arrests in Moscow approached 20 percent in 1920, 15 percent in 1921, and 13 percent in 1922. By contrast, national figures for the period 1911–1913 ranged between 3 and 5 percent.^[7]

One sign of homeless children’s central role in the juvenile crime wave lay in statistics showing a much higher percentage of orphans among delinquents by 1921–1922 than before 1914. According to an estimate for Moscow, only 3.5 percent of the delinquents surveyed in 1909 were orphans, compared to 28.8 percent in 1921. In St. Petersburg/Petrograd the figure sprang from 5.7 percent in 1914–1916 to 31 percent in 1920.^[8] Thereafter, cities that attracted large numbers of waifs, such as Moscow and Rostov-on-the-Don, maintained an extremely high percentage of orphans among their underage offenders. According to data for 1925, approximately 22 percent of the youths appearing before Juvenile Affairs Commissions in the Russian Republic (excluding Moscow) were orphans, while for Moscow the number doubled to 44 percent—and reached 59 percent in Rostov.^[9] Most studies of young lawbreakers in various regions throughout the 1920s revealed that approximately 60–70 percent lacked one or both parents, with the highest percentages generally found among recidivists.^[10]

Statistics naturally present certain problems of interpretation. The growing volume of cases heard by Juvenile Affairs Commissions, for example, followed in part from an increase in the number and efficiency of the commissions themselves. Moreover, the actual dimensions of juvenile crime in famine regions exceeded official figures by a large margin. “In the atmosphere of ‘famine life,’ ” one author observed, “they [juvenile crimes] became so commonplace that it was not worth reporting them or even reacting to them.”^[11] Data showing a significant decrease in the number of adolescents appearing before commissions in 1922 also create confusion. This drop appears to result largely from a change made to the Criminal Code in June 1922, which sent the cases of most youths sixteen to eighteen years of age directly to the courts, rather than to commissions.^[12] Statistics aside, however, no one would dispute that juvenile crime reached unprecedented levels during the famine and that homeless children accounted for the lion’s share.

After an improved harvest in 1922, the volume of juvenile offenses moderated by 1923–1924.^[13] But hunger continued to prompt remaining and newly spawned waifs, still far more numerous than in the prewar era, to seize the necessities of life in any way possible. Clearly, the pressing requirement of food (and, to a lesser extent, clothing) underlay most thefts. Autobiographical sketches of street children describe the turn to these crimes prosaically, as a natural feature of their world, requiring no special explanation or justification. Many undertook their first robberies with nerves tingling and even trembling with fright, but before long the forays became routine.^[14] This said, and without refuting the statement that most stole to satisfy basic needs, other motives appeared from time to time. Thefts provided the funds to acquire narcotics, stylish clothes, movie tickets, and similar items well outside the category of necessities. They also served as a form of amusement or adventure—and as a means of proving one’s reliability and prowess to the rest of a gang.^[15]

Many youths did not plunge into crime immediately after landing on the street. Any number of factors contributed to the hesitation, including a lingering inhibition carried over from the society a child had departed, fear of capture and beatings, sufficient earnings produced by begging or petty trade, and lack of experience in the realm of illegal undertakings. On this issue, a study conducted over the period 1925–1928 of more than a thousand “difficult” children concluded that those who had engaged in begging only briefly before moving on to stealing came much more often from urban families than from the peasantry. By the same token, youths who had clung to begging longer revealed a greater tendency to have arrived from the countryside. Other things being equal, the author concluded, a peasant lad’s inexperience with city life made him less likely than a homeless boy of urban background to embrace thievery rapidly.^[16]

Some indigent juveniles, of course, never became criminals, certainly not habitual bandits. But in general, the longer a child remained adrift, the more likely he was to join the corps of petty thieves. Probably a large majority of boys on their own for at least several months supported themselves to a significant extent by stealing.^[17] Aside from level of desperation and tenure on the street, several additional considerations encouraged or retarded the turn to crime. Older children, for example, those at least fourteen years of age, generally took up stealing with less hesitation. Doubtless their greater speed and strength emboldened them, as did, perhaps, the reported adverse relationship between one’s age and begging receipts. Conversely, according to the study just mentioned, youths hampered by physical or mental deficiencies remained beggars longer than their healthier comrades. Finally, whatever a waif’s personal qualities, the sooner he joined a gang, the shorter his path to crime under the tutelage and prodding of the group’s veterans.^[18]

The immediate circumstances that convinced a child to exchange other means of support for thefts varied considerably. Perhaps a beggar or vendor saw his customary flow of coins dry up for a few days or simply tired of the work’s monotony. Maybe he stumbled upon an unexpected opportunity to steal with impunity—goods left temporarily unguarded outside a store or restaurant, for example. Having profited from the chance to acquire far more than he could hope to earn begging or trading, he kept an eye peeled for new openings. In some cases, gambling debts or an introduction to narcotics prompted robberies. So too might a desire for other “luxuries,” such as the better food and clothing enjoyed by experienced thieves.^[19] In any event, when a boy replaced (or supplemented) begging or peddling with stealing, the thefts often bore a relationship to his previous occupation. A former beggar on trains, for instance, might specialize in burglarizing railroad cars and their passengers. Children who made the rounds begging in apartments began sometimes to enter antechambers, communal kitchens, and other rooms surreptitiously, no longer intent on soliciting. Similarly, those accustomed to begging or trading amid crowds in streets and markets recognized opportunities to raid vendors and snatch purses.^[20]

Indeed, few inhabitants of Soviet cities in the 1920s had not heard startled cries to seize small ragged figures darting off with handbags or parcels.^[21] Before long, the image of a waif probably coincided in most minds with that of a petty thief. Unfair though it may have been to regard all street children in this light, persons in crowded public places were well advised to guard their bundles and pockets, especially in the decade’s early years. “More and more often,” an author from Kazan’ observed at this time, “one hears complaints from citizens about the extraordinary boldness and brazenness of juvenile delinquents” working the streets, stations, wharves, and markets of large cities. According to a report from the famine-stricken Crimea, attacks by bands of hungry youths grew so frequent that many women ceased venturing to bazaars without escorts.^[22]

Groups as large as ten to thirty children swooped in lightning fashion on individuals, knocking them down and making off with their purses, bags, or packages. While gangs generally preferred to ambush women and the elderly, even healthy men, stunned by the suddenness of an assault and swarmed over as if by a school of piranhas, found themselves stripped of belongings on occasion. A doctor, strolling through a bazaar in Simferopol’ with another man of substantial height and strength, described the following scene. His friend paused to purchase some bread, while the doctor went on ahead to a cigarette vendor. As he paid for the cigarettes, he noticed a group of children dash by and, a second later, heard a cry.

My companion was literally enveloped by a pile of boys: some hung on his arms; others clambered up his legs, trying to reach a parcel that he held high above him in his hand. The bread had already vanished; they seized it first of all. One lad managed to grab the parcel, which turned out to be a box of cigarette wrappers, and tore it open. The wrappers fell out, but the boys did not pay any further attention to them and dashed off. All of this happened so quickly that I did not have time to run to my companion’s assistance.

As a result of such attacks, officials increased patrols in the bazaars—to which some youths responded by carrying tobacco to throw in the eyes of resolute policemen.^[23] Other reports described boys who waited for passengers to pull out money to pay cab drivers and then made a grab for the funds before dashing off. Even toward the end of the 1920s, back pages of newspapers contained reports of street children surrounding a pedestrian, seizing her purse, handbag, or other possessions, and then scattering. Their familiarity with the neighborhood’s escape routes and hiding places made them difficult to apprehend. If people nearby caught one or more of the culprits, the latter had often managed already to relay the stolen goods to others in the group.^[24]

Rather than rush at their targets or overwhelm them with sheer numbers, many children preferred to steal more discreetly from passing citizens. Hence the legions of young pickpockets in the nation’s cities.^[25] These thieves naturally selected such locations as squares, bazaars, and train stations, where the press of bodies facilitated their probes. One observer watched for an hour as a boy took advantage of the crowds struggling to board trams at a stop near the Sukharevskii Market. Carefully gauging a group’s flow, he reached into pockets just as people grabbed for the rail at the tram’s entrance—and rarely emerged empty-handed. Far to the south, on the busy thoroughfares of Sevastopol’, a visitor noticed many filthy, half-naked street children, their long hair bleached by the sun, worming in and out of the sidewalk traffic. Few paid them attention until a man grabbed at his pocket and turned to pursue one of the boys. Like a rabbit reaching a thicket, the lad darted into the crowd, leaving the victim to gesture in resignation and continue on his way.^[26] Other youths exploited opportunities presented not by the jostling of torsos but by temporary distractions. Street singers, jugglers, contraptions set up in market squares to test one’s strength—anything would do that drew the curious and diverted their attention momentarily from belongings. In the case of inebriated citizens sprawled unconscious outdoors, adroit fingers required no artifice at all to relieve the dormant revelers of boots and other possessions.^[27]

Witnesses noted that some juveniles maneuvered in teams to concoct distractions for their prey. Two children in a market, for example, approached a woman from different directions. One occupied her vigilance by creating the impression that he sought an opening to snatch her basket, while his companion moved in from the side and put his hand in her pocket under the cover of a little board he held.^[28] At a train station, another pair employed a strategy in which one diverted a woman by begging persistently, even tugging her sleeve, despite her threats to call for the police. Meanwhile the other slipped in unnoticed and deftly removed parcels from her basket.^[29] A group of four prowling the Sukharevskii Market concerted their efforts somewhat differently. The lead youth scrutinized a line of shoppers until a promising target caught his eye. He then wormed his way into the densest portion of the line, seeking to position himself to explore the quarry’s pockets. Following this move, his three comrades pushed vigorously into the line behind him, trying to magnify the jostling and thus avail the group’s undertaking. On this occasion, however, their efforts bore no fruit, as the intended victim turned quickly and left.^[30]

After committing thefts of one sort or another, the perpetrators did not always make good their escape. Victims or others nearby managed now and then to seize some of the culprits, and youths so detained did not expect or generally receive mercy. Before ceding a boy to the police, those robbed—and even groups of onlookers—often expressed their exasperation by administering beatings that could leave arms, legs, ribs, jaws, or skulls broken. A survey of the Moscow Labor Home’s residents reported that 85 percent had received drubbings from citizens who apprehended them.^[31] Aleksei P——iaev, the boy whose father’s death in World War I and mother’s mental breakdown lay behind his arrival on the street, carried scars on his head from such batterings. “When you are caught stealing,” he confided, “it is good if they send you straight to the police station. Many people, when they catch you, begin beating you so hard that you go away scarcely alive.”^[32] Even so, hungry juveniles resigned themselves to the blows, a routine feature of their struggle for survival that could not be avoided. A scene in a market square brought this point home to an observer, who marveled at a ravenous lad devouring bread during the course of a thrashing:

I myself saw a boy of about 10–12 years of age reach out, while being beaten with a cane, for a piece of bread already covered with grime and voraciously cram it into his mouth. Blows rained on his back, but the boy, on hands and knees, continued hurriedly to bite off piece after piece so as not to lose the bread. This was near the bread row at the bazaar. Adults—women—gathered around and shouted: “That’s what the scoundrel deserves; beat him some more! We get no peace from these lice.”^[33]

Bantam thieves focused as much attention on street hawkers and market vendors as on pedestrians and shoppers. Most days, a line of petty traders (adults and children) stretched along Moscow’s Strastnoi Boulevard near the statue of Pushkin, where they sold cigarettes, apples, rolls, and the like. From time to time one of their number, sighting a gang bearing down on them at full speed, let out a warning cry, prompting the vendors to gather up their baskets or trays and scamper off in all directions. Encumbered with their wares, they did not always manage to escape. The New York Times correspondent in Moscow was struck by the raids’ explosive nature. “Suddenly there materializes beside you a group of children, seven, ten, and twelve years old. . . . They shuffle together, taking counsel, then swift as swallows make one after another a leap for the counter, grabbing anything, running like the wind.” Such attacks—everyday occurrences early in the 1920s—remained common throughout the decade. Nowhere could waifs expect to find food so accessibly displayed day after day as on street traders’ stands and in the market stalls of any large city.^[34]

Inexperienced juveniles, reduced by their circumstances to desperation, sometimes stalked vendors alone. But traders faced a more serious threat from thieves who struck in groups—occasionally numbering as many as thirty to forty youths—intent on overwhelming an entrepreneur and stripping her (less often his) stand of its goods.^[35] A long-term study of street children in Khar’kov yielded an unusually detailed description of such a raid on a woman selling cigarettes. The group’s leader deployed members with instructions to play one of four roles. Some were to distract the woman by asking about the prices she charged, while others, apparently as another diversion, pretended to look for lost coins nearby. Taking advantage of the opportunity thus created, the remaining participants were either to snatch cigarettes from her stand or seize bags hanging underneath. Once set in motion, however, the plan immediately ran into difficulty. The woman paid no attention to the youths pretending to look for coins and stared instead at the “assault troops” fidgeting nearby. Rather than abort the venture, the group’s leader took matters into his own hands by suddenly shoving the woman into her stand. During the resulting turmoil, those assigned to the task rushed in and grabbed cigarettes and bags.^[36]

Whatever the target, this organized approach typified a large number of thefts carried out by experienced children. One or more often stood watch to warn of approaching danger, especially if the crime involved surreptitious entry of an apartment, warehouse, or other facility. Depending on the undertaking’s nature, a decoy might also be stationed to distract the attention of a policeman, passersby, or owner of the item to be stolen—perhaps by feigning a fit or in the manner just described. Apart from those who actually seized the goods, others frequently positioned themselves in preparation to receive the loot and relay it instantly to a safe hiding place, especially if the group anticipated that the crime would be detected immediately.^[37] These support roles commonly fell to younger or less experienced participants, including a boy who had fled a children’s home in Khar’kov and traveled to Moscow. Youths with whom he became acquainted in a train station introduced him to the Khitrovskii market, where he received lessons in stealing from apartments. As a first step, his friends left him just outside the targeted building, poised to dash away with the stolen goods. Despite the operation’s success (celebrated with a drinking binge), teamwork did not strike him as essential, for he soon attempted a robbery on his own—resulting in a six-month prison sentence. As he headed back to the market following his confinement, he noticed an open door and crept in to steal whatever lay at hand. Once again, prison rather than riches ensued.^[38]

As this impulsive attempt indicated, not all raids germinated from careful planning. Sometimes a group simply rushed down the street—“like a pack of young wolves,” according to an observer in Moscow—with one member or another snatching on the run any exposed item that caught his eye in the booths or stands they passed.^[39] On occasion, children undertook these dashes as much for the adventure as for the spoils. In Khar’kov one day, the same leader who planned the attack on the cigarette vendor proposed two options for his followers to consider while loitering outside a movie theater: sneak into the theater or launch a thieving spree. Opting for the latter, the group set out immediately in unorganized fashion down the street, accompanied by a few school children caught up in the excitement of the impending escapade. Descending on the first cigarette trader to appear in their path, they seized some of his cigarettes and his cash box. The money fell out onto the ground, but the band did not break stride to gather it up and sped on, as if to outrun the vendor’s cries. Reaching the end of the street, they grabbed more cigarettes from another tray (at which point the police managed to apprehend two of the youngest, most passive participants) and rounded the corner. This new tack soon brought them upon snack bars, which surrendered a few bottles of mineral water to the passing raiders. As they approached a pharmacy, one of the boldest darted in and, a moment later, leaped out carrying a vessel extracted from a tank of boiling water. The group then made for the sanctuary afforded by back lanes, where they consumed the mineral water before returning to their home street.^[40]

Rather than harry vendors and pedestrians, some children preferred to steal from apartments. To this end they devised a variety of techniques for entering rooms, ranging from picking locks and crawling through windows to masquerading as laundresses or delivery boys.^[41] The strategies often entailed considerable risk, as suggested in the youths’ songs:

	Stealing, too, I learned the practice,
	And to vodka my love did give.
	Among apartments I took up prowling,
	And to prison I went to live.[42]

One night, just such a figure wriggled through an apartment window intending to open the doors for his confederates after the tenants had left in the morning. He wormed into a cupboard to hide until daybreak and soon fell asleep. The scheme collapsed when a resident surprised the unfamiliar lodger and shook him awake in a manner that betrayed no admiration for his dexterity.^[43]

D. Sergeev, who lived in the Gor’ky colony administered for years by Anton Makarenko, described a similarly bold robbery he had earlier attempted. Under night’s cover, he and some friends escaped from achildren’s home and hopped aboard a train that reached Taganrog the next morning. After carousing much of the day in this southern city, just down the line from Rostov-on-the-Don, they decided to break into a dwelling. When darkness fell, the group set to work on the chosen structure and silently removed a window pane. Sergeev climbed inside, threw some linen out to the others, and turned to a dresser in search of money. As he probed for the key, it fell to the floor with a clatter that sent him scrambling for cover behind the piece of furniture. Almost at once a woman appeared with a light and walked around the room, while Sergeev crouched motionless, afraid to breathe. Then she approached another bed to wake a man who arose and noticed the broken window. Alarmed by the discovery, he came over to inspect the dresser, where his startled gaze fell on the intruder. Sergeev made a dash for the window, but the man seized his legs and beat the boy severely before turning him over to the police.^[44]

Warier urchins stole from apartments by reaching inside the outer door for galoshes or a coat. Only as their experience and nerve developed did they penetrate further in search of more valuable items—forays that often took place under the cover of begging. A boy who found the door to an apartment or communal kitchen open, and with no sign of people within, would slip inside. If the occupants or someone in the hall noticed him, he began begging for food or money as if that had been his intent all along.^[45] Aleksei P——iaev stumbled upon this tactic by chance, after escaping from a children’s home. His travels took him through Viatka and Vologda to Moscow’s Iaroslavl’ Station, where hunger or some other motive drove him to beg at a nearby block of apartments. Inside the building, an unattended pair of boots changed his plans. With footwear in hand, he sped away and later resold his plunder in the Sukharevskii Market. Here he chanced upon a boy he had met in Vologda, and the two decided to join forces stealing from apartments in the guise of beggars. For a time, they mainly pilfered Primus stoves—so many, in fact, that Aleksei could not pass the market without middlemen shouting to inquire if he had more stoves to sell.

Before long the boys began to seize anything of value that opportunity presented. Nor did they confine themselves to rooms with doors ajar. Aleksei later offered the following tip on breaking windows to a staff member of a children’s colony: “You smear honey on the glass and break it with a rag. All the splinters will stick to the rag without making any noise.” During the pair’s last successful robbery, in a building near the Arbat, they entered a corridor lined with several locked doors. Scarcely discouraged, the “beggars” broke into four apartments using a piece of iron and a skeleton key without attracting other residents’ attention. Their exploits yielded two large sacks of loot, including men’s suits and a fur coat, which they sold in the Novo-Spasskii Market for more than enough money to outfit themselves with boots, leather jackets, and other clothes well beyond the reach of most street children.^[46]

Thefts from individuals and apartments, while accounting for the majority of robberies committed by homeless juveniles, did not exhaust the list of their targets. They pillaged storage facilities, workshops, and stores—sometimes smashing the glass to reach goods in window displays—and preyed on deliverymen’s vehicles and the carts of peasants bringing food to markets.^[47] Some who obtained work carrying loads at wharves, markets, and similar locations took advantage of opportunities to divert goods to destinations unintended by their employers.^[48] On the railways, precocious thieves stole baggage so frequently that travelers were well advised to close carriage windows as stations neared, however hot the weather. “One day this past summer,” a foreigner recounted, “as the train slowed up for a station, one of my friends saw a ragged little arm insinuate itself into the compartment through the window and gracefully appropriate his valise; four besprizorni fled with the booty, thumbing their noses at the despoiled.”^[49] During the unloading of fruit and vegetables, youths became a common sight in rail yards, maneuvering for opportunities to slink under cars and snatch produce. One boy even bored holes in cars and then filled up bags with the grain that poured out.^[50]

These illegal activities, not to mention the street setting that encompassed every aspect of waifs’ lives, insured contact between them and the underworld of adults. Locations in which children sought refuge often sheltered older vagabonds and criminals as well, thereby serving as schools for newcomers in the occupations and diversions of the street.^[51] Little wonder, then, that numerous groups quickly developed ties with grownups and conducted thefts under their direction.^[52] Many sources told of adolescents living in thieves’ dens, sometimes as camp followers, but frequently as active participants in the bands’ activities.^[53] From a youth’s point of view, membership in an adult gang offered multiple advantages—not the least of which were food, shelter, and protection from threats that menaced one alone on the street.^[54] He in turn performed a variety of tasks to earn his keep. Even a relatively inexperienced boy could soon be trained to stand watch at a lair or during robberies, and children were likewise deployed to observe buildings—in order to determine the residents’ daily schedules, for example—or gather other information.^[55] The underworld also utilized juveniles to spirit away stolen goods and serve as couriers if messages or parcels had to be delivered around town. Purveyors of bootleg liquor and cocaine sometimes marketed their products through street urchins, who might also be instructed to take orders for new deliveries.^[56] Finally, echoing Bill Sikes’s manipulation of Oliver Twist, thieves on occasion dispatched diminutive accomplices through narrow apertures or up drainpipes toward destinations inaccessible to larger bodies.^[57] Lacking Charles Dickens to rescue them, youths who fell in with this company stood the greatest chance of entering adulthood as proficient and habitual criminals.

That prospect appealed to a boy named Alexander as he served a sentence in the Moscow Labor Home. A few years earlier, after the death of his widowed mother, his older brothers had placed him in school, where nothing engaged his interest. Deserting the classroom to romp with street children, he began to commit petty thefts and eventually gravitated into the orbit of an adult criminal. This man, an Estonian who had fled his native land, fed and clothed Alexander and trained him as an assistant. Over a span of two years they succeeded in several large thefts and lived comfortably on the proceeds. But one day Alexander decided his schooling was complete and undertook a robbery alone, without his mentor’s knowledge. Capture and imprisonment were the result, and Alexander expressed regret in the Moscow Labor Home over venturing forth without the master’s guidance. He continued to idealize the Estonian as an “invincible thief” and dreamed of achieving similar standing. The opportunity may have arisen, for the Estonian promised to take him in again upon his release.^[58]

Abandoned children vexed many people around them even when not stealing. To the fastidious eye, their mere appearance represented an affront and caused numerous pens to shudder when describing lice-ridden creatures encountered about town. Caked with grime and clad in filthy garments, their sooty feet often bare or wrapped in newspaper, they inspired revulsion as often as pity. Some wore shoes and clothing of outlandish size, stolen from adults or retrieved from garbage, as a traveler noticed in Batum. There, a boy begging in the train station flopped about inside pants so big that he could pull them over his head. The man who noticed Chainik in Narkompros’s waiting room described the other youths present as “clad just in underwear, blackened by dirt, with rags hanging down to the knees; or barefoot, with the remains of a coat over an otherwise bare body. Some wore sacks in place of outer clothes, with immense galoshes on their feet.”^[59] A sympathetic Konstantin Paustovsky came upon a group in similarly mangy dress:

These jackets obtained from some grown-up man or woman were long, reaching below the knee, with dangling sleeves. Time, dust and dirt had given them a uniformly mouse-grey colour and made them shine as if covered with oil. In the torn and battered pockets of these jackets the besprizorniki kept all their belongings—bits of broken combs, knives, cigarettes, crusts of bread, matches, greasy cards, and bits of dirty bandages. They did not even have shirts, however old or decayed, under their jackets—just their frozen, dirty, greenish-yellow bodies, covered with bleeding streaks which they got from scratching.^[60]

Youths in need of warm clothing donned whatever came to hand, turning themselves into strange spectacles, as when boys sported both men’s and women’s apparel. Pravda described a girl in Moscow wearing meager tatters through which appeared her naked body, bluish from the cold—by itself, scarcely an exceptional sight among the homeless. But on her feet glistened new, fur-trimmed overshoes, evidently stolen. The juxtaposition of these foppish boots with the rest of her attire jarred the eye.^[61]

Such children stood out everywhere—splashing in mud puddles, loitering in public areas, riding on the bumpers of trams, and dashing through crowds, lacing the air with vulgar observations.^[62] Their recreation filled many with the aversion registered by a woman watching a group playing cards on the sidewalk: “Dirty, infested rags hung in shreds over them, and it was difficult to say which looked dirtier and more revolting, the rags or the bare parts of the body that could be seen through the rags.” Before long a stray cat walked by. “Immediately a boy jumped up, threw his cap over its head and began to choke it. A minute later he removed the cap and started on a run, pulling the wretched animal by the tail amid a chorus of screams and oaths.”^[63]

While some citizens might dismiss these antics as mild annoyances at worst, other pastimes of vagrant youths displayed more destructiveness, frequently taking the form of vandalism. “Besprizornye,” one official emphasized, “are the breeding grounds of hooliganism.”^[64] At railroad terminals, on occasion, they broke windows in cars and buildings, showered station personnel and passengers with rocks, and threw objects under passing trains. From the provinces came word that street children in the town of Podol’sk broke windows in the women’s section of the bathhouse on Fridays and Saturdays, its period of operation.^[65] Spiteful waifs also molested pedestrians—tripping passersby, setting dogs on them, staining their coats with various substances, and cutting off women’s braids. In at least a few instances, they abducted other youths and stripped them of their clothing.^[66]

Among the more private indulgences of homeless juveniles, none surpassed the allure of gambling. Cards apparently captured the largest number of enthusiasts across the country, but many other vehicles for betting, such as guessing which side of a thrown coin would land up, enjoyed popularity as well. Aside from children only recently orphaned, most youths whose lives centered on the street—from newspaper vendors and other petty traders to thieves—were well acquainted with games of chance. In the absence of commercially produced playing cards, they manufactured their own by such methods as laminating a few sheets of paper together with glue made from bread, cutting out blank rectangles from this stock, and adding the appropriate designs and numbers.^[67] Some groups even made gambling their full-time occupation and supported themselves for the most part with their win nings. Roaming a city’s seedy districts, they stirred up games with other lads, whom their expertise and trickery often relieved of coins and possessions.^[68]

Passionate gamblers added their clothing to the stakes frequently enough that the appearance of a half-naked child amid a group of urchins could well testify to the youth’s recent setback at cards.^[69] Rather than play for cash or goods—or lacking such items—some elected to gamble for the right to inflict blows of one sort or another on the loser. At the train station in Omsk, a boy nicknamed Baldy (Lysyi) preferred to gamble na volosianku: that is, the winner gained the right to yank out a tuft of hair from the head of the loser. His half-bald head, covered with bloody wounds, suggested that good fortune had not been his steadfast companion.^[70] Card players at the Moscow Labor Home, after losing everything else, occasionally stayed in the game by agreeing to undergo sodomy if their reversals continued. One who lost “himself” in this fashion avoided the penalty by slashing his body with glass splinters to secure admission to a hospital.^[71]

In games demanding the wager of money or goods, youths without either might gamble on credit. They promised to cover any losses with future income generated by begging, trading, or stealing—in some cases an amount requiring several days’ work. Such debts inspired a verse heard among juvenile newspaper vendors in Moscow: “For aces and jacks, I traded all summer” (Za tuza i za valeta, torgoval ia tselo leto).^[72] On occasion, a boy gambled away to others in his group a promise of everything that he could beg or steal the next day (or several days), rather than a fixed amount of money or food.^[73] Those who ran up debts far larger than they could ever hope to pay might be required to perform services desired by creditors. In Odessa, a group of children prowling the streets came upon a cluster of youths singing in public for money. As it happened, one of the performers was deeply in debt to the leader of the first band, a boy named Kolia. Recognizing the debtor, Kolia instructed him to sing for his group, forgiving anywhere from fifty kopecks to one ruble of the debt for each song. Even as his voice grew hoarse, the child acknowledged his obligation and sang on endlessly as ordered.^[74]

Though hardly as popular as gambling, motion pictures also occupied the time of juveniles on their own. Large cities contained numerous movie houses by the 1920s, and these enticed homeless youths along with the rest of the population. To be sure, part of the cinema’s appeal had little to do with the films themselves. The bright lights, nearby vendors of cigarettes and candy, and (in some cases) prostitutes lured street children whose intentions did not include an evening inside the theater. Even those actually seeking to enter the buildings often viewed the facilities as more than purveyors of gripping tales. Cinemas offered shelter from the cold and a dark hall in which other viewers, absorbed in the screen’s story, did not always pay sufficient attention to their pockets and handbags.^[75]

That said, numerous abandoned youths did enjoy the movies. According to reports from several cities, they—like many others then and now—preferred fast-paced adventure films with vivid plots, bold stunts, and exotic settings. Their favorites included several American productions, such as The Mark of Zorro, as well as various Soviet sagas of action and peril, among them The Battleship Potemkin. When asked in an anonymous survey which actor they would most like to emulate, thirty of thirty-three named Americans, with Douglas Fairbanks alone garnering eighteen votes.^[76]

Homeless children seeking to enter cinemas generally faced obstacles. Certain theaters did not admit them—even those with tickets in hand—because of their soiled appearance and no doubt their reputation as thieves. Even at less immaculate movie houses, many waifs did not possess sufficient money for tickets and therefore developed a number of techniques for entering free of charge. Some slipped in past the door attendant by taking advantage of distractions. A few stole tickets purchased by others. On occasion, crowds of juveniles overwhelmed ticket takers and burst into theaters. At least one group pooled their coins to buy a single ticket, enabling a member to enter the building. Once inside, he waited for the lights to dim and then admitted his comrades through a back door. In some neighborhoods, gangs defended “their” cinemas from other groups based along nearby thoroughfares, insisting that only they had the right to sneak into the building in question.^[77]

Among the other diversions pursued by street children, tobacco figured prominently. More than one investigator concluded that “almost all” homeless youths smoked, and this assessment struck close to the mark, at least in the case of those long at large.^[78] Reports from numerous children’s institutions listed anywhere from 50 to 100 percent of the residents as smokers—some of whom had consumed twenty-five to thirty cigarettes per day on the street when only six years old. Efforts to eradicate the practice encountered tenacious resistance and prompted one boy to shout defiantly: “Down with Soviet power, not cigarettes!”^[79] Alcoholic beverages, too, attracted besprizornye (though not in numbers to match tobacco’s devotees).^[80] Despite restrictions on the sale of liquor, juveniles had little difficulty locating willing vendors. Some acquired enough money to purchase comparatively palatable spirits and cigarettes, but most consumed tobacco and alcohol of a sort unlikely to tempt connoisseurs. Unless they could steal alternatives, they made do with makhorka (coarse, acrid tobacco), discarded cigarette butts, home-brewed drinks, or even substitutes such as varnish.^[81]

Investigators who scarcely regarded it a revelation to find urchins familiar with tobacco and alcohol were struck by the number using cocaine, for only a decade earlier few adolescents knew of the drug. The first half of the 1920s witnessed a dramatic change, owing both to the larger supply of cocaine in general and the newly deserted multitudes living in close proximity to dealers and consumers of narcotics.^[82] Thus, forms listing information to be gathered by Juvenile Affairs Commissions incorporated a question on cocaine, and many sources mentioned street children who had acquired the substance.^[83] Some youths tried other narcotics as well, notably opium, morphine, and hashish (especially in Central Asia). But none approached cocaine’s popularity, probably in large part because of its wider availability and ease of use, with no special facilities or equipment required.^[84]

For obvious reasons, precise information is unavailable regarding the number of juveniles introduced to narcotics. In the realm of estimates, a publication of the Commissariat of Health in 1923 mentioned young cocaine users as totaling “in the thousands,” and other sources surmised that 10 to 15 percent of homeless children in large cities consumed drugs (which included heavy drinking).^[85] Among institutions, those stocked with the street’s veterans naturally recorded the highest percentages of these narkomany. A group of doctors investigating three of Moscow’s labor communes in 1924 established that every one of the residents in a compound for the most “difficult” had used cocaine, while no one in the other two facilities gave indication of this experience. The previous year, an examination of juvenile delinquents in the Moscow Labor Home found 28 percent to have taken cocaine (some starting as early as seven to ten years of age), and results from another study published in 1926 put the figure at 85–90 percent.^[86] A boy’s physical appearance alone might advertise his drug habit to investigators. As previously noted, waifs sometimes bestowed telling names on heavy users of cocaine and alcohol—youths whose wasted, shriveled cast stood out even in their rough surroundings.^[87]

Such was the drug’s effect on Grigorii Valentinov. He had parted with his parents in Samara during the famine and traveled to Moscow, where officials placed him in a shelter. After learning from some of the other children how to steal, he escaped.

I began to hang around train stations and markets, looking with dark thieving eyes for something to swipe. When evening comes there is nowhere to sleep. You have to sleep somewhere on the street, on the cold dirty grit. In the morning you get up filthy and go about business. Sometimes, when you are unable to steal anything, you go around hungry, mean, and depressed.

In this way I lived two years—in cold and hunger. One day I went to see some of the guys at the train station. They were snorting some sort of white powder. I asked with surprise what this was. They answered: “This is marafet,” that is, cocaine. They gave me some to take, and I became like a madman, unable to say a word.

From that time on, I began to take cocaine. Whatever I stole went to get cocaine. I took cocaine for two and a half years and became thin and pale, hardly able to walk. Eventually I landed in a clinic and began to recover.^[88]

Cocaine and other narcotics were most readily available in the nation’s principal metropolises, but lesser cities also included drugs among their underworlds’ distractions. A study in 1925 of the links between cocaine and crime ascertained that a “significant number” of the criminals under consideration had first encountered cocaine in the provinces.^[89] Whether in the capitals or far removed, street children were often introduced to cocaine by older thieves and prostitutes. Some hoodlums drew juveniles to their gangs and kept them loyal by periodically supplying the boys with drugs. On occasion, criminals gave doses of cocaine to youths in order to render them less reluctant to perform such harrowing tasks as climbing a drainpipe to enter a second-floor window.^[90] Whoever first acquainted them with narcotics, though, most underage users had to obtain the drugs themselves. As with addicts of other ages and countries, the habit’s expense inspired thefts.^[91]

Cocaine could be purchased in a variety of urban quarters. Large outdoor markets and the lanes around them often proved abundant sources, as did certain bars, cafes, flophouses, restaurants, and theaters. Derelict buildings and labyrinthine alleys of rundown neighborhoods also provided suitable cover for transactions and soon acquired a corresponding reputation. Among the purveyors, newspaper accounts listed several dens operated by Chinese and Koreans, who sold morphine, opium, and cocaine.^[92] Those at home on the street knew of convenient buildings where they could buy cocaine and stay to consume it. A proprietor generally did not charge for use of the room—in which dozens of youths sometimes gathered—making his money instead by selling the drug. In Moscow, a group of formerly homeless boys showed authorities a lair where children (and others) could exchange stolen goods for cocaine. The author of another account visited an urban wasteland of debris, pits, and ramshackle structures, not far from the Sukharevskii Market, where he watched youths and prostitutes purchase cocaine openly. An even brisker trade transpired there at night, he was told, but it would be dangerous to return then for a look.^[93]

In addition to tobacco, alcohol, and cocaine, the street introduced many of its inhabitants to sexual activity without delay. A study in 1925 of ninety-four former waifs in Odessa determined that 40 percent had begun their sex lives by the age of fourteen. Sources are filled with accounts of sexually active children only ten or twelve years old, and some began even earlier. Investigation at an institute for girls (many of them former prostitutes) revealed that 3 percent first had intercourse by the age of seven.^[94] One way or another, abandoned juveniles commonly learned sexual practices from the adults who shared their seedy domain. In this respect, as with underworld jargon and criminal skills, thieves and prostitutes served as tutors readily emulated.^[95] Of course, the first sexual encounters of many youths, especially girls, were entirely involuntary, the product of rape. Those newly on their own fell to the mercy of experienced street children, adult thieves, railway workers, and others, with rape time and again a result.^[96] According to a report presented at a conference on juvenile problems in the summer of 1920, one reason for the extensive sexual experience among a sample of institutionalized girls lay in the long period of warfare the country had just endured. World War I and the Civil War spread large numbers of soldiers as well as refugees throughout the country, and sexual contact between the troops and homeless girls (either as prostitutes or rape victims) was apparently substantial.^[97]

As in attempts to gauge drug use, confidence shuns efforts to estimate the number of sexually active juveniles. No doubt initiation was routine among those long on the street—not just prostitutes, but others who engaged in sex with fellow orphans, adult prostitutes, and thieves. A report that lists fully three-fourths of the Moscow Labor Home’s delinquents as experienced in this regard provides some idea of the practice’s extent among boys accustomed to the underworld. Sexual relations frequently appear to have been casual and fleeting, though a few accounts describe instances of a girl and boy living together, or sometimes one girl and several boys, imitating arrangements chosen by adult thieves and drifters.^[98] A handful of observers noted boys who engaged in sex among themselves—by means of rape, for example, or prostitution within institutions.^[99]

Before long, some sexually active youths contracted venereal diseases, usually syphilis or gonorrhea.^[100] Investigations of children in Khar’kov, Odessa, and Tashkent found that from 4 to 12 percent of the sample (some straight from the street, others by then in institutions) had at least one such disease. These figures may apply accurately to the country as a whole, but the small number (several hundred) involved in the studies renders such a conclusion difficult to embrace with confidence. If this extrapolation proved reasonably accurate, however, it would challenge the conclusion, shared widely in the general population, that waifs as a group were saturated with sexually transmitted diseases.^[101] Among street girls alone, the percentage almost certainly was higher. While here, too, fragmentary data do not permit precise calculations, the numerous girls who worked as prostitutes or suffered rapes doubtless resulted in a larger portion—30 percent of a thousand girls in one study—contracting venereal diseases.^[102] In any case, it seems safe to accept the conclusion of a medical journal in Khar’kov that homeless youths accounted for the lion’s share of juveniles who acquired syphilis through sexual contact. As another author put it in 1921, the surge in the number of boys and girls treated for venereal diseases stemmed directly from the high tide of besprizornye.^[103]

Life as described in the preceding pages naturally left a deep imprint on those who experienced it. Few could endure this existence for long without developing characteristics regarded as undesirable by much of society. To be sure, a big difference existed between a starving village youth, newly arrived in a strange city, and an adolescent tempered by years in the street. The huge contingent of homeless children produced by war and famine struck observers most often as exhausted and helpless, not wicked and perverted. As the years passed, many died, returned to relatives, or entered state institutions. But others remained at large and learned to cope in ways that inclined few to view them as pitiable victims. Similar differences existed among juveniles who replenished their ranks in the middle and later years of the decade. A boy long accustomed to train stations and markets as a result of parental neglect joined the homeless with an outlook far different from that of a child thrown suddenly into the same milieu by unanticipated adversity. Whatever their route to the street, though, the longer they remained there, the more vividly they displayed qualities considered twisted and threatening by society beyond the underworld.^[104]

Some authors argued that the rigors of independent life nurtured certain positive attributes rarely exhibited so prominently by “normal” children. Boys and girls struggling to survive, in other words, allegedly developed impressive resourcefulness, adaptability, boldness, and similar qualities.^[105] No doubt something of the sort did occur, at least among youths not reduced by their plight to illness or apathy. Occasionally, though, the claims went further, suggesting against most evidence that a Spartan life in groups on the street rendered juveniles collectivists at heart, hostile to “bourgeois materialism.” Forced by their harsh environment to work together, the argument went, they developed an unspoiled, cooperative outlook, which social workers were urged to utilize in reclaiming them as part of a new generation of communists.^[106]

For the most part, however, observers acknowledged the obvious: homelessness yielded bitter fruit. Time and again, studies revealed a wide range of personality problems among waifs, ranging from abysmal hygiene habits to severe psychopathic disorders. Reports frequently described veterans among them as emotionally volatile, vengeful, unreliable, disinclined to work, and devoted to any number of underworld vices.^[107] Whatever qualms a Bolshevik might harbor regarding traditional schools, only the most naive could fail to prefer their work over lessons taught in the alleys outside. Anyone who argued that vagrancy helped groom countrymen for socialism betrayed either a fanciful view of street life or an alarming image of the Party’s goal.

Little effort is required to imagine that forsaken youths, miserable in their wretched habitat, clamored for escape into relief institutions. Many certainly did, sometimes besieging government buildings in large numbers to press their desire.^[108] Investigators often discovered groups in whose midst appeared individuals pleading desperately for admittance to already overcrowded facilities.^[109] Nevertheless, such scenes should not obscure the fact that numerous juveniles adjusted to the street in one way or another and displayed no desire to change their way of life. Greater success in begging, crime, or prostitution—not entrance to a school or boarding institution—occupied their concern. A teenage girl, working as a prostitute since the age of thirteen, stated bluntly: “When I have money, I like to take a little cocaine and smoke a bit. I like this life and will never change it.” A twelve-year-old boy, living on his own, declared: “It’s better to live free like this. I eat what I please and don’t starve. It’s cold here, yes, but I like it better than in an orphanage. I can go wherever I please.”^[110] Children rounded up and placed in institutions fled by the thousand and returned to the markets and rails. Many repeated this cycle for years, driven in part by the facilities’ deplorable conditions, but just as powerfully by a desire, as they often put it, “to be free.”^[111]

Out on the street, they typically regarded the society beyond their world with emotions that ran from wariness to loathing. Probably a majority of the population viewed them with much the same feelings—as thieves and degenerates. This produced a chasm between the two camps that appeared in the youths’ songs:

	Spit at me and throw your stones,
	It’s nothing new, I will endure.
	From you I can expect no pity,
	There’s none to help me, I am sure.

Or

	Other kids are treated fondly,
	And from time to time caressed.
	But for me the handling’s cruel,
	I to none at all am blessed.[112]

This animosity flared into view one summer’s day on a Black Sea beach, where several waifs startled a group of sunbathers. Cursing all the while, the children plunged into the waves and then dashed around the beach, splashing water to and fro. People nearby fired verbal abuse and threats at the swirling figures and ordered them to leave. Not the least intimi dated, the newcomers mocked and swore at the bathers, who soon de parted themselves. A witness who recorded the incident recalled most vividly the hatred and contempt that burned in the juveniles’ eyes.^[113]

Nor was this an isolated incident. Time and again, in their actions, interviews, and reminiscences, homeless youths expressed aversion for a surrounding citizenry that represented to them only potential victims or persecutors.^[114] At a station near the Black Sea, a young passenger leaned out of his train car and spat in the face of an adolescent vagabond below. The latter riveted his gaze on the window from which the offense had come and picked up a rock. But at that moment a whistle sounded, and the train lumbered into motion. He slipped back into his spot under the carriage, still clutching the stone and muttering that he would yet pay back the little burzhui. At another station, near Saratov, a peasant recounted to a traveling companion how street children had robbed him on several occasions. Warming to the topic, he promised a thrashing to the next one he caught and punctuated the vow with a menacing gesture out the window to a group of his antagonists standing near the train. They responded with their own threats, assuring him in turn that they would find an opportunity to carry them out.^[115]

Youths such as these did not view stealing as a transgression. Questioned on the point, they responded along the following lines: “Some people have things. We don’t. So why shouldn’t we steal from them?” and “Since I don’t have it, why shouldn’t I take it?” Some did not hesitate to blame their deeds on the callousness of society, in the process abandoning pity for any but themselves. “And now my soul is hardened,” proclaimed one of their songs—a reproach to those whose refusals of assistance had steered many to crime.^[116] An investigator in Saratov described the alienation in stark terms:

People fear the besprizornyi, shun him, sometimes avoid him. And he, this juvenile delinquent, learns early to pay back this cold society in the same coin. Feelings of sympathy for people are removed from him; people become hateful to him. It is a pleasure for him to cause them any sort of unpleasantness. Thus, crime in his eyes amounts to a violation of the laws only of these well fed, clothed, and complacent people—not something to trouble his conscience. Anything may be done when it comes to these alien, hostile people.^[117]

Little wonder, then, that many considered waifs depraved and malignant to an extent that precluded any prospect of rehabilitation. An investigator in Omsk, distressed by the conditions in which children were living in the city’s train station, approached a police official to see if something could be done. The policeman revealed no enthusiasm for the topic and cut short the conversation with an emphatic assessment: “Here’s how it is, comrade. Officially, I have nothing to say to you. Unofficially, my opinion is this: the sooner all your besprizorniki die, the better. I have to deal with them daily, and I tell you sincerely that they are a hopeless bunch, soon to be bandits. And we have enough bandits without them. Is that clear?”^[118] Even the chairman of the Baku Juvenile Affairs Commission—whose organization was entrusted with the very task of placing delinquents on the road to recovery—once remarked: “When all is said and done, you will not make a human being out of a besprizornyi. They are all toughs, thieves, hooligans, and murderers.”^[119] The youths themselves sometimes expressed doubt that they would ever be able to change their ways, even if they so desired. “A thief I have been, and a thief I will remain,” declared one on his dispatch to an institution. Said another to a social worker: “I will put it to you this way, sister. Half of us are such that nothing will work with us now.”^[120] In the face of such pessimistic assessments, the young Soviet government set out not merely to save the besprizornye, but to transform them into builders of a new, communist society.

Notes