When I was a little girl, I lived in a now infamous part of Tyumen called Lesobaza all over the country. They recently killed eight-year-old Nastya, who lived in my childhood home. There, a short time later, in the hallway of an unheated hostel in the winter, a pizza delivery boy encountered a completely naked three-year-old boy who wanted to leave his sleeping mother and eat.
The same Nastya Muravyova lived with her brother and two sisters, father and grandmother, when her mother left her. Then the father was imprisoned, and the children were given to an orphanage. When the father, who as a man with many children had briefly served for murder, was out, the children were gladly returned to the family: they say it was still better than a state bed. Nastya Muravyova lived with her always cheerful grandmother in the even more depressing district of Mayak. She came to her father for the summer, where she slept with her older sister on a bunk bed, Nastya’s twin sister slept on the balcony, and a neighbor friend came to my father’s side immediately. Everyone was drinking and walking. The area of the Muravyovs’ apartment was … 13 square meters. m.This is combined with a corridor and a bathroom. Bulgarian projects were on the side for Crimean resorts, but in the seventies they decided that it would be a bit crowded for resorts, but just right for Siberian workers. And they began to build them in Tyumen. The corridor system looks eight floors, 286 apartments of 9 and 13 square meters. m, 16 apartments of 30 square meters. m.
When Nastya went for a walk at eight in the morning. Even seven. Then he either came home or he didn’t. No one remembers exactly, dad did not see where Nastya was until the evening. Later, the neighbors said that Nastya ran on the street from morning to evening, so as not to interfere with the room. There are whole floors of such children, fed by caring neighbors. Then the whole country saw that my father even gave interviews to drunks. Then Nastya was found wrapped in several layers of cellophane film … Then the parents were deprived of parental rights to other children and a custody case was opened.
Do you know what the employees of the Tyumen Social Security Department told me specifically? “How can we get it out? Everyone knew, of course. But there are three of them at the same time, three of them in the orphanage? Yes, we were pecked for breaking the statistics, for not giving our father a chance.
In short, my father had luck, Nastya did not …
And every year, children like Nastya are less and less likely to lead a safe life in warmth and satiety. I mean, in the orphanage. I was surprised to learn recently that an almost official doctrine has been adopted in Russia, and that doctrine will soon become law: roughly speaking, children are arrested until their parents sober up. And then, if they don’t knit any bast, there’s wallpapered bare walls in the house, kids beaten to death, and five in a jacket. Family protection course. After the adoption of these changes, the children will be offered to their relatives before they are taken away, the opinions of the children will only be taken into account if this is a temporary measure and will only be asked when confiscated through the courts. from the age of ten. And most importantly, if the children themselves complain! Do not complain? Perfect, the orphanages’ supply stats are intact.
And if a compassionate neighbor complained, do you know what they found in the tutelage in some regions? And they call ahead and warn the supervised mother: “We’re coming on Thursday, we’re going to beat the fridge.” So borrow but buy food. I was told such a story from Chebarkul: two drunks from the same house go to their mutual distant relatives for a meal, when a check comes to them: they literally cram the refrigerator with them, and when the authorities leave, the products are returned. sober stewardess. Once upon a time there was a shortage: hungry children ate borrowed sausage and condensed milk. What did my mom do when the check left? In his own words to a friend, he “whipped them to the bloody snot.”
And the tutelage was satisfied: once a month they go round, their ward is “sober, clean, with food.” In short, he is on the way to recovery. Only somewhere hungry children wipe their bloody snot.
Chebarkul is usually a dead place. There was a tragedy there recently: a young girl disappeared. He was put on the wanted list. Soon, he posted on social networks a video message in which his mother said that he was drinking, swearing, beating teenagers, pouring the work on the girl, leading to drinking friends clinging to the girl. In the video, he added records of mother abuse and bullying of children. The boy survived a physically and morally unbearable life: there are five small children in the family. The girl went to another region to some distant acquaintances. The Police and Children’s Rights Commissioner found him, placed him in a hospital for examination, and then took him to Chelyabinsk, where they began to place him in an orphanage. During the excitement, there were many who wanted to take the girl under guardianship. At the same time, the authorities on local television publicly said that the girl went too far, that this is maximalism, that she is a good mother.
What is guardianship? In a terrible dream, the guardianship saw that six children who should not have been separated were simultaneously transported to the orphanage: what a statistical corruption!
What is authority? He persuaded the girl to return.
What will happen now? Neighbors and relatives of this mother wrote to me. And they said that the mother kept walking, but now she is sitting with her children … the son of a friend, the same schoolboy.
I wrote all this, demanded it, resented it. Another piece of news as I write: a mother in Chebarkul broke the head of her one-year-old child after crying loudly in the hospital. What surprised everyone when they learned that this woman was arrested in May and July for beating the same child?
Why did they wait until they smashed his head? Because that’s how the system works now. It is virtually impossible for children’s ombudsmen to advocate the deportation of a child under the age of four, but they can “ask for control” and “help the family”. Because otherwise, the entire conservative population, from the local main committees to the famous State Duma deputies, will take up arms against them.
For this reason, a course was taken to keep the child in the family at all costs.
You know what I remember besides Lesobaza from the 90’s? I remember that we had at least half a house, like Nastya. And then they had nothing to hope for, because at that time no aunt from any guardianship cared for the children. Yes, and they were afraid of orphanages, it was really a kind of hell for children: hunger, beating, sex slavery, violence … What did children do in such families who could not stand staying at home and could not run? to an orphanage? They ran into the street. The same children from heating mains, abandoned houses, railway stations – they were the same social orphans who are in the majority in orphanages today. They lived on the street for only one reason: They were safer there than at home or an orphanage.
Do the statistics on orphanages worry you? Don’t you want a bit of homelessness? By the way, there are homeless children in America. Did we miss them?
There are wonderful orphanages in Russia today, so to speak. The system has improved a lot. I personally know examples when children want to go to an orphanage. And I even analyzed the situation when a responsible, hardworking single mother went to an orphanage by the joint decision of her son, because my mother has a mortgage, she is hungry, there is no one to take her to school, no additional lessons, there is a chronic lack of money, her father does not pay alimony. All these fighters against orphanages and the PNI explain their thesis with pictures from the 1990-2000s, which have little relevance to current reality. In orphanages, they do not starve, do not beat, do not go there, do not go there, do not scalding the faces of children with hot pans. Children there live in cozy rooms, sometimes with more personal space than in large or poor families. They work, they have circles, departments. If someone is beaten there, these cases are announced in schools in the same way as teachers attack.
We are equal to the West because we have adopted the foster system from it – paid guardians who will now replace parents instead of orphanages. These are people who have agreed to take the child for money. Vacation period and those who have the right to return them to the system. They have the right to have separate refrigerators for their own children and their wards. They can access the child’s savings. This is one of those that dominates the plot of American cinema: a criminal who wandered into foster families as a child.
They are very upset that they destroyed the orphanage system in America.
We managed to preserve almost the best of the USSR: the principle of organizing the care of orphans, as well as the psychiatric care system and health model. Now that we can all read news from other countries, we realize how lucky we are. I read here that the average minimum wait time for an appointment with a doctor in Canada reaches 27 weeks. Maybe they have more technologically advanced medical care out there, but in big cities we get an ultrasound scan in 1-2 weeks. This is the advantage of a well-functioning healthcare model, not the nature of the state.
The opportunity to go to an orphanage was also part of a successful system that was poorly run under the USSR, but it is itself irreplaceable. It seems to me that those who have never met children from families worse than an orphanage are opposed to this.
Have you watched Rolan Bykov’s short film “I will never come here again”? Scary? Highly. And I lived among such children. Then she wrote a book about the environment – called “Mom!!!”. And I certainly know that dysfunctional families need their children to have a safe place to leave their parents forever.
The author expresses his personal opinion, which may not coincide with the editors’ position.