HOMELESS CHILDREN IN RUSSIA

Evening Star, Issue 20139, 2 April 1929, Page 10

HOMELESS CHILDREN IN RUSSIA

Count Kokovtzoffj former Finance mid Prime Minister of Russia, has contributed a striking article to tho ‘ Revue dcs Deux_ Monties ’ on the homeless children of his country under the rule of the Soviet. Most of the statistics quoted by hint come from official Bolshevist sources,, states the ‘ Morning Post’s ’ Paris correspondent. Since 1925, when the world learned to its horror that there were in Russia millions of children homeless, nneared for, the prey to every form of disease, vice, and criminal tendency, tho official figures have been reduced to some 300,000. Count Kokovtzolf gives reasons for thinking that the dominution is on paper merely, and that this almost incredible social plague continues with its full force to blight a once-flourishing land. COMMISSAR’S ADMISSION. It was Lunacharsky himself, ilia Commissar for Education, who said, speaking to a conference in November, 1927: “We have new cadres of homeless children created by the social conditions of life to-day.” This admission effectively disposes of the ordinary Soviet pretence that the problem was a heritage of the war. Indeed, anyone who was, like tho present writer, in Russia in 1919 can testify that there was no real class of homeless children then at all. What Lunacharsky said is borne out by the ‘Trud,’ the official organ of tho Bolshevist Trade Unions, which, in an article on April 23, 1927, attributes the majority of cases of homeless children to the children having deserted parents who wore unable to give them food. Parents had no food to give on account of the famines that ravaged Russia in 1921, 1922, 1923, 1924, and were tho direct result of the Soviet economic svstcni. HORDES OF HOMELESS . CHILDREN This is, in Count Kokovtzoffi’s view, also, the chief explanation of the existence of the hordes of homeless children,; The famine of 1921 resulted in between 1,250,000 and 3,000,000 deaths,, and caused a startling outbreak or cannibalism. The famiiies of subsequent years affected severally from eight to twenty million. Partial famines have recurred again since. All that the Soviet Government haa done to cope with the evil is to abolish two excellent private societies for the help of children that were already in existence and to open a number of children’s houses in different places that, according to Lenin's .widow in 1923, were sheltering at tho most 800,000 out of 7,000,000 homeless children. Worse still, these houses, by tho testimony of Bolshevist papers, themselves* are hotbeds of disease, crime, andvkci and are a very emblem of misery., 1