Fostering the Next Generation of Socialists: Patronirovanie in the Fledgling Soviet State

Abstract

This essay traces foster care policies in the SovietUnion, concentrating on the first half of Soviet rule when, due to chaos in the wake of wars, revolutions, and famine, Bolshevikle aders retreated from their original commitment to rearing orphans in public institutions. Although the Bolsheviks considered Russian peasants unsuited for raising socialist citizens, they wound up farming out parentless children to the countryside, if only to relieve pressure on Soviet orphanages. The government made a virtue of this retreat in the 1920s but ceased its propaganda campaign on behalf of foster carewhen reports of child abuse became impossible to ignore. Foster care as a practice persisted, at first because Soviet authorities still needed to wefind places for orphans, but ultimately because they recognized that, as a rule, families provided better homes than institutions. This concession paralleledWestern attitudes to foster care.