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Eyewitness: Russia - a child's eye view

Sasha and Igor set up their stall at seven in the morning - there's stiff adult competition in the computer games end of the market and, unless they're early, they don't get a look in.

At 14, they run their own stall and keep the profits. A few stalls along, Andrei isn't so lucky - he works for a 16-year-old who pays him 50 cents a day. But Andrei hasn't much choice.

"My mother works in a bread factory, she doesn't make enough money so I have to work as well," he said.

A recent report by the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions says that of the 28 million children in Russia, 6 million are not enrolled at school but are forced to work to feed themselves or their families as the country suffers the consequences of economic collapse.

Begging booming

Samara is a typical provincial city with problems no worse than any other - certainly the poverty and crime rates don't compare with Moscow or St Petersburg.

But its very normality illustrates how the collapse of a system which offered jobs for life and social security is having devastating effects on children, everywhere.

As in any Russian city, by mid morning its churches and cemeteries are busy - they're the traditional begging grounds for war veterans and widows, only these days the professional beggars are getting much younger.

Eleven and nine-year-old Masha and Misha say they have to beg because their parents are ill. Fourteen-year-old Vlodya says: "Of course my parents know I'm here - they told me to come!"

I ask another boy, Yuri, to take me home - when the children say their parents are "ill", it's often a euphemism for alcoholism which the main reason so many children are on the streets today.

Since the collapse of the rouble last year, they all beg - only the seven year old says with pride that she goes to school - but looking at her older, glue-sniffing sister, one wonders for how long.

Petrol wars

Turn up at a petrol station after school in Russia today, and you're likely to be served by children.

Though these children do go to school they work afterwards. Here the 16-year-old is in charge - he says he only works for cigarettes and sweets - his 12-year-old staff are more desperate.

And it can get dangerous - there are frequent battles between rival petrol station gangs - an 11-year-old boy was recently doused with petrol and set alight.

But work like selling, begging or working at garages appears benign compared to some of the criminal activity which more children in Russia are being forced to turn to as the economic situation here worsens.

Drug dealers

They like to tell you that in the old Soviet Union there was no crime.

No-one believes that, but crime among children was rare.

In the last two years, the number of offences committed by under 16 year olds has increased from 2% to 10%.

A lot of the children here are serving six to eight-year prison sentences based on drug-related charges - they say that in Russia today, children can't escape the drug dealers.

Nowadays, they start as young as 7 years old. Before it was 20 year olds, then they wouldn't let the younger kids get a look in. It's out of control.

Working the streets

Children scooped off the streets by police all tell the same story - they've had rows or been beaten up by alcoholic parents; they've run away from home and are now living by begging and stealing. They're locked up behind bars at night - it's to protect them from their elders, I'm told.

Meeting 14-year-old Tanya, you understand why. She started working for a pimp a year ago. Wasn't it difficult at the beginning?

"No, not at all. I mean, you can get the clients easily enough. You just stand on the street, there are lots of other girls doing it. Lots of men drive past and then they take you somewhere, you do it and they give you money. No, it's not difficult to find someone to pay you to sleep with them.

"I was never threatened, exactly, but they wear you out with the sex, though, you know what I mean? For example we'd go to a steam bath and there wouldn't be just one man, like we'd agreed, but lots of them. And they'd just come up to me - they wouldn't even ask, they'd just do it."

Tanya then said she had to go - it was eight o'clock and time for work.

Relevant Stories

Saving the 'big rouble hunters' (22 May 99 | From Our Own Correspondent)
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Internet Links

Samara
Samara Region
Unicef report: Children in Russia
International Confederation of Free Trade Unions

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