The problem of Russia's street children has over the last few years become a matter of a serious national and international concern. Compared to 1988, the number of children brought from the streets to special militia reception centers in 1998 doubled. These homes are seen by the authorities as the main solution to the problem of neglected and abandoned children.
Children run away from oppressive and degrading treatment, only to be brought back again and again.
The increase in the numbers of street and homeless children in Russia is a sign of the erosion of the social fabric at its weakest point. Most affected are the families of unskilled manual workers, whose precarious employment status is often made even less secure by alcohol problems and a history of conflict with the law. In Soviet times, such families depended on the state and its paternalistic policies for their economic survival and place in society. Nowadays it is children from such families, plunged into poverty, who find themselves forced, through direct abuse, neglect or economic necessity, to seek their survival in the streets. However, the survey of street children that I conducted in Moscow in 1997-1998 found that, in fact, the children who end up living and working on the street do so because they are searching for strong and reliable social ties, ties that will help their economic survival.