ABSTRACT
Not since the tumultuous 1920s have the children of Russia and the former Soviet Union suffered so terribly from the political turmoil of their time. Following the Bolshevik Revolution and the Russian Civil War, an estimated seven million children whose parents were either dead or missing roamed the former Russian empire searching for food and shelter. While the situation today is not as dire, estimates from government sources put the number of street children in Russia alone at anywhere between 1 to 4 million. What started out as a trickle of abandoned and runaway children in the early 1990s has turned into a steady flow, especially into major former Soviet cities. The problem is so serious that President Putin recently gave a speech calling for a government response to cope with the national crisis. 1
