Tech Schools for Russian Orphans: Failing the Grade
Cristi Hillis
Editor’s note:
The present article is excerpted from the author’s 2006 Davidson College senior thesis examining conditions in Russian vocational schools that enroll orphan graduates exclusively. Often referred to as tech schools in English, these professional’noe teknicheskoe uchilishche, or PTUs for short, offer training in such trades as metalworking, woodworking, cooking, and barbering.
In addition to a review of relevant Russian- and English-language literature, Hillis interviewed government officials, PTU directors, PTU dorm caretakers, leaders of charities working with orphans in PTUs, and the students themselves. Written surveys proved less effective than extended, informal discussions with students (thereby gaining their trust). While living in Russia, January to May 2004, the author spent an average of 15 hours per week with students at three tech schools in St. Petersburg and one in Voronezh.
Grim Statistics
According to the Russian Procuracy General, around 15,000 youth “graduate” from the nation’s orphanages annually. Within a few years of graduation, 5,000 of these graduates are unemployed, 6,000 are homeless, 3,000 have criminal records, and 1,500 have committed suicide.1
Interviews with Russian officials confirm these grim statistics. Without exception, directors of all seven PTUs for orphans in St. Petersburg whom I interviewed, as well as the director of the PTU in Voronezh, said that about 10 percent of their students “survive” once they leave the PTUs. The Minister of Education for St. Petersburg, Nikolai Pavlovich Nikolayev, also confirmed the 10 percent “survival” rate. When asked what they meant by the word “survive,” these officials replied that it referred to some minimum level of living: not going into prostitution, not going to prison, not committing suicide, etc.
PTU 116 Firsthand
Editor’s Note: The author’s firsthand description of PTU 116 is representative in the sense that it is neither the best (PTU 90) nor the worst (PTU 35) tech school she examined.
PTU 116, a large, red-brick building, looms over a snowy parking lot on the outskirts of St. Petersburg. A secretary meets me at the door and guides me through long, empty halls with dark brown paneling. The halls smell strongly of stale cigarette smoke; we see no students. Eventually, we reach the door of the PTU director, Yuri Gorkin (not his real name). He invites me in and begins to tell me about the PTU. I hear glowing statements about what he has done for students, even with limited funding. He gives me tea and cookies.
After awhile, I excuse myself to find a bathroom. I wander down the hall until I see a door. Inside, two girls are smoking and smell strongly of body odor. I slip past them but instead of finding a toilet, I find a hole in the ground plastered with a mixture of mud and urine. I hesitate to enter, overwhelmed by the stench. The bare walls provide no sink in which to wash my hands.
Hours later, I leave the PTU and walk around outside, meeting some of the students. Despite the snow, Grisha (not his real name) stands and talks with me, stomping his feet for warmth and rubbing his bare hands. (At PTU 116, students often prefer the freezing outdoors to the crowded, smoky interior corridors.) Grisha speaks of the difference between the orphanage and the PTU.
“In the orphanage, I knew everyone,” he maintained nostalgically. “We were like family. Here, we don’t know each other. We share a room and do not talk. Mostly they will not hurt me, but they do not care. I live my life; they live theirs. Outside, it is different. On the streets, people know you’re an orphan–they see your clothes, your dirty faces, your shifty eyes. Outside, I have to be
really careful. I have to always have one eye open. Outside, people knife you for your money.”
At this point, Grisha’s eyes grow cloudy. “My older brother, Vanya, left the PTU a few years ago, when he was 21. Before he was 22, someone killed him for a few rubles. They found his body in a dumpster. Now I am careful.”
Material Conditions
PTU 116, one of the largest PTUs for orphans in St. Petersburg, houses over 200 students. Here the government meets the physical needs of orphans fairly well. Their clothes, though dirtier and more worn than those of students in PTU 90, are acceptable for the winter. Though Grisha did not have warm boots or gloves, he had a thick winter coat and closed-toe shoes. The meals I ate with PTU 116 students were tasteless and bland (mostly consisting of vegetable soup), but filling. The food they receive is sufficient; students told me that they rarely went to bed on an empty stomach. However, they did resignedly mention that they receive little health care. The few available places are far away and crowded, and the orphans doubted the quality of medical care. The director of PTU 116 suspects that drug use is quite high in his school. Perhaps as a result, the past few years have seen an increasing number of PTU HIV cases.
Issues of Safety, Isolation, and Self-Esteem
The students I spoke with in PTU 116 all felt fairly safe inside. Though some had gotten in scuffles over the past year, few had been seriously injured. Though the students felt safe inside their own dormitories, Grisha suggested that they did not feel safe outside, perhaps because of the neighborhood. As in PTU 90, students at 116 tended to feel lonely and isolated. PTU 116 enrolls orphans from all over St. Petersburg, many having had no previous contact with one another. Grisha’s comments spoke to the difficulties many have in establishing this contact. He also spoke frequently and dejectedly about always having to fight for himself because no one else would: the constant competition for survival–for the largest bowl of soup, the warmest jacket. This competition keeps students always on the defensive, never able to let down their barriers and be vulnerable with each other.
As with PTU 90, students at 116 suffered from a lack of self-esteem, which led them to believe that they cannot succeed in life. When asked about their life dreams and goals, I primarily received answers such as “to have a job where I’ll be able to get by. And maybe have an apartment, even if it is only one room.” Very few, however, felt that they could achieve this goal. In many ways, their negative assessment is probably realistic. For the average Russian, with the housing shortage, getting an apartment can be extremely difficult. Russian government statistics claim that only five percent of families who registered to receive new dwellings in 2004 received those dwellings.2 If the rate is so low for the average Russian, then naturally orphans have an extremely difficult time receiving housing.
Students at 116 come from better orphanages and are considered to have higher intellectual ability than students judged to have less ability who attend poorer PTUs. Therefore, the system in theory offers students at 116 more lucrative professions, such as woodworking and cooking. Though the students here train for jobs that potentially offer average salaries, the orphans still have to combat the same basic problem of wary employers being unwilling to hire them. F
Notes:
1 Kathleen Hunt, Abandoned to the State: Cruelty and Neglect in Russian Orphanages (New York: Human Rights Watch, 1998), 141.
2 Federal State Statistics Service, Provision of Dwellings to Population, http://www.gks.ru/bgd/regl/b05_12/IssWWW.exe/Stg/d000/07-18.htm (accessed 26 March 2006).
Edited excerpts published with permission from Cristi Hillis, “What Do They Need to Survive? Addressing the Needs of Adolescent Russian Orphans,” Senior thesis, Davidson College, 2006.
Editor’s note: The conclusion of this article will be published in the next issue of the East-West Church & Ministry Report.
Edited excerpts published with permission from Cristi Hillis, “What Do They Need to Survive? Addressing the Needs of Adolescent Russian Orphans,” Senior thesis, Davidson College, 2006.
Cristi Hillis is Project Coordinator for the CoMission for Children at Risk.
