SHELTER COMPANY

MERCY

Nine months before the Russian president called on the country to increase the birth rate, he was given an unexpected honor in the Mari Republic (where he seemed to have never been). It happened after in the dressing room of one of the baths ...

Nine months before the Russian president called on the country to increase the birth rate, he was given an unexpected honor in the Mari Republic (where he seemed to have never been). This happened after a baby wrapped in rags with an uncut umbilical cord was found in the dressing room of one of the baths in the village of Semyonovka. In the Yoshkar-Ola hospital, the baby was first given a surname: Semyonov. Then they chose a name: Andrey. And when it came to patronymic ... Then for some reason they decided that there were no options, and they recorded the baby as Vladimirovich, saying in the local press that this was in honor of President Putin. Otherwise, someone else would have thought that in honor of Zhirinovsky.

Bed under the sun

Tiny Andrei Vladimirovich was treated and transferred to the orphanage. And now, when the child, presumably, found his face, I decided to photograph him for the newspaper. Little whether that? Suddenly, the president will notice and show favor to the baby. “Bibika” will be presented to him, ordered to be given to a good school, and over time, to include citizen Semyonov in some list from United Russia ...

Fortunately, the idea fell through. In the orphanage, I was told that the young woman who abandoned the baby nevertheless repented, found him, proved through the court that she was not a stranger to him, and took him home. Now he has a different surname and a different patronymic. Which? We won't elaborate. What if it coincides with the name of Putin's successor, and we don't need any unnecessary gossip here.

The happiness that has fallen to a baby who has found his own mother is rarely observed in the child's home. Chief physician Nadezhda Mikhailovna Troshina says that there are no more than ten such cases a year. And at the same time (until the fate is determined) 105 children under the age of four are kept here. There are no empty places. On the contrary, it happens that they want to bring someone else, but there is nowhere. A happy childhood sometimes begins with a queue for a state-owned bed.

On the one hand, the birth rate in Mari El is falling, on the other hand, there are more orphans and children without parental care every year. There are already over two thousand of them in the republic (and the population here is only 750 thousand people). They are engaged in as many as three ministries - health, social protection and education. Each has its own institutions: an orphanage, a social shelter "Teply Dom", orphanages and boarding schools. All local reserves and opportunities are being used, and it is hard to imagine what will happen if the birth rate by conscription from above rises sharply. What is there to say about future children? Deal with those who have already been born.

No cookies from parents

It is possible that only those families where children are stuffed with porridge, taught to play the cello and taken to a speech therapist so that they learn to clearly pronounce the word "distributor" are supposed to increase the birth rate. But will those fathers and mothers who do not bathe newborns, but wash them - often without snacks, stay away from the big deal?

In Mari El, they drink, maybe not more than in other regions of Russia, but certainly not less. Drink everything that gurgles. Here is a fresh message: in the Kuzhenersky district, five men were fatally poisoned with technical alcohol at once. These apparently drank without wives, although more and more drinking is family in nature. Children of drinking parents, after deprivation of those parental rights, enter the Warm House. The orphanage opened in 1995 and has nearly doubled in size in ten years. Places are needed, because juvenile vagrants caught at railway stations are also delivered here, here, on the porch, unknown parents leave their children, sometimes two at once.

During our conversation, the director of the Warm House, Alevtina Mikhailovna Sedykh, asked the teacher to bring one of the kids into the office. Ordinary stories ... The father and mother of four-year-old Vova M. have already been deprived of parental rights. With their parents alive, but drinking heavily and, in addition, somewhere missing, Vova and his younger sister wandered around the village for four weeks in search of food. When they examined the house where this family lived, it turned out that not only was there no furniture, but even glass in the windows. There was no floor in the house, which surprised few people. They say this is easily explained: the owners tore off the floorboards, sold and drank. Well, yes, it’s not for nothing that they say: “Drunk in the board”!

And once in the house there was even a TV. This can be judged from the materials of the case. An episode is described there. One evening, the father found that the one and a half year old daughter was behaving noisily and preventing him from watching TV. You can’t go further in your own words, you need to quote further: “He grabbed her by the legs, lifted her above the floor and, holding her upside down, deliberately inflicted at least five blows on various parts of her body with a belt ...”.

And the parents of Vitalik P., before depriving them of their rights, must be found. They left a three-year-old boy with random people and left either to work or to have fun. They have been searched all over the country for a long time, but without success. It is known that they are alive and well. In August, the mother came to the village where she left her son, where she was told that the boy had been sent to an orphanage, and she calmed down.

In the "Warm House" really no one will be lost. Here they feed and teach, there is a swimming pool and a gym. Children are supposed to be kept here for up to six months, but sometimes it takes longer - what can you do with them! From here they can return to their families (which is unlikely), go to a boarding school or an orphanage. Others will quickly take their place. And everything goes to the fact that the shelter will have to be expanded again. Suffice it to say that last year 615 orphans and children left without care (you can hear it - without cookies!) of their parents were identified in the republic. In previous years, the replenishment of local shelters and boarding schools was approximately 500 children.

The Mari Republic is poor and unsettled. According to statistics, 37 percent of its residents in 2005 had incomes below the subsistence level. And often worse than in shelters, children live in families that have not yet collapsed. So, according to the published data of the Ministry of Social Protection of Mari El, 12 thousand children are brought up in the families of the second largest city of Volzhsk, and more than half of them live below the poverty line. This is especially true for families where parents are unemployed. Poverty is not a pie. And what are the calls for increasing the birth rate, when many government programs to improve people's lives turned out to be, if not rattles, then empty shells?