God gave my dear friend B. seven children: three boys and four girls. The eldest boy and girl are already living on their own and have even given birth to three grandchildren for B. in total. The younger ones, plus B. himself, plus his wife and – quite often – his village mother-in-law, a reliable helper, lived until recently, when the Moscow government gave them money for a new apartment, in cramped conditions, namely – in a small two-room apartment. When the youngest girl was born, she and her mother occupied the smaller room where B. himself and his two sons usually lived; the men moved to sleep on the floor in the hallway for a whole year. Their kitchen is so small that there is no room to sleep there.

It was not without reason that the Bolsheviks did not like this institution: a healthy family, especially one with many children, does not allow destructive ideas to run wild.

Well, B. doesn't always have much in his fridge. As he says with a laugh: "We don't even need a fridge: you buy something and it all gets eaten right away!"

B. works as a school teacher for money and also deals with books, publishes philosophical literature; he barely makes a living. He is a philosopher by education and vocation, he would also need a workplace, so now he is counting on winning a corner in his new apartment for a desk with a computer.

The patriarchate took care of housing for another friend of mine, Father A. – he recently moved with his six children from a three-room apartment to a five-room one. Here it is necessary to understand that Father A. has a small church consecrated at home, so one room is always occupied, it is impossible to live there. The priests’ sons are well-satisfied, well-fed, clothed, and have a car; but they live, formally speaking, on alms – because every priest lives on donations from parishioners.

These two families have one remarkable quality in common: they are almost never sad. It must be because they are always busy - you just have to turn around. Scandals, of course, happen, and regularly, and quite loudly - but everyone makes peace quickly: mutual dependence does not allow them to hold a grudge for long.

Now the question is: are the children in these two families – according to the law on social patronage, which passed its first reading in the Duma – in a “socially dangerous situation”? Shouldn’t they be given “social-pedagogical, medical-psychological assistance, assistance in raising, developing, implementing and protecting the rights of minors”? The answer depends, naturally, on what is meant by “socially dangerous situation”; if we consider sleeping on the floor in the hallway or living off donations as such – and why not? – then it’s clearly time to protect the rights of minors. That is, take them to an orphanage.

I have a cynical version of why such a law was created at all. I think it is because the state allocates a lot of money to support orphans and children in social danger – something like 250 thousand rubles a year per child. And the state guardianship system would like more of this money, but the social part of the budget, as we know, is not growing, but rather is even decreasing. So we need to provide funding for children who have not yet been saved from social danger – even if in the end no one is saved.

There is another version, which can be called both conspiracy and eschatological. For some reason (one can even guess why), the modern Russian government needed, like the godless Bolsheviks once did, to get into the most important part of Russian society, exhausted by history, into that little that still lives courageously – into healthy families. It was not for nothing that the Bolsheviks did not like this institution and wanted its demise: a healthy family, especially one with many children, does not allow destructive ideas to run wild, preserves traditions and raises (well, not always, unfortunately) strong and independent people.

God forbid we lose them, right?

Kiril Kharatyan: A Spit in the Future