"I say: 'Goodnight, Mom', even though she isn't here."

January 5, 2011 12:27 PM

The Children of Leningradsky. A 20 minute short by two Polish directors, Andrzej Celinski and Hanna Polak, nominated for the 2004 Academy Award for Best Documentary, Short Subject. 'Since the fall of the Iron Curtain an estimated four million children have found themselves living on the streets in the former countries of the Soviet Union. In the streets of Moscow alone there are over 30,000 surviving in this manner at the present time. The makers of the documentary film concentrated on a community of homeless children living hand to mouth in the Moscow train station Leningradsky.' Through Liveleak.
posted by VikingSword (8 comments total)

I remember reading about bezprizorni in my Soviet history classes in college. Heartbreaking stuff. I can't remember offhand the articles I read, but here's one from the Atlantic. Russia's had the problem of cities teeming with unwanted children for quite a while.
posted by orrnyereg at 12:39 PM on January 5, 2011

I am, at best, agnostic. I have a lot of trouble believing in the invisible man in the sky, but I'm a big believer in fate. And I won't lie - every night as I put my son to bed I use all my imagination and might to thank whatever power it was that put us together in our warm, loving home.

No child should be living this way, not anywhere in the world. Not in the US, not in Africa, not in Russia, not anywhere.

Hanley Denning was able to make life somewhat better and safer for the kids of Guatemala city when she founded Safe Passage. Somehow, somewhere there must be an angel who can help these children make a safer, warmer, life.
posted by anastasiav at 12:43 PM on January 5, 2011 [1 favorite]

Reminds me of Dog Boy, a great novel that many people had trouble believing but is based in reality.
posted by stbalbach at 1:29 PM on January 5, 2011

Thanks. Here's a slightly longer version on Google Video put up by the authors, without all the liveleak ads.
posted by morizky at 1:54 PM on January 5, 2011 [1 favorite]

(quality seems to be much worse on google, though)
posted by morizky at 1:55 PM on January 5, 2011

Oh, man, I can't watch this anymore, I just can't. I'm going to go sit in my baby girl's room and just watch her sleep for a while.
posted by Slap*Happy at 8:18 PM on January 5, 2011

Coincidentally, I watched this yesterday, about a group of homeless children living in a subway in Romania - it's just heartbreaking.
posted by Wantok at 12:49 AM on January 6, 2011

It popular sport for conservatives to point out the problems of the "evil empire" that is communism but in some ways things were better for the people before the collapse. I wonder how long it will take before holding such a belief isn't a toxic conversation topic.
posted by dgran at 7:31 AM on January 7, 2011