And Now My Soul Is Hardened: Abandoned Children In Soviet Russia, 1918-1930

And Now My Soul Is Hardened: Abandoned Children In Soviet Russia, 1918-1930
by Alan M. Ball

Download Book
(Respecting the intellectual property of others is utmost important to us, we make every effort to make sure we only link to legitimate sites, such as those sites owned by authors and publishers. If you have any questions about these links, please contact us.)

link 1

About Book

Ben Elkof, Slavic Review
"Ball has written a poignant but balanced and perceptive account of these poor street children and of government attempts to devise a coherent response to their existence. . . . In the process, [he] deftly interweaves social and institutional history."

G. E. Snow, Choice
"Ball argues that war and famine played a part in creating the phenomenon of millions of abandoned children in the early Soviet state. However, he also contends that economic and social conditions such as high divorce rates, simple abandonment, and single-parent families fostered by state policies contributed to this situation. . . . The work is completely accessible to specialists and nonspecialists alike."

Book Description
Warfare, epidemics, and famine left millions of Soviet children homeless during the 1920s. Many became beggars, prostitutes, and thieves, and were denizens of both secluded underworld haunts and bustling train stations. Alan Ball's study of these abandoned children examines their lives and the strategies the government used to remove them from the streets lest they threaten plans to mold a new socialist generation. The "rehabilitation" of these youths and the results years later are an important lesson in Soviet history.

About the Author
Alan M. Ball is Associate Professor of History at Marquette University and the author of Russia's Last Capitalists: The Nepmen, 1921-1929 (California, 1987).

Comments

SEND A COMMENT

PLEASE READ: All comments must be approved before appearing in the thread; time and space constraints prevent all comments from appearing. We will only approve comments that are directly related to the article, use appropriate language and are not attacking the comments of others.