Orphans in the Soviet Union

At certain periods the Soviet state had to deal with large numbers of orphans and other kinds of street children — due to a number of turmoils in the history of the country from its very beginnings. Major contributors to the population of orphans and otherwise homeless children included World War I (1914–1918), the October Revolution of November 1917 followed by the Russian Civil War (1917–1922), famines of 1921–1922 and of 1932–1933, political repression, forced migrations, and the Soviet-German War theatre (1941–1945) of World War II. == Abandoned children, 1918–1930 == By the early 1920s, Russia was home to millions of orphaned and abandoned children, collectively described in Russian as besprizornye, besprizorniki (literally "unattended").

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