[LINK] "Russians do not want to adopt Russian children"

[rfmcdonald]

Writing for Open Democracy, Ekaterina Loushnikova argues that deep-seated cultural and policy inhibitions against adoption in Russia means that children who, before the 2012 Magnitsky law, might have been adopted by foreigners are now languishing.

Irina Onokhina’s family includes, apart from her own two children and five grandchildren, sixteen adopted children. Irina used to be a journalist; she worked for 33 years as a news photographer on ‘Komsomol Flame’ magazine. Her career was going very nicely, when she suddenly decided to change everything: both her profession and her life. ‘I always dreamed of having a large family,’ she told me, ‘but my husband wasn’t keen, and we divorced. Then, when I reached my 48th birthday, I thought: now what? I’d be retiring in a few years [Russian women receive their state pension at 55]; my children are grown up and have their own lives. I’m still in the prime of life, but nobody needs me.’ In 1990, to her colleagues’ amazement, Irina decided to organise a family-type children’s home. She applied to her local council for the necessary permission, but instead of support she met with incomprehension.

‘Communist Party officials came to my home and even my parents’ home, and tried to put me off. “Don’t have anything to do with these children!” they said. “You don’t know what you are letting yourself in for. They’re all disabled and mentally retarded; they steal, smoke, drink and swear! You’ll never cope with them!”

When Irina went to the committee meeting that would decide the matter, she took with her journalist colleagues with cameras and microphones. ‘When we arrived we switched on the tape recorders and set up the mikes, as though we were going to do an article about it. And it actually worked!’

[. . .]

‘It’s not so simple these days. If you want to adopt you need to do a special course, have a medical check-up, collect lots of bits of paper to show that you’re not an alcoholic or a mental case. And then there’s our notorious juvenile justice system – it’s getting so that a parent can’t even give a child a slap or they’ll end up in court! But I think inter-country adoption is a good thing, and I don’t know why they had to ban it. The foreigners mostly used to take kids with disabilities. If our government can’t treat them, why stop other people trying? Ok, so a few bad things happened, but it’s not like they don’t happen here as well. Just take a look at that!’

Irina points to a local news bulletin on the TV. ‘The young girl gave birth in secret, wrapped her baby in a polythene bag and took it out into the cold, where it died of hypothermia,’ says the newsreader in his dispassionate voice. ‘The woman has admitted her guilt and will spend the next four years in a prison camp.’ The screen shows a weeping girl hiding her face from the camera, and the material evidence of her crime – the child’s body in its polythene wrapping –lying on a table. Its life lasted only a few minutes. According to official statistics, a hundred children perish at the hands of their own mothers every year in Russia.