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

Alan M. Ball. And Now My Soul Is Hardened: Abandoned Children in Soviet Russia, 1918-1930. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996. xxv, 335 pp. Photographs. Maps. Tables. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $60.00, cloth. $18.95, paper.

During the first decade of Soviet Russia nothing seen in the cities disturbed Russian and foreign observers more than the abandoned children-the besprizornye. The term ["the shelterless"] meant different things to different people. Though virtually every one who wrote on the subject agreed that it included children who had been orphaned, separated from or left behind by their parents, many others, including the author of the entry on besprizorost' …