Psychological Support for Refugee Children

Conditions for Conscripts in the Russian Army

Seven Projects approved in June 2004

Seven Projects Approved in November 2004

What Does Your Donation Dollar Buy?

Sergei Sorokin’s Work with Conscientious Objectors

A Typical Monday at Friends House Moscow

Tour: Friends Meeting Friends 2005

Four children are receiving psychotherapy sessions at this center once a week. Two are orphans living with relatives in Moscow. One spends her whole day in her apartment watching after a little brother while her aunt works. Another is a boy with diabetes who lives with his mother, who has cancer, and 2 older siblings, one of whom suffers from a head trauma. In addition, these 4 and another 2 children receive special tutoring because of their learning disabilities. One of these has had severe head trauma, is blind in one eye and rapidly losing the sight in the other eye.

These may not be typical of refugees from Chechnya, but they are not exceptional either. Under the umbrella of Center for Adaptation and Education for Refugees, this small project tests the incoming children to see which are most in need of psychological support. It is hard to imagine that any of the children do not need this support; all of them have lost family, friends and home and suffered as victims in a ghastly war. However, the resources are small and the staff time and space are severely limited.

Ninety percent of the clients are refugees from Chechnya. It is not certain how they learn of the center and its services. There is a website, but most would not have access to this. There are mentions of the center during television programs, there are publications available, and the center has direct contact with the immigration services which may refer some clients. But surely, most of it is by word of mouth.

This project had received funding from the UNHRC. This support ended when the laws in Russia changed to allow children of Chechen refugees to attend public schools. However, being able to attend school is not the same as being able to learn in that environment. Most of these children are years behind their peers in academic skills as well as having behavior problems because of the traumas they have suffered. There are very few services available to them through the normal public schools and other state agencies.

Katya, a volunteer at the center, introduced us to Anna, one of the paid psychologists. Anna puts in 30 hours a month here and, as usual in Russian today, has 2 other jobs besides. One is as the psychologist at a school. She is responsible for 5 classes, each containing 35 children, grades 5 to 9. She works only 2 full days a week. This is an experimental program and is much more time per child than in the typical school. However, it is not nearly what is needed to deal with the severe problems that the refugee children present. Anna’s work in the school is primarily with communication skills and developing self-confidence.

Katya showed us around the claustrophobic quarters: a dark waiting room with benches against the wall holding 7 people waiting to be interviewed; a tiny classroom with 3 stations, each having a computer, a tutor and a pupil; a hallway full of boxes of donated shoes and boots waiting to be sorted and distributed; a storage room, also full of boxes; and a small office. I asked if she would like to serve more clients and she responded, “Where?” It would require an enormous increase in funding to rent larger premises to assist the many refugees that would benefit from these services.

Friends House Moscow supports the work of those who help young men to conscientiously object to military service [see article below on Sergei Sorokin's work]. However, there are many who choose other means to avoid the draft and it is not because of objections to doing violence. It is because of the fear of the violence that will be done to them - by their own fellow soldiers.

The organization Human Rights Watch (HRW) reported on Oct. 20, 2004, that "growing numbers of recruits in the military are dying of injuries inflicted by hazing or [they are] committing suicide." This practice of inhuman and degrading hazing of first year conscripts is known as "the rule of the grandfathers", referring to the second year conscripts.

It is so extensive that HRW chairman for Russia, Alexander Petrov, says, "There are two places in Russia that people die practically on a daily basis: Chechnya and the Army." During the first half of 2004, 25 conscripts died as a result of abuses associated with hazing and 109 servicemen committed suicide - an increase of 38 per cent over the same period last year. The range of abuses includes sexual assult, beatings, pointless servitude, sleep deprivation and confiscation of food, money and personal belongings.

Because of this hazing, thousands of conscripts desert each year. Many parents devise ways to protect their children from the draft, if they can afford it, including buying a medical deferment. This is why most of the 800,000 conscripts (the bulk of the Military forces) come from poorer families. The Defense Minister describes one group of conscripts as a "pathetic lot, afflicted with drug addiction, psychological problems and malnutrition."

Although the courts heard about 3,500 cases of abuse in 2003 and there were 3,400 convictions including 500 officers, there does not seem to be any decrease in the rate of abuse. The Defense Ministry reported that "a fourth of the soldiers in the North Caucasus receive injuries inflicted by colleagues during bullying."

We are hopeful that the FHM sponsored AVP trainings will decrease this abuse, but the problem is deeply embedded in the miltary structure and conditions.

[Information and quotes were taken from an article in the English language newspaper Moscow Times: "Report Slams Hazing in the Military" by Valery Dzutsev, printed October 21, 2004. This newspaper is available online.]

1. Alternatives to Violence Project (AVP) Moscow region: 4 months

AVP Moscow will hold four basic seminars, two advanced seminars and two T4T seminars in regions of Moscow with students at schools, colleges and universities, soldiers, prisoners, social workers and society at large. There will be seminars of various levels in different regions including four one-day seminars and four seminars for facilitators. This project will also print twenty additional manuals, edit the translation of the Pendle Hill booklet 'Nonviolence and Community', publish it and put it on the website, meet with representatives of various organisations to hold a presentation on AVP, hold presentation training, coordinate with other organisations which hold seminars in the same spirit as AVP, and update and add material on the website. $2,105

2. AVP in Ingushetia: one month

Hold three second-level seminars for approximately 75 youths from sixteen to thirty. Many of these are students. The participants of the seminars will be young people from the three republics of Chechnya, Ingushetia and North Ossetia where the existence of stereotypes and the lack of understanding between the youths of the three republics lead to violence. $1,135

3. Computer Classes for Children at a Molokan Community: 6 months

The problem concerns a settlement of Molokans, who are there having been forced to migrate. The settlement is isolated especially in winter. In the community there are poor standards of communication, only one phone line installed a year ago, but people need to study and be supported. This project will repair the house where the computer centre will be, lay a 550 m long cable connecting the computers in the settlement, buy computers, organise the internet connection, buy educational software and hold computer educational courses for the children of the Beryozovka settlement, Kamensk region. $2,588 (Villager members will raise in equal amount from the sale of the harvest.)

4. Works of Tolstoy: one year

There is a lack of information about the spiritual heritage of Tolstoy. This project will acquire sets of 'The Works of Tolstoy' (a collection of work by Tolstoy previously banned in the USSR) as well as Quaker literature, make informative visits to libraries in various regions of Russia, write letters to Russian libraries about the project and distribute the sets of work to interested libraries. $720 (The request was for the purchase of 90 sets but we have authorized funds to buy 10 sets. Other funds may be available pending the report on this first effort.)

5. Civil and Social Activism among Chechen Youths: 3 months

There is a very low level of civil and social activism among youths in Chechnya and a feeling of hopelessness among young people. This project is designed for twenty Chechen youths from eighteen to twenty-eight, who have previously never participated in any NGO activity. It will hold one introductory and one first-level course of the School of Social Creativity - The Startline Course in Nazran, Ingushetia. Leaders will meet with the participants of the programme and with Chechens in other cities which have used this programme to discuss the prospects of further development and to see if it is possible to adapt the programme so that it better reflects the reality in the North Caucasus. $1175

6. Relaxation - Raduga: one month

Fifteen disabled children and their parents will rest in an ecologically clean place in the Kostroma region. Trips, sporting events, excursions will be held, as well as lessons on the ecology of flora. The staff will include two tutors, a biological-ecologist, a sports teacher, a cook and four volunteers. $550 [For more information on Raduga see the article in Issue #15 online.]

7. MMM funds to rent premises:

This expense has been added to the general budget of FHM. There will no longer need to be the formal procedure of applying each term. Moscow MM is contributing an increasing amount to this cost and this is reported to FHM regularly. $650 per year.

1. AVP Moscow region: 4 months

During this period, AVP Moscow will hold: four basic seminars, two advanced seminars and two T4T seminars; eight days worth of one-day and basic seminars with soldiers; four one-day seminars; and four seminars for facilitators. They will also add psychological literature to libraries, hold presentational training sessions, work with other organisations taking part in round-table conferences, and update and add new material to the AVP website. $2316

2. AVP Dzerzhinsk: 6 months

There will be six AVP seminars for students in Dzerzhinsk (in the Nizhni-Novgorod region) for seventy-five young people. $1350

3. AVP in Lipetsk: 4 months

Three basic seminars, two advanced seminars, one one-day seminar and three T4T seminars will be held with unemployed people, school children, students at college and university, soldiers, prisoners and ex-prisoners, social workers and the society at large. The goals are to decrease violence in society and to develop AVP in Lipetsk and the region - to bring in new facilitators, increase the number of participants in AVP seminars and improve the qualifications of the facilitators. $1118

4. Women's Crisis Centre 'Rebirth" and Hotline: one year

The work of the centre (in Gatchina in the Leningrad region), in particular the ‘hotline’ and the support groups, have shown that this service helps many women to feel that they are not alone in their misery, that there are people who want to and are able to help them. They also provide private consultations as well as accompanying women to a doctor or lawyer. Goals include: search for new sources of resources and grants; find lawyers to give free legal consultations at the centre; hold seminars on the theme of ‘Alternatives to Violence’; train volunteers by means of seminars and other teaching methods; cultivate methods to help rehabilitate women; and create a stable organisation to help women to realise that they are not without rights and that they themselves must, and are able to, protect their rights as a full member of society. $ 3002

5. Praktika - Career Advice at Big Change: 8 months

Graduates of orphanages have a low level of education and this creates problems for them in the job market. Goals (working with thirty to thirty-five graduates from Moscow orphanages) include: to inform about different job opportunities; to find out the interests, opportunities and abilities of the students; to give help in choosing a profession; to help in meeting with representatives of their chosen professions; to help find educational establishments where they can continue to study, to hold training sessions to develop students’ skills to present themselves; and to take part in interviews and introduce them to technical means to find a job. $1440

6. Help - Raduga: 2 months

This project will: hold workshops with children on ecology and handicrafts; take the children on excursions; work with parents to create a family "ecology club"; and hold classes on ecology and psychology to overcome stressful conditions. A specially trained teacher, a biologist, an ecologist, volunteers and a speech therapist trained in working with disabled children will run the activities for the children. The parents will also work in the family club sharing different tasks. $620

7. Rehabilitation for Former Prisoners: 4 months

There is a very high level of the recidivism in the Perm region in northern Russia. Lawyers and psychologists will hold seventeen study sessions with about one hundred people, who have been released from prison and have psychological and bureaucratic problems and need rehabilitation help. If people overcome psychological complexes and solve bureaucratic problems after being released from prison, they most likely won’t commit a crime again. This will help save not only these people but also the potential victims. $340.

Three times a year the Executive Committee meets to read, discuss and approve or reject proposals for projects (see previous articles). Each application includes a detailed budget for expenses. The following items come from these budgets in 2004. These are just examples of how your donation dollars are spent. You may wish to consider your donation as paying for one of these specific items, but all donations, unless earmarked for a specific purpose, go into our general fund.

• Salary for 10 hours work as director of Gatchina Women's Crisis Center = $4
• Reprint AVP manuals (to distribute at trainings) = $10 each
• Internet and email costs for one month at Women's Crisis Center = $10
• One set of the Works of Tolstoy = $18
• Transport one AVP facilitator from Moscow to Russian regions = $25
• Salary for 10 hours speech therapist = $28
• Teaching materials for camp for disabled children = $30
• Rent room for Moscow Meeting for Worship for one month = $50
• Transport 3 facilitators to Army barracks for 16 sessions = $66
• Eight months subscription to "Education and Career" for Practika = $80
• Hire biologist, tutor or sports trainer to work with disabled children at camp; 40 hours = $100
• Transport one AVP facilitator or participant from Chechnya, Ingushetia or North Ossetia = $110
• Rent space for Women's Crisis Center for one month = $120
• Transport 21 people from Grozny, Chechnya to Nazran, Ingushetia for seminar = $160
• One lawyer and 2 psychologists to do 17 seminars each with former prisoners = $170
• Overnight stay for 20 persons for 3 days of AVP trainings = $400

From November 4 to 6, Friends House Moscow sponsored a workshop in Elektrostal. The intention was to teach Russian peace and human rights workers, people who often collaborate with Friends House staff, something about the religious basis of Quaker activism. Of the more than thirty participants, about twenty-five were Russian or from the former Soviet Republics. Nine were British and American Friends who in the end did most of the learning, including some soberly illuminating parallels in how both Russians and Americans are now living through the collapse of their Cold War empires.

One of the conference participants was Sergei Sorokin, who may well be Russia's first draft counselor. In Russia, as in the United States, the military is intensifying recruitment efforts in schools. As in the United States, the government is saving money by relying more on reserves, who are given less and less expensive training and equipment, allowing both of our governments to continue to make war and now to save money at the same time. Privatization is also occurring in Russia, although the practice of some Russian unit commanders of hiring out soldiers to build mansions and as hit men is considerably less sanctioned than our use of private "contractors" in Iraq.

Russia has a universal draft for males. However, under the new post-communist Constitution, citizens also have the right to refuse to bear arms, claiming alternative service on religious or philosophical grounds. Very few Russians know that they have this right, or how to exercise it. Bad faith in the government is so ingrained that many young men fear to write the letter necessary to claim their exemptions. Many simply run away. One young man, formerly an intern at Friends House, spent three years living in a tent in a national wilderness park, hoping to avoid conscription.

Sergei Sorokin’s calling is, as he said, to "persuade them to write that letter.”

His first client was his own son, who turned 18 in 1992 and filed an appeal for alternative service. At the time there was almost no precedent for how Russia's new laws should be applied. The Sorokins were supported in the appeal process by a British Friend, Peter Jarman, whom they met at a conference on the rights of conscientious objectors. As a result of his dialogue with Sergei Sorokin, the court prosecutor refused to pursue the appeal as a criminal matter. The son's petition for alternative service was granted. Now some years later, his father describes him as a "motorcycle pilgrim," a young man who is planning to go next summer, by motorcycle, to India - through Iraq.

At his meetings with the young men he advises, Sergei Sorokin can thus speak with the genuine authority that experience gives, saying, as he does, "My son did this."

Many of the first appeals Sorokin supported were in fact treated as criminal proceedings by Russian courts. Two of the young men he first counseled were not only in prison, but had the unhappy distinction of being on Amnesty International's list of political prisoners. One, Oleg, was in the hospital as the result of treatment by prison officials trying to break him. The young man's mother was an attender at what later became Moscow Monthly Meeting. She met Sorokin not, as one would expect, at the Meeting, but sought him out after hearing a strangely providential advertising message on the hospital ward radio, a spot announcement for a conference. The young man knew little of his family's and Sorokin's efforts on his behalf, meeting Sorokin only in court when the petition for alternative service was at last accepted. Sorokin spoke to us with admiration of how, in his isolation, apparently if not really alone, "Oleg stayed faithful."

Sergei Sorokin estimates that he has made more than forty appearances in criminal court and more than three hundred in civil court. Such court appearances are not needed so often today, as Russian courts have become more familiar with the new statutes and as local governments have warmed to the idea of alternative service. Russians see C.O. work like teaching school in impoverished and isolated villages, repairing playground equipment, tending patients in mental hospitals as like what the Komsomols used to do. Komsomols were members of the Communist Party's youth organization, who regularly performed public service. Thus Communism, in a reversal that restores one's faith in human unpredictability, one as good as any of Dostoevsky's wilder plot devices, may have plowed the ground for conscientious objection in Russia.

Russian responses to war and military service are perceptibly those of another culture, that is, human, both like our own and incomprehensibly different. Friends House Moscow is near one of Moscow's busiest train stations, Kursk Station. Many conscripts pass through the station and its satellite metro stop. Russians don't seem to experience any adrenaline surge of patriotic pride as the young men in their fatigues march by. Instead, they sigh, murmuring, "Poor boys, poor boys."

One of the most powerful political forces in the country is The Committee of Mothers of Soldiers, not a pacifist organization, but an advocacy group for soldiers and their families formed almost twenty years ago during the catastrophic war in Afghanistan. The committee is currently going through the Byzantine legal rituals necessary to register as a new political party in Russia.

Sorokin is presently most concerned with the plight of young men in the reserves. He has been meeting with reservists, who, like conscripts, can legally claim alternative service, even while on active duty. He is also holding workshops called "The School for Pacifism" at the Andrei Sakharov Museum of Human Rights in Moscow. The museum is an extraordinary institution. It is both an archive of Stalin's terror and a venue for political education. This fall it held a memorial exhibition to the dead of terrorism and of the war in Chechnya. Given the fear, rage and reaction that followed the killing of child hostages at the Beslan school, it was a risky project. A display of photographs depicted Russians, Chechens, soldiers, civilians, hostages, refugees, men, women, children, the living, the dead. All the images were unified by a transforming curatorial device. Each picture, each subject, was identified by the same repeated caption, "Hostage" - a hostage to war. Now that Communism, with its claims to have transcended history, to have wrapped it all up, is dead, here comes history resurrected, unwrapping itself, striding out of theory's tomb. It's not over yet.

Monday morning and it is a typical start to the working week at Friends' House Moscow (FHM): a phone call at 8:30 am. Technically, the working day doesn't start until 10 am, but this does not stop people ringing at all times of the day, even on occasion at 11:30 pm. This time it is a call from an applicant enquiring as to whether the executive committee has decided to fund her project or not.

It is a busy time at FHM since the executive committee is meeting in two weeks to discuss and accept or refuse project applications. Therefore there is a lot which needs to be prepared; all the project applications must be translated into English, invitations must be organised for non-Russian members of the Executive Committee so that they can apply for a visa to come to Moscow, and places for the members to stay must be organized.

The first task of the day is to check our email. It is a usual batch of emails: reports from project organisers telling us what the projects have done this month; a request from the organiser running a project in Pskov on educating people on the alternatives to military service, asking that we put her in touch with the organiser of the Alternatives to Violence Project in Moscow and to send her more information on AVP; letters from members of the Executive Committee discussing what shall be on the agenda at the forthcoming meeting; a note from a seeker from the Ukraine asking us to send him information about Quakerism; and an email from a Friend in India wishing to visit us when she is in Moscow. Friends writing to us wishing to visit us at FHM is not at all uncommon though they are usually from the States or Britain.

Every Monday morning we hold a staff meeting. Currently at FHM [June 2004] there are three members of staff - two Russians, Galina Orlova and Sergei Grushko, and one British intern, Mark O'Neill. The staff meetings start with silence and then we have the opportunity to reflect our feelings of the past week, to discuss what happened and then to discuss the plans for the current week. The majority of the time at this week's meeting is taken up with discussing preparations for the Executive Committee meeting, how many applications have we received, what has been translated and what still needs to be translated. We also discuss what material we will write in our monthly staff report which we send to the members of FHM's governing board, informing them of FHM's activities.

Currently we have received various project applications, among them a project to hold AVP seminars in Ingushetia, a project to take disabled children to the countryside and a project to set up a sewing workshop to help Chechen refugees. At the end of the week these applications must be translated and sent to the board members, so they can read them beforehand and submit any questions so we in Moscow have time to talk with the organisers and prepare answers for the Executive Committee meeting.

After the meeting, Galina starts preparing for the spiritual session she holds every second Tuesday at FHM, this time translating an article from Quaker Monthly into Russian to be discussed by the group. Sergei continues working on categorising the books in our library which we have accumulated over the years and on updating our website. Mark continues translating the applications and current project reports for the Executive Committee.

We receive a phone call from Tatyana Alekseyeva, the leader of a Molokan community, asking if there were any questions from the board about her proposed project to set up a computer class at the community and to lay a wire which will mean that the small community in the countryside will no longer be so isolated. We submitted this application early to the board, so that we can inform her of any questions earlier as it is so difficult to make contact with the isolated community.

A trip to the post office this afternoon is also required to send Quaker literature, which has been translated into Russian, to a seeker in Novgorod region. Not only does this mean venturing out in the Moscow rain and in nine degrees [9C ≈ 48F], although it is already June; a visit to a post office in Moscow is never as simple as it seems. It is typical to stand in a queue for over an hour, only to be told you have the wrong window or for the window to close for them to "receive arriving mail" just as you reach it. If you do manage to get the correct window and to get there before the sporadic tea breaks, you are more often than not faced with less than a friendly service. Normally Sergei does the post office run, but today it is Mark's turn, an excellent opportunity for him to test his growing skills with the Russian language. After an hour and a half standing in the queue, the books are on their way and there was even a smile from the woman behind the desk - a very successful visit indeed.

The first guest of many in the week arrives in the afternoon - Boris Zolotov, a Tolstoyan who wishes to submit a project application at the June Executive Committee meeting to set up a centre to house the works of Tolstoy as well as Quaker literature. Over tea and biscuits we discuss with him his proposed project and help him to fill in the application form. Since many projects we fund are run by small groups of determined individuals this assistance is often necessary as they have no experience in filling in application forms.

Six o'clock arrives and it is the end of the working day and Galina heads home; Mark and Sergei both are residents at FHM. We receive another guest after the working day is over. Greg Ferguson, an American Quaker living in Russia, arrives to say goodbye to us as he is returning home after several years living in Moscow. Since our mission here is to provide a Quaker presence in Russia, our door is always open to any guest and our phone is always on the hook.

Sign up soon if interested. The visa process takes a long time and it and payment must be completed by early 2005.