102 HUMAN LIFE IN RUSSIA
Her brother was an official there and had recently married.
She stayed with him for several days and had taken food with
her, for the ration in the town was only 500 grammes of maize
every other day. Immediately on her arrival she was struck
by the abnormal appearance of her brother and the absence of
his wife. Upon her insistent inquiries after her sister-in-law
her brother took her by the hand and led her to a dark closet,
where she saw lying on the ground the woman's body, with
clear traces of flesh having been torn away."
We have already pointed out that the children, as the weakest
and least able to resist, were the principal victims of cannibalism.
A few words may be added about the fate of the children in
general, the children who have been the greatest sufferers
from the course of events in the Soviet State.
Now that Moscow has largely succeeded in destroying the
family and family life, the problem of destitute and neglected
children, the so-called bezprizornye, is one of the chief troubles
of the regime. Indeed, it may be claimed that in Russia, more
than in any other country in the world, these suffering and
neglected children form a problem of paramount importance,
a fact which beyond dispute is most closely connected with the
destruction of the family and of religious life. In May 1935
the official Moscow Tass agency published a report to the effect
that the Council of People's Commissaries and the central
committee of the party had adopted a decree "on the removal of
the abuse of neglected and unsupervised children." The decree
blames for the existing state of affairs "the bad work of the
local organs and the lack of interest in the matter of the Soviet
public." As happens so frequently in Russia, the removal of an
abuse was simply undertaken out of hand through a decree.
While the fate of numbers of children, left to their own devices,
perishing in distress and neglect, is typical of Soviet life in
general^ this is particularly true of the famine areas, where there-
are special as well as general causes. The parents have either
died of hunger or have fled in order to escape the famine^ with