“October, 180, - I call the address of the Stavropol taxi driver. “Do you know the Korganov House?”
“Of course, a famous place. Only for a long time nothing has been heard about him, ”the taxi driver replies to me.
According to one version, in 1989, Secretary General Mikhail Gorbachev visited Finland, saw family orphanages there and decided to create something similar in the USSR. For the experiment, Gorbachev chose his native Stavropol Territory. A new type of shelter was commissioned to the tutor of the local orphanage Tatyana Korganova.
According to another version, the idea came from Korganova herself. Under the new institution they singled out a large one-story house, in which local pop lived before the revolution. In 1989, Korganov was settled there with two sons and 18 pupils. For an ordinary family is quite normal, but for this - obviously closely. Therefore, right in the same yard, the state in 1991 begins to build a two-story building - with bedrooms, a dining room, a gym, etc. The moment turned out to be not the most successful - it was possible to turn in a room ready for living by children only in 1996.
Gingerbread house
“This is Mom,” Milerie Korganov takes a large photo in a wooden frame out of the house. ““ And around her is the very first group that was taken in 1989. ” Children anywhere from two to ten years. This is Olga Dobrynin, became a stewardess, now on maternity leave. And this one - in Moscow, teaches dancing. The other is an English teacher. But this tanned find out? Well this is Grisha ... "
- Family photo - the very first group of students of Tatiana Korganova looked like this
- © Alexey Boyarsky / RT
Already a gray-haired 45-year-old Milleri is the middle son of Tatiana Korganova. Native son. There is also an older brother, Arthur, and a younger brother, Yaroslav, adopted at the age of two. Besides them, in the Korganovs' house from 1989 to 2007, another 47 pupils or so-called foster children grew up.
“After my parents died, I went to an orphanage, where Tatiana Vasilyevna was my teacher,” says that same Grisha, already 38 years old, Grigory Pashchenko. “When I was in fourth grade, mother — yes, I call Korganov’s mother — created a family orphanage, to which I was also taken as a member of the very first group. And I was the oldest there. Of course, the difference with the usual orphanage is huge. One thing is the staff who come to work in the morning, leave in the evening, and it is quite another when they constantly live with you like in a family. I think that took place in life only thanks to my mother. After school, he entered the Stavropol Pedagogical Institute at the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics. But at the age of 18 he wrote a statement to the army. Upon his return, he did not study - he went to the construction site. Now I work as a foreman. ”
A little later another girl comes from the photo, Julia Khropal. Already with her two daughters.
“She lived in the house of the Korganovs from eight to 19 years old. Until 1997. They grew like an ordinary family, ”recalls Julia. - "It was just a lot of us, about twenty."
“I remember New Year's meetings. Milerik was dressed up as Santa Claus, and we were waiting for him at the window, when at 12 o'clock we knocked on the door with presents. It was good, ”says Julia.
“We constantly participated in some city events - we performed with songs and dances. Every year we went to the sea. Personally, I went to Moscow. Mom taught us everything - they themselves washed, cleaned, cooked. Sewed. Mom gave me a typewriter - I sewed panties for children. When I left to live on my own, I came here to have a stove for children (Julia did not graduate as a fashion designer, but became a cook. - RT ). We were all here like brothers and sisters. And now we are friends, and Millera is my godfather, ”said the woman.
We are conducting this entire conversation near that very famous house. Quite a neat two-story building with a small courtyard. In front of the facade are several swings, a lawn, a tiny stone-lined round pond and a gazebo. The gates are closed. Once we decorated the huge sign “House of the Korganovs”, we will later find them behind the barn of Milerie.
Milerie himself and other relatives of Tatiana Korganova live as owners in a neighboring one-story house. And in this building since 2008, children no longer exist. As well as there is no more and the famous adoptive Korganov family.
- Milera Korganov keeps a sign that used to hang over the entrance to the family orphanage
- © Alexey Boyarsky / RT
Private education
In addition to the classical orphanage, in Russia there are four more forms of orphans. The most honest and humane is adoption. The child is changing the birth certificate, which includes new parents. They, respectively, receive exactly the same duties and rights as biological mom and dad. Only in this way does a person acquire a real family.
The approximate form is guardianship. It is usually made out by relatives - grandmothers, uncles. Mom or dad called here is strange, but the state allocates a monthly allowance to the guardian. But it is precisely for these benefits that guardians are sometimes registered as guardians.
The so-called adoptive family has nothing to do with adoption. Create it can anyone who has a suitable living space. If the requirements for the adoptive parent are met, the state may give him up to 8 children for upbringing. Pay for this "work" remuneration, as well as benefits for the maintenance of each child. Plus there are benefits, in particular, for payment of utilities. Differences from the family orphanage a bit, but they are important. In a foster family, a “parent” spends both benefits and possible sponsorship money, without reporting to anyone.
Family orphanage - is a public institution. Here, housing, its repair, furnishings, payment of communal - the problem of the state. The teacher receives a salary, and for each - that the state, that private - the penny is obliged to report. As well as for donated toys, furniture and other things.
Not a single family orphanage in today's Russia is no longer there - everyone has re-formed into foster families. So profitable.
And Tatyana Korganova also in the early 2000s was reregistered as a foster family.
Legend with a crack
The problems began in 2004, when Korganov applied to the municipality of Stavropol for permission to privatize a two-story building.
All children registered there - at that time there were 21 - were to become owners. Officials refused. And in order to remove the question forever, they transferred the house from city property to the regional one. Began checking the execution of family law with simultaneous proposals to vacate the premises. A foster family seems to be looking for their own living space, and not to occupy the state one.
“There has already been such a thing,” says Sergey Popov, head of the National Council of the South of Russia. - An orphanage in the forest zone of the city was converted into the residence of the then governor Gajewski. Here and now residence.
Mileria is sure that the battle for the house has undermined the health of the mother. In 2007, she was already so sick that she could no longer take care of children. In the already former House Korganov sent a team of educators from the state orphanage. And in 2008, Tatyana Korganova herself was gone. At about the same time, a crack was found in the wall at the level of the second floor. Children moved to the orphanage. And in the former House of the Korganov, recognized as unfit for habitation, have since tried to deploy various units of the regional Ministry of Education. Now there is an archive listed. But the building has long been empty.
Milerie has been fighting for 11 years to return it to children - he wants to continue the matter of matter, to create a new fostering family in him. But so far to no avail.
“The house sank, it requires very expensive repairs. As for Milery Arkadyevich himself, if he really wanted to create a foster family, he would have done it a long time ago, - Galina Zubkova, the deputy minister of education of the region, wonders. - And then, he was offered other facilities to create a new family orphanage. He did not want.
“You are all here - a mistake of nature”
“Gregory and Julia found another house, before Korganov's illness. Then everything was fine, - says another pupil, Mikhail Androsov. - And then she had an operation on her eyes. Began to walk with glasses. She buried her husband, mother in law. I started to get bogged down on children - it was just another person. ”
Korganova took Misha from the child's house at the age of four. He lived in a foster family under the age of 14, when in 2007, together with the last group, he was transferred to an orphanage. He is now 25 years old, but he is still offended by his mother Tanya.
“We ate like dogs,” from metal bowls. They drank from metal mugs. There was a glass, but we’ll sort it all out ... It wasn’t necessary to forks - only spoons. "
Androsov's words are confirmed by another pupil, who asked not to give his name: “All the best was for her sons and granddaughters, Milerie’s daughters. The best toys brought by sponsors. We were raised with a fist. And she, and Mileria. We were constantly told: they say that all of you here are a mistake of nature. ”
“And when she got sick, we lived with a guilt complex - they said that we were to blame for her illness. We only went to school. We didn’t let out any sections, just take a walk outside the courtyard, ”the source said.
Misha has a more serious claim to Korganova - she did not treat him.
“I was born with cerebral palsy and I was crawling on all fours until I was 16,” says Mikhail. He now moves with the help of a walker. - Tatiana Vasilyevna many times offered to send me to the operation, came from different institutions, Moscow, St. Petersburg. They said: "Take." And she: "No, do not take." I did not want to bother, because it is very troublesome. And if in 2007, when we were handed over to an orphanage, Elena Evgenievna (meaning director of the orphanage N9 Elena Pobeipech. - RT ) would come on September 1, as planned, and not 16 days earlier, then I would not sit in front of you. I was supposed to be transferred to a boarding school for untrained disabled people. There was a certificate that I have no intelligence at all. ”
According to Misha, they did it only thanks to Elena Popepech in 2008. At age 16, an operation was performed in St. Petersburg - since then, he can stand and at least somehow move independently.
“I was then told that everything is very neglected. And if I had had an operation at least eight years earlier, then maybe I would have walked like a healthy one, ”recalls Misha.
Besides him, according to Elena Pobeypech, there was another disabled person - Kolya. He had a hump. And he had an operation to correct the hump only after the transfer to the orphanage.
“Treatment by quota is free. And for everything else, for example, air tickets, we also collected by sponsors, ”Pobeipech recalls. - And the diagnosis of “oligophrenia” Misha was removed. True, he never managed to get a full-fledged secondary education - after all, until the age of 13, he had not been taught almost all the time on the bed. When he was able to walk, he acquired two working specialties: a tailor and a cabinet maker. Take care of the treatment of cerebral palsy in time, but at least just do not register as mentally retarded, you would have already graduated from the university. ”
“We rest in Turkey and practice in England”
“I try not to tell strangers that I work as a director of an orphanage — they still think that we eat children for breakfast,” sighs Elena Pobepech. “Do you want to see what a normal orphanage looks like?”
Of course I want. I see him as a Soviet pioneer camp with chambers on a dozen iron beds. And the boys there must be trimmed under the machine. State institution that take him. In some regions, such barracks still remain. But Stavropol can be considered exemplary - there is only one orphanage for 200 people. And in most of the others - about 30. In the orphanage N9, Pobeipech now has 31 pupils. Nothing to do with the barracks.
A group of five to seven people get something like an apartment: a boys 'bedroom, a girls' bedroom, a living-playroom, and a bathroom. Home furniture. Everything is really very comfortable.
The fact that children are good here can be seen immediately - they are cheerful, liberated, they do not shy away from adults. But of course, this is not a family. No matter how hard teachers try, they are at work.
“Children will only get attached to the teacher, and she once - and went on maternity leave, or even resigned altogether. And we do not live with them - we are leaving for the night, for the weekend, - states Pobeipech. “That's why the state is now striving for the orphanage to be only a temporary shelter before the transfer of the child to a foster family.”
Stavropol Territory wonderfully lucky. As the first family orphanage in the country once appeared here, so now in the village of Derbetovka, 160 km from Stavropol, a unique shelter has been operating since 2012, like from the tale "A Thousand and One Nights." I would not have seen it myself; I would not have believed that such a thing is possible at all.
A small palace for a beautiful wrought fence. Pinnacles, balcony, marble staircase. Reminds boutique hotel. Two hostesses meet us on the threshold - Rosiyat and Patipat. And behind them the crowd dumped the children.
- On the threshold meet two hostesses Rosiyat and Patipat - foster mothers of 16 children
- © Alexey Boyarsky / RT
In total there are 16 children, age - from six to 17 years. Boys and girls, dark and blond. As far as they are lucky, they, I think, do not yet understand. On an area of 2 thousand square meters. meters in gold and marble equipped with the highest standard kitchen, dining room, all sorts of workshops, computer, concert and sports halls, a music studio, even something like a fireplace room, games. Children live in rooms of two. With private bath in each. Just like a real boutique hotel. But the most important thing is that the “gin” who built all this fulfills desires and even whims. The child wants to do wrestling, English, music - please. Coaches and tutors come straight to the palace. Or, for example, the 17-year-old Marina was fascinated by the design of nails, thought to make it their future profession. And on the table in the workshop is already a full set of varnishes and tools.
“Where do you relax in the summer?” - I ask the children, expecting to hear something like neighboring Kislovodsk or Anapa.
“In Turkey,” the joyful choir replied to me.
Immediately it turns out that some of those who learn English, on vacation went to practice in the UK.
- The most comfortable conditions are created for children in the unique shelter
- © Alexey Boyarsky / RT
So who pays for all this? The house was built and completely contained by the Moscow businessman-patron of arts Omar Murtuzaliev. Both he and his wife Uma are natives of Derbetovka. What we see here is a professional foster family. And formally - two families, each with eight children. Patipat and Rosiyat have already raised their own children. And they are happy to work as foster parents. The state allocates them all the required remuneration and benefits. And the difference in expenses is covered by the Murtuzalievs. Just do not think that this fairy tale was created for some “friends” - here children of different nationalities. They are just lucky. Handsomely? Sure. But there is a nuance.
Patiti and Rosiyat children love, hang on them, hug. But they don't call moms: “Aunt Pasha” and “Aunt Rose”. Even those who have never seen their biological mother.
So, no matter how good it is here, no matter how good the “gins” try to create coziness, in a professional foster family, as in the best children's home, real family relationships do not add up.
Profitable invalids
But those who take foster children are not always guided by good intentions.
“Citizens are coming, they want to take the child, and even better than three. They say they love children, but they are primarily interested in remuneration and benefits, ”says Tatiana Loenko, curator of foster families in the Apanasenkovsky district of Stavropol. - And there is, who comes and says honestly: “There is no work. But there is potential - I can give warmth to children. ”
That is, again, in some cases - it is just a form of educational work. The only question is how responsibly and with a soul to her approach. There are stories when foster children are considered simply as some kind of production asset, such as a machine or a cow.
In the Stavropol Territory, accepting eight healthy children in a family receives a monthly remuneration of 40 thousand 420 rubles, if the disabled - 89 thousand 870 rubles. Plus, the allowance for the maintenance of children: 69 thousand 216 rubles. If necessary, you can also spend personal money of pupils - alimony, social pensions, credited to their accounts.
“Sometimes, in plain words, they said that they wanted to take people with disabilities - they pay more for them,” recall the staff of the Stavropol Ministry of Education.
But that's not all. With a properly built strategy, you can establish a good financial support from sponsors. Even if it will be just clothes, toys - already saving public funds.
“Korganova had many sponsors. If Milera gets a building, revives the brand of the House of the Korganovs, then she can also earn good money, his opponents hint to me. - That is why he does not want to create a foster family in any other place. Children alone are of little interest to him. ”
"Misha goes first!"
And nevertheless, the Korganovs' adoptive family for its pupils became really a family. Mutual insults, accusations of parents - that they did not do something, they loved someone more, gave more - all this is also in ordinary families. And mothers often make mistakes, they are far from always deciding on an operation for children when there is a risk to make it even worse.
“And Misha Androsova, my mother paid the most attention,” in the voice of Milerie, who is already a grandfather, it sounds like a child’s insult. - Let's go swimming in our pool: “So, Misha goes first!”
Even those former pupils who began the story about the House of Korganovs with the words “hell, horror, broken psyche”, by the end of the memories softened, noting that there was a lot of good.
“I didn’t have a happy childhood in the Korganovs' house,” said one of the students who wished to remain anonymous. “But no one wanted us anyway.” Children's home - there is still psychologically worse. They don't live with you there, but they work. Night nurses are on duty. "
“And a child needs someone to come to, when it is bad, to cuddle. Was Korganov such a person to me? Yes, it was. Even though I once beat my head against the wall, ”the source said.
“I remember how I was sent to a boarding school for the mentally retarded. Called mom cried. She took pity on me and returned. Then, when I grew up, she prescribed me in this house — she said that maybe I would need it. Yes, I still have a permanent registration in the passport: October, 180, ”he added.
Give to children
As the mass transfer of children from orphanages to foster families, the range of problems became obvious. This is the transformation of a good deed into a soulless business, and the inability to work with disabled children, and even healthy children, if there are many of them. It is already planned to reduce the maximum number of foster children from eight to four. But will this lead to some fundamental changes?
And the former orphans themselves, and their educators, say that if a person really loves a child, wants to become his parent, then he needs to be adopted. The procedure is complicated, sometimes it is formally really easier to arrange a “foster family”. But in fact - adopt. Then get a real family.
By the way, Elena Pobepepech adopted one of her students. And the state needs to popularize not professional foster families, where children, as it were, on overexposure until the age of 18, namely adoption. But as long as society is not ready for this, the path will be at least that way — still better than the official orphanage.
And now let us return to the house of the Korganovs and Milera, who want to continue the work of their mother. In the 1990s, he served in the police patrol service, now works as a guard. But sees his vocation in the other.
“From the age of 13 I lived in the business of my mother. Adults received a special education - graduated from the social university. I love to make, build. We dug that pool in the yard with the children. Then I overlaid it with tiles. And now if I were to build a stove with the boys, they would cook. We went fishing. I would teach them everything ... And about the beatings. Well, maybe he gave brotherly cuffs. But then nobody smoked or drank. All came out decent people. And why do you think that I will do everything as a mother? Maybe I can do it differently, says Millera. - I am ready to create a foster family only in this house. And nowhere else. Because this house built by my mother is dear to me. And even if they create a foster family without my participation, I will still come, take part, as a good neighbor. ”
Is it possible to entrust children with him, what kind of foster father he will be - we do not know. Yes, he himself probably does not know either. But it is obvious that the house needs to be repaired and returned to the children. If only because it was built for them. And let someone find in him a family, albeit a reception. And if Milerie is a father for her or just a good neighbor, that is another question.