The Two Sides of Besprizornost’: Representations of Child Homelessness in Respublika SHKID and Pedagogicheskaia Poema

This article examines how the discourse about the re-education of besprizorniki, street urchins, became closely interconnected with the debate around the concept of the New Soviet Man in the 1920s and 1930s. This made child homelessness the ideal field in which to test different pedagogical approaches and the power of either the individual or the collective in the process of reforging human souls. By comparing two prototypical novels on besprizornost’, Respublika SHKID (The Republic of SHKID, 1926) and Pedagogicheskaia poema (Pedagogical Poem, 1933–35), this article analyzes how the discourse on children’s re-education and conversion was portrayed differently in literature, reflecting the changes in Soviet society under Stalin and in the approach to street urchins and children in this period.