17

Children
On the whole, childhood has traditionally been a great, even the best,
time in a Russian's life. In his autobiographical memoir, Speak, Memory,
Vladimir Nabokov (author of Lolita) describes the idyll of growing up on the
family estates in rural Russia before the First World War.
But in typically extreme Russian fashion, children are either doted upon
and spoiled, or they are abandoned by their hopelessly drunken parents.
Drugs and street violence are new and increasing threats to both categories.
National television programming is scheduled around the bed-time
cartoon and Russians regard with horror the British middle-class practice of
sending their children away to boarding school to be educated. Numerous
private day schools have sprung up, but before that many Russian children
were educated privately at home because their parents bought them tuition
in such subjects as Classical Greek, Latin and French literature to
compensate for the minimal timetabling allowed for these subjects in the
state school system. Teachers' wages are hardly enough for them to survive,
so they take two or three tutoring jobs in the evening to eke out a living.
Peak demand nowadays is to help students pass their final school exams and
university matriculation in foreign languages, physics, chemistry and maths.
Many Russian couples of late have only had one child, or, to put it
another way, many Russians are themselves an only child. This is because
living accommodation is scarce and cramped and the vast majority of
Russian women have to go out to work and do all the housework.