Under her guidance I spent three days visiting institutions. I saw a
boarding school for girls, a boarding home for younger children, an
institution for the feeble-minded, three of the new homes organized by
the Soviet Government, and two small hospitals for children.
The institutions which Madame Lelina is directing are in two groups:
First, those which she has taken over from the old Czar regime, and
second, those which have been founded in the last 18 months. The new
government has been so handicapped by the difficulties of securing
food and other supplies, by the sabotage of many of the intelligent
classes, and by the necessity of directing every energy toward
carrying on hostilities against the bourgeoisie and the Allies, that
there has been little opportunity to remodel the institutions
inherited from the previous regime, therefore neither the strength nor
the weakness of these institutions is to any great extent due to the
present regime. Two of the institutions I visited were of this type,
one happened to be very good and the other very bad, and in neither
case did I feel that Lelina's organization was responsible.
An aristocratic organization under the Czar maintained a boarding
school for girls. This has been taken over by the Soviet Government
with little change, and the 140 children in this institution are
enjoying all the opportunities which a directress trained in France
and Germany, with an exceptionally skillful corps of assistants, can
give them.
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