We expected better: economic collapse and cultural confusion have left post-communist youth with few options. Irena Maryniak tells their troubling story

New Internationalist, April, 2004 by Irena Maryniak

In rural areas throughout former communist Europe there is no access to information, training or employment, and often no cinema or railway station. The best youngsters can hope for is the interest of extremist groups scouring the area for kids with nowhere to go, and offering them instant identity, someone to blame, secret codes, a cause, a buzz. 'The far Right sits there in youth centres and bus stations', says Friedemann Bringt of Kulturburo Sachsen, which monitors fascist groupings in Saxony. 'Young people crave to be in a group and want short easy answer. These people satisfy that need.'

The skills and social values by which today's adults lived under communism are now irrelevant. There is talk of a rupture of generations. Yet teens in Eastern Europe are still notable for their deference to elders and their docile acknowledgement of the rites of kinship. Unless forced out, they live at home, closely guided through schooling and career choices with their dinners prepared and their clothes laundered. It is only when the existing kinship system falls apart--if someone loses their job, leaves, drinks, gets violent, or there isn't enough for food and clothes--that young people risk taking off.

Olesia's history is a tale of the times. She finished school and trained as a cook in Kirovsk, Ukraine. Her father worked in a mine. Everything was clean and neat. 'As a family with many children in the Soviet Union we even had special privileges--a TV in every room.' In the mid-1990s her parents started a business. It failed, they got into debt, so they left and moved around until they ended up in a Moscow suburb. The parents found jobs in a Turkish construction company but they also stole company furniture for their flat. They were sacked. They tried selling fruit in the market but couldn't make ends meet. Her father started drinking and battering his wife. They tried to force Olesia to engage in prostitution with Turkish workers. She left home, slept at train stations, chose her companions as best she could until she was approached by a woman in the metro who offered her accommodation and regular sexual customers. She is now 17 years old. (2)

Prostitution is one way through which the young and destitute attempt to regain some control over their lives. Crime is another. Risking a causal job offer in a big city is a third. 'Natalia', a Moldovan teenager, left her village after meeting a young man who offered her and her sister jobs in the capital, Chisinau. Their mother was delighted. Within hours the girls were separated. Natalia was taken to Romania, trafficked to Serbia, then held prisoner in a house. 'There were many girls--we couldn't escape. The guy told us he'd find us even if we went to the police. He knew them and could bribe them ... One day a taxi driver drove us to a wood where we were supposed to meet our new buyers. We had to put on a lot of make-up and sexy dresses. Then they told us to get undressed. We were sold to four men. They took us to a new house. I was raped by each of them--to taste the merchandise, they said.'