Among a minority of youths, the influence of the criminal world also appeared in the form of tattoos, which urchins as young as nine sought to acquire in imitation of the adornments sported by older thieves around them. Prisons, the street, and even orphanages here and there all sheltered practitioners able to oblige. A study of 146 juveniles in the Moscow Labor Home discovered 37 with at least one tattoo in 1924, and a later investigation reported such decorations on “nearly all” the residents. Popular motifs included nude figures, the sex organs, and emblems signifying membership in a gang. Nearly any part of the body might carry a design, including locations chosen to allow the characters a semblance of animation. A naked man on one shoulder blade, for example, and a naked woman on the other, or a cat and mouse on the buttocks, could be moved in provocative or amusing fashion.^[71]

Some adolescents, including a sixteen-year-old orphan dubbed Odessit, managed as well to ape adult criminals’ lusty, unbridled lifestyle. In Odessit’s case, the models who swayed him inhabited Ukraine and the port that inspired his nickname. Since 1922, this bold and resourceful boy had ranged through all the republic’s principal cities, imbibing the underworld’s habits and vocabulary. Eventually his travels brought him to Khar’kov, where he joined the Sumskaia Street group mentioned in the Introduction and turned the boys more resolutely to crime. Apart from facilitating thefts, membership in the group provided Odessit with a setting for his favorite amusements. He had a passion for gambling, drink, and ostentatious displays of money when treating comrades—among whom he developed a reputation for strictly honoring obligations. A rough-edged dandy, he dressed well by the standards of the street and rarely stood in need of cash.^[72]

Like Odessit, most experienced waifs—and especially those in groups—went by nicknames. In fact, with the passage of time, many forgot their original surnames and identified themselves only with street names.^[73] This evolution, too, symbolized and further emphasized the void between them and the surrounding society. Nicknames often sprang from a youth’s physical appearance—hence appellations such as Krivoi (one-eyed), Kosoi (cross-eyed), Riaboi (pock-marked), and Ryzhii (redhead). Those with a countenance wasted by heavy consumption of cocaine or vodka might answer to Starik (old man). One pale thin lad acquired the name Monashka (nun), and another, whose blanched, oblong face suggested an icon figure, became known on the street as Bogomaz (icon dauber). In addition to physical features, children’s special skills or experiences provided inspiration for names. The moniker Sevastopol’skii (from the Crimean city Sevastopol’), for example, referred to a youth who had traveled extensively in the southern part of the country, while the leader of a gang in Odessa received the name Simuliator because of his ability to assume a variety of roles in order to escape capture.^[74] Diminutive forms of girls’ names, applied to boys, also enjoyed circulation, as did names of animals such as Medvezhenok (bear cub), Lebed’ (swan), and Krysa (rat). In at least a few instances, girls’ nicknames stuck to boys who worked as prostitutes.^[75]

With the passage of months, a group’s Krysa or Kosoi would fall into the hands of the police or depart for other reasons. The band’s core of veterans therefore took in new boys now and then, typically from among recent arrivals at a station, market, or other location that served as the gang’s base. An initiate often underwent a trying, sometimes brutal, probationary period of beatings and orders to perform difficult tasks. If he proved himself by enduring these tests, which could last for weeks, the group accepted him as a reliable member. Those who ran away to escape the torment were dismissed by the others as sniveling babies or worse.^[76]

According to some observers in the 1920s, many gangs divided stolen goods among all members equally or, failing that, in proportion to their involvement in the theft.^[77] No doubt something of the sort occurred here and there, though the true extent of the practice remains difficult to determine. One sometimes senses in these accounts an author’s eagerness to emphasize the cooperative nature of street children, even to the point of suggesting that they harbored embryonic collectivist qualities that educators could cultivate to transform them into builders of a communist society. Other reports, while noting that youths on occasion displayed considerable unity inside their groups, stressed as well that dominant members often tormented the rank and file. This abuse—which included beatings, appropriation of the most desirable portions of food, and sexual exploitation of other boys or girls in the gang—stood in vivid contrast to any custom of communal disposition of spoils.^[78]

However sharply the conduct of groups might differ in some respects, certain rules of behavior and discipline gained wide currency, especially among adolescents experienced on the street. Loyalty to comrades, for example, was embedded deeply enough to prevent many, when questioned by police or social workers, from informing on the gang. “Betrayal” represented a sin of such proportions that young boys raped by older residents of the Moscow Labor Home complained to the staff only with great reluctance, fearing the merciless retribution likely to follow. Also, while respecting those of their world most adept at deceiving outsiders, vagrant children typically regarded cheating at cards or other games played among themselves—not to mention failing to pay debts incurred—as a grave transgression. Offenders risked savage reprisals, usually in the form of beatings, though the authors of one study witnessed instances of gang rape of group members considered guilty of such offenses. In a few reported cases the exaction of vengeance resulted in the victim’s death.^[79]

A youth who fled his group after violating one of its rules might well find that word of his act followed in short order. Gangs sometimes maintained connections with groups in other markets and train stations—even other cities—and could pass information along regarding the misdeeds of former members. In one such case, a boy who had fled from Tula to Moscow was eventually tracked down and dragged out of an institution. Only the staff’s intervention saved him.^[80] In a few instances, children arriving at shelters requested permission for a brief visit to the street in order to “earn” some money with which to settle their obligations before entering the institution. Among other things, they apparently felt that a safe return to the street in the future hinged on paying their debts.^[81]

Most groups featured a leader (sometimes more than one), known in the youths’ slang as a vozhak, glot, or glavar’. In some cases, leaders reportedly attained their preeminence by exercising such qualities as resourcefulness, intelligence, and strength of will, but this seems to have been the exception. Usually the oldest and strongest members (who might also possess the traits just mentioned) employed their physical attributes to intimidate others in the gang and thereby assume the dominant position.^[82] A leader made the group’s important decisions, enforced discipline as he saw fit, and in some cases demanded payment of tribute (cigarettes, perhaps, or something similarly desirable) from other members. While he might experience a challenge periodically, observers were more often struck by the unhesitating obedience his commands received.^[83] Some groups depended so entirely on a leader’s initiative that they crumbled when arrest or other misfortune removed him from the scene. Cohesiveness returned only with the emergence of a new vozhak from the ranks or the arrival of a strong figure from outside. The most submissive and dependent members followed their leaders with blind determination, whether to commit a risky crime or to enter an orphanage.^[84]