SOLNYSHKO CAMP, Moscow Region -- While there is no shortage of food at the Solnyshko summer camp, young campers do have to run a few gauntlets to get into the cafeteria.
Not that they mind. There's clearly nothing more exhilarating than trying to butt one's way past the counselor looking for dirty hands at the door, and if the battering-ram method fails, one can always bite the bullet and wash.
Click here to view photo essay.
The director of Solnyshko, Vera Konyukova, has been cultivating small rituals like hand washing at the camp for the past 18 summers. Her enthusiastic approach has only grown over time. "Here sits a happy person," she ecstatically announced not once, but several times, on a recent Friday afternoon in the bustling cafeteria.
Practically everything at Solnyshko seems to send Konyukova into a paroxysm of bliss, and her enthusiasm was spreading like wildfire. Flitting from table to table, crowds of 7- to 15-year-old boys and girls stopped as they passed her seat to rapturously say hello.
Outside, half a dozen girls were huddled up on the sidewalk to bemoan -- between audible giggles -- the early departure of Ksyusha, one of their friends.
"These are my children," Konyukova said. "We are all one family. They call me glavnaya mama," or chief mother.
To the average Soviet adult who went through years of Pioneer training, the family atmosphere at Solnyshko -- a Russian term of endearment that means "sunshine" -- might ring somewhat off. Gone are the mandatory patriotic singalongs. Gone are the Marxist ideology and the wartime competitions of 60 years ago, when children would race to pick up stray nails from the street to be melted into tanks. The 76-year-old pensioner who runs a doll-making class at Solnyshko cannot separate her own memories of camp from the Stalinist politics of her childhood. "It was a terrible time," said the woman, who gave her name only as Lutsia Ivanovna.
Like all other children's camps, Solnyshko was a Pioneer camp from its founding in 1965 until 1991. While it never approached the massive proportions of camps such as Artek on the Black Sea, which housed 5,000 children per session, it was typical in many respects. One of the benefits of the Soviet system was that factories and organizations were affiliated with daycare centers and camps, so employees always had somewhere to send their children during the summer.
But since the Pioneers lost state backing with the Soviet collapse, Solnyshko has faced an unexpected onslaught of legal difficulties.
"The hardest time was 1991," Konyukova said.
She said she had been afraid that the camp, located about 40 kilometers south of Moscow, would be privatized. In a mixed blessing, however, it passed over to the federal government instead.
As before, Solnyshko is reserved for employees of a group of firms who receive huge discounts on the 7,600-ruble ($250) fee for each of the three 24-day sessions. At these reduced prices, many of the children can afford to stay all summer.
But funds for maintenance and upkeep are often lacking, and attendance is subject to the ups and downs of the companies where the children's parents work. "The only thing I'm afraid of is that these organizations are badly organized, and I don't know how long they will last," Konyukova said. "They'll stop giving discounts to the kids, and no one will come."
When she's not busy with paperwork, Konyukova spends her time cultivating a new kind of summer camp experience -- a very post-Soviet blend of family values and metaphysical child-rearing theory. While the camp mostly focuses on theater, music and painting, Konyukova insists on a healthy dose of sports in order to achieve a "harmony between body and soul."
And instead of breaking down the 160 children who attended the July session into militarized detachments, she divided her camp-goers into mini-families of eight to 10 children, each with a slightly older counselor in charge.
Most of the counselors are students who are paid for their work, but several of them are former campers who volunteer their time.
"I wouldn't think of spending the summer anywhere else," said Grisha, 18, as he wove his nine tiny charges into a human chain to make their way down a path.
Five of Grisha's eight brothers and sisters also are spending the summer at Solnyshko.
Filling in for the patriotic songs and ideological recitations of the Pioneer years are art studio workshops during the day and nightly song or dance performances. Instead of celebrating the advances of communism, the children leap through bonfires at the summer festival of Ivan Kupala and listen to guitarist Alexander Krasnikov sing songs by the late bard Vladimir Vysotsky.
Another change at Solnyshko that might raise the eyebrows of hardened Pioneers is the steady stream of foreign counselors that Camp Counselors U.S.A. has sent for the past few years. Among other things, the two American counselors at Solnyshko in July taught the children to play "Head's Up -- Seven Up," an exotic game of musical chairs that involves a dozen children sitting around a table in a darkened room with their eyes closed and their thumbs sticking out.
Counselor Janeen Streeter said she was most surprised on her arrival at Solnyshko by the lack of regimentation. "There's lots of free time," she said. "They do whatever they want and choose their own activities. When I was at camp, everything was always on time."
Anything that does not concern eating, sleeping or washing up is largely scheduled on the spot. The day begins at 8:10 a.m. with an aerobic session and leapfrogs on from meal to meal -- there are five in total -- until bedtime at 9:30 p.m. During the recent visit -- which fell on the last day of the July session -- children spent part of the afternoon in free play, running down uneven cement paths, swinging back and forth on rusty playground equipment and aimlessly shuffling decks of cards by the colorful camp gates.
Sometimes Konyukova's "democratic atmosphere" can go too far. "Dealing with children has become more complicated because of mass media," she said.
Back in the days of the Pioneers, she said, children were not exposed to the amount of sex and violence that today's average child readily finds at the newsstand or on television.
"Children these days act like adults," she said.
For the most part, though, the campers need little discipline, she added.
An obligatory part of summer camp is the quiet hour, which at Solnyshko actually lasts from 2 to 4 p.m.
But on the last day of camp, there was little hope of anyone sleeping. Poking her head into the cabin with the youngest children, Konyukova heard a ruckus coming out of one of the rooms and opened the door. The noise stopped at once, and a dozen 7-year-old boys clad in their underwear rocketed to their beds.
Fingers started pointing. "I'm trying to sleep, but they won't let me," said one of the little boys. "I can't sleep," wailed another.
"I'm ashamed of you," Konyukova said, her face melting into a truly heartbroken expression that was immediately reflected on the children's faces.
"How could you make so much noise when everyone is trying to sleep?" she asked gently.
But apparently Konyukova was not all that ashamed. As soon as she shut the door, the giggling started up again. She didn't bother going back to quiet the boys down.
Not that they mind. There's clearly nothing more exhilarating than trying to butt one's way past the counselor looking for dirty hands at the door, and if the battering-ram method fails, one can always bite the bullet and wash.
Click here to view photo essay.
The director of Solnyshko, Vera Konyukova, has been cultivating small rituals like hand washing at the camp for the past 18 summers. Her enthusiastic approach has only grown over time. "Here sits a happy person," she ecstatically announced not once, but several times, on a recent Friday afternoon in the bustling cafeteria.
Practically everything at Solnyshko seems to send Konyukova into a paroxysm of bliss, and her enthusiasm was spreading like wildfire. Flitting from table to table, crowds of 7- to 15-year-old boys and girls stopped as they passed her seat to rapturously say hello.
Outside, half a dozen girls were huddled up on the sidewalk to bemoan -- between audible giggles -- the early departure of Ksyusha, one of their friends.
"These are my children," Konyukova said. "We are all one family. They call me glavnaya mama," or chief mother.
To the average Soviet adult who went through years of Pioneer training, the family atmosphere at Solnyshko -- a Russian term of endearment that means "sunshine" -- might ring somewhat off. Gone are the mandatory patriotic singalongs. Gone are the Marxist ideology and the wartime competitions of 60 years ago, when children would race to pick up stray nails from the street to be melted into tanks. The 76-year-old pensioner who runs a doll-making class at Solnyshko cannot separate her own memories of camp from the Stalinist politics of her childhood. "It was a terrible time," said the woman, who gave her name only as Lutsia Ivanovna.
Like all other children's camps, Solnyshko was a Pioneer camp from its founding in 1965 until 1991. While it never approached the massive proportions of camps such as Artek on the Black Sea, which housed 5,000 children per session, it was typical in many respects. One of the benefits of the Soviet system was that factories and organizations were affiliated with daycare centers and camps, so employees always had somewhere to send their children during the summer.
But since the Pioneers lost state backing with the Soviet collapse, Solnyshko has faced an unexpected onslaught of legal difficulties.
"The hardest time was 1991," Konyukova said.
She said she had been afraid that the camp, located about 40 kilometers south of Moscow, would be privatized. In a mixed blessing, however, it passed over to the federal government instead.
As before, Solnyshko is reserved for employees of a group of firms who receive huge discounts on the 7,600-ruble ($250) fee for each of the three 24-day sessions. At these reduced prices, many of the children can afford to stay all summer.
But funds for maintenance and upkeep are often lacking, and attendance is subject to the ups and downs of the companies where the children's parents work. "The only thing I'm afraid of is that these organizations are badly organized, and I don't know how long they will last," Konyukova said. "They'll stop giving discounts to the kids, and no one will come."
When she's not busy with paperwork, Konyukova spends her time cultivating a new kind of summer camp experience -- a very post-Soviet blend of family values and metaphysical child-rearing theory. While the camp mostly focuses on theater, music and painting, Konyukova insists on a healthy dose of sports in order to achieve a "harmony between body and soul."
And instead of breaking down the 160 children who attended the July session into militarized detachments, she divided her camp-goers into mini-families of eight to 10 children, each with a slightly older counselor in charge.
Most of the counselors are students who are paid for their work, but several of them are former campers who volunteer their time.
"I wouldn't think of spending the summer anywhere else," said Grisha, 18, as he wove his nine tiny charges into a human chain to make their way down a path.
Five of Grisha's eight brothers and sisters also are spending the summer at Solnyshko.
Filling in for the patriotic songs and ideological recitations of the Pioneer years are art studio workshops during the day and nightly song or dance performances. Instead of celebrating the advances of communism, the children leap through bonfires at the summer festival of Ivan Kupala and listen to guitarist Alexander Krasnikov sing songs by the late bard Vladimir Vysotsky.
Another change at Solnyshko that might raise the eyebrows of hardened Pioneers is the steady stream of foreign counselors that Camp Counselors U.S.A. has sent for the past few years. Among other things, the two American counselors at Solnyshko in July taught the children to play "Head's Up -- Seven Up," an exotic game of musical chairs that involves a dozen children sitting around a table in a darkened room with their eyes closed and their thumbs sticking out.
Counselor Janeen Streeter said she was most surprised on her arrival at Solnyshko by the lack of regimentation. "There's lots of free time," she said. "They do whatever they want and choose their own activities. When I was at camp, everything was always on time."
Anything that does not concern eating, sleeping or washing up is largely scheduled on the spot. The day begins at 8:10 a.m. with an aerobic session and leapfrogs on from meal to meal -- there are five in total -- until bedtime at 9:30 p.m. During the recent visit -- which fell on the last day of the July session -- children spent part of the afternoon in free play, running down uneven cement paths, swinging back and forth on rusty playground equipment and aimlessly shuffling decks of cards by the colorful camp gates.
Sometimes Konyukova's "democratic atmosphere" can go too far. "Dealing with children has become more complicated because of mass media," she said.
Back in the days of the Pioneers, she said, children were not exposed to the amount of sex and violence that today's average child readily finds at the newsstand or on television.
"Children these days act like adults," she said.
For the most part, though, the campers need little discipline, she added.
An obligatory part of summer camp is the quiet hour, which at Solnyshko actually lasts from 2 to 4 p.m.
But on the last day of camp, there was little hope of anyone sleeping. Poking her head into the cabin with the youngest children, Konyukova heard a ruckus coming out of one of the rooms and opened the door. The noise stopped at once, and a dozen 7-year-old boys clad in their underwear rocketed to their beds.
Fingers started pointing. "I'm trying to sleep, but they won't let me," said one of the little boys. "I can't sleep," wailed another.
"I'm ashamed of you," Konyukova said, her face melting into a truly heartbroken expression that was immediately reflected on the children's faces.
"How could you make so much noise when everyone is trying to sleep?" she asked gently.
But apparently Konyukova was not all that ashamed. As soon as she shut the door, the giggling started up again. She didn't bother going back to quiet the boys down.
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