This book examines, through a detailed study of Soviet residential childcare homes and boarding schools, the much wider issues of Soviet policies towards deviance, social norms, repression, and social control.

Introduction 1. Policing deviance: Criminalizing poverty through residential childcare in the post-Stalinist USSR Families, poverty, and social problems: children's way into care Child removal as a mechanism of policing deviance 2. Productivity and 'defectology': From a criminalization to a pathologization of deviance Socialist tradition and Stalinist legacy: collectivism, discipline, and control in education in education before the 1958 reform Reforming residential childcare (1958-1970s) The scientific groundwork of residential childcare: classification, disability, and medicalization Challenging the residential childcare system (1970s-1991 3. Managing residential childcare: A strategy of containment Management at the local level: living and working conditions in Soviet residential childcare Factors of change: the impact of inspections, personal dedication, and political pressures 4. Life in care as a way of life? Children's institutional experiences and the difficult afterlife of care An 'institutional' life with distinct social rules and structures Leaving the institution: disculturation and stigma Conclusion