New Russia Has Schools for the Haves--and Have-Nots

MOSCOW —  Alyosha, an impish-looking 5-year-old, eats caviar for breakfast, gets massages regularly and plays computer games. And that’s not even the coolest stuff at his $8,500-a-year kindergarten.

“We have nice toys and a swimming pool,” he tells a visitor to his school with a shy smile. Prompted by his teacher, he adds: “Classes, too.”

From Alyosha’s posh private school in a Moscow suburb to the broken toys and chipped paint of cash-poor public schools across Russia, kindergarten was never like this in Soviet times.

Back then, every little Ivan Ivanovich was entitled to the same education. Most schools were more or less alike--few frills but no abject poverty.

Today, Russians with money can choose from a dizzying array of kindergartens and specialty schools to start their tot on the road to greatness, or at least conspicuous consumption.

But the vast majority of parents must make do with local government-subsidized kindergartens, almost free but usually overcrowded and underfinanced.

At Kindergarten No. 224 in the city center, barely a mile from the Kremlin, even the dim lighting can’t hide rundown equipment, toy tractors missing tires, dingy linen on cots where the children take naps.

The school’s director, Alla Andreyeva, admits conditions are “shameful.”

“We try to meet children’s needs at a certain level, but we just can’t. We just don’t have the money. It wasn’t this way in the Soviet Union,” says Andreyeva, 55, espousing a popular sentiment that explains the political resurgence of Russia’s Communists.

Since the Soviet Union collapsed at the end of 1991, many public kindergartens have closed, but some 600 private schools have sprung up across the country, including 300 in the capital. Many take tykes.

For the equivalent of $3,000 to $4,000 a year--two or three times the average nationwide income--Muscovites can send their 3- to 5-year-olds to kindergartens where courses might include chess, math logic, a foreign language or two, even manners, in addition to the basics.

Parents whose children already speak English can send them to the Anglo-American School kindergarten, a slice of Americana at the eye-opening price of $10,500 a year.

The moneyed may also hire English-speaking governesses or send their little heirs to boarding schools abroad to learn English.

The same goal can be accomplished in Moscow at a handful of elite schools.

At the Phoenix school in a prestigious western suburb, 53 children age 4 and up can check in Monday morning and stay for the week, at a cost of $6,300 a year. The five kindergartners at the school have five teachers and a nanny and are protected by round-the-clock security guards.

Little Alyosha goes to the Premier school. It stands out as an educational oasis in proletarian surroundings on the southeastern outskirts.

Every morning, school vans fan out across Moscow to fetch 150 children of bankers, business people and other well-to-do. The children, including three dozen kindergartners, face commutes of as long as an hour and a half.

From the moment they are whisked into the guarded compound, surrounded by a 9-foot-high wire fence and set in a snowy clearing amid apartment high-rises, they are lavished with attention.

The day begins with the first of three hot meals--breakfast on a recent day consisted of fried fish, caviar and bread. Then the smallest children are escorted to separate kindergartens of no more than nine students each.

In large, bright, well-furnished rooms, they are given instruction in art, music, English, dance, speech and physical fitness. They nap in imported wooden bunk beds, swim in a small indoor pool, and are tended to and massaged by the medical staff.

Later, they may play games on some of the school’s 40 computers or watch television.

Director Lyubov Mashina, who co-founded the school in 1992 with financing from three businessmen, dismisses the stereotype that these are the offspring of “new Russians,” dripping with ill-obtained money. She says the families are all screened, although the presence of a security staff of 15 testifies to the parents’ fear of kidnapping.

Mashina fears that the future of private education in Russia could change drastically if Communists should regain the presidency in this year’s election.

“In 70 years in power, they said everybody has equal rights--equal!--so we don’t need such schools with excellent conditions,” she says. “So now I’m imagining them saying, ‘Let us divide your equipment with all the other schools.’

“I’d rather not think about that,” she adds, smiling.