The stories told in «Republic of Shkid» are not fictional. Shkid – the School named after Dostoevsky, an orphanage for homeless children, – really existed in the 1920s. Revolution, civil war, hunger, poverty – these were the realities of that time. People adapted as best they could. Some succeeded, while others, alas… As a result, a huge number of underage children ended up on the streets. To survive, they had to beg, steal, rob, and band together. The director of the «Republic of Shkid», Viktor Nikolaevich Sorokin, whom the students call Vikniksor for short, manages to channel the wild inventive energy of former young bandits, thieves, and hooligans towards reform, seeing in them the desire to become full-fledged members of society. The students rebel, stage uprisings against their teachers, plot how to escape from this institution, but… they stay. Because they want to learn and, as they say themselves, «go out into the world». The authors of the book saw and knew the details of Shkid life with their own eyes, as they themselves were its students. Hence, the plot contains many interesting and believable details, tragic, sometimes terrifying, but often brilliantly funny…
