First of two parts


Last week Galina held her 10-month old baby for the first time.


"He looks just like my husband," said Galina, who did not want to give her last name. The 36-year-old mother-to-be hovered outside the reception room of the Moscow Adoption Agency, eager to complete the bureaucratic steps that remained between her and her future son. "I think we'll name him Dima -- or maybe Anton," she added, looking forward at last to the sleepless nights of motherhood.


Galina's happy ending is not the kind of story that usually makes headlines, but as the Russian press and parliament debate the evils and merits of foreign adoption, thousands of childless Russians like Galina are adopting children each year. In 1993 some 17,000 children were adopted in Russia, only 1,376 of them by foreigners.


The role of foreigners may force the subject of adoption out into the open, but until a few years ago it was one of those taboo subjects that Russians thought were better left ignored. "I've been working with orphans for years," said Lyudmila Fimina, who runs a Moscow adoption agency called Right of the Child. "Even my friends were surprised when they learned we have orphans in Russia."


The secrecy is maintained by Russian families who adopt. According to Galina, many women fake pregnancies, "so the neighbors don't talk." She said she has seen women with padded bellies at the adoption center. The pillows they stuff under their clothes get progressively larger until the women arrive home one day with a flat stomach and a little baby. Fimina estimates that 90 percent of Russian families who adopt try to hide it from the child.


Parents persuade themselves that the padded bellies and hushed origins are necessary to protect the child from future abuse, but just as often the secrecy is to protect the parents as well. Galina had wanted for years to adopt a child, but her husband was too ashamed to consent. In spite of the stigma that some Russians attach to adoption, there are still thousands of childless couples who wait eagerly for a child of their own. According to Lyubov Selyavina, director of the Moscow Adoption Center, parents wait up to a year for a child.


In reality, however, they wait much longer. Marina Levina, who runs a charitable organization called Roditelsky Most (Parents' Bridge) in St. Petersburg, claims it is not unusual for parents to wait five, six or seven years for a child. "Quite frankly, I'm surprised that a 10-month-old baby wasn't snatched up by a foreign adoption agency," said Levina, who claims that international adoption is a source of increasing competition for Russian families.


Indeed, while international adoptions last year accounted for only 9 percent of the total, foreign interest is anything but waning. This has triggered accusations of baby trade in the press and parliament, but it is difficult to determine just how much competition foreign adoptions present. Russian law permits international adoptions only when it is in the health interests of the child; it also requires adoption officials to search for a family in Russia before offering children to foreign parents. But for every rule there are a dozen ways to evade it.


Even Russian adoption officials admit that in the current system there is plenty of room for corruption. With no centralized regulation, each child's fate falls into the hands of the orphanage director and the regional adoption administrator. Even Irina Volodina, who is in charge of national adoption for the Education Ministry, cannot close her eyes to the possibilities: orphanage directors who hold babies for high-paying foreigners; doctors who sell medical certificates that call for immediate care overseas; baby brokers who charge exorbitant fees to find babies for high-paying clients. "There are plenty of dirty hands," she said.


Identifying those dirty hands is another matter. According to Hans Van Loon, an international adoption specialist for The Hague Conference on Private International Law, there are plenty of rumors. "You have the basics that make it plausible that a baby trade can exist, but since it is a private affair, it is difficult to get hold of the facts," he said.


So-called baby brokers play a large role in the trade, said Levina, who describes them as bandits with nice clothes. Motivated by a $5,000 finder's fee, some can be very persuasive. "Our people are not very law abiding," said Levina. "Money is a great temptation."


Temptation does not always end up in the pockets of the orphanage director or the regional official. But it has become common practice among foreign agencies to include in their standard fee a healthy donation to the orphanage -- usually $1,000 to $1,500, or goods such as washing machines. In this practice Russian couples, working without agencies and often with less money at their disposal, are at a disadvantage.


While it is difficult to determine just how many orphan directors are influenced by money, the issue has led to press reports about families whose would-be sons and daughters have been snatched out from them by foreigners.


Galina, for one, admits she was influenced by these reports. "Until last week I was against international adoption," she says. "But not anymore. When I walked into that orphanage and I saw all those children with their eyes just begging, 'Take me, take me,' I understood that [without foreigners] we'll never find enough mothers to care for them."