The story of the John reed Children's Colony on the Volga, which is as well a story of the whole great structure of Russia. "It all began with just ten boys. Boys of thirteen, fourteen, fifteen years, without fathers or mothers. Putoff, Michaef, Smirnof, and other names too hard to pronounce. They were thin, scrawny boys, small for their age and hungry. For two or three years they had not tasted sugar. Black, sour bread of rye was all they had, and sometimes thin potato soup. But even of this there was not enough for boys to grow on. Not since the Hungry Year, when their fathers and mothers died, and they were stranded with hundreds of thousands of other boys, along the great River Volga."