MOSCOW - For the children of a Moscow orphanage, it was a glimpse of a life of plenty. For their visitors, 18-year-old twin sisters from California, it was an emotional return to a place where they once struggled to survive.
More than 16 years after an American couple traveled here to collect two malnourished 2-year-old girls named Galina and Svetlana, the identical twins - now Jessica and Jennifer Allen - have made their first trip back to Children's Home No. 13.
As Russia and the United States work out an ugly dispute over abuse of Russian adopted children, the sisters' story brings home how international adoptions can have a happy ending, and carries a message of hope to former Cold War foes still struggling to break down barriers of distrust.
The twins celebrated their Russian heritage as their journey came full circle last week.
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"It's like, wow, we're from here," said Jennifer, formerly Svetlana.
Her sister chimed in: "We're definitely Russian." The twins have high Slavic cheekbones but sound like typical California teenagers.
Russia has for years been the second biggest source nation, after China, of adopted children for Americans. But such adoptions have fallen steadily in the wake of a string of abuse scandals that outraged Russia, prompting officials to demand tighter control over adoptions or that they be suspended altogether.
This month the two countries hope to sign a binding agreement obliging the U.S. to investigate any reports of trouble and to increase oversight of adopting families. Russia demanded such an agreement after an adoptive mother from Tennessee put her 7-year-old boy on a plane back to Moscow last year, unaccompanied. At least 17 adopted Russian children have died in domestic violence in American families, according Russian officials.
According to the U.S. State Department's Bureau for Consular Affairs, there were 1,079 adoptions of Russian children by Americans in 2010, down from 1,586 in 2009 and 5,826 in 2004.
Many fear that tighter regulations may cause potential adoptive parents to look to other countries and leave more Russian children at the mercy of underfunded and overcrowded orphanages.
"We're so lucky that we got adopted," Jessica said.
The story of their 1994 adoption, which made the front page of The Washington Post, involved an emotionally draining trip to Russia for adoptive parents Pam and Mike Allen.
