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Old women sit in the TV room of a boarding house in Moscow for the old and mentally retarded, waiting for time to pass. Most have no families and have spent most of their time just sitting and waiting.

The aged hands of an elderly pensioner who lives alone in a run-down flat in Mozhaisk, a small town near Moscow. A social worker brings her meager rations of milk and bread. She is partially blind and feeble.

Pelageya Gorbachev cleans the trolley tracks as she has been doing for the past 50 years. Widowed during WWII, she lives with her grandson. Her income is meager, but she works because the family cannot make ends meet without it.

Maria Ostapova, 81, lives alone in a wooden house in Mozhaisk, near Moscow. A social worker brings her bread and milk. She has no TV, telephone, no radio, no newspapers. She doesn't know who Boris Yeltsin is. She sits all day long with only her…

Two women from the Siberian village of Kalachevo, designated forager for their families, gossip while waiting hours in the cold for bread.

Maria Ostapova, 81, lives alone in a wooden house in Mozhaisk, near Moscow. A social worker brings her bread and milk.

Anna Sidorova, 68, lives with her husband in a small village in Siberia. She drinks many glasses of vodka in toasts to peace and friendship among our nations, but adds 'We have to work for ourselves. We should not wait for any help from abroad.'

A son puts his arm around his elderly mother for a portrait. They live in a small town near Moscow with no running water. Life is hard, but they take care of each other on their small farm.

Anastasiya Malkova looks out her window in the small Siberian village of Kalchevo.

In American dictionaries, 'babushka' means 'scarf'. In Russia it means grandmother or old woman, and it often evokes the image of cranky little busybodies with sharp tongues and killer elbows. But too many times the cliche proves unfair. The…