ZNAMENKA, Russia -- They troop in and stand before us, a ragtag group of kids in mismatched clothes.

The expression of joy on this boy's face as he receives a toy car from ChildLife International says it all. Children at this temporary orphanage in Oryol received toys, clothes, hats, gloves and other gifts gathered in a Quad-Cities donation drive. Volunteers Jean Mueller, of Bettendorf, and Kathy Johnson, of Taylor Ridge, handed out the gifts.

They sing, dance and recite poems, like some bizarre school variety show. But no proud moms and dads are videotaping junior's performance in this large mint-green room that smells of dampness and mold.

Two volunteers and our team of four journalists from the Quad-Cities are the first audience these kids have had in a long time. And they will not be going home with anyone after the curtain closes. This is their home, for now.

So we smile big, bright plastic grins that hide the screams in our heads. We pretend it's perfectly normal for 32 young children to live in an institution with a director who does not know their names and teachers young enough to be their sisters.

We laugh and clap and hope none of the little ones notice if our hands quickly brush at the corners of our eyes every few minutes. These children do not need tears. They need smiles, and for a week in February they got them from our group of visiting Quad-Citians.

Terri Gleize, of Donahue, sat on the floor and pulled a 6-year-old girl onto her lap for story time. Two girls snuggled by her sides, pressing against her as Karen Paytash, of East Moline, told stories and sang songs. The kids joined in when she sang ``Heads, Shoulders, Knees and Toes,'' miming everything she did in spite of a language barrier.

They urged Mrs. Paytash to do it again, sing it faster, and they wanted to sing it in English, too. She laughed at the sheer joy of their excitement.

``No matter how bleak the institutional walls were, no matter how bad the mattress they slept on smelled, no matter how many times they had worn the same outfit, they could smile and laugh with me over a song,'' Mrs. Paytash would say later, after returning to her East Moline home.

Smiles are rare at the Znamenka Social Rehabilitation Center for Minors and at similar centers across Russia. More than 620,000 Russian children are without parental care, though nearly all still have a living parent. About half that number are cared for by a distant relative. The other half come to shelters like this one.

They are temporary shelters, meant to house and feed children for three to six months while parents deal with their problems. Many are alcoholics, and some are physically or sexually abusive, but others just cannot afford to feed their children.

Andrei's parents, from the poverty-stricken former Soviet republic of Moldova, fit that description. They travel across Russia's 11 time zones looking for work, and they send money when they can. Andrei, 4, lived with his grandmother until she got sick in December. He is staying at the Oryol temporary shelter while she is in the hospital. If she doesn't recover, he will go to an internat (boarding school).

Most children in Russia's temporary shelters are in limbo. Parents retain custody and can return for their children at any time. About 70 percent of the children at such centers go home after a few months. Many will return in the future as parents continually wrestle with their problems.

In the United States, most of these children would be placed with foster families or in group homes with small, family-like settings. In Russia, the Soviet mentality of addressing problems collectively instead of individually lives on in hundreds of state-run institutions.

``There is a Russian tradition that an orphan must be raised by a relative or by the state,'' said Nina Serykh, an Oryol social services director. ``It is difficult to change people's attitudes about that.''

Sometimes parents conquer their problems and return for their children. Sometimes they don't. If relatives cannot be found, children are pushed into a labyrinth of institutions run by three government ministries.

The Ministry of Health cares for abandoned infants from birth to age 4 or 5. Between 18,000 and 20,000 children live in 252 baby houses, called a dom rebyonka. At age 4, they are tested and sent to a permanent home run by the Ministry of Education or the Ministry of Labor and Social Development.

The Ministry of Education runs homes for ``educable'' children without disabilities. They usually live in a dyetskii dom (children's home) and attend regular Russian schools for the required nine years. They may also go to an internat where they are housed in dormitories and educated within the institution.

The Ministry of Education also runs internats for ``lightly disabled'' children. They receive only six years of education, far short of a high school diploma, according to a Human Rights Watch investigation into Russian orphanages.

Orphans diagnosed with physical or mental disabilities go to institutions run by the Ministry of Labor and Social Development where they stay until age 18. New York-based Human Rights Watch, and Rights of the Child, the leading Russian children's advocacy group, have stridently criticized these internats for abuse and torture.

At the Oryol temporary shelter, a visitor asks Snerjana, 6, who her favorite teacher is. ``Valentina Kofanova,'' the little girl responds, ``because she is kind.''

At the Znamenka temporary shelter, a visitor asks 6-year-old Tanya the same question. She stares blankly for a moment, then says, ``No one.''

The quality of children's lives varies widely from home to home, even within one region. Directors and teachers set the tone.

``Some teachers absolutely love their children, and some don't,'' said Kerry Marks, director of Christian World Adoption's Russia program. ``It's like in any (U.S.) day care center. There is abuse and there are horrible conditions, but it's not like that everywhere.''

Quad-Cities volunteers in Oryol saw a wide variety.

The stained brick facade of the run-down Oryol temporary shelter belied the cheerful atmosphere inside. The tile floor was stained and faded but clean. Colorful murals of birds and flowers covered the pink peeling walls of the foyer and stairwell.

Children getting dressed to go outside chattered excitedly as a smiling Ms. Kofanova helped them into thick coats. Kathy Johnson, of Taylor Ridge, and Jean Mueller, of Bettendorf, were impressed by the dedicated teachers and center director Raisa Trubina.

``I feel comfortable with the people because I don't see fear in the kids' eyes,'' Mrs. Mueller said. ``They don't shy away from them, they run up to them and hug them. If kids are afraid, they're afraid, and you can see it.''

The grim appearance of the Znamenka center, however, spoke volumes of the sadness within, as did its location. Ms. Gleize and Mrs. Paytash had to endure a 10-minute minivan ride along what must be one of the worst roads in Russia, down a rutted lane with crater-like potholes.

The children's home sat glumly at the end of the unplowed lane next to a dilapidated cattle farm and across from rows of empty shack-like summer homes. Two shaggy dogs skulked off the front door stoop as the visitors approached.

Though one teacher genuinely seemed to like the children, the others seemed disinterested and were not dressed appropriately to work with children, Ms. Gleize said. Mrs. Paytash noticed the teachers did not join games with the children.

The Quad-Citians also reacted negatively to the center's director, a tall attractive, red-head who wore a new outfit every day.

``She was phony and the kids didn't like her,'' Ms. Gleize said. ``I saw her try to put her arm around a boy, and he pulled away like he was afraid.''

The foyer and administrative offices were pleasant, but the children's rooms were not. Bed frames in the dormitory-style bedroom were crooked and the lumpy mattresses reeked of urine. The children had to stand around an old, wooden table to eat because they had no chairs.

When children arrive at the center, they are taken to three rooms that would terrify an adult, let alone a small child being separated from his or her parents.

The stark walls and steel table in the examining room and the broken tile and dirty facilities in the bathroom are bad, but the quarantine room is worse. Children must stay alone for days, in a room totally bare but for one cot, until the staff is sure they do not have a communicable disease.

Little is done to change substandard conditions at Russia's children's homes, because there is no independent oversight, according to Rights of the Child director Boris Altshuler. The only ``surprise'' inspections are ones the staff knows about ahead of time, and the Ministry of Education did not inspect any of its hundreds of children's homes in 1997, he said.

Children at the Oryol center are brushing their teeth in a communal washroom that smells of pungent disinfectant. Alla, 6, carefully drops her toothbrush inside a pink plastic mug with a white number 2 painted on the side. She hangs her white towel on a hook in cubby number 2 and carefully returns the mug to its spot on the shelf above.

Back in her classroom/bedroom, Alla takes off her clothes, revealing a faded undershirt and baggy gray underpants. She climbs into bed number 2. Her neighbor in bed number 1 is her sister Natasha, 5.

There are no names at these temporary orphanages, only numbers. There are no individual bedrooms, no cuddles before bedtime, no privacy.

``In U.S. child care centers, you would see this is where Sally hangs her coat, this is Brian's cubby,'' Mrs. Paytash said. ``But here everything is numbered. It seems so impersonal.''

If Alla and Natasha lived in the Quad-Cities, they might be living with a foster family. They might wear soft cotton Pocahontas or Mulan nightdresses and snuggle under pink ruffled bedspreads.

Alla and Natasha don't have that chance because Russia has no foster-family system. Pilot programs are being tested in a few cities, but Rights of the Child accuses ministry officials of trying to paralyze the system's implementation.

Only eight Moscow foster families managed to gain approval in the program's two years of operation, which Mr. Altshuler blames on bureaucratic foot-dragging. Foster care costs half as much as institutional care, and the money goes straight to the family, he said, thereby jeopardizing government jobs.

Rights of the Child also criticizes the underdevelopment of domestic adoption programs. In 1997, 15,000 Russian children were adopted by unrelated Russian families, Mr. Altshuler said, citing government figures.

``There is domestic adoption, but much less than is possible,'' he said. ``We know of many situations where Russians wanted to adopt a child, but the system created artificial obstacles for selfish reasons.''

That is the heart of the crisis in Russia's orphanages, Mr. Altshuler said. While officials blame conditions on Russia's current economic crisis, Rights of the Child and Human Rights Watch contend the real problem is not financial, but institutional.

The complex system of orphanages is a thriving business that Russian officials do not want to change, Mr. Altshuler said. In fact, they do their best to keep children coming in by terminating parental custody and giving parents far less child support than institutions receive.

A few progressive social agencies, like one Quad-Citians Pat Herath and Ann Marx visited in Mtsensk, are starting family counseling programs, but the state's most common reaction to troubled Russian parents is to take their children away, Mr. Altshuler said.

Few families receive real psychological help, because helping parents identify and address the root causes of problems requires close cooperation between social workers, police and local authorities, Mr. Altshuler said.

``Such cooperation is absolutely impossible in the frame of the present Russian system of child care,'' Mr. Altshuler said, noting it is far easier for authorities to simply arrest troubled parents for minor crimes and take their children away.

A budget imbalance exacerbates the situation. Institutions receive between 1,800 and 3,000 rubles per child per month, Mr. Altshuler said, but at-risk families receive only 200 to 300 rubles per month. The government is not interested in redistributing money to parents because institutions would lose funding, Mr. Altshuler said.

``They're trying to protect their jobs,'' Mr. Altshuler said. ``Developing a foster-family system or encouraging adoption will inevitably result in the decay of the traditional children's institution system. Hence, many people will lose their salaries.''