The older criminals valued kids like them because teenagers didn’t attract suspicion. Back then, packs of homeless children wandering the streets and asking strangers for food barely drew a second glance. In the evenings, pleased with the day’s haul, the veteran thieves would spin stories about the romance of the criminal life and pass along practical lessons from their own experience.
For example, they taught the boys how to train their hands for pickpocketing. After those lessons, Babushkin got himself a pair of walnuts and was told to roll them constantly in both hands. The rough shells helped develop extraordinary sensitivity in the fingers.
For the same reason, he sorted through bits of bread crumb that, once dried, turned hard and prickly. At the same time, the young thieves were gradually introduced to the strict criminal code. On the streets, Babushkin picked pockets boldly and with remarkable composure, which soon earned him the nickname Chapaenok.
But overconfidence eventually landed him in real legal trouble. In July 1943, he was caught during another theft and quickly ended up in court. The judge took into account that he was an orphan supporting younger siblings and gave him a break: one year of probation.
Babushkin had no intention of going straight, and the moment he left the courthouse, he went right back to stealing. More than that, he improved his technique. Before, Chapaenok simply pulled wallets from people’s pockets and ran.
Now he would carefully remove a wallet from a victim’s bag, take the cash, close it, and quietly slip it back. It was a smart trick that reduced the chance of being caught red-handed, since the wallet itself stayed in place. Still, one day even that method failed, and he was arrested again.
So in 1944, at age 16, Babushkin went away on his first real sentence, spending a year in a juvenile labor colony. From that point on, he spent very little time free. At first, his prison terms were relatively short…
