The country of the Soviets punished its disabled winners for their injuries, for their loss of families, shelter, and native nests, devastated by the war. Punishment with poverty, loneliness, hopelessness. Actually death. The worst of deaths...
I read it. It just became scary. Even if it's a half-truth. Destroy those who gave.... Gave everything, in short. Recently at night I saw the end of something bad. film, where disabled people were taken to the steppe in trains and shot. Exaggeration? Or a small piece terrible truth? So you say the Nazis are beasts? I don’t think they killed their heroes...
On a Ukrainian forum, I collected thoughts and memories on the topic “where did millions of disabled people of the Second World War disappear?”, weeded out the barking of genetic monsters from under the Kremlin wall, and this is what happened.
It's a long way to the island of Valaam
Not all armless and legless people were exiled, but those who begged, begged, and had no housing. There were hundreds of thousands of them, who had lost their families, their homes, no one needed, no money, but hung with awards.
They were collected overnight from all over the city by special police and state security squads, taken to railway stations, loaded into ZK-type heated vehicles and sent to these very “boarding houses”. Their passports and soldier's books were taken away - in fact, they were transferred to the status of ZK. And the boarding schools themselves were part of the mentoring department.
The essence of these boarding schools was to quietly send disabled people to the next world as quickly as possible. Even the meager allowance that was allocated to the disabled was almost completely stolen.
In the early 60s we had a neighbor who was a legless war invalid. I remember him riding this cart on ball bearings. But he was always afraid to leave the yard unaccompanied. The wife or one of the relatives had to walk alongside. I remember how my father was worried about him, how everyone was afraid that the disabled man would be taken away, although he had a family and an apartment. In the year 65-66, my father got him (through the military registration and enlistment office, social security and regional committee) a wheelchair, and we celebrated the “liberation” with the whole yard, and we, the children, ran after him and asked for a ride.
The population of the USSR before the war is estimated at 220 million, taking into account the population of the annexed territories of Poland, Hungary, Romania and the Baltic countries. The total demographic losses of the USSR for the period 41-45 are estimated at 52-57 million people. But this figure includes the “unborn”. The real number of population losses can be estimated at about 42-44 million. 32-34 million are military losses of the army, air force and navy + 2 million Jews exterminated as a result of the Holocaust + 2 million civilians killed as a result of hostilities. Try to explain the rest of the missing millions yourself.
Valaam Island, 200 kilometers north of Svetlana in 1952-1984, was the site of one of the most inhumane experiments to form the largest human “factory”. Here from Leningrad and Leningrad region In order not to spoil the urban landscape, disabled people were exiled - a variety of people, from legless and armless, to mental retardation and tuberculosis. It was believed that disabled people spoil the appearance of Soviet cities.
On Valaam they were almost counted on their heads as “these disabled people.” They “died” in the hundreds, but at the Valaam cemetery we found only 2 rotten columns with ... numbers. There was nothing left - they all went into the ground, leaving no monument to the terrible experiment of the human zoo of the Soviet island.
This was the title of a drawing recently published in the media by former intelligence officer Viktor Popkov from the series “We survived hell!” - portraits of disabled front-line soldiers by artist Gennady Dobrov. Dobrov painted on Valaam. We will illustrate this material with his works.
Ay-ay-ay... What Sovkovsky pathos emanates from the official legends under the drawings. From best representatives a people constantly seizing foreign lands and supplying weapons to all the terrorists of the world. But this veteran eked out a miserable existence in a rat hole on the island of Valaam. With one pair of broken crutches and a single short jacket.
Quote:
After the war Soviet cities were flooded with people who were lucky enough to survive at the front, but who lost arms and legs in the battles for their homeland. Homemade carts, on which human stumps, crutches and prosthetics of war heroes darted between the legs of passers-by, spoiled the good looks of the bright socialist today. And then one day Soviet citizens woke up and did not hear the usual rumble of carts and the creaking of dentures. Disabled people were removed from cities overnight. The island of Valaam became one of the places of their exile. As a matter of fact, these events are known, recorded in the annals of history, which means that “what happened is past.” Meanwhile, the expelled disabled people settled down on the island, started farming, started families, gave birth to children, who themselves grew up and gave birth to children themselves - real indigenous islanders.
Unpromising people from the island of Valaam
N. Nikonorov
First, let's do some math. If the calculations are wrong, correct them.
In World War II, the USSR lost, according to various estimates, from 20 to 60 million people killed. This is the spread. Statistics and military science they claim that during the battle there are several wounded for every one killed. Among them there are crippled (disabled) people. I cannot judge what percentage. But let’s assume it’s small, comparable to the number of people killed. This means that the number of cripples after the war should have been in the TENS OF MILLIONS.
My conscious childhood began in 1973. You can say they died from their wounds. Maybe. My grandfather died of wounds in '54. But not all the same? Tens of millions? My mother was born during the war. A long time ago she dropped a phrase that, due to my youth, I did not attach any importance to. She said that after the war there were a lot of cripples on the streets. Some worked part-time, some begged or wandered. And then somehow they were suddenly gone. I think she said they were taken somewhere. But I can’t vouch for this particular phrase. I want to clarify that my mother is a person without imagination. Therefore, if she said a lot, then most likely it was so..
Let's summarize: after the war, tens of millions of disabled people remained. Many are very young. Twenty to thirty years. Still to live and live. Even taking into account disability... But thirty years after the war, I have not seen practically a single one. And, according to some, the cripples disappeared within a very short period of time after the end of the war. Where did they go? Your opinions, gentlemen and comrades...
Quote:
All of us, people like me, were gathered on Valaam. A few years ago, there were a lot of us disabled people here: some without arms, some without legs, and some who were also blind. All are former front-line soldiers.
“Theme of invasion” on Valaam
Vladimir Zak
Quote:
In 1950, a House for Disabled Persons of War and Labor was opened on Valaam. The monastery and hermitage buildings housed cripples who suffered during the Great Patriotic War...
History of the Valaam Monastery
Valaam was one, but the most famous of dozens of places of exile for war invalids. This is very famous story. It's a pity that some "patriots" roll their eyes.
The communists were worse than the Swedes. These are the most Hard times in the history of Valaam. What the first commissars did not plunder in the 40s was desecrated and destroyed later. Terrible things happened on the island: in 1952, the poor and crippled were brought there from all over the country and left to die. Some nonconformist artists made a career out of painting human stumps in their cells. The boarding home for the disabled and elderly became something of a social leper colony - there, like on Solovki during the Gulag, the “dregs of society” were kept in captivity.
NOT to be worn St. George's Cross next to the piece of iron on which is depicted the EXECUTIONER of your people. Fate will not forgive this.
Quote:
And in 1950, by decree of the Supreme Council of the Karelo-Finnish SSR, a House for Disabled Persons of War and Labor was established on Valaam and located in the monastery buildings. What an establishment this was!
It’s probably not an idle question: why here, on the island, and not somewhere on the mainland? After all, it’s easier to supply and cheaper to maintain. Formal explanation: there is a lot of housing, utility rooms, utility rooms (one farm is worth something), arable land for subsidiary farming, orchards, berry nurseries, and informal, the real reason: Hundreds of thousands of disabled people were too much of an eyesore for the victorious Soviet people: armless, legless, restless, begging in train stations, on trains, on the streets, and you never know where else. Well, judge for yourself: his chest is full of o-r-d-e-n-a-h, and he’s begging near the bakery. No good! Get rid of them, get rid of them at all costs. But where should we put them? And in former monasteries, to the islands!
Out of sight, out of mind. Within a few months, the victorious country cleared its streets of this “shame”! This is how these almshouses arose in Kirillo-Belozersky, Goritsky, Alexander-Svirsky, Valaam and other monasteries. Or rather, on the ruins of the monastery, on the crushed Soviet power pillars of Orthodoxy. The country of the Soviets punished its disabled winners for their injuries, for their loss of families, shelter, and native nests, devastated by the war. Punishment with poverty, loneliness, hopelessness. Anyone who came to Valaam instantly realized: “This is all!” Further - a dead end. “Then there is silence” in an unknown grave in an abandoned monastery cemetery.
Reader! My dear reader! Can you and I understand today the measure of the boundless despair of the insurmountable grief that gripped these people the moment they set foot on this earth? In prison, in the terrible Gulag camp, the prisoner always has a glimmer of hope to get out of there, to find freedom, a different, less bitter life. There was no way out from here. From here only to the grave, as if sentenced to death. Well, imagine what kind of life flowed within these walls.
I saw all this up close for many years in a row. But it’s difficult to describe. Especially when their faces, eyes, hands, their indescribable smiles appear before my mind’s eye, the smiles of creatures who seem to have been guilty of something forever, as if asking for forgiveness for something. No, it's impossible to describe. It’s impossible, probably also because when remembering all this, the heart simply stops, the breath catches, and an impossible confusion arises in the thoughts, some kind of clot of pain! Sorry...
"Baalam Notebook"
Evgeny Kuznetsov
Disabled people were not expelled from all cities, but only from the main large cities of the European part of the USSR. A legless veteran begging from a bakery was not a concern in Mukhosransk, but was unacceptable in Moscow, Leningrad, Kiev, Minsk, Odessa, Riga, Tallinn, Odessa, Dnepropetrovsk, Kharkov, Tomsk, Novosibirsk (where Stalin planned to move the capital of the USSR).
Similar establishments still exist. For example, near Kharkov in the village of Vysoky. And in Strelechy... Are you sure that the conditions there are very different from Valaam?
Well, what can I say to all this? S..u..u..u..uuuuckie!!! (from the forum).
Answer from a Russian security officer (a modern degenerate) in a Ukrainian forum:
If a country has the means to place people in “places of exile for war invalids,” should this be called a crime of the regime?
S..u..u..u..uuuuckie!!! - these are not the same ones, then. S..u..u..u..uuuuckie!!! - these are these, today... (from the forum)
I am very sorry that such degenerates still live who have the audacity to declare that all this did not happen. And then they consider themselves fighters against fascism and talk about “no one is forgotten, nothing is forgotten.”
About the tragedy of disabled people of the Great Patriotic War, deported by the Soviet authorities in the post-war period to special “closed” boarding schools. In the Soviet Union, disabled people of the Great Patriotic War had a unique attitude. A few years after the end of hostilities, many of the “war cripples” were simply taken away from cities and towns and left to die in “special boarding schools” and “sanatoriums.” This story deserves our attention.
I was a battalion scout
And he is the staff clerk.
I was responsible for Russia,
And he slept with my wife.
With a stingy tear from the front
The Guards battalion was crying,
When I'm a heroic star
He was awarded by the marshal.
Then they gave me dentures
And they were quickly sent to the rear.
I remember one episode from my childhood memories. Your humble servant was then 5-6 years old, no more. In one of the grocery stores in Bobruisk I often saw an elderly man with a prosthetic instead of a leg. The edge of the crutch protruded from his trousers. Despite the injury, this man moved confidently and generally looked quite respectable.
And then, at one of the holidays on May 9, I saw this man in a different role. On his chest were several “Orders of Glory”, the Order of the “Red Star” and the “Red Banner of Battle”. Only then did I realize that this was a real hero. Unfortunately, I don't know anything else about this person. He died a long time ago, and then, in the 1980s, I was too young to ask him about his life and exploits, for which he was awarded the highest government awards.
In the Soviet Union, disabled people of the Great Patriotic War had a unique attitude. A few years after the end of hostilities, many of the “war cripples” were simply taken away from cities and towns and left to die in “special boarding schools” and “sanatoriums.” This story deserves our attention.
Operation Disabled
...On one summer day in 1948, in the bazaars, squares, streets of Soviet cities and towns, passers-by did not see the usual crutches and carts on which legless front-line soldiers moved. Literally in one night, the authorities “removed” hundreds of disabled veterans of the Great Patriotic War from populated areas and took them away “from human eyes.” For next days The police searched all the doss houses and basements where the cripples lived. Everyone who was there also faced deportation.
Red Army soldiers
It is impossible to justify such actions, but still, let’s try to analyze why this happened? Firstly, the Soviet Union was economically unable not only to provide a decent life for hundreds of thousands of its soldiers who were injured, but also in general to provide for its people, crippled by the war. Secondly, disabled people spoiled the image of the country that defeated fascism.
A Soviet soldier is a strong, young, full of strength man, a man, and not a stump, like the “samovars” - soldiers and commanders of the Red Army who received the most serious wounds and lost their upper and lower positions. lower limbs. And finally, thirdly, the political issue was important. Soldiers who lost everything in the war became “free” in the land of slaves. They were no longer afraid of the NKVD and the police. In addition, many were awarded orders and medals. Among the disabled there were many Heroes of the Soviet Union. These people saw the hell of war and, having survived there, they were no longer afraid of anything.
Supervision of those who return
Soviet special bodies began to monitor disabled military personnel during the Great Patriotic War. During 1943-1944, the NKGB of the USSR sent local authority State Security has several directives requiring agents to ensure the study of processes occurring among war invalids.
Disabled person of the Great Patriotic War. Drawing by Gennady Dobrov
“Chekists” organized intelligence coverage of the work of hospitals, local councils and authorities social security on questions medical care, employment of disabled people, establishment and payment of pensions to them. Problems in the relationship between this category of Soviet citizens and the authorities were not long in coming.
In the Uzbek SSR, at the end of the war, 554 military invalids were taken into operational registration, most of whom had previously been in German captivity. In October 1944, the UNKGB Krasnodar region 103 disabled people were identified “who returned to the Soviet rear under unclear circumstances.” The Molotov region administration then arrested 13 disabled front-line soldiers “for anti-Soviet work.”
Most often, those returning from the front were accused of anti-collective farm protests and anti-Soviet agitation, which was expressed in the “glorification of kulak farms and the capitalist way of life in the countryside.” And soon the NKGB in the Komi Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic “opened up” the “Union of War Invalids”, which was headed by a former major Soviet army. According to people “in cornflower blue caps,” this organization was engaged in “disorganization of collective farm production.”
Hero of the defense of Stalingrad Ivan Zabara. Drawing by Gennady Dobrov
In addition, the authorities were clearly frightened by the threats of terrorist attacks from “military cripples” against their representatives. Former soldiers and officers of the Red Army without arms and legs threatened the chairmen and auditors, and did not give a damn to the bosses and house managers. At the front, they looked death in the eye, were in German captivity, burned in tanks, went to ram enemy planes and survived. These people were no longer afraid of anything. One of those arrested and charged with the murder of the village council secretary said during interrogation: “It doesn’t matter to me now whether to be free or in prison.”
Deported under Stalin, deported under Khrushchev
After the end of the Great Patriotic War, attention to disabled veterans from the authorities did not decrease. As already noted, the first wave of deportation of disabled military personnel took place in 1948 and affected, first of all, privates and sergeants. In addition, they deported mainly those who had not been awarded the highest government awards. The second wave swept across Soviet Union in 1953. One Muscovite recalled that his friend, who lived on Gorky Avenue, had a husband who was an officer in the Soviet army and lost his legs during the war.
He moved while sitting in a wooden box and pushed off the ground with special sticks. Soon the front-line soldier gathered around him a whole company of the same military invalids. They wore military jackets and tunics, and “the geography of Europe hung on their chests.” The woman was warned not to let her husband go outside. As a result, in the early 1950s, he was “picked up” by the police and taken to one of the “sanatoriums” for the disabled, located somewhere near Omsk in Siberia. Subsequently, unable to withstand the conditions of detention in the “special sanatorium,” the front-line soldier hanged himself.
Partisan from Belarus Serafima Komissarova. Drawing by Gennady Dobrov
The next owner of the Kremlin, Nikita Khrushchev, also did not stand on ceremony with the crippled veterans. During his reign, disabled military personnel continued to be considered a “mendicant element.” In February 1954, the USSR Minister of Internal Affairs S. Kruglov reported to the Presidium of the CPSU Central Committee that “despite the measures taken, major cities and in the industrial centers of the country such an intolerable phenomenon as begging still continues to occur.
Valaam and other resort camps
In 1948, by Decree of the Supreme Council of the Karelo-Finnish SSR (however, most likely, on instructions “from Moscow”), the “House of Invalids of War and Labor” was formed. The crippled people were kept here in inhumane conditions. The old monastery buildings were practically unsuitable for habitation. Some buildings had no roofs, and electricity was installed only a few years later.
Book of accounting of "guests" of Valaam
At first there weren’t even enough paramedics and junior medical staff. Many of the front-line soldiers died in the first months of their stay on the island. In 1959, there were 1,500 disabled people there. Similar establishments were opened in Siberia and other parts of the USSR. Rumor has it that there were such “special sanatoriums” in Belarus.
After being placed in these units, front-line soldiers were deprived of their passports and all other documents, including awards. The food there was meager. The orderlies recalled that “patients without limbs were taken out into the yard to get some fresh air. Sometimes they were put in special baskets and lifted up trees using ropes. The result was something like nests. Sometimes people with disabilities “forgot” to take them off and they died from hypothermia after spending the night in the frosty, fresh air. Cases of suicide were frequent.
Have these people been visited by their relatives? Since the late 1950s, front-line soldiers were allowed to meet with loved ones, but many did not want to report themselves, believing that they would only complicate life for their family.
Mikhail Kozatenkov, a participant in three wars. Drawing by Gennady Dobrov
Those who died on Valaam were buried in a special cemetery. Inconspicuous wooden monuments were placed on the graves, which crumbled over time. In total, according to various sources, up to two thousand people were buried in this graveyard.
In 1984, the Valaam boarding school was liquidated, and its remaining guests were transported to the village of Vidlitsa, Olonetsky district of Karelia. Later, ethnographers found an archive of personal files of Valaam guests. True, the information in these documents is very scarce: full name, date of birth, disability category and cause of death. Today no one can answer where the personal documents of these people, and most importantly, the awards, disappeared.
The memory of disabled front-line soldiers was largely preserved thanks to enthusiastic volunteers who got jobs in these “special sanatoriums.” One of them, Gennady Dobrov, was able to visit Valaam during the Khrushchev Thaw. It was prohibited to take photographs at the “security facility,” so the orderly made sketches. His works became public knowledge only in the mid-1980s. In 1988, an album of his drawings, “Autographs of War,” was published. To create it, the artist visited about 20 boarding homes for veterans in different parts THE USSR.
Monument to veterans who died on Valaam
According to the Military Medical Museum in St. Petersburg, 46 million 250 thousand Soviet citizens were injured during the Great Patriotic War. Of this number, about 10 million returned from the front with various forms disability. Of this number, 775 thousand were wounded in the head, 155 thousand with one eye, 54 thousand blind, 3 million with one arm, 1.1 million without both arms...
In 2011, a memorial was opened on Valama in memory of the disabled veterans who died here. But residents of most post-Soviet republics still know nothing about this shameful page in the history of the “state of workers and peasants.” I am sure that among the prisoners of Valaam and other “sanatoriums” there were quite a few Belarusian front-line soldiers who, defending their Motherland, gave almost everything, but in gratitude received exile and the stigma of being a subhuman. This, like other crimes of the Soviet system, cannot be forgotten.
taken from ng_cherkashin
This is not a caricature - this is a portrait of a real disabled war veteran, a resident of Valaam Island
Note.
A couple of years ago I visited Valaam. Between two runs of the excursion - "look left, look right" - I met the eyes of the local inhabitants basking in the rays of the scant northern sun. We looked at each other - separated by an imaginary, but no less real grid - as one looks at exotic zoo exhibits, with amazement and a bit of disgust. Since there were no explanatory signs, the mystery remained unsolved for us, tourists. By appearance they were not disabled, and there was no time limit, and all the limbs were in place. But in their souls, in their stamp of rejection, in their habitual, innate hopelessness - they were the most disabled people on earth - i.e. such disabled people who not only forgot, but simply never knew that they were born disabled and would die disabled. And their children, if any are born, will also be disabled.
Most likely, these were the descendants of war invalids who had already been laid to rest in a common unmarked Valaam grave. Descendants, conceived without love, born without joy, raised without childhood, probably wonder themselves why they are here. Not quite human anymore, not quite beast yet. Our brothers and sisters.
Commies of all countries, already for Valaam alone, what is in store for you in eternity! But our drama is that the cursed commies are also, for the most part, our grandfathers, fathers, brothers and sisters.
In this sense we have suffered complete defeat, with which all that remains is to congratulate each other.
**************************************** ****************************************
"....And in 1950, by decree of the Supreme Council of the Karelo-Finnish SSR, a House for War and Labor Disabled Persons was established on Valaam and in the monastery buildings. What an institution it was!
It’s probably not an idle question: why here, on the island, and not somewhere on the mainland? After all, it’s easier to supply and cheaper to maintain. The formal explanation: there is a lot of housing, utility rooms, utility rooms (the farm alone is worth it), arable land for subsidiary farming, orchards, berry nurseries, but the informal, true reason: hundreds of thousands of disabled people were too much of an eyesore for the victorious Soviet people: armless, legless, restless, begging in train stations, on trains, on the streets, and who knows where else. Well, judge for yourself: his chest is full of o-r-d-e-n-a-h, and he’s begging near the bakery. No good! Get rid of them, get rid of them at all costs. But where should we put them? And to former monasteries, to the islands! Out of sight, out of mind. Within a few months, the victorious country cleared its streets of this “shame”! This is how these almshouses arose in Kirillo-Belozersky, Goritsky, Alexander-Svirsky, Valaam and other monasteries. Or rather, on the ruins of monasteries, on the pillars of Orthodoxy crushed by Soviet power. The country of the Soviets punished its disabled winners for their injuries, for their loss of families, shelter, and native nests, devastated by the war. Punishment with poverty, loneliness, hopelessness. Anyone who came to Valaam instantly realized: “This is all!” Further - a dead end. “Then there is silence” in an unknown grave in an abandoned monastery cemetery...."
From the comments: My father, a veteran, by the will of fate, fought and survived that war. In the late 60s, I went on a business trip to Valaam with some commission from the Ministry of Health. I returned years older in those few days. He was silent for a long time and could not talk to me about anything. Then, when he started talking about what he saw on Valaam, he had a heart attack. This is how I learned about Valaam Hell from my father. Yes, this Hell was!... And blessed memory to the victims of the Soviet Holocaust!
It's a long way to the island of Valaam
Not all armless and legless people were exiled, but those who begged, begged, and had no housing. There were hundreds of thousands of them, who had lost their families, their homes, no one needed, no money, but hung with awards.
They were collected overnight from all over the city by special police and state security squads, taken to railway stations, loaded into ZK-type heated vehicles and sent to these very “boarding houses”. Their passports and soldier's books were taken away - in fact, they were transferred to the status of ZK. And the boarding schools themselves were part of the mentoring department.
The essence of these boarding schools was to quietly send disabled people to the next world as quickly as possible. Even the meager allowance that was allocated to the disabled was almost completely stolen.
In the early 60s we had a neighbor who was a legless war invalid. I remember him riding this cart on ball bearings. But he was always afraid to leave the yard unaccompanied. The wife or one of the relatives had to walk alongside. I remember how my father was worried about him, how everyone was afraid that the disabled man would be taken away, although he had a family and an apartment. In the year 65-66, my father got him (through the military registration and enlistment office, social security and regional committee) a wheelchair and we celebrated the “liberation” with the whole yard, and we, the children, ran after him and asked for a ride.
The population of the USSR before the war is estimated at 220 million, taking into account the population of the annexed territories of Poland, Hungary, Romania and the Baltic countries. The total demographic losses of the USSR for the period 41-45 are estimated at 52-57 million people. But this figure includes the “unborn”. The real number of population losses can be estimated at about 42-44 million. 32-34 million are military losses of the army, air force and navy + 2 million Jews exterminated as a result of the Holocaust + 2 million civilians killed as a result of hostilities. Try to explain the rest of the missing millions yourself.
Valaam Island, 200 kilometers north of Svetlana in 1952-1984, was the site of one of the most inhumane experiments to form the largest human “factory”. Disabled people of all kinds were exiled here from Leningrad and the Leningrad region, so as not to spoil the urban landscape - from the legless and armless, to mental retardation and tuberculosis. It was believed that disabled people spoil the appearance of Soviet cities.
On Valaam they were almost counted on their heads as “these disabled people.” They “died” in the hundreds, but at the Valaam cemetery we found only 2 rotten columns with ... numbers. There was nothing left - they all went into the ground, leaving no monument to the terrible experiment of the human zoo of the Soviet island.
“I don’t want a new war!” This was the title of a drawing recently published in the media by former intelligence officer Viktor Popkov from the series “We survived hell!” - portraits of disabled front-line soldiers by artist Gennady Dobrov. Dobrov painted on Valaam. We will illustrate this material with his works.
Ay-ay-ay... What Sovkovsky pathos emanates from the official legends under the drawings. From the best representatives of the people, who are constantly seizing foreign lands and supplying weapons to all the terrorists of the world. But this veteran eked out a miserable existence in a rat hole on the island of Valaam. With one pair of broken crutches and a single short jacket.
Quote: " After the war, Soviet cities were flooded with people who were lucky enough to survive at the front, but who lost arms and legs in the battles for their homeland. Homemade carts, on which human stumps, crutches and prosthetics of war heroes darted between the legs of passers-by, spoiled the good looks of the bright socialist today. And then one day Soviet citizens woke up and did not hear the usual rumble of carts and the creaking of dentures. Disabled people were removed from cities overnight. The island of Valaam became one of the places of their exile. As a matter of fact, these events are known, recorded in the annals of history, which means that “what happened is past.” Meanwhile, the expelled disabled people settled down on the island, started farming, started families, gave birth to children, who themselves grew up and gave birth to children themselves - real indigenous islanders.
Unpromising people from the island of Valaam
First, let's do some math. If the calculations are wrong, correct them.
In World War II, the USSR lost, according to various estimates, from 20 to 60 million people killed. This is the spread. Statistics and military science claim that during a battle, for every one killed, there are several wounded. Among them there are crippled (disabled) people. I cannot judge what percentage. But let’s assume it’s small, comparable to the number of people killed. This means that the number of cripples after the war should have been in the TENS OF MILLIONS.
My conscious childhood began in 1973. You can say they died from their wounds. Maybe. My grandfather died of wounds in '54. But not all the same? Tens of millions? My mother was born during the war. A long time ago she dropped a phrase that, due to my youth, I did not attach any importance to. She said that after the war there were a lot of cripples on the streets. Some worked part-time, some begged or wandered. And then somehow they were suddenly gone. I think she said they were taken somewhere. But I can’t vouch for this particular phrase. I want to clarify that my mother is a person without imagination. Therefore, if she said a lot, then most likely it was so..
Let's summarize: after the war, tens of millions of disabled people remained. Many are very young. Twenty to thirty years. Still to live and live. Even taking into account disability... But thirty years after the war, I have not seen practically a single one. And, according to some, the cripples disappeared within a very short period of time after the end of the war. Where did they go? Your opinions, gentlemen and comrades...
P.S. I can add on my own behalf that everything written is the absolute truth. When I first came to Valaam, some premises and churches had already been given to the monastery, and its slow restoration began. I lived in the monastery for about a month, as a labor worker (there is such a practice in monasteries - you can live there and work for a while).
One day I looked into one of the monastery’s outbuildings. A dark narrow corridor filled with buckets, basins, some kind of barrels, rags, and several small cages on the sides of the corridor. In dirty little cages, old men sat on beds or on chairs - blind and silent. There was little light, and the smell of long-unventilated rooms came from the cages.
At first I thought that this was some kind of prison, and that some exiles lived here. However, a little later, when I asked the monk what kind of old, emaciated people were in the monastery, he answered bluntly that these were war invalids exiled here shortly after the victory by order of Stalin.
After this story, every time I hear about “the great Stalin,” I remember these old men exiled to the then almost uninhabited island of Valaam, who had almost lost their human appearance, whom great Stalin This is how he thanked me for the victory and for the loss of health in this terrible war. Well, later I found out that approximately the same thing happened in all the major cities of the Soviet Republic, and one fine day thousands of beggars and beggars from among the war invalids were, on the orders of Stalin, sent by the security officers to such remote cages - away from view, so as not to prevented the communists from building socialism and telling the people what a beautiful country they had built and how freely people could breathe in it. But many of these exiled disabled people had orders all over their chests. "For the health of the Russian people!" - Soviet Stalinists like to remember this toast supposedly once made by Stalin as proof of the greatness of the Leader and his gratitude to the Russian people for the Victory and all the hardships of the war endured.
In addition, I realized that in the 20s, the security officers led by Dzerzhinsky solved the problem of street children in exactly the same way, and that most of street boys were simply hidden in prisons and camps, and some of them, apparently, were simply destroyed.
That's it. Glory to the Soviet Motherland! Glory to Lenin and Stalin! Glory to the CPSU! And long live Putin, Medvedev and Abramovich, with their Cheka and all their Russian pussy. After all, all these degenerates are Soviet people, but can one call them Soviet man human - this is still a very, very big question. After all, all Soviet and post-Soviet people are, in essence, the same disabled people who were mutilated by communism and the Soviet propaganda and repressive machine. Well, there’s nothing to say about the degenerates from the Cheka - this criminal organization from the very first day of Bolshevism was the main instrument of the entire inhuman cannibalistic policy of the Soviet government.
The material is complex. I publish it because, it turns out, even people of my generation don’t remember some things. For example, about how one day disabled veterans of the Second World War disappeared from large cities, almost all of them, almost overnight. So that they do not spoil the image of a socialist country, do not undermine faith in a bright tomorrow and do not darken the memory of the great Victory.
According to sources, the mass withdrawal of disabled people outside the city limits occurred in 1949, on the 70th anniversary of Stalin. In fact, they were caught from 1946 until the Khrushchev era. You can find reports to Khrushchev himself about how many legless and armless beggars in the orders were removed, for example, on railway. And the numbers there are in the thousands. Yes, not everyone was taken out. They took those who had no relatives, who did not want to burden their relatives with caring for themselves, or whom these relatives abandoned due to injury. Those who lived in families were afraid to show themselves on the street unaccompanied by relatives, lest they be taken away. Those who could, left the capital for the outskirts of the USSR, because, despite their disabilities, they could and wanted to work and lead a full life.
I really hope that there will be no inappropriate comments on this post. Further material is not for the sake of polemics, political disputes, discussions of who, when and where lived well and everything else. This material is for people to remember. With respect to the fallen, silently. On the battlefield, they fell or died from their wounds after the victorious salute died down in 1945.
Valaam Island, 200 kilometers north of Svetlana in 1952-1984, was the site of one of the most inhumane experiments to form the largest human “factory”. Disabled people were exiled here, so as not to spoil the urban landscape - a variety of people, from legless and armless, to mental retardation and tuberculosis. It was believed that disabled people spoil the appearance of Soviet cities. Valaam was one, but the most famous of dozens of places of exile for war invalids. This is a very famous story. It’s a pity that some “patriots” roll their eyes.
These are the most difficult times in the history of Valaam. What the first commissars did not plunder in the 40s was desecrated and destroyed later. Terrible things happened on the island: in 1952, the poor and crippled were brought there from all over the country and left to die. Some nonconformist artists made a career out of painting human stumps in their cells. The boarding home for the disabled and elderly became something of a social leper colony - there, like on Solovki during the Gulag, the “scum of society” were kept in captivity. Not all armless and legless people were exiled, but those who begged, begged, and had no housing. There were hundreds of thousands of them, who had lost their families, their homes, no one needed, no money, but hung with awards.
They were collected overnight from all over the city by special police and state security squads, taken to railway stations, loaded into ZK-type heated vehicles and sent to these very “boarding houses”. Their passports and soldier's books were taken away - in fact, they were transferred to the status of ZK. And the boarding schools themselves were part of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. The essence of these boarding schools was to quietly send disabled people to the next world as quickly as possible. Even the meager allowance that was allocated to the disabled was almost completely stolen.
Take a closer look at these faces... / Artist Gennady Dobrov 1937-2011 /
“Unknown,” that’s what Dobrov called this drawing. Later it seemed to be possible to find out (but only presumably) that it was Hero of the USSR Grigory Voloshin. He was a pilot and survived ramming an enemy plane. He survived and lived as an “Unknown” in the Valaam boarding school for 29 years. In 1994, his relatives showed up and erected a modest monument at the Igumensky cemetery, where deceased disabled people were buried, which eventually fell into disrepair. The rest of the graves remained nameless, overgrown with grass...
Quote (History of the Valaam Monastery): “In 1950, a Home for Disabled Persons of War and Labor was built on Valaam. The monastery and hermitage buildings housed cripples who suffered during the Great Patriotic War...”
“I don’t want a new war!” Former intelligence officer Viktor Popkov. But this veteran eked out a miserable existence in a rat hole on the island of Valaam. With one pair of broken crutches and a single short jacket.
Quote (“Unpromising people from the island of Valaam” N. Nikonorov): “After the war, Soviet cities were flooded with people who were lucky enough to survive at the front, but who lost arms and legs in the battles for their homeland. Homemade carts, on which human stumps, crutches and prosthetics of war heroes darted between the legs of passers-by, spoiled the good looks of the bright socialist today. And then one day Soviet citizens woke up and did not hear the usual rumble of carts and the creaking of dentures. Disabled people were removed from cities overnight. The island of Valaam became one of the places of their exile. As a matter of fact, these events are known, recorded in the annals of history, which means that “what happened is past.” Meanwhile, the expelled disabled people settled down on the island, started farming, started families, gave birth to children, who themselves grew up and gave birth to children themselves - real indigenous islanders.”
"Defender of Leningrad." Drawing of former infantryman Alexander Ambarov, who defended besieged Leningrad. Twice during fierce bombings he found himself buried alive. With almost no hope of seeing him alive, his comrades dug up the warrior. Having healed, he went into battle again. He ended his days exiled and forgotten alive on the island of Valaam.
Quote (“Valaam Notebook” by E. Kuznetsov): “And in 1950, by decree of the Supreme Council of the Karelo-Finnish SSR, a House for Disabled Persons of War and Labor was formed on Valaam and located in the monastery buildings. This was an establishment!”
It’s probably not an idle question: why here, on the island, and not somewhere on the mainland? After all, it’s easier to supply and cheaper to maintain. The formal explanation: there is a lot of housing, utility rooms, utility rooms (the farm alone is worth it), arable land for subsidiary farming, orchards, berry nurseries, but the informal, true reason: hundreds of thousands of disabled people were too much of an eyesore for the victorious Soviet people: armless, legless, restless, begging in train stations, on trains, on the streets, and who knows where else. Well, judge for yourself: his chest is covered in medals, and he’s begging near a bakery. No good! Get rid of them, get rid of them at all costs. But where should we put them? And to former monasteries, to the islands! Out of sight, out of mind. Within a few months, the victorious country cleared its streets of this “shame”! This is how these almshouses arose in Kirillo-Belozersky, Goritsky, Alexander-Svirsky, Valaam and other monasteries. Or rather, on the ruins of monasteries, on the pillars of Orthodoxy crushed by Soviet power. The country of the Soviets punished its disabled winners for their injuries, for their loss of families, shelter, and native nests, devastated by the war. Punishment with poverty, loneliness, hopelessness. Anyone who came to Valaam instantly realized: “This is all!” Next is a dead end. “Then there is silence” in an unknown grave in an abandoned monastery cemetery.
Reader! My dear reader! Can you and I understand today the measure of the boundless despair of the insurmountable grief that gripped these people the moment they set foot on this earth? In prison, in the terrible Gulag camp, the prisoner always has a glimmer of hope to get out of there, to find freedom, a different, less bitter life. There was no way out from here. From here only to the grave, as if sentenced to death. Well, imagine what kind of life flowed within these walls. I saw all this up close for many years in a row. But it’s difficult to describe. Especially when their faces, eyes, hands, their indescribable smiles appear before my mind’s eye, the smiles of creatures who seem to have been guilty of something forever, as if asking for forgiveness for something. No, it's impossible to describe. It’s impossible, probably also because when remembering all this, the heart simply stops, the breath catches, and an impossible confusion arises in the thoughts, some kind of clot of pain! Sorry…
Scout Serafima Komissarova. She fought in a partisan detachment in Belarus. While performing a mission on a winter night, she was frozen into a swamp, where she was found only in the morning and literally cut out of the ice.
Lieutenant Alexander Podosenov. At the age of 17 he volunteered to go to the front. Became an officer. In Karelia, he was wounded by a bullet in the head and paralyzed. Valaam lived in a boarding school on the island throughout the post-war years, sitting motionless on pillows.
Quote (“Theme of the invasion” on Valaam V.Zak): “All of us, people like me, were gathered on Valaam. A few years ago, there were a lot of us disabled people here: some without arms, some without legs, and some who were also blind. All are former front-line soldiers.”
"A story about medals." Fingers move gropingly along the surface of the medals on Ivan Zabara’s chest. So they found the medal “For the Defense of Stalingrad.” “It was hell there, but we survived,” said the soldier. And his face, as if carved from stone, tightly compressed lips, eyes blinded by flame, confirm these meager but proud words that he whispered on the island of Valaam.
Partisan, soldier Viktor Lukin. At first he fought in a partisan detachment. After the expulsion of the fascist occupiers from the territory of the USSR, he fought with enemies in the army. The war did not spare him, but he remained as strong in spirit as ever.
Mikhail Kazatenkov. "Old Warrior" Warrior of three wars: Russian-Japanese (1904-1905), World War I (1914-1918), World War II (1939-1945). When the artist painted Mikhail Kazankov, he was 90 years old. Knight of two St. George's Crosses for the First world war, the warrior ended his heroic life on the island of Valaam.
"Old wound." In one fierce battle, soldier Andrei Fominykh from the Far Eastern city of Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk was seriously wounded. Years have passed, the earth has long healed its wounds, but the soldier’s wound has not healed. And so he never reached his native place. The island of Valaam is far from Sakhalin. Oh, far...
"Memory". The picture depicts Georgy Zotov, a war veteran from the village of Fenino near Moscow. Leafing through the files of newspapers from the war years, the veteran mentally turns back to the past. He returned, and how many comrades remained there on the battlefields! It’s just that the old war doesn’t understand what’s better - to stay on the fields of Germany, or to eke out a miserable, almost animal existence on the island?
"A happy family". Vasily Lobachev defended Moscow and was wounded. Due to gangrene, his arms and legs were amputated. And his wife Lydia, who also lost both legs during the war. They were lucky to stay in Moscow. The God-bearing people allowed it. Even two sons were born! A rare happy family in Russia.
"Scorched by War." Front-line radio operator Yulia Emanova against the backdrop of Stalingrad, in the defense of which she took part. A simple village girl who volunteered to go to the front. On her chest are high awards of the USSR for military exploits - the Order of Glory and the Red Banner.
"Private War". In the Siberian city of Omsk, the artist met Mikhail Guselnikov, a former private in the 712th Infantry Brigade, who fought on the Leningrad Front. On January 28, 1943, during a breakthrough of the siege of Leningrad, a soldier was wounded in the spine. Since then he has been bedridden.
“Walked from the Caucasus to Budapest.” The artist met the sailor hero Alexei Chkheidze in the village of Danki near Moscow. Winter 1945. Budapest. Group Marines storms the royal palace. Almost all the brave souls will die in its underground galleries. Aleksey Chkheidze, who miraculously survived, underwent several operations, had his arms amputated, was blind, and had almost completely lost his hearing, even after this he found the strength to joke: he ironically called himself a “prosthetic man.”
"Veteran".
"Rest on the way." Russian soldier Alexey Kurganov lives in the village of Takmyk, Omsk region. On the front roads from Moscow to Hungary, he lost both legs.
"Letter to a fellow soldier." Disabled war veterans adapted to peaceful life in different ways. Vladimir Eremin from the village of Kuchino, deprived of both arms.
“A life lived...” There are lives that stand out for their special purity, morality and heroism. Mikhail Zvezdochkin lived such a life. WITH inguinal hernia he volunteered to go to the front. He commanded the artillery crew. He ended the war in Berlin. Life is on the island of Valaam.
"Front-line soldier." Muscovite Mikhail Koketkin was an airborne paratrooper at the front. As a result of a serious injury, he lost both legs.
"Front-line memories." Muscovite Boris Mileev, who lost both arms at the front, is printing front-line memoirs.
"Portrait of a woman with a burnt face." This woman was not at the front. Two days before the war, her beloved military husband was sent to the Brest Fortress. She also had to go there a little later. Hearing on the radio about the beginning of the war, she fainted - her face into the burning stove. Her husband, as she guessed, was no longer alive. When the artist painted her, she sang beautiful folk songs to him...
After World War II, the USSR was left bloodless: millions of young people died at the front. The lives of those who did not die, but were injured, were ambivalent. Front-line soldiers returned home crippled, and to live a “normal” and full life they couldn't. There is an opinion that, to please Stalin, disabled people were taken to Solovki and Valaam, “so as not to spoil the Victory Day with their presence.”
How did this myth come about?
History is a science that is constantly being interpreted. Classical historians and alternative historians broadcast polar opinions regarding Stalin’s merits in the Great Patriotic War. But in the case of disabled people, the Second World War is unanimous: guilty! He sent disabled people to Solovki and Valaam to be shot! The source of the myth is considered to be the “Valaam Notebook” by Evgeny Kuznetsov, a tour guide of Valaam. The modern source of the myth is considered to be a conversation between Natella Boltyanskaya and Alexander Daniel on Ekho Moskvy on May 9, 2009. Excerpt from the conversation: “Boltyanskaya: Comment on the monstrous fact when, on the orders of Stalin, after the Great Patriotic War disabled people were forcibly exiled to Valaam, to Solovki, so that they, armless, legless heroes, would not spoil the victory holiday with their appearance. Why is there so little talk about this now? Why aren't they called by name? After all, it was these people who paid for the victory with their blood and wounds. Or can they now also not be mentioned?
Daniel: Well, why comment on this fact? This fact is well known and monstrous. It is completely understandable why Stalin and the Stalinist leadership expelled the veterans from the cities.
Boltyanskaya: Well, they really didn’t want to spoil the festive look?
Daniel: Absolutely. I'm sure it's for aesthetic reasons. Legless people on carts didn't fit into that piece of art, so to speak, in the style of socialist realism, into which the leadership wanted to turn the country. There is nothing to evaluate here"
Not a single fact or reference to a specific historical source No. The leitmotif of the conversation is that Stalin’s merits are overstated, his image does not correspond to his actions.
Why a myth?
The myth about prison boarding schools for disabled veterans did not appear immediately. Mythologization began with the mysterious atmosphere around the house on Valaam. The author of the famous “Valaam Notebook”, guide Evgeny Kuznetsov, wrote:
“In 1950, by decree of the Supreme Council of the Karelo-Finnish SSR, the House of War and Labor Disabled Persons was formed on Valaam and located in the monastery buildings. What an establishment this was! It’s probably not an idle question: why here, on the island, and not somewhere on the mainland? After all, it’s easier to supply and cheaper to maintain. The formal explanation is that there is a lot of housing, utility rooms, utility rooms (a farm alone is worth it), arable land for subsidiary farming, orchards, and berry nurseries. And the informal, true reason is that hundreds of thousands of disabled people were too much of an eyesore for the victorious Soviet people: armless, legless, restless, who lived by begging in train stations, on trains, on the streets, and who knows where else. Well, judge for yourself: his chest is covered in medals, and he’s begging near a bakery. No good! Get rid of them, get rid of them at all costs. But where should we put them? And to former monasteries, to the islands! Out of sight, out of mind. Within a few months, the victorious country cleared its streets of this “shame”! This is how these almshouses arose in Kirillo-Belozersky, Goritsky, Alexander-Svirsky, Valaam and other monasteries...”
That is, the remoteness of the island of Valaam aroused Kuznetsov’s suspicion that they wanted to get rid of the veterans: “To the former monasteries, to the islands! Out of sight...” And immediately he included Goritsy, Kirillov, and the village of Staraya Sloboda (Svirskoe) among the “islands”. But how, for example, in Goritsy, in the Vologda region, was it possible to “hide” disabled people? It's big locality, where everything is in plain sight.
There are no documents in the public domain that directly indicate that disabled people are exiled to Solovki, Valaam and other “places of detention.” It may well be that these documents exist in archives, but there is no published data yet. Therefore, talk about places of exile refers to myths.
The main open source is considered to be the “Valaam Notebook” by Evgeny Kuznetsov, who worked as a guide on Valaam for more than 40 years. But the only source is not conclusive evidence.
Solovki has a grim reputation as a concentration camp. Even the phrase “send to Solovki” has a menacing connotation, so linking the home for the disabled and Solovki means convincing that the disabled suffered and died in agony.
Another source of the myth is the deep conviction of people that disabled people of the Second World War were bullied, forgotten about and not given due respect. Lyudmila Alekseeva, chairman of the Moscow Helsinki Group, published an essay on the Echo of Moscow website “How the Motherland Repaid Its Winners.” Historian Alexander Daniel and his famous interview with Natella Boltyanskaya on radio “Echo of Moscow”. Igor Garin (real name Igor Papirov, Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences) wrote a long essay “Another truth about the Second World War, documents, journalism.” Internet users reading such materials form a clearly negative opinion.
Another point of view
Eduard Kochergin, a Soviet artist and writer, author of “Stories of the St. Petersburg Islands,” wrote about Vasya Petrogradsky, a former sailor of the Baltic Fleet who lost both legs in the war. He was leaving by boat for Goritsy, a home for the disabled. Here is what Kochergin writes about Petrogradsky’s stay there: “The most amazing and most unexpected thing is that upon arrival in Goritsy, our Vasily Ivanovich not only did not get lost, but on the contrary, he finally showed up. Complete stumps of war were brought to the former convent from all over the North-West, that is, people completely deprived of arms and legs, popularly called “samovars”. So, with his singing passion and abilities, from these remnants of people he created a choir - a choir of “samovars” - and in this he found his meaning of life." It turns out that the disabled did not live last days. The authorities believed that rather than begging and sleeping under a fence (and many disabled people did not have a home), it was better to be under constant supervision and care. After some time, disabled people remained in Goritsy who did not want to be a burden to the family. Those who recovered were released and helped with getting a job.
Fragment of the Goritsky list of disabled people:
“Ratushnyak Sergey Silvestrovich (amp. cult. right thigh) 1922 JOB 01.10.1946 to at will to Vinnytsia region.
Rigorin Sergey Vasilyevich worker 1914 JOB 06/17/1944 for employment.
Rogozin Vasily Nikolaevich 1916 JOB 02/15/1946 left for Makhachkala 04/05/1948 transferred to another boarding school.
Rogozin Kirill Gavrilovich 1906 JOB 06/21/1948 transferred to group 3.
Romanov Pyotr Petrovich 1923 JOB 06/23/1946 at his own request in Tomsk.”
The main task of the home for the disabled is to rehabilitate and integrate into life, to help master new profession. For example, legless disabled people were trained as bookkeepers and shoemakers. And the situation with “catching disabled people” is ambiguous. Front-line soldiers with injuries understood that life on the street (most often this was the case - relatives were killed, parents died or needed help) was bad. Such front-line soldiers wrote to the authorities with a request to send them to a nursing home. Only after this they were sent to Valaam, Goritsy or Solovki.
Another myth is that relatives knew nothing about the affairs of disabled people. In the personal files there are letters to which the administration of Valaam responded: “We inform you that the health of such and such is as before, he receives your letters, but does not write, because there is no news and there is nothing to write about - everything is as before, but he sends greetings to you "".
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