On what day does the Holy Fire descend? The secret of the Holy Fire has been revealed: we light it at home
The final solution to the “disability issue” in the USSR was as follows:
In 1949, before the celebration of the 70th anniversary of the Great Stalin, front-line soldiers and disabled people from World War II were shot in the USSR. Some of them were shot... some were taken to the distant islands of the North, and to the remote corners of Siberia - for the purpose of further "disposal".
Valaam is a concentration camp for disabled people of the Second World War, located on the island of Valaam (the northern part of Lake Ladoga), where after the Second World War in 1950 - 1984 war disabled people were taken. Founded by order Soviet leadership in 1950. It was located in old monastery buildings. Closed in 1984.
The final solution to the “disability issue” in the USSR was carried out overnight - by the forces of special units of the Soviet people's militia. In one night, the authorities conducted a raid, collected homeless disabled people, and centrally took them to the station, loaded them into ZK-type heated cars, and sent them in trains to Solovki. Without guilt and trial! - so that they do not confuse citizens with the unpleasant appearance of their front-line stumps... and do not spoil the idyllic picture of the general socialist prosperity of Soviet cities.
There is an opinion that homeless WWII disabled people, of whom there were tens of thousands after the war, primarily aroused anger among those who actually sat through the war at headquarters.
There were rumors that this action was organized personally by Zhukov.
Disabled people, for example, were taken not only from Kyiv, they were taken from all major cities of the USSR.
They “cleared” the country in one night!.. It was a special operation unprecedented in its scale. They said that the disabled tried to resist...threw themselves onto the rails...but they were picked up and carried anyway.
They even “took out” the so-called “samovars” - people without arms and legs. On Solovki they were sometimes taken out to breathe fresh air and hung on ropes from trees. Sometimes they forgot and they froze. These were usually 20-year-old guys, crippled by the war and written off by the Motherland as waste human material no longer useful to the Motherland.
Many of them were injured during the storming of Berlin in March-April 1945, when Marshal Zhukov, in order to save tanks, sent infantry soldiers to attack minefields. Thus, stepping on mines and being blown up... the soldiers cleared the minefields with their bodies, creating a corridor for the troops... thereby bringing the Great Victory closer.
Comrade Zhukov proudly boasted about this fact to Eisenhower, which was recorded in the personal diary of the American military leader, who simply fell into a stupor from such revelations of his Soviet colleague.
Several thousand disabled people were taken out from all over Kyiv at that time. Disabled people who lived in families were not touched. The “purge of disabled people” was repeated in the late 40s. But then disabled people were sent to boarding schools, which also resembled prisons... And these boarding schools were under the NKVD department.
Since then, there have been no more disabled people at veterans' parades. They were simply removed as an unpleasant mention. Thus, the Motherland never again remembered this unpleasant problem - the disabled. And the Soviet people could continue to carefreely enjoy the Soviet gracious reality... without having to contemplate the unpleasant sight of thousands of begging... and drunken disabled stumps. Even their names disappeared into oblivion.
Much later, disabled survivors began to receive benefits and other benefits.
And those lonely legless and armless boys were simply buried alive on Solovki... and today no one knows their names... or their suffering.
This is how it was produced final decision the issue of disabled people in the USSR.
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 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 house 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 Valaam Monastery): “In 1950, a House for Disabled Persons of War and Labor was established 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. Strictly speaking, 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. Formal explanation: there is a lot of housing, utility rooms, utility rooms (one farm is worth it), arable land for subsidiary farming, orchards, berry nurseries, and 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 extent 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, the smiles of creatures who seem to have been guilty of something forever, appear before my mind’s eye, 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 for 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. A holder 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 shows 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?
"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 Rifle 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. A group of marines storm 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 road." 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 an 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...
The Great Patriotic War became a test for people not only during the fighting, but also after its end; the eviction of disabled people from Moscow after the war is one of such tests, which also became one of the stains in the history of the USSR. Of course, the main test of the war was the number of military and civilian deaths in the Second World War, but no less a test was the incredible number of wounded soldiers, estimated in tens or even hundreds of thousands.From the very beginning of the Great Patriotic War in 1941 until its end in 1945, there was an endless stream of soldiers wounded on the battlefields. Some of the soldiers had minor injuries and after treatment the soldiers returned to duty, but a huge number of soldiers received injuries that affected their future lives.
According to eyewitnesses, after the end of the Patriotic War in 1945, large cities of the USSR were flooded with a huge number of war invalids, without arms, without legs, and sometimes without all limbs - poor people were looking for an opportunity for life, for food, because huge losses were not only among military, but also among civilians, so the soldiers simply remained alone.
Big cities were filled with disabled people, there were so many of them that at some point people simply stopped noticing them. A few photographs from that time indicate huge quantities disabled people in cities, they became a kind of sign of the post-war era, they could be found everywhere. Rattling wheelbarrow bearings of those who lost their legs, hand-made crutches and prostheses - this is a common picture of large cities in the late 40s of the last century.
Unfortunately, the country, exhausted by the war, could not adequately provide for all those in need. In museums dedicated to the war one can find much evidence of the dire situation with people with disabilities. Ugly prosthetics, lack of basic medicine, of course, in such conditions the victorious soldier could not feel truly proud of his country.
Hence the drunkenness, the soldiers, left without arms and without legs, saw no other way out than to sit for hours in drinking establishments, where sometimes serious passions flared up. People argued, discussed the results of certain battles and sometimes spoke unflatteringly about the country's top leadership about the results of certain operations. And no matter how scary it may sound, the state had to calm down this crowd, while these were proud and independent people, because what could frighten such a person. And also, obviously, the state was afraid of disabled front-line soldiers, and these unfortunate people spoiled the picture of a happy Soviet state.
The first clouds over disabled people, quite recently, began to thicken already in the late 40s, when for law enforcement agencies these heroes gradually became one of the asocial individuals, compared with beggars, tramps and criminals.
But the authorities took the greatest effort to clear the streets of disabled people in the mid-50s. In the shortest possible time, large cities were cleared of lonely disabled people; it seemed as if they simply disappeared overnight. At the same time, the operation of Stalin’s eviction of disabled people after the war became one of the most hidden secrets of the USSR.
How Stalin got rid of the disabled could only be judged from the words of a few witnesses to that atrocity. How is it that the state acted so inhumanely with the victors, with the heroes, and was there another solution to the problem?
The fate of disabled people after the Great Patriotic War
Fit, brave, with orders and medals on his chest - this is exactly how Soviet propaganda painted the image of the winner. But there were soldiers without arms, without legs, deprived of sight and hearing. And at some point they were simply taken to specially created boarding schools in different parts of the country. This happened almost overnight, suddenly all the disabled people from large cities disappeared. At the same time, it was not known for certain where the disabled people disappeared after the war, or who the perpetrators of this purge were.A few social services, the military, the police - even now, turning to archival data does little to solve this mystery. There are supposedly no documents confirming the action to evict people with disabilities from large cities. Lonely, crippled by war, but at the same time proud people they were simply taken out of the cities, so that by the fall of 1953 there were practically no war-crippled soldiers left in Moscow, Leningrad and other large cities of the USSR.
Of course, it was impossible to completely keep secret where the unnecessary front-line soldiers disappeared even at that time, which is how people learned about Valaam. It was a terrible truth: Valaam camp for disabled people of the Second World War – exists! On the site of an old, dilapidated monastery, which was poorly suited for habitation, a kind of leper colony was created, only it was not lepers who lived here, but unnecessary heroes of the Great Patriotic War. The only convenience was electricity; they say that many buildings did not even have windows, so that in the very first harsh winter, dozens of people simply died from the cold.
But not only this monastery became the last shelter for victims called Operation “Disabled” - islands, mountain villages, old abandoned monasteries, these are the places where poor people found refuge.
Unfortunately, it was not customary to talk about Valaam; the few witnesses to this horror who wanted to describe or capture it were faced with the strictest prohibition from organs. Even in the feature film made in 1984, a drama based on the book “Patience,” the story of one of the disabled people is shown, but this story is embellished and was subject to the most severe Soviet censorship.
Another source of information is the stories of guide Evgeny Kuznetsov; in his “Valaam Notebook” he talks about where disabled veterans were brought from, how they lived here and how they found their last refuge here.
Restoring a complete historical and truthful picture of the Valaam camp is now very difficult also because every disabled person who came here was deprived of any documents, their passports, award books and any other identification documents were taken away. So the war heroes lived in complete oblivion, and were buried in the same oblivion. In most cases, there are no documents or even signs on the graves in Valaam. It’s hard to even imagine how many places where war invalids lived in inhumane conditions were still scattered around the country.
Of course, the situation not in all camps looked terrifying, in some there were orderlies, food and washing for the disabled, but in general, history requires that it not be consigned to oblivion.
So declassifying the archives will help reveal many secrets of the USSR, where disabled veterans disappeared, one of those secrets that requires people to know about the real heroes who went through the horrors of the war and endured inhuman suffering after its end!
An anti-Soviet fairy tale about the Great Patriotic War - one of the frequently replicated myths goes like this: “...in the late 40s there were many disabled people on the streets. The legacy of the recent war... Front-line soldiers. Armless, legless, on crutches, with artificial limbs... They sang and begged, begging in carriages and markets. And this could give rise to some seditious thoughts in our heads about the gratitude of the Soviet people to their defenders... Suddenly they disappeared. They were collected in one night - loaded into wagons and taken to boarding houses closed type with a special regime." At night, secretly - so that there is no noise. Forcibly - some threw themselves onto the rails, but where were they against the young and healthy? They took it out. So as not to offend the eyes of townspeople and tourists with their appearance. So that they don’t remind us of our debt to them, who saved us all.”
What was it really like? Quite different. Mikhail Sizov figured out the issue.
"VALAAM LISTS
On June 22, 1941, the war began - and did it end?
They took me away. Where?
When we remember the Great Patriotic War, not only the flag over the Reichstag, the Victory salute, and national rejoicing appear in our memory, but also human grief. And one does not mix with the other. Yes, this war caused terrible damage to the country. But the joy of Victory, the awareness of one’s righteousness and strength should not be buried in sorrow - this would be a betrayal towards those who gave their lives for the Victory, who obtained this joy with their blood.
So I recently wrote to my Polish friend: “Witek, on Christmas Day they don’t cry about the murdered babies of Bethlehem. I don’t know about you Catholics, but among us those killed by Herod are remembered separately, on the fourth day after Christmas. In the same way, it is not customary for us to overshadow Victory Day; for this purpose, June 22, the day the war began, is more appropriate.”
Witek is the Internet nickname of a Polish publicist who maintains a blog for a Russian audience on a reputable portal in Poland. Writes a lot about crimes Soviet power, about the Katyn massacre, the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, etc. And on May 8, on the eve of Victory Day, he “congratulated” the Russians with a publication called: “Where have the disabled front-line soldiers gone? Food for thought for those who like to celebrate noisily.”
The publication was compiled from various Russian-language articles. They say: “In the statistical study “Russia and the USSR in the wars of the 20th century. Losses armed forces“It appears that during the war 3,798,200 people were demobilized due to injury, illness, or age, of which 2,576,000 were disabled. And among them 450,000 are one-armed or one-legged. Older readers will remember that in the late 40s there were many disabled people on the streets. The legacy of the recent war... Front-line soldiers. Armless, legless, on crutches, with artificial limbs... They sang and begged, begging in carriages and markets. And this could give rise to some seditious thoughts in our heads about the gratitude of the Soviet people to their defenders... Suddenly they disappeared. They were collected in one night - loaded into wagons and taken to “closed boarding houses with a special regime.” At night, secretly - so that there is no noise. Forcibly - some threw themselves onto the rails, but where were they against the young and healthy? They took it out. So as not to offend the eyes of townspeople and tourists with their appearance. So that we are not reminded of our debt to them, who saved us all.
In fact, no one really understood - they took anyone they could, and those who had a family couldn’t even convey the news about themselves! Their passports and military IDs were taken away. They disappeared and that's it. That's where they lived - if you can call it life. Rather, existence in some kind of Hades, on the other side of the Styx and Lethe - the rivers of oblivion... Prison-type boarding schools from where there was no way out. But they were young guys, they wanted to live! In fact, they were in the position of prisoners... Such an institution existed, for example, on the island of Valaam. The boarding schools were under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. It’s clear what kind of life there was..."
It’s unpleasant to read this, especially with Polish comments. As a Christian, I would need to humbly repent for our God-fighting communists: this is what they did to disabled veterans. But the more I plunged into this stream of words, collected from the streams of Russian human rights criticism, the more I was overcome by disgust: “What a country the USSR is! What kind of people!” And the communists have already faded into the background, because in a normal country inhabited by normal people, they would not be able to commit such atrocities. Everyone is to blame! How did the Russian people allow this to happen?!
And then I had a feeling: something is not right here, there is some kind of demonization of reality... Are “hundreds of thousands” of crippled veterans really sent to prison boarding schools? After all, overall there were no more than 500 thousand of them, and the vast majority returned to their families, worked to restore the country, some as best they could - without an arm or a leg. This is preserved in people's memory! Were boarding schools really subordinate to the Ministry of Internal Affairs? Was there security there? In response, Witek was able to cite only an excerpt from the report of the Minister of Internal Affairs Kruglov dated February 20, 1954: “Beggars refuse to send them to homes for the disabled... they leave them without permission and continue to beg. I propose to transform homes for the disabled and the elderly into closed-type homes with special regimes.” But it does not in any way follow from this that the proposal for a “regime” was satisfied. The minister proceeded from his own, purely departmental, point of view, but he did not make the decision. But what really follows from this note is that until the mid-50s there was no “regime” in boarding schools for the disabled. Our human rights activists talk about the end of the 40s, when disabled people were “sent to prisons.”
By boat to Goritsy
The myth about prison boarding schools for disabled veterans did not appear immediately. Apparently, it all started with the mystery that surrounded the nursing home 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? This is a large populated area, where everything is in plain sight.
The defender of Nevskaya Dubrovka, Alexander Ambarov, was buried alive twice during the bombing (drawing by G. Dobrov)
Eduard Kochergin in “Stories from the St. Petersburg Islands” describes how in the early 50s, Leningrad homeless people and homeless women (including walking women, so to speak, “the lower classes of society”) accompanied their cheerful drinking companion and singer Vasya Petrogradsky, a former sailor of the Baltic Fleet, to the boarding school. who lost both legs at the front. Social Security officials (who forced him to go to a boarding school) and a crowd of friends put him on an ordinary passenger ship. At parting, the “ironed and waxed Vasily” was given keepsakes - a new button accordion and three boxes of his favorite “Triple” cologne. To the playing of this button accordion (“The beloved city can sleep peacefully...”), the steamer set sail for Goritsy.
“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. In the former convent Complete stumps of war were brought from all over the North-West, that is, people completely devoid of arms and legs, popularly called “samovars”. So, with his singing passion and abilities, he created a choir from these remnants of people - a choir of “samovars” - and in this he found his meaning of life. The head of the “monastery” and all her doctors and nurses enthusiastically welcomed Vasily Ivanovich’s initiative, and turned a blind eye to his cologne drinking. The nursing sisters, led by the nerve doctor, generally idolized him and considered him a savior from the passionate attacks of unfortunate young male torsos on their own persons.
In the summer, twice a day, healthy Vologda women carried their charges on green-brown blankets for a “walk” outside the walls of the monastery, laying them out among the sternum overgrown with grass and bushes that sloped steeply down to the Sheksna... Bubble was placed at the top, then high voices , lower - baritone, and closer to the river - bass.
During the morning “festivities,” rehearsals took place, and between the lying torsos, in a vest, on a leather “ass,” a sailor galloped, teaching and instructing everyone and not giving anyone peace: “On the left side - turn up the speed, stern - take your time, the helmsman (Bubble ) – got it right!“ In the evening, when Moscow, Cherepovets, St. Petersburg and other three-deck steamships with passengers on board moored and set sail at the pier below, the “samovars” led by Vasily Petrogradsky gave a concert. After the loud, hoarse “Polundra!” Begin, lads!” over the Vologda eels, over the walls of the old monastery, towering on a steep slope, over the pier with steamboats below, the ringing voice of Bubble was heard, and behind him the powerful voices of passionately eager male choir picked up and led upstream the Sheksna River a sea song:
The sea spreads wide
And the waves are raging in the distance...
Comrade, we are going far,
Farther from this earth...
And the well-prepared, well-fed “three-deck” passengers froze in surprise and fright from the strength and eagerness of the sound. They stood on their tiptoes and climbed onto the upper decks of their ships, trying to see who was producing this sound miracle. But behind the tall Vologda grass and coastal bushes no stumps are visible human bodies singing from the ground. Sometimes, just above the tops of the bushes, the hand of our fellow countryman, who created the only choir of living torsos on the globe, will flash. It will flash and disappear, dissolving into the foliage. Very soon, rumors about the wonderful monastery choir of “samovars” from Goritsy, on Sheksna, spread throughout the Mariinsky system, and Vasily was given a new, local title to the St. Petersburg title. Now he began to be called Vasily Petrogradsky and Goritsky.
And from St. Petersburg to Goritsy every year on May 9 and November 7, boxes with the best “Triple” cologne were sent, until in the spring of May 1957 the parcel returned to the Petrograd side “for lack of an addressee.”
As we see, there was no “prison” in Goritsy, and the “stumps of war” were not hidden. Rather than sleep under a fence, it is better to let them live under medical supervision and care - this was the position of the authorities. After a while, only those who were abandoned by their relatives or who themselves did not want to come to their wife in the form of a “stump” remained in Goritsy. Those who could be treated were treated and released into life, helping with employment. The Goritsky list of disabled people has been preserved, so I take from it the first fragment I come across without looking:
“Ratushnyak Sergey Silvestrovich (amp. cult. right thigh) 1922 JOB 01.10.1946 at your own request to Vinnytsia region.
Rigorin Sergey Vasilievich 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 your own request in Tomsk».
There is also the following entry: “Savinov Vasily Maksimovich – private (osteopar. hip) 1903 JOB 07/02/1947 excluded for long-term unauthorized absence.”
"We parted with tears"
These Goritsky lists were found in Vologda and Cherepovets (the nursing home was transferred there) by genealogist Vitaly Semyonov. He also established the addresses of other boarding schools in the Vologda region: in the village of Priboy (Nikoloozersky Monastery) and near the city of Kirillov (Nilo-Sorsk Hermitage), where the most seriously ill were brought from Goritsy. In the desert there is still a neurological dispensary, and two churches, an abbot’s building and cell buildings have been preserved there (see Pokrov over Belozerye in No. 426 of “Faith”). The same boarding school was located in the village of Zeleny Bereg (Phillipo-Irapsky Monastery), which is near the village of Nikolskoye on the Andoga River (see Philip, the comforter of the soul in No. 418 of “Faith”). I had the opportunity to visit both of these monasteries, as well as Goritsy. And it never occurred to me to ask about veterans. And Vitaly Semyonov continues to “dig”...
Unknown soldier. 1974 (collage by the author from a drawing by G. Dobrov)
More recently, in May 2012, he received an email from a schoolgirl from the village of Nikolskoye. High school student Irina Kapitonova reconstructed 29 names of patients in the Andoga nursing home and recorded the memories of more than a dozen people who worked in the nursing home. Here are some excerpts:
“Next to the cells on the street there was a canopy built in the fresh air. Non-ambulatory disabled people favorable days They were taken out into the fresh air on cots. Disabled people were provided with systematic medical care. The head of the first-aid post was paramedic Valentina Petrovna Smirnova. She was sent here after graduating from the Leningrad Medical School at the Mechnikov Institute. Valentina Petrovna lived in a 12-meter room next to the disabled. In difficult times she always came to the rescue.
Every day at 8 a.m., medical workers made rounds of disabled people in their wards. Night calls were also frequent. We went to Kaduy on horseback to get medicine. Medicines were provided regularly. They fed us 3 times and also gave us an afternoon snack every day.
They maintained a large subsidiary farm at the home for the disabled... There were few workers in the subsidiary farm. Disabled people willingly helped them. According to former worker Alexandra Volkova (b. 1929), disabled people were hard workers. There was a library on site. They brought films for disabled people. Those who could went fishing, picked mushrooms and berries. All extracted products went to the common table.
None of the relatives visited disabled people. It is difficult to say: either they themselves did not want to be a burden, or their relatives did not know where they were staying. Many disabled people managed to find a family. Young women from the Green Coast and from nearby villages, who had lost their fiancés in the war, united their fate with the disabled from the Green Coast...
According to respondents, many smoked, but did not enjoy alcohol. Work helped to cope with physical and mental wounds. The fates of many of them testify to this. Zaboev Fedor Fedorovich, a disabled person of the 1st group without legs, was called “a legend” by those who knew him well. His golden hands knew how to do absolutely everything: tailoring, sewing and repairing shoes, harvesting the collective farm fields, cutting firewood...
The home for the disabled existed until 1974. Disabled people parted with the Green Coast and with each other hard, with tears. This shows that they were comfortable here.”
I forwarded all this information to the Polish publicist, saying that there is no need to paint the Soviet era with black paint - normal people there were kind and sympathetic people there, they respected their veterans. But my opponent did not give up: “What about the Valaam Notebook, don’t you believe Kuznetsov?” And again Kuznetsova quotes how the veterans were starving, they didn’t have enough vegetables:
“I saw it with my own eyes. When asked by one of them: “What should I bring from St. Petersburg?”, we, as a rule, heard: “A tomato and sausages, a piece of sausage.” And when the guys and I, having received our salaries, came to the village and bought ten bottles of vodka and a box of beer, what began here! In wheelchairs, “gurneys” (a board with four ball-bearing “wheels”), and on crutches, they joyfully hurried to the clearing near the Znamenskaya Chapel, where there was then a dance floor nearby. For legless disabled people! Just think of it! And there was a beer stall here. And the feast began. A glass of vodka and a glass of Leningrad beer. Yes, if you “cover” it with half a tomato and a piece of “Separate” sausage! My God, have the most sophisticated gourmets tasted such dishes! And how the eyes thawed, the faces began to glow, how those terrible, apologetic, guilty smiles disappeared from them...”
Well what can I say? Kuznetsov, while still a student, began working as a tour guide on Valaam in 1964. At that time, and even later, “sausage” could only be freely purchased in Leningrad and Moscow. Does this mean that disabled people were starving?
To be honest, Witeka’s words hurt me. After all, Valaam is very close to me. I came there on a business trip from the Petrozavodsk newspaper “Komsomolets” back in 1987. The nursing home was not found - three years ago it was transferred to " mainland", in the village of Vidlitsa. But I had a chance to talk to the one-armed veteran. I spent three nights in the forestry office (there were a forestry enterprise and a timber industry enterprise on the island), and there was an apiary nearby. It was at this apiary that a disabled person lived, who wished to stay with his bees. Looking at him, it somehow didn’t occur to me to ask about the “horrors” of the nursing home - such a bright, peaceful old man. Only one thing upset him. He showed me the bees and suggested: “I’m old, I don’t have an assistant, stay.” And I remember I was seriously thinking: maybe I should give up on everything and stay on the island?
I share this memory with my opponent, and he responds: “So, you don’t believe Kuznetsov. Do you trust your priests? A year ago on Valaam, a cross-monument was erected at the cemetery for disabled veterans, after the funeral service it was said...” And he quotes: “These are people who received severe injuries in the Great Patriotic War. Many of them had no arms or legs. But most of all, they probably suffered from the fact that the Motherland, for the freedom of which they gave their health, did not consider it possible to do anything better than send them here, to this cold island, away from the society of the victors... Their living conditions here they were not much different from the camp: they had no possibility of movement, they did not have the opportunity to go to their relatives and friends. They died here - they died mournfully, as we just heard in the prayer for the repose. What happened on Valaam... is another little-known story related to the war...”
Yes, my Polish friend fucked me. I didn’t even know what to answer.
The truth about Valaam
This sermon was delivered after the consecration of the cross, built at the request of the abbot of the monastery by representatives of the Association of Funeral Industry Enterprises of St. Petersburg and the North-Western Region. The coordinator of this case was Olga Losich, who also prepared historical information for a future monument. An interview with her is posted on the association’s website. Olga Losich reports that “the Association was tasked with creating a monument to war veterans who lived on Valaam since 1953” (in fact, veterans lived there already in 1951–1952. - M.S.). She goes on to tell how difficult it was for them to find the archives of the nursing home - they “ended up” in Vidlitsa. And he reports that about a thousand veterans were immediately brought to the island along with medical workers, then “from melancholy and loneliness they began to die one after another.” “We completely went through and studied the documents contained in twenty bags,” says O. Losich. – The search and research stage of the work ended with the compilation of lists of war veterans buried on Valaam. This list includes 54 names of veterans.” In total, according to Losich, 200 disabled people should have been buried in the cemetery.
Memorial to the disabled people of the Patriotic War buried on Valaam
A question immediately arises. Even if there are 200 buried, where did the remaining 800 go? So, after all, they didn’t “die one after another”? And no one condemned them to death on this “cold island”? The nursing home existed on Valaam for more than 30 years. The number of disabled people by year is known: 1952 - 876, 1953 - 922, 1954 - 973, 1955 - 973, 1956 - 812, 1957 - 691, - and then at approximately the same level. These were very sick people, with wounds and concussions, and many were elderly. Less than six deaths per year out of 900–700 people - is this really a high mortality rate for such an institution?
In reality, there was a lot of “turnover” on the island - some were brought there, others were taken away, rarely anyone stayed. And this follows from the archives that the members of the association searched for with such difficulties, although these documents have long been known to Karelian local historians. Photocopies of them are even posted on the Internet. Personally, I became interested, looked through almost two hundred documents and even found a relative of my fellow countryman from the Belomorsky region. In general, what immediately catches your eye is the residential addresses of disabled veterans. This is mainly the Karelo-Finnish SSR.
The assertion that parasitizing disabled veterans from large cities of the USSR were brought to the “cold island” is a myth that for some reason is still supported. From the documents it follows that very often these were natives of Petrozavodsk, Olonetsky, Pitkyaranta, Pryazhinsky and other regions of Karelia. They were not “caught” on the streets, but were brought to Valaam from “low-occupancy homes for the disabled” that already existed in Karelia - “Ryuttyu”, “Lambero”, “Svyatoozero”, “Tomitsy”, “Baraniy Bereg”, “Muromskoye”, "Monte Saari". Various escorts from these houses are preserved in the personal files of disabled people.
As the documents show, the main task was to give the disabled person a profession in order to rehabilitate him for a normal life. For example, from Valaam they were sent to courses for accountants and shoemakers - legless disabled people could fully master this. There was also training to become a shoemaker at Lambero. Veterans of the 3rd group were required to work; veterans of the 2nd group – depending on the nature of their injuries. During my studies, 50% of the disability pension was withheld in favor of the state.
Vitaly Semyonov, who scrupulously studied the Valaam archive, writes: “The typical situation that we see from the documents: a soldier returns from the war without legs, there are no relatives - they were killed on the way to evacuation, or there are old parents who themselves need help. Yesterday's soldier mumbles and mumbles, and then waves his hand at everything and writes to Petrozavodsk: I ask you to send me to a nursing home. After this, representatives of local authorities inspect living conditions and confirm (or do not confirm) the friend’s request. And only after that the veteran went to Valaam.
Contrary to legend, in more than 50% of cases those who ended up on Valaam had relatives about whom he knew very well. In my personal files, every now and then I come across letters addressed to the director - they say, what happened, we haven’t received letters for a year! The Valaam administration even had the traditional form of response: “We inform you that so-and-so’s health 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.” .
The most amazing thing: horror stories about the Valaam “Hades” fly away instantly, as soon as any doubter types in the address on the Internet - http://russianmemory.gallery.ru/watch?a=bcaV-exc0. Here they are, photocopies of internal documentation. For example, this explanatory text (preserving spelling):
“1952 Valaam Invalid Home. From war invalid V.N. Kachalov. Statement. Since I went to the city of Petrozavodsk and an accident happened, during a seizure I took off my jacket and summer trousers, I ask you to give me a sweatshirt and trousers. What I ask you not to refuse. In Petrozavodsk I told the minister, she told you to write a statement. To this: Kachalov 25/IX–52 years old.”
The picture is clarified by another note: “To the director of the home for the disabled, comrade. Titov from a disabled war veteran, II gr. Kachalova V.N. Explanation. I explain that I sold 8 items: 2 cotton trousers, 1 cotton sheet, 1 cotton jacket, cotton sweatshirt. One cotton jacket. Shirt 1 cotton, socks 1 cotton. For all this I ask you to forgive me and in the future I ask you to forgive me. I give the employment inspector my word in writing that I will not allow this to happen again and I ask you to give me a woolen suit, as was given to disabled war veterans. To this: Kachalov. 3/X–1952". It turns out that the disabled person freely went from the island to the regional center and had fun there.
A request to a disabled front-line soldier whether he really wants to enter a nursing home (this and other documents on the page are from the Valaam archive)
Or here are some more documents. An official request to a disabled person whether he really wants to live in a disabled home (talking about “raids”). Dismissal "inv. war comrade Alexey Alekseevich Khatov in that he was resigning to accompany his wife to her place of residence in the Altai Territory, Rubtsovsk” (and was it a “prison”?). And here are two more documents. One provides a certificate for 1946 that the veteran Gavrilenko from Pitkyaranta, a former tanker, blind in both eyes, an incapacitated mother, “is in a hopeless situation,” so he is allocated a place in the Lambero boarding school in the Olonets region. From another it follows that the tanker was transferred to Valaam, but in 1951 his mother took him from there. Or this detail: Fyodor Vasilyevich Lanev, who arrived in Valaam from the city of Kondopoga, in 1954, as a veteran, receives a pension of 160 rubles. It is from such small details that the real picture grows.
And on all the documents there is not a “home for disabled people of war and labor,” as E. Kuznetsov and many mythologists call it, but simply a “home for disabled people.” It turns out that he did not specialize in veterans. Among the “supported” (as patients were officially called) there was a different contingent, including “disabled and elderly people from prisons.” V. Semenov learned about this from former workers of the Valaam nursing home when he traveled to Karelia in 2003.
“I had one case,” said the old woman. – One former prisoner attacked me in the kitchen, he was healthy, with a prosthetic leg, but you can’t touch them - they’ll sue you. They beat you, but you can’t beat them! I then screamed, the deputy director came and gave him such a blow that he flew off. But it’s okay, I didn’t sue, because I felt that I was wrong.”
The story of the Valaam “Hades” is very ambiguous. Meanwhile, the legend of the “Gulag for Veterans” continues to expand. And is it really my friend’s fault, the Polish publicist who collected all these horror stories, if not in the Polish, American or some other, namely in the Russian Wikipedia it says: “Valaam is a camp for disabled people of the Second World War, where after the Second World War in 1950-1984 they brought disabled war veterans.” There is also a link to the article “How war invalids were destroyed in the USSR” with comments from some Ukrainian: “Before the crimes of the Russian communists, all the crimes of German Nazism combined pale in comparison... Genetic monsters... Where did the God-bearing people go with the crippled victors? The essence of these boarding schools was to quietly send disabled people to the next world as quickly as possible...” And last year, a book by American adjunct professor Frances Bernstein was supposed to be published in the United States, which describes the infringement of the rights of veterans, including in the Goritsky house disabled people. Psychological pressure continues - aimed at denigrating what now unites the peoples of Russia. Quietly, gradually, delving into the wounds of veterans, they undermine the “memory of memory” among the younger generation - they say, if your grandfathers mocked veterans, then why do you lay flowers at monuments at weddings, why do you need “such” Victory?
Only the truth can resist this. And a prayerful memory of those crippled who for many years carried the fragments of a terrible war. And, of course, I bow to Olga Losich and her comrades for erecting a memorial cross on Valaam. The cross may also appear in the Goritsky churchyard - Vitaly Semyonov has been trying to achieve this from the local authorities for several years. And how many more such disabled cemeteries are there in Rus'...
Instead of an afterword: After the publication of this publication on July 4, a 78-year-old Syktyvkar woman came to the editorial office of our newspaper and said that her father was considered missing in the family for a long time after the war. But one day her friend went to Valaam and accidentally saw a fellow villager there... It was the father of our guest. He lost his legs during the war and decided not to tell his family about himself, so as not to be a burden. We will tell about this and another story that has added to the “Valaam list” in issue No. 664 of the newspaper.”
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. The front-line soldiers returned home crippled, and they could not live a “normal” and full life. 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. Modern source The conversation between Natella Boltyanskaya and Alexander Daniel on Ekho Moskvy on May 9, 2009 is considered a myth. Excerpt from the conversation: “Boltyanskaya: Comment on the monstrous fact when, by order 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 work 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 as beggers 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? This is a large populated area, 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 10/01/1946 at his own request to the 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 "".
