How People and Veterans With Disabilities Were Treated in the USSR? Ushanka Digest

The Stalinist purges of the 30's killed off the top officer corps!

I'm glad you finally addressed the veterans that disappeared in last segment. I saw an hour special on it but can't remember when or where. If I find it again I'll let you know. Stalin had the veterans murdered by the NKVD/KGB. There were 10s or 100s of thousands that disappeared. But as with anything the soviets did is they then killed the murders and then killed those that murdered those.

Before they managed to build their 'wheelchair' how did these people get around ?

Reminds me of The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. There was a guy in there talking to Angel Eyes using blocks to walk on his hands.

You always speak of the first man in space. But it was his friend that went 2 or 3 days before him. They captured his screams in Australia, as he went around I believe 7 times. He also took a flight later on because the craft had so many flaws he didn't want soviet hero to parish.
The soviet robot tank landed the day before the US put men on the moon. The robot tank had issues in the beginning, but did complete mosts of its missions. It later died because dirt/dust covered the solor panel dish.

USSR had nukes, go to space but there is no wheelchairs. Shame.

All that he had left was his upper torso. Wow!

I wonder what kind of prosthesis the current Russian disabled vets are using?

I was in Kiev Ukraine in 1994. I was at the World War II monument there. They had an eternal flame there and I saw an old Veteran throwing flowers into the flame. He was complaining about his treatment as a Veteran. The police took him away. They wouldn’t let me take a photo of him but I got a photo of the flame with the flower petals he threw in around it.

Good ol' Uncle Joe. Aren't there some in Russia today that look up to him and are trying to rehabilitate his reputation?

Lenin had a wheelchair.

I'd never have thought to ask about this topic, but in all honesty, this is a fascinating view into a society I barely know anything about.

So much for the Workers Paradise!! How awful; central planning didn't even consider wheelchairs for the disabled?!?!?! Now my mother is in a wheelchair most of the time. Since she is a fall risk the assisted living facility insists she stays in the wheelchair. When I take her out to run errands she uses a walker. She was dissatisfied with one chair, it was hard to wheel her around. She called the company that manufactured the original chair, and demanded a new one; and she got one. The most notable Soviet individual who was disabled due to a sports injury was Elena Mukina. I always wondered what kind of care she received? I knew it wouldn't be quality care; this was very disturbing. What a disgrace.

Спасибо вам большое за обмен. My wife and I have a disable son who still lives with us. It is a shame that with all the 501C whatever charitable organizations that there is not much available for disable people. Many executive offices, parking places, salaries, nice brochures but little help.

The invalid ww2 vets, made people sad not being able to work and homeless around major cities.
They were put on barges to the east on a river. The river went to the sea. The barges were then sunk.
I think this is in gulag archipelago.

Back then this was practiced all around the world. Disabled people were isolated from the world because their families were ashamed of their condition. In my home country Brazil it was believed that a disabled child was a punishment for the sins of parents. No one wanted to be pointed as a sinner, so these children were either confined at home or put in institutions. Some were forced to beg, since parents would have like 10 children that they couln't feed, and all children had to work. They took the Catholic Church ban on contraceptives seriously. Even today, people with severe disabilities are not seen around, because it's impossible to ride a wheelchair on broken and irregular sideways. There are ramps and adapted restrooms in every large business, but the disabled cannot get anywhere unless they have cars, that most cannot afford because hardly anyone will hire them.
People with mental disabilities, on the other way, are everywhere, but they don't get sympathy because it's considered as something caused by lack of discipline and laziness. The religious nuts think it's demon possession.

It blows my mind that back then “most liberal” meant opened minded then and now it’s literally the exact opposite

as a veeran from a family of veterans, I am so moved by the story of this hero. Slava!

Goes to show how hard they tried to be the coolest kid on the block, they forgot the ones that mattered.

amazing how indifferent the soviet union was to suffering and hardship. someone in some high burocratic office sat and made production plans for consumer products, capital increase, and military needs, but non of that had anything to do with handicapped.

I would suggest that the treatment of veterans who were severely wounded possibly still isn't what it should be here in the UK. On this evidence though, it was light years ahead of the USSR.
Of course, for a great many veterans they may be intact physically, but suffering deeply, in the psychological sense. We see this all the time, after the wars of recent decades. Help is lacking there, simply because the NHS has been badly run down by the Conservatives over the last 14 years, by any reasonable metric.

My family has several veterans of afghan war who have II/III group of disability. No visual difference, but the one with II is not allowed to drive

They didn't make wheel chairs.... They made rockets that went into space, but not wheel chairs.... Man that's backwards.

It really is no wonder why Tankies hate you so much, you do such a good job shattering their rosy fantasies about the soviet union.

I believe one of the differences between Russia and Ukraine will show itself in the coming years. Russia will hide it's wounded soldiers, while Ukraine will honor them in public. It seems to me that the USSR helped them little in order to make it difficult for them to appear in public, so that they could be out of sight. Actually, this made the USSR somewhat more similar to Nazi Germany.

Soviet state granted veterans special privileges only as long as mass demobilization was under way. Once this massive upheaval was over and veterans had been reintegrated into civilian society. Privileges were dismantled and by 1948 veterans ceased to exist as an officially recognized status group. Only 30 years later was their status institutionalized in law. However, legal status was not the only mechanism that created commonality among veterans. What held them together was instead a shared sense of entitlement based on wartime sacrifice. During the first postwar decade, therefore, Soviet veterans are best understood as an "entitlement group by their government.

Did he kill fiddy men?

Says it all really the money and will to put a device on another celestial body but not to manufacturer wheelchairs and i mean it wasn't much better in the west

Hello Comrade. While watching a U.S. made documentary about the USSR, I heard 'the barge story'. In this version, the victims were former Imperial officers in about 1920.

It’s very undignified, seeing a man who scooches around on a little cart at waist level. Very sad! But I suppose there’s no way to make a man without legs look good, not really.

You mean documents writing "Today we sank another barge with 400 people on board"?
The only way to find out would be interviewing people who took part in the scheme and looking at document archives for clues but I wouldn't hold my hopes high for now.

I always kinda based my views of this on the state of those wild metal ramps on public stairs across the former union.

I'm not sure what sort of nitwit said england treated veterans just as badly, things like plastic surgery where pioneered to help injured veterans during the first world war and it improved even more for second world war veterans

Regarding another issue that was brought up, re: mental disabilities brought about by combat - PTSD, it's an issue that is still not addressed by many governments to this day. A no. of my school teachers were combat vets (British & Canadian Army WW2 and South African Army Angolan War 1975-89) and they would tell me that when they were demobilised, they were given next to no help regarding mental health. Decades after the conflict, they were still suffering from the psycological effects of war. The respite being alcohol or chomping through all kinds of pills prescribed by a doctor.

My deepest sympathies for those treated likewise in any nation. America and Canada are also 2 nations with horrible track records.

The story about the barges is horrific, but I doubt it for only one reason: It's inefficient. If they just wanted to kill them all they wouldn't need to ship them across the country and down one of the longest rivers in asia.

I think more likely they created a new camp for them and used the barges as material. Although that fate isn't necessarily much better since in another camp they did something similar and due to lack of food it devolved into cannibalism.

What a contrast 😢. Even back then in the gdr ( I'm an east german), they had at least 1 bigger company, that produced wheelchairs. They even had special schools and facilities for disabled persons.

An interesting follow up idea - how did the USSR treat the mentally ill/developmentally disabled? I imagine it wasn't decent (heard a horror story about a disabled Chinese woman I've seen that lives in the US, plus horror stories from channels covering mainland China) but did it improve with the reforms in the late 80s?

invalid, as a noun, also has the same meaning in the US. Though it is rarely used anymore.

Really enjoy your compilation videos like this one at the end of a long day. 👍 Great video

They were treated like shit. Most were living in poverty and begging at train stations. There were very little accomodations

Unpopular topic, human topic, critical topic, well summarized. Good hob thank you

One favourite psychological diagnosis that many people were sent to hospital for was because they suffered from "Emigration Delusions"
On another matter in the UK between 1945 and the arrival of Mrs Thatcher after 1979.
Vast swathes of British insdury was nationalised and state controlled.
This included the Coal industry, Electricity, Gas, Steel, Shipbuilding, Transport (Airlines, Buses, Canals, Railways and a significant amount of Passenger Shipping) and Water.
British Petroleum was also state owned.
Apart from that significant amounts of public transport and water were owned municipalities (The local authorities) in fact, today there are still a small number of municipal bus companies in the UK
In many respects in the post WW II era Britain was described as having a 'mixed economy' with both nationalised and private industries.
So somewhere between the USA and the USSR.

In my poor former slave State, in the 60s I remember this black man that had almost all of his legs removed. I'm not sure how he lived as i was just a kid but I remember him propelling himself all over the downtown area on a small wagon like thing.

Interesting

The problem with marxist ideas is equqlity to all sounds good but when someone is unable to perform the same as everyone else then what is the solution? That is where things get dark.

I actually asked a question about this ones, I am interested in this topic because I am totally blind myself. So I am always interested in how things are for people like me and other places.