Disabled people of the Second World War after the war are true. How disabled people of the Great Patriotic War were destroyed after the war

“They gathered in a park near the station. Some were missing an arm or a leg, some (former pilots) had burn marks on their faces. They sat on benches and begged passengers for bread. When it got dark, the disabled would sometimes get into heated arguments, they swore. The police detained the most “violent” ones, but then quickly released them. The law enforcement officers tried not to mess with the disabled again.”,

Old-timer Andrei Arterchuk talks about the realities near the Shepetivka railway station 60-70 years ago.

We have a very little idea about the appearance of that category of people, whose representatives were so memorable for Andrei Moiseevich. After all, photographs with images of people crippled by the war were under an unspoken ban. They were not advertised either in the press or in books. On the instructions of the Deputy People's Commissar of State Security of the USSR Bogdan Kobulov, from the end of January 1945, censors of department "B" of the NKGB seized photographs of front-line soldiers with amputated limbs, blindness, and disfigured faces, even from letters of ordinary Soviet citizens. And then these “trophies” were hidden so “reliably” that they cannot be found even in the archives of modern intelligence services...

As of February 1, 1946, up to half a million disabled people from the Soviet-German war lived in Ukraine. Of these, 7,941 people belonged to the first disability group, 189,560 to the second, and 264,954 to the third. Almost every tenth disabled front-line soldier (39,880 people) had an officer rank. Among the latter, there were 21,503 disabled people of the second group. This was followed by representatives of the third (16,539 people) and first (1,038) disability groups.

Russian artist Gennady Dobrov (1937-2011) created a series of drawings “Autographs of War”. In the drawing “Rest on the Road” - soldier Alexey Kurganov, he lived in a boarding house in the Siberian village of Takmyk, Omsk region. He went through the war from Moscow to Hungary and lost his legs.

Although Ukraine in those years was dominated by post-war devastation, the authorities practically did not worry about the life and health of disabled people. Measures to support them were taken, but often symbolic, half-hearted, and ineffective.

Firstly, they tried to provide housing for front-line soldiers without a fixed place of residence. However, there have been cases when some disabled people “idly” repeatedly petitioned the authorities for improved living conditions, since they were “not heard” there. For example, this is how I looked for free " square meters"Pavel Lebedev is a disabled war veteran, a member of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks), twice an order bearer. Almost every day (after demobilization in October 1945) he visited the Chernivtsi city council and regional executive committee in order to ask officials to help his family - of six people! - in searching for housing. As a result, Lebedev was “lucky” - he got an apartment on December 15, when it was already frosty and snowing outside. The simple “apartment” that the city authorities provided him had no heating, no water, no electricity, not to mention. already about furniture or dishes. Thus, the honored holder of the Orders of Lenin and the Red Banner had to sleep on the floor and cook food in cans.

But disabled front-line soldier Merkotenko did not even receive such primitive housing. After demobilization, he eked out a miserable existence at the Znamenka Odesskaya station railway, namely, in a primitive shack on the site of the parental home burned by the Nazis. Since he quickly got tired of this “life”, he decided to complain to the Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (Bolsheviks) Nikita Khrushchev:

“Forgive me for writing to you and not addressing the local authorities. The fact is that she doesn’t accept demands, requests, or even almost pleas... I’m not even nineteen yet, but I’ve already seen everything: the roar of guns , and hunger, and cold, and poverty with death. In 1943, not even seventeen years old, I became a soldier of the Red Army. Now my body is decorated with six wounds that I am proud of... Since December 1944, when I returned from the hospital. home as an invalid, the long days of my need have dragged on. Our house is destroyed, and the hut that we built and live in is “tempting” me to commit suicide. I’ve been wearing old clothes from the hospital, uniforms from the same place. I’ve been turning to the Znamensky authorities for the past ten years. months and always hear the same thing: “no” or “if there is any, we’ll give it.” Since I don’t receive help, I live on 300 grams of bread. I went to the city committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine, and there the first secretary, Comrade Brazikevich, said: “We have nothing, you don’t have to go...”

There are similar minor notes in a letter dated January 24, 1946 from front-line soldier Zelman Kvasha from Vinnitsa to his father in Cleveland, Ohio, USA:

"...My house burned down, everything was destroyed and destroyed. I was wounded twice, there is not a single finger on one of my hands. I can’t work, it’s only thanks to what my wife earns that I exist. We are naked and barefoot. Dear dad, please help you with at least something."

"The story about the medals. It was hell there." Ivan Zabara shows his medal "For the Defense of Stalingrad". Bakhchisarai, 1975. Artist Gennady Dobrov.

In the first post-war years, war veterans who were disfigured at the fronts did not receive a “disabled” pension. Even a penny allowance, which for some reason was called “rent”, could only be claimed by front-line soldiers with the first or second disability group. Representatives of the first category received 80-150 rubles per month from the state, the second were entitled to half this amount (in 1945-1948, the amount of rent constantly fluctuated). How meager these funds were becomes clear when comparing them with the prices of food and clothing. For example, in the summer of 1947, the market asked for 10 rubles per liter of milk, a kilo of pork cost 120, and a pound of rye - 850. An ordinary men's suit in a "run-of-the-mill" general store cost an "exorbitant" 700-800 rubles.

In addition to the “fixed” amount, veterans crippled by the war were also given a “ration.” Disabled Pavel Kotelkov, who was detained by the OUN Security Service on suspicion of collaboration with the NKVD, claimed that his monthly ration included 9 kg of flour, 400 g of crackers, sugar, cow and vegetable oil, a liter of kerosene, 4 kg of salt and some that of American clothing. However, the size of these rations soon began to decrease. For example, in the summer of 1946, a native of the Volnovakha district of the Stalin region, Dmitry Levchenko, having a second group of disability, received only the so-called bread ration, and its amount was 50% less than before.

Also, the state provided disabled people with a number of benefits, for example, priority for prosthetics of arms, legs, teeth, and was supposed to be provided with orthopedic shoes and corsets. Disabled people also received fuel for the winter. However, often much of the above was only declared on paper. For example, although according to official Ukrainian data in 1945, three factories and twenty-six prosthetic workshops produced as many as 23,504 prosthetic legs, 8,359 prosthetic arms, 13,649 pairs of orthopedic shoes and 794 corsets, letters from consumers of these products are littered with complaints about their quality. ABOUT good prosthesis many only dreamed of it, unable to “get it” due to the shortage.

“The workshop, where experienced dental technicians Gavrilyuk, Barash and Katsman work, cannot serve disabled people of the Patriotic War, since it does not have necessary materials- steel sleeves, steel casting, porcelain teeth, cement, etc. Dentures are made exclusively from customer materials",

The author of the article “Fair complaints of disabled people” wrote about post-war raw material problems in the newspaper “Kolkhoznaya Pravda” (published in the town of Slavuta, Kamenets-Podolsk region, issue dated June 30, 1946).

Although preferential provision disabled people with fuel for the winter in the second half of the 1940s and it was declared that there was a catastrophic lack of transport to deliver it to their homes.

“There’s not a log of firewood, and there’s nowhere to get it. According to the law, people with disabilities are given firewood, but it’s 60 kilometers away, in the forest. How and with what can I get it out of there? Wherever I turn, you fly off from everywhere, like peas from a wall. So we’ve won for ourselves cold all winter",

A war veteran, Fedko, a resident of Alexandria, Kirovograd region, complained to a relative. And out of 250 front-line soldiers with injuries who lived in Lutsk during the heating season of 1945-1946, only 78 people got hold of fuel. Of the 630 war invalids - residents of one of the central districts of Nikolaev - only 135 people kept warm in the winter with "Stalin's" firewood.

"The price of our happiness." Sergei Gerasimovich Balabanchikov. Klimovsk, Moscow region, 1978

True, disabled people were exempted from paying tuition fees for themselves and their children. For the children of disabled officers, as well as those officers who died in the war, went missing or died from the consequences of wounds, education in 8-10 grades of schools, technical schools and universities did not cost a penny. This rule, by the way, began to apply at the end of 1944, when hostilities were taking place. For comparison, in the late 1940s, for one year of study at the Lviv Polytechnic Institute or University. Franko charged 300 rubles from “ordinary” students. Students of the Lviv Pedagogical College and the Railway Technical School paid twice as much - only 150 rubles - annually.

The above-mentioned benefits, of course, were not enough to live on for those disfigured at the fronts (and there were plenty of young people among them!). Therefore, they looked for opportunities to make at least some income.

“In the cities... you can get various goods looted from Europe (mainly from Germany) from people with disabilities and the military in general,”

OUNovets wrote in a review of events in the Zhytomyr, Kyiv and Kamenets-Podolsk regions over the summer and early autumn of 1945.

"Book about love." Polina Kirilova, a resident of a boarding school in the village of Nogliki in the north of Sakhalin Island. Sakhalin Island, 1976 Artist Gennady Dobrov. Photo: gennady-dobrov.ru

However, those disabled people who were engaged in selling things from the war times were “hunted” by the police. Once at the market in Ivankov (now Borshchevsky district of the Ternopil region), a policeman intended to detain one such merchant. But, as the document says, “a cloud of women” came running to help the disabled man. A general brawl began. “Did our husbands and children shed their blood at the front for you to trample on it now!? You, Stalinist thieves, will be destroyed by the Ukrainian partisans, like the Krauts!” shouted the traders. By the way, many disabled people also worked at the bazaar in Radomyshl, Zhitomir region. One day a woman approached the table of a legless front-line soldier, mistakenly believing that he was selling butter. “Move away, I don’t have any butter,” the disabled man roughly pushed her away from the counter and hit her with a stick. Jumping to the side, the frightened woman began to curse the seller: “If only both of your legs were torn off in the war, and not just one!” He rushed after her, but due to his injury at the front, he could not overtake the woman.

On September 29, 1945, a resolution was issued by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine (Bolsheviks) and the Council of People's Commissars of the Ukrainian SSR "On employment and material and living support for disabled people of the Patriotic War." The essence of the document is this. If you were a private in the war, be kind, get a job in a cooperative, artel and produce everyday goods. An officer? Such people were entitled to a more responsible position - head of a department at a factory, collective farm accountant, teacher, court employee. In less than six months after the release of the “labor decree” in Ukraine, more than 80% of total number front-line soldiers with disabilities who “settled” there after the war.

Example practical work Soviet censorship in 1944. The document is published for the first time

But, unfortunately, having a job does not guarantee a decent life for disabled people. After all, many ordinary artel workers received very little. Due to low wages, for example, workers of the “Red Star” sewing artel (in 1948 it operated in Zolochev in the Lviv region) stayed after the working day and sewed “to the left”, fulfilling private orders. Only the director of this artel, Pyotr Odintsov, earned more or less normal income - 600 rubles a month, although this man, appointed to a leadership position “from above,” had absolutely no knowledge of either tailoring or shoemaking.

Deprived of adequate monetary compensation, disabled cooperators often produced low-quality products. For the same reason, they “turned a blind eye” to trends in customer demand and made virtually no changes to the product range. And they showed little interest in the quality of raw materials. And the prices for manufactured goods were unreasonably inflated, equating them to the cost of goods made from good quality materials.

On November 22, 1949, the Minister of State Security of the Ukrainian SSR Nikolai Kovalchuk summed up the results of the inspection of bases and warehouses of cooperative structures of disabled people, consumer and industrial cooperation, the Ministry of Local Industry and the Ministry of Trade. "Inspectors" found low-quality and defective goods (sewing products, knitwear, shoes, haberdashery, children's toys, food products, etc.) in the amount of 232,008,000 rubles!

For example, in the city of Stalino, on the basis of the artel named after. Osipenko found more than 5,200 women's shirts. The inspectors determined why they were lying around: the price per unit of goods (31 rubles) did not correspond to the quality of the raw materials (cheap scraps of fabric). For the same reason, men's suits, trousers, and women's skirts worth a total of 105,171 rubles were stored in the warehouse of the Luch clothing factory of the Kamenets-Podolsk regional industrial district. Buyers were also of little interest in the products of the “17 September” artel from the Drohobych region - incorrectly sewn shoes with curved heels, as well as defective candles with wicks that the “candle making masters” had incorrectly filled with paraffin.

4,756 pairs of unpaired shoes lay as “dead weight” in the stalls and at the base of the “Pyatiletka” artel (Slavyansk, Stalin region). And in the warehouse of the Khimprom artel (Chernigov region) 35,000 boxes of substandard shoe polish have accumulated, as well as two tons of low-quality wheel ointment (used by owners of horse-drawn vehicles). The Metalist artel of the Dnepropetrovsk regional cooperative union experienced serious difficulties in selling toy children's guns (they accumulated for 186,200 rubles) and padlocks with a total value of 486,000 thousand.

"Old Warrior" Mikhail Semenovich Kazankov. Bakhchisaray, 1975 Artist Gennady Dobrov. Photo: gennady-dobrov.ru

Even while staying In such a difficult situation, disabled workers had to pay taxes, as well as fulfill a number of other “related” obligations to the state. As indicated in the report of the Zolochevsky district branch of the OUN for May 1947, Soviet disabled people of group II in the USSR were subject to taxes on land (cultivation of one hectare of land, including a 50 percent discount, “cost” 90 rubles per year), garden (annual tax calculated for one ar = 8 rubles), a cow (for one = 88 rubles), a horse (for one = 75 rubles), bees (1 hive = 4 rubles). The so-called grain supply was also charged to disabled people. In the first years after the war, they did not rent it out, but already in 1948 they began to do so.

The “norm” for a war-crippled farmer who cultivated a plot of land up to two hectares was three to four centners of grain per hectare per year. For example, with a 42-year-old resident of the Kitsmansky district of the Chernivtsi region, Nikolai Tkachuk, who returned from the front without both legs and fingers right hand, the state took 3 centners of bread per hectare. His fellow countryman Yuri Babchuk, without a right limb and with three young children “on his shoulders,” “filled the state bins” with a ton of grain from three hectares. Those peasants who ignored grain deliveries were dealt with by high-ranking “guests” from the region. In the house of one of the “debtors” - a legless invalid of the Great Patriotic War from the village of Stenka in the Zolochiv region - they described all the things, after which they “advised” the owner to “correct himself” in two days, otherwise they would go to court.

Disabled people called the “voluntary-compulsory” purchase of bonds a kind of “tax.” government loan. The villagers were persistently and systematically “pushed” to this by the same “guests from the region.” Exactly how, is evidenced by the dialogue in the village council of the village of Golgocha, Podgaetsk district, between local resident Osip Skripnik (who lost his leg near Berlin) and visiting agitator Shcherba. So, on July 1, 1948, the latter suggested that the disabled person spend part of his 70-ruble monthly income on government bonds. But he asked the agitator to help with the purchase of a scarce prosthesis.The “guest” angrily stated in response: “There are no dentures, but the money must be handed over. It is not my fault that the monthly payment must be given to state needs, these are our laws and this is how it should be.” Outraged by what he heard, the disabled man began to shout: “Those who fought became cripples, I lost my leg near Berlin, and now we have to live in poverty? And you, those who have eaten your bellies, are also beating people, saying that you stand up for them? ". Hearing this, the official showed the front-line soldier to the door. But he didn’t leave the village council, so Shcherba grabbed the man and threw him out the door, finally hitting him with his boot.

In the spring of 1947, war invalid Gushkovaty from the Zaleshchitsky district was also “persuaded” to buy bonds, although his rent was half that of Skrypnyk. When the agitator, who was tired of waiting for the disabled person to decide, called him a “bandit,” he became angry: “I’ve been to America, Canada, Germany, but nowhere have I seen such a disaster as in the Soviet Union. You say that everything We are one homeland, brothers? Then why is this not so? Because Vasily Mandryuk and Vasily Veselovsky - disabled people from the village of Petrivtsi, Melnytsia-Podilsky district, Ternopil region - did not sign up for large amounts of state loans, the first of them was kept in the basement by the representatives of the district committee of the Communist Party (b)U for one day, and the second - for three.

Although disabled people were actively “recruited” into collective farms, many flatly refused to join. For example, to such a proposal, war veteran Daniil Lutsiv from the Mykulynets district of the Ternopil region responded on March 11, 1948 as follows: “Give me a gun and I’ll shoot myself, but I won’t go to the collective farm.” In the village of Strigantsy, Berezhansky district, agitators managed to “catch on the collective farm hook” the demobilized Andrei Soroka. The legless disabled person was convinced that he was signing a request for an increase in the disabled person's annuity, although in fact it was an application to join the collective farm. On the morning of February 20, 1948, shortly before the start of the collective farm meeting, “messengers” came to the disabled man’s house and warned him that he must come to the village council for a meeting. Realizing that he had been deceived, the disabled man began throwing indoor flowerpots and chicken eggs, then stripped naked and announced his intention to go to the meeting in what his mother gave birth to. However, the visitors somehow managed to dress the “rebel” and “show him off” to the village council

A typical form for the quarterly report of the branches and military censorship points of the NKGB during the Soviet-German war of 1941-1945. The document is published for the first time

For those military personnel who have completely lost their ability to work, the Ukrainian SSR created a network of specialized boarding schools. Since such people often needed treatment, they were assigned to special “disabled” hospitals.As of March 23, 1946, there were 84 hospitals housing 20,250 war invalids.

"Unknown Soldier". Nobody knows anything about this man's life. As a result of severe wounds, he lost his arms and legs, lost his speech and hearing. The war left him only the ability to see. Psychiatric department boarding house on the island of Valaam, 1974 Artist Gennady Dobrov. Photo: gennady-dobrov.ru

Also in different Ukrainian regions there were 12 residential care homes for people with disabilities without a fixed place of residence. There, 544 war veterans found shelter over their heads. What was it like for front-line soldiers with injuries in these institutions? They, of course, did not enjoy life there. For example, the authorities forgot to provide the “inhabitants” of the Starobeshevo boarding school (Stalin region) with pillows; they slept on antediluvian straw mattresses. And the bed that was provided at the boarding school was declared “unsuitable for use” by inspectors. “Since cultural work in the institution is at a low level, hooliganism and stabbing are on the rise,” the MGB document reported on the life of Starobeshevo disabled people.

Having more than “plunged” into the problems of the post-war hard times, demobilized disabled people felt difficulties with social adaptation. Many of them actually had to start their lives over. Those who were unable to “get involved” in time gradually lost their human characteristics, degraded, and began to beg.

“Give me a ruble, because I lost my arm while swimming across the Dnieper, Oder and Vistula,” this is how disabled Easterners addressed passers-by on the streets of Lvov in October 1946. In the same month, in the Stanislavovsky district (now Ivano-Frankivsk region), the author of the OUN report reported,

“Disabled people from the Patriotic War, often with medals, walk around the city like ordinary beggars, rage, resolutely demand financial help from everyone they meet and their owners. At the same time, they threaten.”

The notes of the OUN member about what he saw in the Dnieper region and Crimea, made by him several years later, have a similar content.

"Scorched by War." Front-line radio operator Yulia Stepanovna Emanova. Volgograd. 1975 Artist Gennady Dobrov. Photo: gennady-dobrov.ru

“Everywhere at stations in Ukraine I met disabled people from the so-called Patriotic War. They were often missing an arm, a leg, an eye, accompanied by guide boys. These disabled people begged for alms,”

“I arrived there - post-war times, full of disabled people...”,

This is already a fragment from the memoirs of Irina Kozak.

At that time, the woman was the liaison officer of the commander of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, Roman Shukhevych. The cripples, “left behind after the war” and “wandering around the world,” amazed an eyewitness in June 1947 in the Vasilkovsky district of the Kyiv region. In the summer of 1948, four former front-line soldiers (two were missing one arm, the third was missing a leg, the fourth was missing both arms and legs) were begging for alms at the Satanovsky market in the Kamenets-Podolsk region. One of them turned to Andrei Zaverukha, who came for shopping from the village of Tolstoy, with the following words: “Brother, don’t pass by, look at what I’ve been through.” And Maria Savchin, the wife of Vasily Galasy, a participant in the Ukrainian national liberation struggle, the leader of the underground Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists in Volyn, wrote about what she saw in Zaporozhye in 1954: “When we walked through the streets, we met beggars, often children, but mostly disabled people ( probably from the war)".

According to the Minister of State Security of the Ukrainian SSR Nikolai Kovalchuk, which he cited in a letter to the first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (Bolsheviks) Leonid Melnikov on April 7, 1952, police officers in the second half of 1951 and the first quarter of 1952 detained 8949 people “beggars and vagrants” element", including 2868 - in Kyiv. Of these, 716 people were employed, 1,294 were placed in homes for the disabled and elderly, and 2,442 people were transferred to guardians. The remaining 4,498 people signed a subscription to stop begging.

A page from one of the reports on the facts of anti-Soviet manifestations and characteristic negative expressions among those demobilized from the Soviet army and disabled veterans of the Patriotic War. The bottom paragraph is the complaint of Nikolai Miruni, a disabled person from the Soviet-German war, a resident of the Vinnitsa region, about his hard life in 1946. The document is published for the first time

The number of those who, having a means of subsistence, wandered and collected alms for their own enrichment is impressive. For example, war invalid Kachanov regularly begged for coins from Kiev residents in the early 1950s, although he worked in the artel named after. Kirov for a good 500 rubles a month, and also received 125 rubles in rent. His “colleague” Naborshchikov, having his own house in Fastov, “travelled” around the capital’s trams and trolleybuses, pretending to be a former tanker who took part in the battles of Stalingrad and Odessa. In fact, he did not take part in hostilities, but received a concussion as a result of an accident while driving a car while drunk. Citizen Dolgin, having been demobilized from the front without two legs, collected sixty rubles a day, begging along the streets of Odessa, Lvov and Kyiv, and then drank everything he begged for. As an eyewitness testified, many “invalids of the Patriotic War” wandered in Lviv at the turn of 1949-1950. These people “earned” their living by stealing, robbing, or begging. Those of them who could not find a piece of bread (very often - disabled people without legs, arms or eyes) staged fights, during which their accomplices “worked” the audience in the right direction.

"Russian prophet". Vanechka, a disabled beggar. Village of Tara, Omsk region, 1975 Artist Gennady Dobrov. Photo: gennady-dobrov.ru

By the way, the Kyiv police several times in a row failed to place the blind front-line soldier Semchenko in a boarding school, since he constantly categorically refused such a prospect, lived wherever he pleased, wandering the streets and singing plaintive songs to the accompaniment of a harmonica.

Cases of begging among disabled people increased significantly during the famine years of 1946-1947. Due to difficulties with food in eastern and southern Ukraine, many people, including disabled front-line soldiers, began to travel from there to Western Ukrainian lands for food. These “bag men” were often removed from trains, but they continued to get “to Zapadnaya” on foot, dragging a stroller with a bag behind them on a rope.

The political referent of the Bandera wing of the OUN, Yakov Busol, outlined in a letter to Vasily Kuk an interesting dialogue between a war invalid and NKVD workers, heard in the Rivne region:

A “disabled lieutenant of the Patriotic War” came to Verbshchyna for food, went into the village - and there the NKVD detained him and sent him back. He swears: “Are you looking for Banderas here? Look for them in the Chernigov region, Kursk region, because there are already local Banderas there too.”

And in the Zolochevsky district in March 1947, so many “bagmen” got along that, as an eyewitness wrote, because of them “the houses simply weren’t closed.” The local residents called these visitors “proshaks.” Demobilized disabled Red Army soldiers without arms and legs, on crutches, “begged for bread with tears in their eyes.” Sometimes they offered something from scarce goods in exchange. According to information from the OUN member (June 1946), all freight trains were crowded with “proshaks.” Some not only walked around the villages and asked the villagers for alms, but also “brazenly stole everything that came to hand.”

"Defender of Nevskaya Dubrovka." Infantryman Ambarov Alexander Vasilyevich, twice covered with earth after fascist plane raids on Nevskaya Dubrovka. Valaam Island, 1974 Artist Gennady Dobrov. Photo: gennady-dobrov.ru

One day in the late autumn of 1946, after one of these “visits” to Western Ukraine, a disabled Soviet war sergeant was boarding a train in the opposite direction at the Stanislavovsky station. But his luggage (bundles of food) was so large and heavy that his fellow NKVD member became embittered and threw it off the train. The sergeant shouted: “I fought for the Soviet homeland, and now they are taking away my bread!” To which another fellow traveler - a foreman of the Red Army - objected: “Listen, guy, no matter what army you fight in, white or red, you and we still have the same turn. If you fought, they gave you food, if you don’t fight, then you don’t need to eat. Go.” from here, otherwise they’ll go to jail.”

By the way, in many cases it was not limited to begging or “bag-bags”. After all, people with disabilities did not hesitate to speak out about the state of affairs in the country, they criticized the party, the government, and local authorities. Because they allowed themselves to voice “uncombed thoughts,” they often became the object of surveillance by intelligence officers. In their “top secret” memos, they recorded the moods of disabled people with careful accuracy. So, on August 9, 1947, the Minister of the Ministry of State Security, Lieutenant General Sergei Savchenko, addressed all heads of regional departments with the following request in a “note on HF”:

“Before August 18 of this year, send to the 5th Directorate of the Ministry of State Security of the Ukrainian SSR (dealt with political repressions - Authors) a detailed report on the facts of anti-Soviet manifestations and characteristic negative statements among those demobilized from the Soviet army and disabled veterans of the Patriotic War.”

By the way, members of the OUN did similar things, but with a different goal - to search for “compromising evidence” on Soviet realities.

“On a bench near the Ternopil station, a drunken invalid, an Easterner without both legs, sat and spoke about Stalin, the party and the government whatever he wanted. A policeman approached him and asked to show his documents. “Here is my document,” he pointed to the crutch. When The policeman tried to take the disabled man to the station, he hit him on the head with a stick... He grabbed the bench railing with his hands and began to shout: “Give me the leg that the state took away from me, go to the front to show your strength, not here. Bring me the crutch yourself!”

This story is from the post-war OUN document “Vіsti about SUZ”. And the following data is already from the KGB. Agents “Mikhailov” and “Vladimirov” notified the NKGB of the Ukrainian SSR about “the presence at the Lvov State University of an anti-Soviet group of students from among the disabled of the Patriotic War who intend to discredit the party’s policy on the national issue.” And the disabled man Alexei Maleev was arrested only because on August 7, 1945, he sent an anonymous letter to the editor of the newspaper Pravda with “slander against the party and its leaders.” During the investigation, he confirmed that he wrote this letter because of disagreement with the activities carried out by the party and the government.

False stamp of the Soviet field mail from the war of 1941-1945. Photo published for the first time

Thus, the relationship between disabled front-line soldiers and the Soviet government was very difficult. In addition, the latter, already in peacetime, managed to use the sentiments of some cripples in its Jesuit combinations designed to discredit Ukrainian nationalists. After all, the attitude towards the Banderaites of such citizens as, for example, three-time fugitive from mobilization in the UPA, disabled person of the Great Patriotic War, three-time order bearer, senior sergeant Dmitrenko, could be easily predicted. Moreover, in September 1945, nationalists burned his house in the Solotvinsky district (Transcarpathia).

However, when reading such things, one should not forget that the security officers repeatedly sent legendary detachments of pseudo-rebels to Western Ukraine, who acted under the guise of the UPA. Here, for example, is an incident that occurred on June 4, 1946 in the village of Komarov, Galician district (now Ivano-Frankivsk region):

“A department of Bolsheviks came, dressed as UPA riflemen: in Mazepinka, embroidered shirts. They asked for bread, eggs and said that they had been walking through the forests for three years now. ...Calling themselves UPA riflemen, they took away clothes. A disabled war veteran, a Red Army soldier, who had returned since the second war, without an arm, they took off the boots from my feet and beat me with beech trees, saying: “You, bastard, fought for Stalin, but you don’t want to help us.”

The next day, the victim went to the regional center and complained to the prosecutor about the arbitrariness. After that, they returned his boots, warning him not to tell anyone about what had happened.

Such “werewolves”, which were inherited from the Stanislavov region, were trained in the capital of Ukraine. As Ivan Bezkorovayny clarified during interrogation at the OUN Security Council (August 1947), personnel were selected from demobilized Red Army soldiers. They were taught the ability to pretend to be deaf and mute, to transform into disabled people or beggars who could walk around villages and overhear what people were saying about nationalists, collective farms, and the possibility of starting a new world war. Knowing this, the Central Line of the OUN ordered to treat Soviet disabled front-line soldiers with respect.

“Our national duty is a warm, cordial meeting of brothers, who should be explained frankly with fraternal help how, following our example, they should fight the Soviet regime and its agents,”

We read in the address to the peasants of Western Ukrainian regions for 1946.

Quite by accident I found out that Steeln ordered the destruction of a huge number of disabled people of the Great Patriotic War (WWII) in major cities. In 1949, before the celebration of Stalin's 70th anniversary, in former USSR

). The film "Riot of the Executioners" has a duration of 84 minutes. Year of creation: 1998. Director: Gennady Zemel. The film stars: Konstantin Kot-Ogly, Igor Gorshkov, Erken Suleymanov, Dmitry Savinykh, German Gorst, Vladimir Epifanov, Arman Nugmanov, Andrey Buzikov, Alexey Shemes, Alexander Zubov, Eduard Boyarsky, Sergey Ufimtsev, Sergey Popov, Sergey Lukyantsev, Pavel Sirotin, Oleg Biryuchev.

The content of the film is as follows. In 1949, before the celebration of Stalin's 70th anniversary, disabled WWII soldiers were shot in the former USSR. The state could not provide them with even a basic existence and simply destroyed them. Some of them were shot, some were taken to the distant islands of the North and to the remote corners of Siberia. The film reproduces a possible story of a similar extermination of crippled soldiers in one of Stalin’s camps. Combat commander Alexey finds his old military friend, who is also to be shot. A real riot begins... And so on. Look.

The film deeply sank into my soul. After watching the movie, I couldn't sleep for several nights. At first I didn’t want to believe what I saw. Was Stalin and the Soviet regime really so cruel that they shot hundreds of thousands of war heroes because they came from the war crippled: without arms, without legs, without eyes, and so on? Horror! This is how you have to hate your people in order to kill the heroes who, Joseph Vissarionovich, protected you from shameful captivity Nazi Germany? Little by little I began to collect information about this bloody history of our socialist state. And here's what I found out. Disabled beggars were not expelled from all cities, but only from large cities in the European part of the USSR. A legless veteran who begs for alms at a bakery did not worry the authorities if he lived in a village or in a small town (in Klin, Vologda or Yaroslavl). For Stalin, the situation was unacceptable when in Moscow, Leningrad, Kiev, Minsk, Odessa, Riga, Tallinn, Odessa, Dnepropetrovsk, Kharkov, Tomsk, Novosibirsk (where Stalin planned to move the capital of the USSR) disabled people were lying on the dirty sidewalks, hung with orders and medals, received for feats of arms. The authorities' policy is clear - disabled people must be fed, clothed, given a roof over their heads and treated. Since the state did not provide any financial support to the crippled (WWII veterans), they were forced to beg, beg, and live under a fence in the dirt and in poverty. Many of the former front-line soldiers suffered from alcoholism. In the post-war years (1946 - 1948), thousands of legless and armless officers and soldiers of the valiant Red Army begged for alms in large cities. Homeless disabled people were grouped in the basements of non-residential premises. Of course, even in the difficult post-war years, the USSR would have had enough funds to provide several million war invalids with housing, food and clothing. But, unfortunately, Stalin made the standard decision for that time - to shoot and destroy. “No man, no problem”.

Figure 2. Partisan from Belarus Serafima Komissarova. Drawing by Gennady Dobrov

In many memoirs, people are surprised by the sudden disappearance of disabled people from city streets. « EVGENY KUZNETSOV. "VALAAM NOTEBOOK". I still can’t forget Sverdlovsk in the early 50s. Captured Germans marching under escort and, most importantly, our soldiers who returned from the war disabled. I often saw them at “American women”, small pubs scattered around the city. How old was I then? About 5-6 years old, no more... And before my eyes, like today, a cart on bearings and a man on it without legs, being pushed off the ground by pieces of wood wrapped in rags... Then they disappeared overnight. There were all kinds of rumors about their fate... But everyone tried to assure themselves and others that the state took care of the fate of the crippled front-line soldiers... » But the concern of the socialist state was reduced to banal destruction. At the beginning of 1946, Stalin gave an oral order to L.P. Beria to begin “developing activities” for the systematic elimination of such a “shameful phenomenon of Soviet reality” as the miserable life of WWII disabled people in large cities of the state: Moscow, Leningrad, Kyiv, Minsk , Odessa, Riga, Tallinn, Odessa, Dnepropetrovsk, Kharkov, Tomsk, Novosibirsk. Disabled people who lived in these cities, but started families, worked and did not beg - didn't touch. Some disabled people worked in factories as watchmen, on collective farms as accountants, accountants, shoemakers, watchmen, made baskets and repaired small equipment, including radios. Many cripples started families and had healthy children. These WWII veterans died of old age at 70–80 years old. But millions of unemployed and homeless disabled people were simply destroyed. It is the practice of executing Stalin’s order to liquidate WWII veterans that is described in the film “Riot of the Executioners.”N It is necessary to repeat once again that all WWII disabled people who worked in cities and lived in villages, villages, towns and small towns were in no way affected by the next wave of Stalinist repressions y. Rural cripples both begged and begged, and continued to beg at a great distance from “civilization” until their death from old age. But the authorities treated the city’s crippled beggars very cruelly.

How did the USSR security officials carry out Stalin's order in practical terms? Most of the war veterans were shot in the Soviet Gulag. A small part was placed in concentration camps, which the Soviet government called “special boarding schools” or “sanatoriums for WWII participants.” But when I read the documents posted on the Internet about the conditions of war veterans in these “sanatoriums,” my hair stood on end with horror. Anyone interested in this problem should type “Stalin’s repressions against WWII cripples” into any Internet search engine.

Figure 3. Hero of the defense of Stalingrad Ivan Zabara. Drawing by Gennady Dobrov

Figure 4. Disabled WWII in St. Petersburg.

Statistics from the Central Archive of the Ministry of Defense provide the following data. 28 million 540 thousand soldiers, commanders and civilians died on the fronts of the Great Patriotic War. 46 million 250 thousand were injured. 775 thousand front-line soldiers returned home with broken skulls. One-eyed - 155 thousand. There are 54 thousand blind people. With mutilated faces 501,342. With severed genitals 28,648. One-armed 3 million 147. Armless 1 million 10 thousand. There are 3 million 255 thousand one-legged people. There are 1 million 121 thousand legless people. With partially severed arms and legs - 418,905. So-called “samovars”, armless and legless - 85,942. According to the Military Medical Museum (St. Petersburg), 47 million 150 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, 2.1 million without one leg or both legs, 3 million without one arm, 1.1 million without both arms... and so on . From archival documents it was revealed that some of the WWII disabled people brought (to the Gulag camps, to “special boarding schools”, “sanatoriums” and “dispensaries”) were shot, some were taken to the distant islands of the North and to the remote corners of Siberia, where they died of disease and hunger. In the reference book of documents "GULAG: 1918-1960" (Moscow, publishing house "Materik", 2002) I found information that on May 27, 1946, a network of camps was hastily created (in particular, Olkhovsky, Solikamsky, Chistyuinsky, etc. ), where DISABLED PEOPLE OF WAR were brought (from clear signs disability) WITHOUT COURT SENTENCES. There they were shot, starved, and so on…. Read “Circles of Hell of the “holy” people”. On the Internet there is a link to the article http://ipvnews.org/nurnberg_article29102010.php. It's just getting scary. I found on the Internet a large number of documents about the inhuman living conditions of disabled people on the island of Valaam. Valaam is a camp for disabled people of the Second World War, located on the island of Valaam (in the northern part of Lake Ladoga), where after the Second World War in 1945-1954 war invalids from all over the USSR were brought. The camp was founded by decree of the Supreme Council of the Karelo-Finnish SSR in 1950. Located in former monastery buildings. In the Valaam special boarding school, front-line soldiers died en masse. In winter there were a lot of dead people, so many that they even began to bury them outside the cemetery, without coffins, ten people per grave. The graves were without tombstones, without names, only three rotten, fallen columns - a terrible monument to unconsciousness, the meaninglessness of life, the absence of any justice and payment for heroism. The camp was closed only in 1984. The same “special boarding school for the disabled” was created on the Solovetsky Islands, in Belarus, near Omsk and in 32 other places in the great and mighty USSR.

Figure 5. Soviet propaganda presented Stalin as a compassionate fighter for the people's happiness.

How were concentration camps, under the guise of “special boarding schools” and “sanatoriums,” filled with people with disabilities? At night, security officers conducted a raid, collected all disabled people without a fixed place of residence, and sent them in trains to places “not so remote.” They took away all the cripples indiscriminately. The commanders did not give the soldiers time to understand social status disabled people. “I grabbed the cripple - load it into a lorry, and then take it to the station, where a train with wagons is waiting.” At the same time, convicted military personnel - penal prisoners and former prisoners of fascist camps - were also loaded onto the train. But the former prisoners of the fascist camps, at least formally, were put on trial, the charges were read out, and a verdict was passed. And the war cripples were sentenced to extermination without guilt, without trial and without investigation. It seems to me that disabled people, first of all, aroused anger among those who actually sat out the entire war at headquarters and never stormed well-fortified German trenches. In one document I read that a major action to exterminate cripples in Ukraine was personally organized by Marshal Zhukov. So, disabled people were taken out of all major cities of the USSR. Security agencies “cleaned up” the country quickly and without sentimentality. Some documents say that disabled people tried to resist and threw themselves onto the rails. But the NKVD soldiers picked them up and took them out. They even took out “samovars” - people without arms and legs. On Solovki, the bodies of these soldiers were taken out to breathe fresh air, and so that they would take a vertical position and not lie on the grass, the “orderlies” hung them on ropes from tree branches, placing their bodies in large wicker baskets. The “orderlies” were convicted front-line soldiers who were captured by the Nazis, but were released by the advancing troops or escaped from captivity. The soldiers and officers who surrendered to the Nazis were perceived by the authorities of the Stalin era as traitors. The crippled front-line soldiers were mostly 20-year-old guys who burned in damaged tanks, after which their arms and legs were amputated. They were pulled out of the tanks by their comrades, or they themselves were able to crawl out of the burning car. But doctors were forced to amputate their limbs. For example, 9,804 disabled people were taken out of Kyiv, Dnepropetrovsk and Odessa in 1947 alone. Since 1949, there were no longer disabled people at veterans' parades. Disabled people completely disappeared from city streets after 1949. They were simply “removed” as an unpleasant memory of the incompetent management of military operations by our generals, marshals and Generalissimo Stalin personally. And the Motherland never again remembered its best sons, who, without sparing their lives and health, defended this Motherland. Even their names disappeared into oblivion. It was much later (after 1970) that the surviving disabled people began to receive benefits, rations and other benefits. And until 1970, those lonely, legless and armless boys were simply buried alive in special boarding schools (= Gulag camps), or worse than that- were shot as superfluous people of a powerful state, who were actually equated with the real enemies of the people: murderers, bandits, traitors, executioners, Vlasovites. It’s disgusting to watch when some patriotic communists or pro-communist citizens roll their eyes and scream heart-rendingly « Yes, this cannot be!». Documentary facts confirm that this happened, and these actions of the authorities can never be erased from the history of socialism!

MOLOSTOV.

Stalin's "samovars"

(open the link below the text)

In 1949, before the celebration of the 70th anniversary of the Great Stalin, front-line soldiers and disabled people of 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 (northern part of Lake Ladoga), where after the Second World War, war disabled people were taken from 1950 to 1984. Founded by order of the 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 transported them centrally to the station, loaded them into ZK-type heated cars and sent them in trains to Solovki. Without guilt and trial. That they
unpleasant looking their front-line stumps did not embarrass citizens and did 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.
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 run by the NKVD. 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 of disabled people, and the Soviet people could continue to carefreely enjoy the Soviet blessed reality without having to contemplate the unpleasant sight of thousands of stumped disabled people begging for alms. Even their names disappeared into oblivion. Much later, those disabled people who survived 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 the final solution to the disability issue in the USSR was made.

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.
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"....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, household buildings (one farm is worth it), 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 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 real 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 in this way he thanked 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 the street boys were simply hidden in prisons and camps, and some of them, apparently, were simply destroyed.

That's it. Glory 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 whether a Soviet person can be called a human being 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 inhumane cannibalistic policy of the Soviet government.