- Title : The Rights Movement of the ‘Disabled’ in the Soviet Union in 1970s and 1980s
- Author : KO Kayoung
- Journal : The Western History Review
- Publication Date : December, 2022
- Abstract
This article is about the movement for the rights of disabled people in the Soviet Union in the late 1970s and the early 1980s. This article examines the activities of people with disabilities who were deprived of their freedom of action.
From the time of Tsarist Russia to World War II, the disabled people who were the subject of national attention were mainly veterans with disabilities on the battlefield. However, there were many workers with disabilities in the industrial sites that entered the systemic competition under the newly developed Cold War system after World War II. Accordingly, on May 20, 1978, the <Initiative Group for the Defense of the Rights of the Disabled in the USSR> was formed mostly by those with mobility impairments. The goals of this organization included gathering and disseminating information about the state of the disabled in the Soviet Union, petitioning the Soviet administrative body responsible for their welfare, enlisting the aid of the international community, and expressing solidarity with other groups working to improve the welfare of the disabled.
To that end, the “Initiative Group for the Defense of the Rights of the Disabled” published data on the situation of the disabled in the Soviet Union in the form of “Samizdat” (underground publication) in the journal Buletten. The journal was not only circulated domestically, but also sent to the human rights organizations abroad.
This series of organized activities of the disabled was suppressed by the Soviet authorities in various ways. Their activities were eventually disbanded in the early 1980s due to government repression. The rigidity of Soviet society, which did not contain diverse voices, seems to have been one of the causes of the failure of socialism in reality.
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