Boarding school for disabled people in Valaam. "Samovars" of Comrade Stalin. How war invalids were sent to special boarding schools

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 large cities. In 1949, before the celebration of Stalin's 70th anniversary, in former USSR Disabled WWII soldiers were shot. The first acquaintance with this brutal act of Stalin began with watching the film “Riot of the Executioners.” On the Internet, I came across the film “Riot of the Executioners” posted on YouTube about disabled people executed by order of Stalin (

Figure 1. Still from the film “Riot of the Executioners”

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, defended you from the shameful captivity of Nazi Germany? Gradually 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 big cities European part of the USSR. A legless veteran begging at a bakery didn't bother the authorities if he lived in a village or 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, Kiev, 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 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. If anyone is interested in this problem, please call any search engine Internet " Stalin's repressions in relation to the cripples of the Second World War."

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) during the Great Patriotic War 47 million 150 thousand Soviet citizens were injured. 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 WAR PEOPLE were brought (with obvious signs of 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 extermination campaign against cripples in Ukraine was personally organized by Marshal Zhukov. So, the disabled were taken out of all major cities 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 torsos of these soldiers were taken out to get some 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 torsos 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, they were shot as extra people powerful state, who were actually equated with the real enemies of the people: with 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.

Hooked. An entry appeared on the Facebook feed about how in the 50s war invalids were literally forcibly taken to Solovki so as not to spoil the landscape of successful Soviet reality. I decided to look for sources. Yes, the Vaalam notebook of Evgeny Kuznetsov, a certain writer Varlam Shalamov, who spent many years in camps for anti-Soviet views and last years life, already in a nursing home for people with mental illness, visited by some mysterious strangers...
But still, there are facts, and you need to know your history, even if you don’t like everything about it.
On the fronts of the Great Patriotic War, 28 million 540 thousand soldiers, commanders and civilians died. 46 million 250 thousand were injured. 775 thousand front-line soldiers returned home with broken skulls. There are 155 thousand one-eyed people. There are 54 thousand blind people. With mutilated faces 501,342 With torn off genitals 28,648 One-armed 3 million 147 Armless 1 million 10 thousand One-legged 3 million 255 thousand Legless 1 million 121 thousand With partially torn off arms and legs 418,905 So-called “samovars”, armless and legless - 85,942 So. Today we are exploring the topic of a boarding house for disabled people of the Great Patriotic War on the island of Valaam. Everyone and everyone is speculating on this topic:

Quote:

After the war, Soviet cities were flooded with people who were lucky enough to survive at the front, but who lost arms and legs in the battles for their homeland. Homemade carts, on which human stumps, crutches and prosthetics of war heroes darted between the legs of passers-by, spoiled the good looks of the bright socialist today. And then one day Soviet citizens woke up and did not hear the usual rumble of carts and the creaking of dentures. Disabled people were removed from cities overnight. The island of Valaam became one of the places of their exile. As a matter of fact, these events are known, recorded in the annals of history, which means that “what happened is past.” Meanwhile, the expelled disabled people settled down on the island, started farming, started families, gave birth to children, who themselves grew up and gave birth to children themselves - real indigenous islanders.

Unpromising people from the island of Valaam

N. Nikonorov

Where did the God-bearing people of the crippled victorious people go?

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.

Reader! My dear reader! Can you and I understand today the measure of the boundless despair of the insurmountable grief that gripped these people the moment they set foot on this earth? In prison, in the terrible Gulag camp, the prisoner always has a glimmer of hope to get out of there, to find freedom, a different, less bitter life. There was no way out from here

Evgeny Kuznetsov

Baalam notebook

As usual, liberals are valiantly dancing on bones.

The topic is interesting. Important. Moreover, no one hid anything about this island in the USSR - I have known about it since childhood. Typically, I haven’t found a single article about boarding school, so I will create a picture from the mosaic of the Internet.

First, I think you need to go through the websites, read what they write about the Valaam Home for the Invalids. In the front row are the priests (holy people!!!)

In 1952, a boarding house for war invalids and the elderly was organized in the monastery buildings. According to eyewitnesses, it was a very sad sight. Often two legless people lived in one basket (!). Being in cold rooms, with virtually no care, many veterans drank themselves to death and died.

- Who caused more damage to the monastery - the communists or foreign invaders?
- The communists were worse than the Swedes. These are the most difficult times in the history of Valaam. What the first commissars did not plunder in the 40s was desecrated and destroyed later. Terrible things happened on the island: in 1952, the poor and crippled were brought there from all over the country and left to die. Some nonconformist artists made a career out of painting human stumps in their cells. The boarding home for the disabled and elderly became something of a social leper colony - there, like on Solovki during the Gulag, the “dregs of society” were kept in captivity.

...Although the first disabled people were brought in in 1950, electricity was provided to them only in 1952....

...they were sometimes taken out to get some fresh air and hung on ropes from trees. Sometimes they forgot and they froze. They were mostly 20-year-olds...

...Among the abandoned graves I found a small monument to Hero of the USSR Grigory Voloshin. At the front, he lost his arms, legs, hearing and speech. Grigory Andreevich spent 29 years among the same disabled people. Local residents still remember very well how nurses carried those who lost everything in the war into the monastery garden and hung them from an apple tree. The relatives of the Hero of the USSR learned about his fate only in 1994. Then a monument in his honor appeared at the Igumensky cemetery. However, no one is caring for the grave of Grigory Voloshin."

And at the end there is complete darkness that you just want to shoot yourself right away :

...after the war, disabled people were killed en masse so as not to interfere with the prosperity of their homeland.(the film “Riot of the Executioners” is about the post-war extermination (by order of Stalin) of disabled Soviet soldiers of the Second World War. The reason is the reluctance/inability of the state to ensure their existence.)

All these comrades like to tell how :

“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 Motherland. 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 so "One day, Soviet citizens woke up and did not hear the usual rumble of carts and the creaking of prosthetics. Disabled people were removed from the cities overnight."

These same comrades love to quote "Report of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs to the Presidium of the CPSU Central Committee on measures to prevent and eliminate beggary" , but for some reason without citing it in full:

Document No. 06778. Minister of the Ministry of Internal Affairs Kruglov reports on February 20, 1954 to Malenkov and Khrushchev that “despite the measures taken, such an intolerable phenomenon as beggary still continues to occur in large cities and industrial centers of the country.” The numbers show that not everything was all right with beggars in the USSR. "In the second half of 1951, 107,766 people were detained, in 1952 - 156,817 people, and in 1953 - 182,342 people." Poverty grew in parallel with the construction of socialism. "Among the detained beggars, war and labor invalids make up 70%, those who have fallen into temporary poverty - 20%, professional beggars - 10%." A “derivative” of the growth of begging is also mentioned: “...the lack of a sufficient number of homes for the elderly and disabled and boarding schools for the blind disabled.”

“The fight against beggary is made more difficult... by the fact that many beggars refuse to be sent to homes for the disabled... they leave them without permission and continue to beg.” It is immediately proposed to “convert homes for the disabled and the elderly into closed-type homes with a special regime.”

Here's the full version:

Report of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs to the Presidium of the CPSU Central Committee on measures to prevent and eliminate beggary

20.02.1954

Secret

TO THE PRESIDIUM OF THE CPSU Central Committee
Comrade G.M. MALENKOV
Comrade KHRUSHCHEV N.S.

.....Our country has become a sea of ​​tears and grief. And Balaam, like a drop of water, reflected this whole picture of the people's tragedy. Here, in 1950. The Home for the Invalids was organized for participants of the Great Patriotic War. Former front-line soldiers from all over Karelia settled on the island that sheltered them, left without relatives and friends, who had lost their arms, legs, hearing, and sight. People also came here from different parts of the country, often no less dispossessed by the war, to form a composition service personnel. For both, Valaam became a second homeland.

In 1950, in the surviving cell buildings among the vegetable gardens and orchards, a boarding house for war invalids was set up. A thousand unfortunate people - inhuman suffering, gigantic dramas. Seven hundred personnel

On the island of Valaam there was a boarding school for the disabled, where there were disabled people from the Second World War, the so-called “samovars” - without arms and legs. They did not want to return home and the family received either a missing person notice or a funeral. Their names were not disclosed. this boarding school was subsequently liquidated

After the war there was a home for the disabled and mental hospital. Not everyone who was injured in the war could return home, and many did not want to... and some had nowhere to return. So that's how they ended up here. Today there is no longer a nursing home or a hospital; the premises have been transferred to the monastery; there are about three hundred local residents. These are the people (or their children) who worked here in the hospital and in the home for the disabled as doctors, nurses, workers... They cared for the disabled and sick.

So, I'll try to draw some conclusions.

1. Who benefits from the spread of such rumors?

I won’t even take anti-Soviet people into account - everything is clear with these guys. But I found it interesting material about the current situation on the island of Valaam:

The Russian Orthodox Church is categorically not satisfied with the existing special status of the territory (SPNA) - there are restrictions on economic and entrepreneurial activities. That is, everything they want is already there. Only for everyone. But they want there to be restrictions for everyone except the monastery.

Several farms were privatized in the early 90s. Literally a few weeks later, a demand came to revoke the issued documents - “privatization is prohibited.” After many courts, the ban on privatization was declared illegal.
Since people were afraid to hand over documents, several people have privatization certificates in their hands. But the city administration lost the documents.
Attempts at privatization turn into endless circles: either there is no passport in the BTI, then there is no personal account, then there is no house number and it is impossible to establish the address, but there are house numbers in the voter lists.

So far, none of the owners have tried to apply their rights to housing, for example, to sell, so there have been no problems yet.

The status of the village was withdrawn at the request of the monastery. The idea was this: as buildings were put up for major repairs, residents would be relocated to a flexible fund “within the same settlement.” It later became clear that the city does not have a flexible fund and the buildings have been waiting for repairs for decades.

People have been living out of suitcases for the second decade. Plans are made for a year or two. Children are taught that there is no road here. The non-return of young people is a disaster for a rural settlement. But this is a small homeland, from which love for a big one begins. The real situation in my friend’s family: her daughter went to study on the mainland. During the holidays, both of them were in tears: “Mommy, please don’t write an application for an apartment, don’t leave here, where am I going to return?!” How can I live without this?!”

You see, the most unpleasant thing in all our problems is the position of the state in the person of officials. Everything is clear with the Russian Orthodox Church - they have their own business, they defend their interests. The state completely abandoned its citizens. Everything is done only through the monastery. Transport, shop.

Quote from the monastery lawyer L. Medvedev: “Valaam is a special place, and universal laws do not apply here”

The only one municipal property, which now remains on Valaam, is a cemetery. And even then it’s not properly designed. Therefore, for example, attempts to clean up a cemetery by municipal services unexpectedly resulted in problems.

Valaam: thrown into the bosom of the church

The monastery crushed the entire island under itself. The monastery is the owner. The monastery is strength. The monastery is making money. But the monastery is not interested in the cemetery. That's why the cemetery is in this condition.

And by spreading rumors about inhuman communists who mocked the disabled and destroyed everything they could, it would be very convenient to capture the entire island.

2. Valaam boarding house. Disabled people were brought here by force or stayed voluntarily.

To begin with, I would like to give information about the Hero of the Soviet Union Grigory Voloshin, whose abandoned grave is located on the island

Voloshin Grigory Andreevich 02/05/1922 - 01/16/1945 Fighter pilot, junior lieutenant. Participant of the Great Patriotic War since 1944. Fought as part of 813 IAP. On January 16, 1945, in an air battle, while saving his commander, he rammed an FW-190 and died himself.*

* Since on the island of Valaam there was a boarding school for the disabled, where there were disabled people from the Second World War, the so-called “samovars” - without arms and legs, they did not want to return home - and the family received either a notice of a “missing person” or a funeral, the person was added to the lists of the dead . And he, absolutely helpless, lived on Valaam, and his name was known only on the island. A real Hero understood that in such a state - without arms, legs, hearing and speech, he would be a huge burden for his relatives. And he stayed in the boarding school.

This means that Grigory Andreevich was on the island. Do you believe that he was brought here by force? Picked up from the street? Stole from your wife? A real Hero understood that in such a state - without arms, legs, hearing and speech, he would be a huge burden for his relatives. And he stayed in the boarding school.
So the Valaam boarding school was created specifically for such disabled people as Lieutenant Voloshin

3. In fact, were there terrible living conditions in the boarding house?

The light, carried out in 1952, suggests that the boarding school was on the list of priorities for electrification. After all, back in the 60s. There were unelectrified villages. 700 staff (the number of residents of the boarding school varies from 500 to 1500 people) indicates a serious medical and service base.

4. Crime of the Stalinist regime - the poor were moved to boarding schools throughout the USSR

Beggars primarily lead an asocial lifestyle. Yes, they are front-line soldiers. But for the most part, these are already drunk people.

To provide them with treatment, care and care - that was the task of the state. As soon as funds were found to complete this task, it was implemented. Often those who begged - they had neither housing nor relatives caring for them, and if they had not been sent to boarding schools, they would have died under the fence. Other disabled people had relatives. However, the statements - "my father, grandfather, uncle... disappeared at that time" Can not hear. But just something like - “My grandmother’s neighbor heard with her own ears on the tram...”.

Maybe it was possible to do something better (provide housing, provide employment), but apparently it was not possible. With today's capabilities, it would have been possible to do something differently, but that was then - in difficult times for the country. After all, they were not sold into slavery, and not left on the street, as liberals now hand over their children and disabled people, but they were provided with housing and food.

5. Were disabled people exterminated in the USSR, as the film “Riot of the Executioners” claims?

No, they didn't destroy it. Stalin simply ate them as a snack after innocently murdered babies.

Draw your own conclusions...

Http://www.isunduk.ru/2009-11-16-15-58-17/56-2009-12-23-17-31-21/136-2010-06-06-23-22-34. html

Where did the disabled veterans of the Soviet-German war disappear from the streets of large cities in 1949?
The final solution to the disability issue in the USSR.

In 1949, before the celebration of the 70th anniversary of the Great Stalin, disabled front-line soldiers of the Soviet-German war were shot in the former USSR. Some of them were shot, some were taken to the distant islands of the North of Russia and to the remote corners of Siberia on the island of Valaam.

Valaam Island is a concentration 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 1950-1984 war disabled people were taken to former monastery buildings.

Most of these people lived and died on the island of Valaam, where the Soviet government forcibly sent war cripples so that they would not spoil the cities named after great Soviet figures with their ugliness. There was one more place - the steppes of Kazakhstan. There in the steppe, crippled front-line soldiers were thrown out of freight cars and shot with machine guns...

So the Motherland decided to get rid of the unnecessary ballast of drunken disabled cripples, veterans of Zhukov’s army - victorious soldiers, whose bodies Comrade Zhukov and other great commanders of the USSR cleared minefields on the approaches to Berlin in order to save tanks.

The terrible statistics have become known only now. It was hidden in a folder, hitherto worn and yellowed by time, marked “Top Secret”. - Due to the principled attitude of the USSR towards its soldiers as human material, the losses of the parties on Soviet-German front reached 1:10 - for 1 dead German, 10 dead Soviets. On the fronts of the so-called “Great Patriotic” War:
-28,540,000 soldiers, commanders and civilians died.
-46,250,000 injured.
-775,000 front-line soldiers returned home with broken skulls.
- There are 155,000 one-eyed people.
- There are 54,000 blind people.
- With disfigured faces 501342
- With crooked necks 157565
- With damaged ridges 143241
- With severed genitals 28648
- One-armed 3000000 147
- Armless 110,000
- One-legged 3255000
- Legless 1121000
- With arms and legs partially torn off 418905
- Armless and legless so-called “samovars” - 850 942

And here in 1950, by decree Supreme Council The Karelo-Finnish SSR was formed on Valaam and the House of War and Labor Invalids was located in the monastery buildings. Why such attention to the unfortunate disabled war veterans? Why on a remote island cut off from the outside world, and not on the mainland? But the establishment was still...

His chest is covered in orders, and he is begging for alms near the bakery. The USSR government decided to get rid of them at all costs, so as not to spoil the idyllic picture of Soviet prosperity with their stumps. They found a way out, to the islands: out of sight, out of mind. Within a few months, the victorious country cleared its streets of this constantly begging “evil spirits”!

They were collected overnight by special police and state security squads, quickly taken to railway stations, loaded into ZK-type heated vehicles and sent to these very “boarding houses” - concentration camps. 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 under the control of the NKVD.

The goal of these boarding schools was to peacefully send disabled people to the next world as quickly as possible. Even the meager allowance that was allocated to the disabled... was plundered by the Soviet authorities.

And then one morning, waking up just before the anniversary of Stalin’s seventieth birthday, happy Soviet citizens did not hear the usual rumble of homemade wheelchairs and the creaking of prosthetics of cripples who had returned from the war...
it was the famous "bright future"!

Now at the Valaam cemetery there are only 2 rotten columns with... numbers. There were no names, nothing left - they all went into the ground, leaving no monument to the terrible experiment of the human zoo of the heroes of the Soviet regime.

Portraits of disabled front-line soldiers. Artist Gennady Dobrov.

P.S. Russian documentary film. How Zhukov treated human material - his soldiers.

There are horror stories on the Internet that after the Great Patriotic War, some disabled people were shot, and some were exiled to various kinds“prison-type boarding schools,” including in Valaam and Goritsy. What the nursing home on Valaam and in the village of Goritsy, Vologda region actually was, will be discussed in this article.

The article entitled "Valaam Lists" was originally published in the publication " "Vera" - "Eskom", Christian newspaper of the North of Russia" (N662, June 2012).

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 of 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 writes a blog for a Russian audience on a reputable portal in Poland. He writes a lot about the crimes of the Soviet regime, about Katyn execution, 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 were one-armed or one-legged. Older readers will remember that in the late 40s there were many on the streets disabled people. The legacy of the recent war... Front-line soldiers. Armless, legless, on crutches, with artificial limbs... They sang and begged, begged in carriages and markets. And this could give rise to some seditious thoughts in their 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 as not to make noise. Forcibly - some threw themselves onto the rails, but where were they against the young and healthy? They were taken out. So that their appearance would not offend the eyes of townspeople and tourists. So that they would not be reminded of their duty 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 immersed myself in this verbal stream, 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 a special regime.” 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, begging in train stations, on trains, on the streets, and who knows where else. Well, judge for yourself: his chest is covered in medals, and he’s begging near a bakery. No good! Get rid of them, get rid of them at all costs. But where should we put them? And to former monasteries, to the islands! Out of sight, out of mind. Within a few months, the victorious country cleared its streets of this “shame”! This is how these almshouses arose in Kirillo-Belozersky, Goritsky, Alexander-Svirsky, Valaam and other monasteries...”

That is, the remoteness of the island of Valaam aroused Kuznetsov’s suspicion that they wanted to get rid of the veterans: “To the former monasteries, to the islands! Out of sight...” And immediately he included Goritsy, Kirillov, and the village of Staraya Sloboda (Svirskoe) among the “islands.” But how, for example, in Goritsy, in the Vologda region, was it possible to “hide” disabled people? It's big locality, where everything is in plain sight.

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 ship set sail for Goritsy.

The defender of Nevskaya Dubrovka, Alexander Ambarov, was buried alive twice during the bombing (drawing by G. Dobrov)

“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, 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, steeply sloping down to the Sheksna... The singer was placed at the top - Bubble, 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, 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! Get started, 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, in passionately eager voices, a powerful 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,
Away 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 his 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 hip) 1922 JOB 01.10.1946 to at will to Vinnytsia region.

Rigorin Sergey Vasilyevich worker 1914 JOB 06/17/1944 for employment.

Rogozin Vasily Nikolaevich 1916 JOB 02/15/1946 left for Makhachkala 04/05/1948 transferred to another boarding school.

Rogozin Kirill Gavrilovich 1906 JOB 06/21/1948 transferred to group 3.

Romanov Pyotr Petrovich 1923 JOB 06/23/1946 at his own request in Tomsk.”

There is also the following entry: “Savinov Vasily Maksimovich – private (osteopar. hip ap.) 1903 JOB 07/02/1947 expelled for long-term unauthorized absence.”

"We parted with tears"

Unknown Soldier. 1974 (collage by the author from a drawing by G. Dobrov)

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”...

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 carried out on cots Fresh air. Disabled people were systematically health care. The head of the first-aid post was paramedic Valentina Petrovna Smirnova. She was sent here after graduating from 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 smear it with black paint. Soviet time – 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 did not find him - three years ago he was transferred to the “mainland”, to 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 of 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.

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 difficulty, 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 normal life. For example, from Valaam they sent bookkeepers and shoemakers to courses - 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 carry out an inspection living conditions and confirm (or 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 a 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 anyone in doubt types 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 gives a certificate for 1946 that the veteran Gavrilenko from Pitkyaranta, a former tanker, blind in two 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 the 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.”

***

Memorial to the disabled people of the Patriotic War buried on Valaam

The story of the Valaam “Hades” is very ambiguous. Meanwhile, the legend of the “Gulag for Veterans” continues to expand. And is it 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 professor Francis Bernstein was supposed to be published in the United States about the mockery of veterans in the Goritsky nursing home. Psychological pressure continues - aimed at denigrating what now unites the peoples of Russia. Quietly, gradually, delving into the wounds of veterans, they undermine younger generation“memory of memory” - 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 the 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 for several years now. local authorities. 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 added to the “Valaam list” in issue No. 664 of the newspaper.

"Defender of Leningrad." Drawing of former infantryman Alexander Ambarov, who defended besieged Leningrad. Twice during fierce bombings he found himself buried alive. With almost no hope of seeing him alive, his comrades dug up the warrior. Having healed, he went into battle again. He ended his days exiled and forgotten alive on the island of Valaam.
Quote (“Valaam Notebook” by E. Kuznetsov): “And in 1950, by decree of the Supreme Council of the Karelo-Finnish SSR, a House for Disabled Persons of War and Labor was formed on Valaam and located in the monastery buildings. This was an establishment!”
It’s probably not an idle question: why here, on the island, and not somewhere on the mainland? After all, it’s easier to supply and cheaper to maintain. The formal explanation: there is a lot of housing, utility rooms, utility rooms (the farm alone is worth it), arable land for subsidiary farming, orchards, berry nurseries, but the informal, true reason: hundreds of thousands of disabled people were too much of an eyesore for the victorious Soviet people: armless, legless, restless, begging in train stations, on trains, on the streets, and who knows where else. Well, judge for yourself: his chest is covered in medals, and he’s begging near a bakery. No good! Get rid of them, get rid of them at all costs. But where should we put them? And to former monasteries, to the islands! Out of sight, out of mind. Within a few months, the victorious country cleared its streets of this “shame”! This is how these almshouses arose in Kirillo-Belozersky, Goritsky, Alexander-Svirsky, Valaam and other monasteries. Or rather, on the ruins of monasteries, on the pillars of Orthodoxy crushed by Soviet power. The country of the Soviets punished its disabled winners for their injuries, for their loss of families, shelter, and native nests, devastated by the war. Punishment with poverty, loneliness, hopelessness. Anyone who came to Valaam instantly realized: “This is all!” Further - a dead end. “Then there is silence” in an unknown grave in an abandoned monastery cemetery.
Reader! My dear reader! Can you and I understand today the measure of the boundless despair of the insurmountable grief that gripped these people the moment they set foot on this earth? In prison, in the terrible Gulag camp, the prisoner always has a glimmer of hope to get out of there, to find freedom, a different, less bitter life. There was no way out from here. From here only to the grave, as if sentenced to death. Well, imagine what kind of life flowed within these walls. I saw all this up close for many years in a row. But it’s difficult to describe. Especially when their faces, eyes, hands, their indescribable smiles appear before my mind’s eye, the smiles of creatures who seem to have been guilty of something forever, as if asking for forgiveness for something. No, it's impossible to describe. It’s impossible, probably also because when remembering all this, the heart simply stops, the breath catches, and an impossible confusion arises in the thoughts, some kind of clot of pain! Sorry…