After World War II, the USSR was left bloodless: millions of young people died at the front. The lives of those who did not die, but were injured, were ambivalent. The front-line soldiers returned home crippled, and they could not live a “normal” and full life. There is an opinion that, to please Stalin, disabled people were taken to Solovki and Valaam, “so as not to spoil the Victory Day with their presence.”

How did this myth come about?

History is a science that is constantly being interpreted. Classical historians and alternative historians broadcast polar opinions regarding Stalin’s merits in the Great Patriotic War. But in the case of disabled people, the Second World War is unanimous: guilty! He sent disabled people to Solovki and Valaam to be shot! The source of the myth is considered to be the “Valaam Notebook” by Evgeny Kuznetsov, a tour guide of Valaam. The modern source of the myth is considered to be a conversation between Natella Boltyanskaya and Alexander Daniel on Ekho Moskvy on May 9, 2009. Excerpt from the conversation: “Boltyanskaya: Comment on the monstrous fact when, by order of Stalin, after the Great Patriotic War, disabled people were forcibly exiled to Valaam, to Solovki, so that they, armless, legless heroes, would not spoil the victory holiday with their appearance. Why is there so little talk about this now? Why aren't they called by name? After all, it was these people who paid for the victory with their blood and wounds. Or can they now also not be mentioned?
Daniel: Well, why comment on this fact? This fact is well known and monstrous. It is completely understandable why Stalin and the Stalinist leadership expelled the veterans from the cities.
Boltyanskaya: Well, they really didn’t want to spoil the festive look?
Daniel: Absolutely. I'm sure it's for aesthetic reasons. Legless people on carts did not fit into the work of art, so to speak, in the style of socialist realism, into which the leadership wanted to turn the country. There is nothing to evaluate here"
There is not a single fact or reference to a specific historical source. The leitmotif of the conversation is that Stalin’s merits are overstated, his image does not correspond to his actions.

Why a myth?

The myth about prison boarding schools for disabled veterans did not appear immediately. Mythologization began with the mysterious atmosphere around the house on Valaam. The author of the famous “Valaam Notebook”, guide Evgeny Kuznetsov, wrote:
“In 1950, by decree Supreme Council The Karelo-Finnish SSR was formed on Valaam and the House of War and Labor Invalids was 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 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 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.
There are no documents in the public domain that directly indicate that disabled people are exiled to Solovki, Valaam and other “places of detention.” It may well be that these documents exist in archives, but there is no published data yet. Therefore, talk about places of exile refers to myths.
The main open source is considered to be the “Valaam Notebook” by Evgeny Kuznetsov, who worked as a guide on Valaam for more than 40 years. But the only source is not conclusive evidence.
Solovki has a grim reputation as a concentration camp. Even the phrase “send to Solovki” has a menacing connotation, so linking the home for the disabled and Solovki means convincing that the disabled suffered and died in agony.
Another source of the myth is the deep conviction of people that disabled people of the Second World War were bullied, forgotten about and not given due respect. Lyudmila Alekseeva, chairman of the Moscow Helsinki Group, published an essay on the Echo of Moscow website “How the Motherland Repaid Its Winners.” Historian Alexander Daniel and his famous interview with Natella Boltyanskaya on radio “Echo of Moscow”. Igor Garin (real name Igor Papirov, Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences) wrote a long essay “Another truth about the Second World War, documents, journalism.” Internet users reading such materials form a clearly negative opinion.

Another point of view

Eduard Kochergin, a Soviet artist and writer, author of “Stories of the St. Petersburg Islands,” wrote about Vasya Petrogradsky, a former sailor of the Baltic Fleet who lost both legs in the war. He was leaving by boat for Goritsy, a home for the disabled. Here is what Kochergin writes about Petrogradsky’s stay there: “The most amazing and most unexpected thing is that upon arrival in Goritsy, our Vasily Ivanovich not only did not get lost, but on the contrary, he finally showed up. Complete stumps of war were brought to the former convent from all over the North-West, that is, people completely deprived of arms and legs, popularly called “samovars”. So, with his singing passion and abilities, from these remnants of people he created a choir - a choir of “samovars” - and in this he found his meaning of life." It turns out that the disabled did not live last days. The authorities believed that rather than begging and sleeping under a fence (and many disabled people did not have a home), it was better to be under constant supervision and care. After some time, disabled people remained in Goritsy who did not want to be a burden to the family. Those who recovered were released and helped with getting a job.

Fragment of the Goritsky list of disabled people:

“Ratushnyak Sergey Silvestrovich (amp. cult. right 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.”
The main task of the home for the disabled is to rehabilitate and integrate into life, to help master new profession. For example, legless disabled people were trained as bookkeepers and shoemakers. And the situation with “catching disabled people” is ambiguous. Front-line soldiers with injuries understood that life on the street (most often this was the case - relatives were killed, parents died or needed help) was bad. Such front-line soldiers wrote to the authorities with a request to send them to a nursing home. Only after this they were sent to Valaam, Goritsy or Solovki.
Another myth is that relatives knew nothing about the affairs of disabled people. In the personal files there are letters to which the administration of Valaam responded: “We inform you that the health of such and such is as before, he receives your letters, but does not write, because there is no news and there is nothing to write about - everything is as before, but he sends greetings to you "".

Book 2. DISCUSSIONS AROUND SOLOVIKOV

Chapter 3. Judgments, discussions and disputes about Solovki. Questions that require answers.

"So what is this man saying?
- And he simply lied! - the checkered assistant announced loudly to the whole theater and, turning to Bengalsky, added:
- Congratulations, citizen, having lied! "

Michael Bulgakov. Novel "The Master and Margarita"

The myth about WWII veterans and disabled people exiled to Solovki

The distorting mirror of Solovki: what happened and what didn’t happen on Solovki

“Will the future objective historian be able to get to the truth from the often contradictory recollections of chroniclers or from official, and usually deliberately false, archival materials?” ( Rozanov Mikhail. Solovetsky concentration camp in the monastery. 1922 – 1939: Facts – Speculation – “Parashi”. A review of the memories of Solovki residents by Solovki residents. In 2 books. and 8 hours. USA: Ed. author, 1979., Book. 1 (parts 1-3). 293 pp.)

They say that after the Great Patriotic War, in the period between 1946-1959, raids took place in many Russian cities. The police grabbed blind, legless, armless disabled people, loaded them into “craters” and took them away in an unknown direction. These people were never seen again. They say that they were sent to Solovki, where they met their death.

The myth about disabled veterans of the Second World War,
exiled to Solovki for destruction

Radio "Echo of Moscow" in the program "In the Name of Stalin" remembered widely famous story, directly related to post-camp Solovki. Presenter Natella Boltyanskaya and terror historian Alexander Daniel discussed the monstrous “operation” of the NKVD-MGB to exterminate war invalids (highlighted orange). Solovki remains firmly in the people's memory among the places of exile of unfortunate amputee veterans. The following was said verbatim in the broadcast:

Natella Boltyanskaya: – “Comment on the monstrous fact when, by order of Stalin after the Great Patriotic War disabled people were forcibly exiled to Valaam and Solovki so that they, armless, legless heroes, do not spoil the victory holiday with their appearance. Why is there so little talk about this now? Why aren't they called by name? After all, it was these people who paid for the victory with their blood and wounds. Or can we not even mention them now?”
Alexander Daniel: - Well, why comment on this fact? This fact is well known and monstrous. It is completely understandable why Stalin and the Stalinist leadership expelled the veterans from the cities.
Natella Boltyanskaya: – Well, they really didn’t want to spoil the festive look?
Alexander Daniel: – Absolutely so. I'm sure it's for aesthetic reasons. Legless people on carts did not fit into the work of art, so to speak, in the style of socialist realism, into which the leadership wanted to turn the country. There is nothing to evaluate here. ( Natella Boltyanskaya. Stalin and the Second World War. Ved. Natella Boltyanskaya. Radio "Echo of Moscow", Program "In the Name of Stalin". Moscow. 05/09/2009)

What could really be happening on Solovki?

Irina Yasina
(1964)

"...Moscow is a closed city for disabled people... It is impossible to cross the street, it is impossible to make a phone call, drink coffee, or take money from an ATM. This is how it happened historically. As you know, disabled people, so as not to spoil the appearance of socialist cities, were simply sent to Solovki And these “samovars” sent to homemade strollers They were mostly front-line soldiers who had lost their legs in the war. Since then, disabled people have not been seen on our streets." ( Irina Yasina. You have to believe in people. Magazine "EZh", Moscow, 07/09/2009)

Natalia Gevorkyan
(1956)

“We abandon our own, we surrender them, just as we surrendered those boys at the beginning of the Chechen war, who were sent to Grozny and abandoned. How many did we surrender in Afghanistan and Chechnya? How many survivors of the Great Patriotic War were later rotted in the camps? How many Soviet legless and armless "The victorious soldiers were sent to die on Solovki so as not to spoil the landscape?" ( Gevorkyan Natalia. Soldier and homeland. Online publication "Gazeta.RU", Moscow, www.gazeta.ru. 10/19/2011)

No, there were no disabled people on Solovki

There are no publicly published articles, documents or eyewitness accounts about the deportation of disabled people to Solovki. It is possible that such documents exist in archives, but they have not yet been discovered or published. This allows us to attribute talk about the Elephant for disabled veterans to the myths about Solovki. In our opinion, there are two reasons for this myth.

1. First of all, this. Popular rumor, not without reason, attributed to it the status of a camp in which. The phrase “Exile to Solovki” meant imprisonment in any camp, regardless of its location.
2. The second reason is that people who returned from the war were very badly affected by the blatant injustice of the Soviet regime towards the disabled - instead of well-deserved awards, care and honor - persecution, arrests, deportation and, in fact, destruction.

At the same time, there is evidence of people with an impeccable reputation: Yulia Kantor and Mikhail Weller speak about the presence of disabled “samovars” on Solovki. Their words should be taken extremely seriously, if only because they have never been noticed in an incorrect presentation of the facts.

Julia Kantor (1972)- Professor, Doctor of History, specialist in the history of the Great Patriotic War and the pre-war period. Advisor to the Director of the State Hermitage.

Y. Kantor - ...the feeling of power, that the people turn out to be like that, they are not beaten and not beaten. And it was necessary, you know, the right to victory, won at such a price, to be taken out, pulled out. And this happened immediately... all over the country... again, why did they remove war invalids in every way?
K. Larina - Where were they taken?
Yu. Kantor - V special boarding schools on the islands, including Valaam, and so on.
V. Dymarsky - On Solovki.
Yu. Kantor - On Solovki. Whatever.
K. Larina - Nagibin, in my opinion, has just such a story.
V. Dymarsky - Many people have it.
Y. Kantor - Yes, there are memories and, by the way, there are documents. In Karelia there is an archive about the last of these special boarding schools for those people who remained. In general, they were called “samovars”... This, by the way, is also in fiction. Those left without any limbs at all. Some couldn’t even speak, and so on. Why were the so-called disabled people and beggars removed? Because the state didn’t help them at all, didn’t help them in any way. These too, and such people, that is, those winners. Therefore, it’s as if, well, we won - and okay, and we continue to live in tightening screws, further and further. ( Kantor Julia. Memory of the war. Ved. V. Dymarsky and K. Larina. Radio station "Echo of Moscow", Moscow. www.echo.msk.ru. 05/09/2014)

: “One of the thousands of nameless “mailboxes” of the Ministry of Defense - a closed institute supervised by Beria - conducted the first experiments on Solovki, where in a huge monastery the former camp for prisoners was replaced by a hospital isolated from the world for “samovars”, according to all documents, which had long been unlisted in alive." ( Mikhail Weller. Samovar. Publisher: "United Capital" St. Petersburg, 1997)

Son, maybe you would ask someone to finish you off?

Dmitry Fost:...there were a huge number of disabled people, real disabled people, without arms, without legs. Let’s take a figure not from 1945, let’s take a figure later - in 1954, almost 10 years after the war, Kruglov, the Minister of Internal Affairs reports to Khrushchev: “Nikita Sergeevich, there are a lot of disabled beggars traveling on trains. We detained one hundred thousand people in 1951, 156 thousand people in 1952, 182 thousand people in 1953.” 70% of them are war invalids - legless, armless, eyeless. 10% - professional beggars who “fell into temporary need” - 20%. Insane amount of people. And suddenly, in front of the war veterans - all the veterans - they simply begin to catch people without arms, without legs, hung with orders, in courtyards, in back streets, in railway stations, like mad dogs. Who are not to blame for their situation: the house was looted, destroyed, the family was destroyed, the seed was missing, he was missing - maybe he does not want to return to the house so as not to be a burden. And these people were simply caught. There are very interesting memories - in Kyiv, one of the generals stood up for disabled people who were loaded into freight cars. They were simply swung and thrown there, and they flew into these freight cars, jingling their military awards - this was done by young conscript soldiers. In 1946, they very carefully tried to place several hundred [disabled] veterans from Moscow on Valaam...

In 1949, perhaps as a gift, they were taken seriously. The streets were cleared of them. But they did not touch those who had relatives. If I may, a personal impression: I grew up on Yakimanka, at the intersection of Babyegorodsky and Yakimanka there was a beer hall - there was such a Kultya. They drank a lot at that time - it was 1958 - but there were few alcoholics. Kultya was the only alcoholic in the entire area. He had no legs, only one arm up to the elbow, no other arm at all, and he was blind. His mother brought him on wheels, left him near the pub, and, of course, everyone gave him something to drink... And once I myself witnessed - it was a very strong childhood impression, I was only 5 years old - an old woman came up, gave him beer and said : “Son, maybe you could ask someone to finish you off?” He says: “Mother, how much have I already asked for? No one takes on such a sin.” This picture remained in my eyes, and for me personally it is an explanation of how the real heroes of the war were treated, who sacrificed so much.
Vitaly Dymarsky: Are there burials?
Dmitry Fost: We discussed this with Minutko - not all disabled people were taken to the special homes they tried to organize, the so-called “incorrigibles” - they got rid of them.
Dmitry Zakharov: That is, they simply destroyed it.
Dmitry Fost: Yes, they were taken out, and the burial places are known. But this is a question that needs additional study, and only when these burials are discovered and opened will it be possible to talk about this with confidence. Today... there is no access to this information, of course. ( Dmitry Fost. Stalin and the generation of winners. Presenters: Vitaly Dymarsky and Dmitry Zakharov. Program "The Price of Victory", Ekho Moskvy. Moscow. 02/15/2010)

The disgusting crime of the Stalin regime

(instead of conclusion)

"Listener: Good night... the Germans did not think of their war heroes and no one among the people to take out disabled people, organize camps and destroy them there. on Valaam, on Solovki. You probably know that there were wheelchair users, amputees, heroes with orders came after the war. And in 47, when the memory of the war was erased and it ceased to be the day of victory, and the monetary reform was carried out, they became beggars and went to beg. They were collected from Moscow and from all cities, from all over the union, taken to the north and they died there. I wish I could find out these guards who came up with this...

Evgeniy Proshechkin: This is a shameful story that does not paint our country, when immediately, literally two or three years after the war, the Stalinist leadership, seeing that the front-line soldiers raised their heads high, they raised it correctly, they liberated half of Europe, the country, and began to abolish various benefits, according to At the request of workers, May 9 became a working day again. And indeed, amputees, “samovars,” as they were called, were sent, although not to Solovki, but to Northern Ladoga, Valaam, they wrote about it. This, of course, is one of the disgusting crimes of the Stalinist regime, what can one say."

(Evgeny Proshechkin, Chairman of the Moscow Anti-Fascist Center. Are crimes like those the former warden is accused of subject to a statute of limitations? Nazi concentration camps Ivan Demjanjuk? Hosted by Vladimir Kara-Murza. Broadcast "The Edge of Time". Radio Liberty. Moscow, 05/12/2009)

How the Motherland repaid its winners

Of course, the most terrible impression was how they treated those who were crippled by the war. People without arms, without legs, burned, terrible - starting from 1944, and especially after its end, they filled Moscow. These were not only Muscovites who suffered in the battles, but also people from other places. Because, although there was hunger in Moscow at that time - people lived on ration cards - but, nevertheless, it was easier in Moscow than in the rest of the country, which lived very hard and very hungry after the war, also in 1946 and 1947 years. There were a lot of them, these war invalids. Young guys. If he had no legs, then on something like this, you know... They didn’t have prosthetics, they had wooden ones, like stools - small ones, on wheels, and they pushed off the ground with their hands and moved on these pieces of wood. And some of them begged for alms, some sang, played. There were often drunk people among them. It’s understandable, because life, in general, is normal for them human life, ended.

Well, let someone condemn them - we did not condemn them. We didn’t even feel sorry for them, we sympathized with them, we understood. And then suddenly, literally one day, such people disappeared from the streets of Moscow, every single one.

We didn't know what happened to them. Only then, after Stalin’s death, reports began to leak out that they had been evicted. Everyone was rounded up and deported somewhere to the islands, where, well, they were fed and allowed to live out their lives. Can you imagine what kind of life this was? This is how they treated people who were crippled by the war, who gave their very young lives to this war. This is how the Motherland treated them. Not a mother, but a stepmother. ( Alekseeva Lyudmila. How the Motherland repaid its winners. Radio "Echo of Moscow", Moscow, 10/28/2011)

On the issue that communists have always been disinterested and under Stalin they never stole

“Well, this is one of the stories, one of the myths that, in general, is in circulation now. So, a question from Natalya: “They persistently count only those executed in 1937, it turns out very little - only 700-odd thousand, there is something to talk about. But they don’t want to count either Solovki, or those who died on the White Sea Canal, or those who died in the camps in general, or those who were dispossessed, or those who died in captivity due to Stalin’s fault." ( Natella Boltyanskaya. The Solovetsky stone is a little off there, if you imagine Lubyanka Square, there is a round flowerbed on which stood, and if you look at the KGB building, although this is not a very pleasant sight... a decent activity, then on the right, not reaching the Polytechnic Museum, there is a rectangular public garden, and nearby. Yes. I have already said that this monument itself, if it had not been removed then, would have been there. But you understand, then we were in solidarity with the same, remember, indignant articles when Dzerzhinsky, and we pushed him as a compatriot, we gave them the Soviet Union. You know, this is how glorious the son of the Polish people was. They painted his hands up to the elbows with red paint..." ( Sergey Buntman. Interception. Radio station "Echo of Moscow". Moscow.12/18/2009)

Solovetskaya book catalogue:

"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…

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, in former USSR Disabled front-line soldiers of the Soviet-German war were shot. 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 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 of the Supreme Council of the Karelo-Finnish SSR, the House of War and Labor Invalids was established on Valaam and 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.