Bookvica

[WORLD WAR II: VETERANS HISTORY IN THE USSR] Vozvratshchenie k trudovoi deiatel’nosti invalidov Otechestvennoi voiny (Sbornik postanovlenii i instruktsii) [i.e. Return to Work of Disabled Veterans of the Patriotic War (Collection of Regulations and Instructions] / Compiled by N. Obodan

Item #1787

Leningrad: Leningradskoe gazetnozhurnal’noe i knizhnoe izdatel’stvo, 1943. 120 pp. 14x11 cm. In original printed wrappers. Fragments of spine lost, soiling occasionally, creases, t.p. partly detached, otherwise good. Very rare wartime edition.

The book was released for representatives of trade unions and managers of factories to where disabled veterans came back to work. The main compiler was head of the Leningrad Institute of Medical and Labor Expertise, N. Obodan. Later he worked in children’s orthopedic surgery in Leningrad until 1969.
According to the Military Medical Museum in St. Petersburg, during the Great Patriotic War, 46 million 250 thousand Soviet citizens were injured. Of this number, about 10 million returned from the front with various forms of disability, including 775 thousands with injuries to the head, 155 thousands with one eye, 54 thousands blind soldiers, 3 millions with one arm, 1,1 millions without both arms. Soviet authorities began to monitor military invalids even before the end of the Second World War. During 1943-1944, the NKGB sent several directives to local state security agencies demanding to prevent war invalids from
conducting anti-Soviet propaganda. There were more than enough reasons for dissatisfaction with the Soviet government. Monetary compensation was insufficient or even negligible. Instead, the authorities offered people with disabilities to earn their own living.
This particular edition contains blank questionnaires for reception and professional orientation of disabled persons. They were offered to employ in some types of craft workshops.

In 1948, the authorities decided to fight the poor “order-bearers” that blocked the official triumph of the victorious country. The USSR adopted a decree “On the eviction to remote areas of persons who maliciously evade labor activity in agriculture and lead an antisocial parasitic lifestyle”. Several public trials were also held. For example, in the village Kozhva (Komi ASSR), the NKVD discovered a so-called Union of War Invalids, organized by several former officers of the Red Army. It was headed by a major who provoked anti-Soviet conversations and “slanderous fabrication” about the poor situation of disabled people in the Soviet Union. In the late Stalinist period, thousands of disabled veterans were sent to closed provincial communities.

Not found in Worldcat.

Price: $450.00