Deaf in the USSR: Marginality, Community, and Soviet Identity, 1917–1991 by Claire L. Shaw

Abstract

Reviewed by: Deaf in the USSR: Marginality, Community, and Soviet Identity, 1917–1991 by Claire L. Shaw Timothy Reagan (bio) Deaf in the USSR: Marginality, Community, and Soviet Identity, 1917–1991, by Claire L. Shaw Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2017, hardcover, 310 pages, $49.99, 978-1-5017-1366-8. Deaf communities in different societies often share certain commonalities with and differ with respect to specificities from the societies that surround them and in which they are embedded. Much of the time, the commonalities can lead us to overlook the unique aspects of particular Deaf communities, but there are exceptions: cases in which the Deaf community of a country is radically different from Deaf communities in other countries. In Deaf in the USSR: Marginality, Community, and Soviet Identity, 1917–1991, Claire L. Shaw provides us with a powerful example of just such a case. Prior to 1917, deaf people in the Russian Empire were incredibly marginalized; indeed, for the most part, they had no legal rights. Thus, the 1917 Revolution created opportunities for major changes in how deaf people were viewed by hearing people, and in how they viewed themselves. The case of the USSR is further complicated by the fact that the Deaf community was both tied to and separated from the ideology that undergirded Soviet society. As Shaw explains, "the tension between commonality and difference, belonging and not belonging, in the lives and identities of Soviet deaf people stands at the heart of this book. … By asking what it means to be deaf in a culture that is founded on a radically utopian and socialist view of humanity, and how Soviet ideologues reconciled the fallibility of the body with their dreams of a future society, deafness reveals the tensions and contradictions inherent in the Soviet revolutionary project" (2). Nearly thirty years after the collapse and disintegration of the USSR in 1991—as well as following the purges under Stalin, the Great Patriotic War (i.e., World War II), and the Cold War—it is perhaps [End Page 479] difficult for us to remember today how extraordinary the October Revolution and its immediate aftermath actually were, as well as to recall the hope and idealism that the creation of the Soviet Union generated both in the USSR itself and overseas. The February Revolution effectively ended more than 300 years of absolutist rule under the Romanov dynasty—an autocratic rule that had become increasingly so under Nicholas II. Before the Revolution, the position of deafness in Russian society was complicated. On the one hand, under Article 381 of the State Legal Code, deaf people were grouped together with the insane and typically kept under legal guardianship unless they were able to prove that they could read, write, and speak Russian—this in a society in which the vast majority of hearing people were illiterate. At the same time, there was a growing network of schools for the deaf, and Russian educators of deaf students were familiar with Western theories and approaches to deaf education. In Russia, as elsewhere, the "war of methods" also impacted deaf education, although for the most part the approach in the Empire was to "chart a middle course" between oralism and manualism and to recognize "that while sign language should not be a goal of deaf education, it could certainly be a useful tool" (24). In post-revolutionary Russia, civil rights and freedoms were promised to all citizens, including those considered disabled. Although the terminology for such individuals in Russian remained (and remains) problematic to Western ears—in Russian, deafness is still considered one type of a дефект ('defect'), and what in the West would be called "special education" is called дефектология ('defectology')—the Revolution actually led to a very different, and far more inclusive, approach to disability issues generally, and certainly to policies related to deafness. Yet, throughout the history of the Soviet Union, there continued a fundamental tension between recognition of deafness as a lived reality within the more general context of Soviet society and deafness as a kind of ongoing enforced marginalization. It is this tension that is the focus of Deaf in the USSR, which traces the history of deafness in the...