The Disabled and Elderly People in Prerevolutionary and Early Soviet Society: Formation of Disability Model in 1900–1938

Abstract

The first half of the XX century was the time when the model of disability, the main feature of which was the inability to work, was being formed in Russia. Basing on unknown documents from Siberian archives, this article analyses the transformation of the social status of disabled and elderly people in the pre-revolutionary period and the first decades of the Soviet rule. In the Imperial Russia disability was equal to senility. Any person who was no longer able to work, regardless of age, became elderly. In Soviet Russia the hierarchy of disability developed in accordance with the proletarian ideology. The group of disabled workers who had pensions was the most privileged; they were followed by the groups of disabled veterans, who were rehabilitated by health and labor methods, and homeless people with intellectual disabilities, the deaf, the blind, the elderly disabled, and the senile disabled. The latter group was isolated in homes for the disabled. The general direction of the social policy for all categories of disabled people was employment opportunities in compliance with the principle of «utilization of remaining work». The need in the labor force in the period of industrialization led to the emergence of the phenomenon of «working pensioner». As a result, in Soviet Russia a rationally employing model of disability, which was characterized by disability as the inability to work without the inclusion of other characteristics, was formed. The majority of the disabled were elderly people who were not involved in any type of rehabilitation. State social policy in respect of the disabled focused on their involvement in the labor force, which contributed to their integration into society