Waiting for Mikhail
Parchomenko, Walter
The disabled in the USSR WAITING FOR MIKHAIL OLD NEGLECT, NEW REPRISALS MIKHAIL GORBACHEV, the new Soviet leader, faces an important problem which is not likely to appear on his Politburo's...
...They categorically refused to accept the need for an independent national association, maintaining that the Ministry for Social Services adequately fulfilled all the needs of the disabled...
...What emerges is a complex and, indeed, contradictory picture of Soviet reality...
...The disabled in the USSR WAITING FOR MIKHAIL OLD NEGLECT, NEW REPRISALS MIKHAIL GORBACHEV, the new Soviet leader, faces an important problem which is not likely to appear on his Politburo's agenda, at least until the Soviet Union's international prestige has been damaged...
...Secondly, he and his colleagues should carefully study the Action Group's basic request for the formation of an Ail-Union Society of Physically Disabled Persons modeled closely after the already existing and lawful All-Union Societies of the Deaf and the Blind...
...Several years ago the United Nations' General Assembly adopted resolutions making 1981 the International Year of Disabled Persons (IYDP), and 1983-1992 the Decade of Disabled Persons...
...Congressional Helsinki Commission, since the Action Group's formation in 1978, its members and supporters have become the target of increasing repression which has included violent house searches, seizures of books and letters, the threatened removal of parental rights, brutal beatings, death threats, deportation, and psychiatric repression...
...From the outset, however, the Soviet authorities reacted negatively...
...WALTER PARCHOMENKO (Walter Patchomenko is a Visiting Scholar at the Harriman Institute for Advanced Study of the Soviet Union at Columbia University...
...More recently, according to the Helsinki Commission, in June 1983 Vasily Pervushin was arrested for his outspoken defense of the Action Group...
...These conclusions emerged from a scholarly conference on the topic held earlier this year at Michigan State University...
...The general purpose of the Action Group was strikingly similar to that of these lawful associations: to provide members with educational programs, technical training, and a network of special industrial enterprises which would give disabled persons an income and self-respect, thus permitting them to lead independent, active, and normal lives...
...They decided to form a national organization on disability, a non-government association modeled closely after the already existing Ail-Union Societies of the Blind and of the Deaf...
...The problem, put simply, is Soviet observance of the United Nations' Decade of Disabled Persons (1983-1992), and its treatment of disabled rights activists...
...Through such efforts the Action Group hoped, over time, to undermine the widespread image of disabled persons as helpless, hopeless, nonfunctioning, and noncontributing members of Soviet society...
...Gorbachev should do three things...
...There exists as well a curious separation between the relatively privileged status of blind and deaf persons disabled in World War II, and the deplorable conditions of the remainder of the Soviet Union's physically disabled population...
...Abundant evidence to corroborate this assertion has been painstakingly gathered by Amnesty International...
...What can Mr...
...He should personally examine the cases of Vasily Pervushin, Yury Valov, and others confined to psychiatric hospitals for their disabled rights activism and end once and for all this grave affront to the dignity of the disabled...
...Gorbachev should see Soviet disabled rights activists for what they truly are: not "criminals" and "anti-Soviets" seeking to embarrass the regime, but loyal citizens committed to helping the disabled to become independent, contributing members of Soviet society...
...Gorbachev do to bring the Soviet Union somewhat in accord with the spirit of the Decade of Disabled Persons and safeguard his country's international prestige...
...His articles on Soviet and East European affairs have appeared in the New York Times, the Christian Science Monitor, the Wall Street Journal, and numerous other publications...
...Despite these reprisals and the deportation of two of the Group's leading members to West Germany in late 1982, the tiny Action Group somehow continues to function...
...That was the promise given the United Nations...
...A successful prototype, the Invalids Federation, existed in the USSR from 1925 until 1956...
...In the year remaining before the United Nations' crucial first review of its members' observance of the Decade, Mr...
...How have Soviet authorities observed IYDP and the Decade of Disabled Persons...
...What is the reality for millions of disabled persons in the USSR today...
...In these declarations, the Soviet Union and many other countries promised to seek "full participation and equality" for all disabled citizens...
...It was agreed that governments should take a leading role in these efforts, that nongovernmental organizations should assist governments, and that the progress of all countries toward ' 'full participation and equality'' should be monitored and assessed periodically at the international, regional, and national levels...
...In recent years, the Group has focused on the state's pursuit of a policy designed to disable healthy political prisoners and to erode further the health, of already disabled political prisoners...
...According to its report, Soviet authorities promote the slow tortured death of uncompromising political prisoners through a calculated application of harsh labor conditions...
...The conference's findings also disclosed dramatic abuses in Soviet treatment of disabled rights activists, abuses which suggest the Soviet Union has seriously violated the spirit of IYDP and the Decade of Disabled Persons...
...similarly he should examine the debilitating conditions of political confinement in the USSR, bringing them in line with the relevant and humane provisions of the Soviet Corrective Labor and Criminal Codes...
...On the one hand, the Communist Party has a sustained commitment to improving the living standards of the Soviet people, evidenced by important achievements in the development of public health care and social security...
...The authoritative List of Political Prisoners in the USSR, compiled by Cronid Lubarsky in Munich, reports that no fewer than 63 of the 903 known Soviet political prisoners confined during 1983 were disabled or seriously ill...
...The subject must be viewed in the light of Soviet history and the social and economic situation facing the population as a whole...
...In February 1981, for example, the authorities sentenced Yury Valov, author of the samizdat essay ' 'Word of an Invalid,'' to an indefinate term of confinement in a psychiatric hospital...
...On the other hand, there remain enormous flaws in the social welfare system (incredible inefficiency, indifference, and corruption), the result of the Soviet economy's inability to provide the general population, and disabled persons in particular, with conveniences and benefits available in the West...
...The Action Group to Defend the Rights of the Disabled in the USSR was formed in 1978 by three paraplegics frustrated by official indifference to their many appeals for equal rights since 1956...
...Furthermore, according to the U.S...
...A disabled and decorated veteran of World War II, he was forcibly taken to a special psychiatric hospital near Alma-Ata, where Pervushin remains to this day...
...Commonweal: 390 Nor has this official campaign abated since the Soviet Union endorsed IYDP...
...Lastly, Mr...
Vol. 112 • July 1985 • No. 13
