Disabled Veterans in History

Disabled Russian War Veterans: Surviving the Collapse of the Soviet Union

Ethel Dunn Disabled Russian WarVeterans: Surviving the Collapse of the Soviet Union Finding information about the disabled in Russia is not easy, because Soviet and Russian statistical handbooks until recently tended to lump pensioners and disabled into one category. There was also a tendency to deny that any problems existed among the disabled, which kept them even further from view. In the 1990s, a diligent researcher could nonetheless dig into printed books, scholarly journals, and newspapers and construct a picture of what life on a pension in present-day Russia must be like. There are a few basic questions for which there are no clear answers when it comes to these veterans : how many disabled Russian war veterans are we talking about, and which category of pension, a key to discovering their disabled status, do they receive? The different ministries and agencies that administer pensions divide all of the disabled into three groups: Group I, the most disabled and supposedly unable to work; Group II, those able to work under certain conditions ; and Group III, the least disabled. The population of these cohorts is hardly stable. A Medical-Social Expert Bureau reviews the health status of the disabled, including veterans, every two years, unless the person’s condition is judged unlikely to change. People receiving old-age pensions may also now qualify for a disability pension, but it is almost impossible to know whether the result is an increase in the total number of disabled or simply a redistribution of the disabled population. I will be discussing three groups of Russian disabled veterans: those who served in World War II; those who were drafted during peacetime, including those who served abroad in various con›icts; and the so-called Afgantsy, soldiers who served in the war in Afghanistan. Some sociological studies have been made of the Afgantsy, and I will be discussing these studies in this essay. World War II, called the Great Patriotic War in Russia, resulted in 20 million dead, 7.5 million of them in the armed forces.1 At the end of World 251 War II there were 11,365,000 of‹cers and troops in the Soviet armed forces, including 800,000 women. Demobilization started toward the end of 1945, and in a few years there were fewer than three million troops.2 Not only was this a huge population loss, a ›ood of men and women needing jobs, services, and health care were released into a ruined civilian economy. World War II remains vivid in the memories of most of the older generation of Soviet and Russian citizens, because every family and every village suffered some loss. The disabled and veteran pensioners still pose a huge problem in terms of health care for the Russian government. Disabled veterans of World War II numbered 659,200 in 1989, but their numbers increase as those veterans who survived the war without crippling injuries (2,660,000 in 1994, and another 13 million who, because they worked in the rear of the army, are entitled under law to the same bene‹ts) age and acquire multiple disabilities.3 The Soviet Union was also involved in a substantial number of other con›icts, before and after 1945. The soldiers called up to serve in these con›icts were called “internationalists,” but they never achieved the same status as the veterans of World War II, who were ‹ghting in defense of their invaded fatherland. The “internationalists” were doing their socialist duty to help defend other countries from Western imperialism, according to Soviet de‹nition, but by the late Soviet period, there was considerable skepticism and cynicism about the motivating ideology in Soviet society. There was a Soviet military presence in these other con›icts: Afghanistan (April 1978–February 1989) Algeria (1962–64) Angola (November 1975–November 1979, 1985) Bangladesh (1972–73) Cambodia (April–December 1970) China (1920s–1953) Egypt (October 1962–1975) Ethiopia (December 1977, November 1979) Laos (1960, 1975) Mongolia (1939) Mozambique (1967–69, 1975) North Korea (1950–53) Spain (1936–39) Syria (1967, 1970) Vietnam (January 1961–December 1974) Yemen (October 1962–December 1967, March–December 1969).4 252 Disabled Veterans in History All of these con›icts presumably have produced their own disabled veterans . In addition, Soviet troops were stationed in Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and East Germany, with massive concentrations of troops in East Germany, but their roles apparently did not involve combat. After the...