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13 The Changing World of the Russian Deaf Community Michael Pursglove and Anna Komarova On September 7, 1995, Igor Abramov, chairman of the Moscow branch of VOG, the All-Russian Federation of the Deaf, was shot dead by a contract killer outside his flat in the Strogino suburb of Moscow. The often violent world of hearing Moscow had impinged on that of the Moscow deaf community. One of Abramov ’s last acts was to chair a committee that produced a modest little booklet titled Zhesty (Signs), published only a few days before his death. At the time, the booklet did not attract much attention but, in hindsight, it marks an important stage in the development of the Russian deaf community in the post-Communist era. Zhesty is probably best described as a phrase book and contains what are claimed to be the 472 most used signs in Russian Sign Language (RSL), the first language of many profoundly deaf people in Russia. It makes no claim to being academic but, instead, is offered as an “elementary teaching aid.” Although some deaf people in Moscow are rather critical of the book, claiming that some of the signs are wrong, it does have its uses, and it is extremely user-friendly, a rare virtue in a country not noted for its user-friendliness. For example, one of the two double sections, each containing 40 signs, is given over to the numbers that any user of any language, sign or otherwise, needs from a very early stage. What is most important about this booklet, however, is not its contents nor its format, but the circumstances of its publication. It was published by the organization that Abramov had headed, MOSGORVOG, the Moscow branch of the AllRussian Federation of the Deaf. Its parent organization, VOG, is virtually the sole organization for deaf people in Russia. Founded in 1926, it has branches—72 in all—in every major city in the Russian Federation and a total membership of approximately 156,000. Zhesty’s publication marks a striking shift from years of VOG’s oralist policies. The coauthors of this chapter, one English and one Russian, both hearing, This chapter is an edited and updated version of a paper presented at the Sociolinguistics Symposium 11, Cardiff, Wales, September 1996. 249 250 Michael Pursglove and Anna Komarova have experience working for the central directorate of VOG, which provided insight into the workings of both it and its subordinate branches. We have also been involved from the beginning with the Moscow Bilingual School for the Deaf, set up in 1992 to promote the bilingual approach to deaf education in a country where attitudes toward sign language still range from lukewarm to downright hostile, despite the changes in society begun by Gorbachev in 1985. With the first pupils having graduated in 1998, this time seems to be an opportune occasion to attempt an assessment of the changes that have occurred since 1991 within what we will call the Russian deaf community. As we will show, a generally accepted definition of that term still remains elusive, but sufficient evidence is available to enable us to draw some tentative conclusions. GORBACHEV’S REFORMS AND THEIR IMPACT ON RUSSIAN DEAF PEOPLE The reforms initiated by Mikhail Gorbachev from 1985 onward are associated with the concepts of glasnost (openness, transparency) and perestroika (restructuring ), both of which were originally intended to relate only to the workings of the Communist Party and the government. It is beyond the scope of this chapter to discuss the effect of these reforms on Soviet society as a whole, although the generalization could be ventured that, although Gorbachev’s attempts at restructuring largely failed, his policy of openness was widely interpreted as a green light for the introduction of freedoms that had been rigorously suppressed in the pre-Gorbachev era—freedoms of speech, association, and travel. For deaf people, the freedom to meet their Western counterparts and the removal of restrictions on travel to Western countries had a dramatic effect. From 1987 onward, contact between Russian deaf people and foreigners grew to an extent that enabled Russia to send a group of more than 50 to the “Deaf Way” conference at Gallaudet in 1989. The fact that users of RSL were able to communicate readily with users of other sign languages came as a revelation to them, as did the fact that, in some countries at least, sign language was accorded the same status as the national spoken language...

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