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Disabled ‘Afgantsy’: Fighters for a Better Deal

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Social Change and Social Issues in the Former USSR

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Abstract

If there is one subject concerning the USSR that has evaded the attention of Western scholars it is the disabled.l Partly this is because few are equipped to study the crippled, insane, blind or deaf. In any case, even within the (former) USSR, the dimension of the disabled population and the extent and effectiveness of its treatment is little publicised; for decades virtually nothing on the subject reached the foreign eye. Perestroika is changing that. But it is the agitation by Afghan veterans for a better deal for themselves and other disadvantaged groups in the population, especially the handicapped, that has done much to bring publicity, and force action.

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Notes

  1. The first Western book meriting attention on the Soviet disabled came out in 1989: see W. O. McCagg and Lewis Siegelbaum (eds), The Disabled in the Soviet Union (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1989).

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Authors
  1. Jim Riordan
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Soviet and East European Studies, University of Glasgow, UK

    Walter Joyce (Research Fellow) (Research Fellow)

Copyright information

© 1992 International Council for Soviet and East European Studies, and Walter Joyce

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Cite this chapter

Riordan, J. (1992). Disabled ‘Afgantsy’: Fighters for a Better Deal. In: Joyce, W. (eds) Social Change and Social Issues in the Former USSR. Selected Papers from the Fourth World Congress for Soviet and East European Studies, Harrogate, 1990. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-22069-4_7

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