Approximately 500,000 Soviet troops and officials lost limbs during the Great Patriotic War (WW2), which lasted from 1941 to 1945. After returning to society, they discovered that they were no longer useful to anyone and were unable to find employment. In an effort to make ends meet, they sat around and begged in the markets, theatres, and streets.
In order to stop destroying the views of Soviet cities, Joseph Stalin ordered that this faulty audience be removed from public display. Veterans with disabilities were abducted from Leningrad and other major cities, loaded into trucks, and driven to the edge of Lake Ladoga, close to the Finnish border, where they were transported by boat to the island of Valaam.
The House of Invalids of War and Labor was founded in the buildings of the former monastery, in 1948. Limbless veterans lived in harsh conditions of isolation like the worst criminals, because they were crippled and not killed in a battle with the enemy.
Those who had lost all their limbs were cynically nicknamed “samovars” (because without legs and arms a person looks like Russian samovar). Samovars in particular had hard time. They were continuously swaddled like babies (see the picture above), pissing and defecating under themselves.
In the summer, they were taken outside and placed on the grass next to the river or lake, so their piss and excrements dripped into the waterways. Some would roll down and try to kill themselves by drowning. Nurses took pity of them, had them form Samovar Choirs to give them meaning in life.
The buildings didn't have heating or power for the first few years, or even a hospital, for that matter. Numerous illnesses and the cold claimed thousands of lives.
Kirillo-Belozersky, Alexander-Svirsky, and Goritsky are just a few of the similar businesses that popped up during that time period throughout the Soviet Union. They were all hidden from human habit in isolated, chilly locations, frequently in abandoned monasteries. Between 100,000 and 200,000 disabled veterans were confined there.
Mothers, wives, and sisters searched for the disabled relatives the government had stolen. After the war, a lot of women tried calling or visiting homes for the disabled, but they rarely had any luck.
Others people with disabilities purposefully chose not to appear in front of their loved ones; some even concealed their real names so as not to expose their ugliness and powerlessness.
These individuals were consequently lost to the common memory of history. Few private enthusiasts who are not assisted by the government attempt to learn the truth about people who spent the last years of their lives in special boarding schools for war veterans. Vitaly Semyonov, a historian and genealogy from Moscow, is one of them.
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