Caregivers and their Charges in the Soviet Union: The Case of the Striving Disabled

Please join us for the inaugural event of our Work of Care in Russia speaker series, a presentation by Maria Galmarini-Kabala (College of William & Mary).

The Soviet system of care and social protection involved both the distribution of monetary help through the Pensioning Department of the Commissariat (later Ministry) of Social Assistance and the implementation of social policies in such diverse fields as education, health care, family life, housing, and employment. In this talk, Maria Galmarini-Kabala will introduce four specific service agencies: the Medico-Pedagogical Station, the Mother and Infant Department, and the Societies of the Blind and the Deaf. After having clarified their institutional standing within the system of Soviet welfare in the post-revolutionary and Stalinist period, she will analyze how the people working in these organizations constructed their charges and how their constructions compared with Soviet bureaucrats’ vision of “the pensioner.” The figure of the “striving disabled,” which took shape precisely at this time, was of particular significance in informing future understandings of care work, activism, and proper disabled subjectivity.