case

In August 2008, six year old Kristina was placed into a psycho-neurological care home for children
with multiple developmental disabilities, thereby separating her from her twin sister with whom she
had lived since birth.  When they were three years old, an American couple had intended to adopt
both girls, but the local guardianship board instead awarded parental rights to their aunt. The
sisters were removed from their aunt’s care three years later due to neglect and placed in a
hospital awaiting assessment of their needs by a local PMPK board. Kristina’s sister was assigned
to a boarding school for children with visual impairments and then taken in by a foster family,
which was quite a rare event for a disabled child.  However, Kristina was placed by the PMPK in a
psycho-neurological care home due to her blindness and perceived IQ levels.  The emotional shock of
being separated from her sister was aggravated by the inhumane conditions at the setting such that
she refused to speak, move or eat.  The isolated location of the care home prevented regular visits
by volunteers who had cared for Kristina and her sister in hospital and they were shocked at her
total dependence on external care when they visited after several months. A public campaign to find
a family placement for Kristina attracted significant attention in the media and from many key
figures in Russian child protection.  A later public investigation found high cases of child death
as well as sexual violence in the care home.

Procedures

The special psycho-medical-pedagogical commissions [psikhologo-mediko-pedagogicheskaya komissiya]
that assess disabled children and create ‘rehabilitation plans’ for them.  These organisations are
known in Russia by their abbreviation PMPK.  Without the official disability certificate [spravka
in Russian] issued by these commissions, parents are unable to receive financial, medical and
welfare support to support their children, thus giving the PMPK a power imbalance over applicants
and their families.

The PMPK operate at local, regional and national levels and may comprise defectologists (special
educators), psychiatrists, psychologists, paediatric doctors, nurses, social pedagogues and speech
therapists, although there is generally a medical dominance.  Following submission of various
medical documents, psychiatric assessments and school reports, children are tested by the
commissions, parents are questioned and a decision made about whether to assign one of eight
categories of disability.  In relation to mental disability, the PMPK have abandoned the derogatory
Soviet-era classifications ‘idiot,’ ‘imbecile’ and ‘debile’ and are now officially banned from
pronouncing a child ‘uneducable’ (see Sutton 1980 for the original meaning and use of these
terms).  Nonetheless, mental disability is still discussed as ‘mental retardation’ or ‘deviation in
cognitive development’ (umstvennaya  otstalost’ or otklonenie v umstvennom razvitii).

Discourses of defectology

Defectology was the field of Soviet pedagogy focused on work with disabled children akin to
‘special education’ in some other countries.  In Foucauldian terms, it represents the professional
‘gaze’ and interpretation of mental disability that regulated children’s lives and support for
them.  Today the discipline is sometimes known as ‘correctional pedagogy’ in Russia, but its ethos
and content reflect considerable continuity from the late Soviet period.  Definitions, diagnostics
and care procedures for Russian children with mental and psychiatric disability have thus changed
very little from the late 1960s and early 1970s, in contrast to incremental reforms around
physically disabled children (Thomson 2002; Iarskaia-Smirnova and Romanov 2007).

Although Soviet psychology, pedagogy and related disciplines were characterised by remarkable
creativity, experimentation and humanism in the 1920s (e.g. Sandomirskaja 2008), later conservatism
and control in the political sphere meant that state approaches to disability grew increasingly
punitive and segregationist.  The discipline of pedology combining psychology and pedagogy was
banned and in 1936 as defectology abandoned its initially humanist ideas rooted in Vygotskian
psychology.  It became highly focused on identifying and treating ‘deviations’ and ‘abnormalities’
in children, thus promoting the normalising and segregationist tendencies that Foucault identified
in Western psychiatry and medicine.  Defectology identified eight different types of childhood
disability with specialised research institutes, rehabilitation centres and schools focused on work
with a particular ‘category’ of disabled child.  Our focus is mental disability in children, which
was termed ‘mental retardation’ [umstvenno otstalost’ in Russian] or ‘oligophrenia.’ We are also
concerned about the children who would have been labelled as ‘uneducable’ [neobuchaemyi] and
therefore seen as outside the remit of defectology, which was a branch of education.

Susanna Rubinstein’s Soviet-era textbook The psychology of a mentally retarded pupil provides
insight into the language and construction of childhood mental disability in the Soviet Union.[1]
The publication was first published in 1970 and revised several times during the Soviet Union and
remains a highly influential text used by many special educators, correctional pedagogues and
defectologists in Russia today.[2]  Rubinstein used her experience in the Ministry of Health’s
patho-psychology research laboratory to recommend particular approaches and techniques for mentally
disabled children.  The main tenet of defectology is that mentally disabled children fundamentally
differ to non-disabled children due to their different brain development:

The psyche of a mentally retarded [‘oligophrenic’] child is completely different to that of a
normal child … immature higher intellectual processes in combination with extremely rigid behaviour
create … a distinctive type of mental development (Rubinstein 1986: 23).

These assumptions meant that mentally disabled children were regarded as emotionally and
intellectually ‘primitive.’  Rubinstein wrote that ‘many mentally retarded children share this
specific way of thinking to a larger or lesser degree.  The experiences of a mentally retarded
child are more primitive, only feeling pleasure or displeasure, and having almost no subtle
differentiated shades of experience’ (1986: 74).  Defectology suggested that children’s mental
development determined their other competences: ‘mentally retarded children start comparatively
late to understand issues of social behaviour, morals and ethics due to their undeveloped thinking,
weak grasp of general concepts and patterns’ (Rubinstein 1986: 72).

The upshot of such thinking was an emphasis in defectology on the key roles of teachers and special
surroundings to develop children’s mental abilities.  As Rubinstein’s textbook stated, ‘continuous
and relentless supervision and control by teachers is the main thing needed by children … in order
to prevent bad influences and habits’ (1986: 56).  Defectology conformed to ideological aims to
hide disability and other ‘social problems’ from broader society by recommending a system of
residential institutions separate from mainstream society as the most effective and also most
humane environment for work with disabled children.  Even liberal defectologists in Russia who
challenged some aspects of Rubinstein’s thinking described the ideal setting for disabled children
as ‘a children’s home, school, a small village with houses and a club, where blind-deaf people of
all ages will live.  They will communicate with each other by touch and the help of special
equipment.  Such conditions for communication do not exist in standard schools and houses’
(Serikkalieva et al 1978: 13).  Again, the preoccupation with cognitive achievement undermined
other potential goals of education that could have facilitated a critique of isolation and
segregation.

Within their residential institutions, teachers and carers were supposed to use control and
correction to educate and raise children: ‘in a strict regime, children can behave properly.
Without such a regime, they easily acquire bad habits.  Idleness affects them especially badly
whilst an organised regime full of work, sport and games is beneficial’ (Rubinstein 1986: 57).
This focus on cognitive development and ‘proper’ conduct instead of communication, intellectual
development and emotional well-being meant that defectology had very little basis in human rights
or inclusive approaches to disability.  The general aim was to improve individual functioning in
the hope that children would then be classified as non-disabled or with a milder disability –
rather than to encourage integration into society.

Ultimately, defectology had a narrow, utilitarian focus on mental development.  Perceived cognitive
ability was the key criterion for differentiating children and focus of professional support.  The
discipline promoted the idea that only trained professionals could work with ‘defective’ children;
mainstream teachers and families were excluded from involvement with disabled children and made to
feel untrained and unprepared to work with them.  Indeed, the Soviet welfare system for disabled
children, chiefly special commissions for assessing disability and residential institutions, was
founded on defectological principles.  The next section considers how discourses of defectology
became concretised in institutional practices and procedures with very real consequences for
mentally disabled children’s lives and well-being.

________________________________

[1] A full copy of the 1986 version of Rubinstein’s book is available in Russian at
http://cl.rushkolnik.ru/tw_files2/urls_79/11/d-10450/7z-docs/1.pdf [accessed 21 June 2013]

[2] A Youtube video of a conference at Moscow City Psychological-Pedagogical University on what
would have been Susanna Rubinstein’s 100^th birthday can be found at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otQB8rUbORE [accessed 21 June 2013]