vlad.tribnet.com / Issue #156 / Special reports / Reading article...

Being disabled is hard enough in itself. Being disabled in Primorye, particularly now, requires more endurance than ever.

Russia celebrated International Invalids Day on Dec. 3, and the following ten days dedicated to the disabled are planned to attract public attention to their situation. In conjunction with the occasion, Vladivostok's disabled plan to gather at the Krai administration building to demand more funding for services.





The krai's Artificial Limb Company has not been financed since March 1997, and cannot provide free equipment to its clients - totalling over 12,000 people - for much longer.

Soviet society never cared much about them: concrete pre-fab apartments, with their faulty elevators and winding staircases, force the disabled to be dependent on helping hands. There are few wheelchair-accessible buildings of any kind in Primorye.

While prosthesis technology quickly develops abroad, Russian prosthetic limbs are still cut with axes on chopping blocks, and made from steel, plaster, and heavy lime wood. People who need these goods must wait at the Artificial Limb Company's hotel while their equipment is prepared.





Modern wheelchairs and other equipment are exported to Russia, but many cannot afford to pay. Some are forced to use the simplest means of all: a piece of wood with wheels attached, and someone to pull them along.

Still, Primorye's disabled may teach us a valuable lesson: regardless of how difficult it may be to get by, they persist in a society that ignores them. There is fierce determination in their eyes.