Landmark - special handrails to ensure the movement of the blind. The path that runs along Rusinovskaya Street in the town of Yermolino, Kaluga Region, along an iron railing is the daily route of several dozen of the last inhabitants of the former exemplary city for the visually impaired, which was created in Soviet times. The path goes from the residential five-story building to the entrance of the plant, where the blind collect medical pipettes.
In 1948, in the Kaluga village of Rusinovo, soldiers who lost their eyesight were collected. A hundred blind front-line soldiers and a hundred sighted people from among the locals produced various household trifles, for the manufacture of which did not require great knowledge - only patience and tireless hands. Then, on the basis of this artel, it was decided to create a whole city for the blind. A hundred kilometers from Moscow, a plant, a residential neighborhood, a cultural center, a polyclinic, a boarding school, a kindergarten, and shops have grown.
People from all over the country began to gather in Rusinovo. We drove on their own - this place was not a reservation for people with disabilities. Here people with visual disabilities and the blind lived a full life. 1100 people worked at the enterprise of the All-Russian Society of the Blind (VOS), more than half - the visually impaired of the 1st and 2nd groups.
For those times, their salaries (200–250 rubles) made it possible to provide everything necessary for a decent life. Apartments they received from the state for free. The blind created families, their children went to kindergartens and schools.
However, it all ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union.
"You just have no eyesight."
As the head of the Borovsky District Department of the All-Russian Society of the Blind, Alexander Rakovich, tells us, life in Rusinov, as in the whole country, changed dramatically in the 1990s.
“In the 1990s, wages dropped sharply at our Rusinov enterprise,” says Alexander Rakovich. “The Rubin factory collapsed in Moscow - the blind collected microchips for their televisions. There were no orders from Muscovites, we began to pay a little. I have earnings from 240 rubles fell to 80, and in the hands - an unemployed wife and two small children. To live on the proposed penny considered demeaning. I thought about myself: you just have no vision, and everything else is in perfect order, fight! ”
- The head of the Borovsky district branch of the BOC Alexander Rakovich
- RT
Blind Rakovich in 5 years - because of complications after the flu. As the man notes, he never considered himself miserable: he studied well at a boarding school, did gymnastics, swimming and athletics in his childhood and youth. Alexander Rakovich by nature - a fighter.
After being discharged from the factory, he began to take up any business: he raised and sold chickens to summer residents of the capital, selling videotapes, then computers. A few years later he already had 15 outlets in the cities of Yermolino and Balabanovo.
Leadership qualities Rakovich also shows at the post of head of the Borovsky district branch of the BOC, and as a deputy of the city council of the municipal formation “City Settlement“ Yermolino City ”, which now includes the former Rusinovo village. Alexander Rakovich is actively fighting for the legal rights of visually impaired persons.
"The sighted don't understand what the blind need," he says. “Our authorities, our society, want to banally pay off visually impaired people — pensions, benefits — and forget about them.” This is the main problem today. I believe that it is necessary to create programs for the adaptation of blind and visually impaired people to modern life. We are the same as you. "
Rakovich notes that now there are special computer programs that need to be used to adapt the visually impaired.
“All smartphones are equipped with talkers.” If under the state order, blind people are provided with both software that translates characters from a computer screen into a speech form, then they will be able to work as lawyers and accountants. It is necessary to adopt innovative programs for the adaptation of the visually impaired at the state level and move with progress. And we have blind people, in order to simply feed themselves, they collect pipettes, ”complains Rakovich.
"Manual labor is dying out"
“Of course, manual labor as such is dying out today,” says Sergey Bykov, general director of Borovskoye enterprise RUSINOVOPAK BOC LLC. - For assembling a medical pipette, the worker receives 17.5 kopecks, and its cost price is 21 kopecks. Enterprise profitability is only 2.5%. ”
The plant on the outskirts of Yermolino keeps afloat only because, in parallel with the workplaces for the disabled, a line for the production of corrugated cardboard is organized here, where sighted people work. But this is barely enough for survival.
Under the leadership of Bykov 108 people. 65 of them are people with disabilities of various categories, including 37 blind people.
The CEO is proud that RUSiNOVOPAK recently, with the help of VOS management, managed to get out of bankruptcy proceedings. Debts to creditors were prohibitive for the enterprise - 4.9 million rubles.
“And so would our blind people be left without work at all,” says Sergey Bykov. - Not far from us is the famous Kaluga "Technopark". I know that 16 hearing impaired people recently took to the Samsung plant. And the blind do not need anyone at work. ”
"Glad to have a job"
“I take a glass tube, put a rubber on one end, then put the collected pipette into the case and close it tightly,” Vasily Prutyan comments on the routine operation. - And so seven hours in a row. But I am very glad that I have a job. I can't survive without it. ”
- Vasily Prutyan
- RT
A 57-year-old disabled person arrived in Yermolino five years ago from Transnistria. In the city of Bendery, he said, today and for healthy people is not easy, and there is no work for the blind at all.
The trauma that led to total blindness, Vasily received while serving in the army, 37 years ago. “I remember the sun, I saw it,” says the disabled person, without stopping to work.
In the early 1990s, fighting took place in Bendery between the troops of the now independent Moldavia and local self-defense units.
“It seemed that nothing could be more terrible than war,” says Vasily. - But it turned out there. When I didn’t have a job, we were really on the verge of starvation. ”
Vasily Prutyan and his wife went to Rusinovo. Even in the Soviet years, he heard how well a blind man lives there. In reality, everything turned out to be not quite so, but Vasily Prutyan got the job.
“The blind pick up any pieces of joy that the sighted do not notice,” he says philosophically. “When even a small but stable salary appeared, my Claudia Ivanovna and I took a mortgage and bought a one-room apartment in Balabanovo.”
The bank has given out Prutyanam 1.3 million rubles. The disability pension of Vasily is 17 thousand rubles, and he earns about 10 thousand rubles a month on RUSiNOVAK. His sighted wife works as a cleaner at the school and receives 9.7 thousand rubles. Monthly to pay the mortgage loan takes 26.5 thousand rubles. But Vasily does not lose optimism.
“The only thing I lack in life right now is a phone with Internet access,” says the man. - One daughter, Lena, stayed in Transnistria, the family of another daughter, Yana, rents an apartment in the suburbs. I have two grandsons and five granddaughters. I have not heard their voices for a long time. ”
"While the legs will wear"
Most Rusinov blind people have strong families.
“Taking care of children and grandchildren does not allow them to relax, keeps them in constant vitality,” says Vladimir Savenkov.
A graduate of the Kazan University philology department is over sixty years old, but four days a week he leaves his apartment in Ermolino at 5 am and at 7:30 he starts work in a call-center organized by the Moscow government specifically for the employment of disabled people at the Kakhovskaya metro station.
“Work in the capital is more interesting. But for me it’s more important that I earn more than they pay at the plant in Yermolino, Savenkov says. “I do not want my relatives to be in need, and I myself want to live a full life, which money can provide.”
The long road with several transfers (bus - train - metro) does not tire him.
“As I had previously studied the road by reference point in Rusinovo, I chose and remembered for myself new landmarks - without handrails,” said Savenkov. “While I’m going to carry my legs, I’ll do everything that my wife, children and grandchildren do not need.
"We suffer, we cry"
The apartments of the blind residents of Rusinovskaya street are very clean.
“When you do not see anything, then you get used three times a rag to walk through one place. I have kneecaps, so cleaning is tolerable, ”says 82-year-old Antonina Pankina. - With cooking more difficult. I do not see when the water in the pan boils, again recently scalded my fingers. But Sasha my ear to determine when the pasta can already fall asleep in the water. But he has been a kitchener for a year now. ”
- Alexander Pankin
- RT
Alexander Pankin had slept after a heart attack, and before that he had four strokes.
“The Germans brought us to Germany, but they didn’t take something in 1942,” he says. - I was five years old. I do not know why it happened that many babies were then collected by the Nazis in a camp in Poland. I remember that they fed poorly, and our soldiers came - they gave sugar ”.
Victory in 1945, Sasha met at an orphanage in Belarus.
“The trouble happened to me when the boys and I found the German faustpatron in the forest,” recalls Pan'kin. - I was the instigator, therefore I undertook to gut him. The guys are all intact, and I'm eight years old without eyes. ”
Alexander Pankin made a good career at the VOS enterprise in Rusinovo - from a simple worker to a deputy director. For many years he headed the Borovsk regional public organization of juvenile prisoners of fascist concentration camps. Together with his wife, they raised three children.
“And now we are suffering, crying, asking for death,” sighs Antonina Alekseevna. “I can’t lift or flip my sasha, now de-multiplied,” In the hospital, he was lying on an orthopedic bed, and it is impossible to buy such a home for our pensions. And children are not helpers. One son is also visually impaired, a genetic disease has passed from me. Two healthy - poor and not long live. "
Forgotten tune
In Ermolino now rarely come from the side. The youngest blind worker of “RUSiNovoPAK” Valeria Korotaeva is from local.
- Valeria Korotaeva
- RT
“I was born much earlier than I was,” she explains the reason for her blindness. - Once hurried, I'm not in a hurry anywhere else. In the universe, everything is in balance, everything comes in time. No need to rush. Happens to me: you go, you go and suddenly you understand - lost. I do not panic, go back and again go along the familiar road. ”
Valeria graduated from the Kursk College of Music for the Blind, studied domra, then entered the Institute of Culture, but was unlucky in the entrance exams. She didn’t even look for a job in the specialty “Orchestra Artist” she received. And then Lera stretched the tendons on her arm. This put an end to a musical career.
“I returned home to Borovsk, I got a job at the plant,” recalls Valeria. - The choice of work for the blind now everywhere is small. I know that somewhere in the massage brushes plastic carnations are inserted, somewhere medical boot covers are folded. Pipettes so pipettes - it suits me. "
- Rehearsal of the ensemble "Ivushka"
- RT
Twice a week, after work, Lera sings in the vocal ensemble “Ivushka”, which was created by the deputy of the Ermolinsky Council, Alexander Rakovich. The blind artistic director of the musical group, Alexander Lipatov, says that 11 people attend the rehearsals.
“There used to be a big folk choir in Rusinov,” he says. - Then all of our singers have grown old, who are still alive, they are now sitting in apartments. The most lively come, and from our youth we have only Valeria. ”