Dialectics of Deafness in the Soviet Union: A Review of Claire L. Shaw's Deaf in the USSR

As a person living on the territory of the former Soviet space and engaged in the study of the Deaf community, I read Claire Shaw’s 2017 book Deaf in the USSR with great enthusiasm. I am a hearing clinical psychologist and a postgraduate student in the Faculty of Journalism of Moscow State University, currently doing research on the Deaf in the field of media. I am researching the role of the media in the process of inclusion of the Deaf in Russia, and this work is certainly an extremely valuable source of information, especially given the fact that there are no such publications in Russian. The history of the Deaf throughout the Soviet period and up to the present day, of course, is of great interest and a significant contribution to Deaf studies in contemporary times. What turned out to be incredible and significant for me personally was the fact that, as it turned out, I had learned Russian Sign Language from the same teachers with whom Shaw studied, which made reading this book touching for me, both personally and academically. This review has three main sections. The first focuses on the history of the Soviet Union with respect to deafness and deaf people. The second covers Soviet ideology and Marxist theory regarding deafness and education. The last one describes matters of definitions and terms—both historical and current. Throughout, I endeavor to illustrate core dialectic tensions at play through Shaw’s work and, more broadly, these tensions’ role in understanding deaf history in and beyond the borders of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR).