“Stumps” of the war

In the late 40s in the streets there were a lot of war veterans-invalids – 
with disfigured faces, blind, without hands and legs, but with orders and 
medals on their chests. Those, whose injuries were particularly severe, 
moved on makeshift wheelchair carts. Invalids sang in carriages, railway 
stations, markets and other places of gathering people, begging, drinking … 
In 1949, before the celebration of the 70th anniversary of Stalin, it was 
decided to push  mutilated soldiers, victorious soldiers of Zhukov Army, 
to the most remote and inaccessible parts of the country, mostly to abandoned
monasteries so that persons with disabilities couldn’t spoil with  their 
ugliness flourishing cities of the socialist fatherland. They were gathered 
for one night by special outfits of police and security – loaded into the vans 
and taken to the “boarding houses of the closed type with a special regime.” 
One of such houses was located on the island of Valaam (the northern part 
of Lake Ladoga), in the former monastic buildings. About the horrific details 
of life of the inhabitants of this postwar reservation there is not much 
evidence, but they do exist, no matter how hard “good faith” historians and 
publicists tried to hide the facts of unprecedented crimes of the Soviet power 
in relation to its own defenders. On Valaam, according to various sources, 
were kept up to a thousand of mutilated soldiers, living for a meager allowance, 
for who the act of “caring and compassion” turned into a camp hell. Those who 
had no arms or legs, they were called  Stalin’s “samovars”, were hung for the 
whole day on the branches of trees in baskets or grids. Sometimes they were 
forgotten to be taken off … Dead heroes were buried, like criminals – 
nameless, under the sign with a serial number.