Disability in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union: history, policy and everyday life

Abstract

Reviews the book, Disability in Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union: History, Policy and Everyday Life edited by Michael Rassell and Elena Iarskaia-Smirnova (2013). This is indeed a timely book. It arrives at the 25-year anniversary of the collapse of most of the socialist governments in Eastern and Central Europe; an anniversary that is still largely seen as a celebration of the arrival of democracy and freedom to the 'Eastern bloc'. This simplifying appraisal of the complex and difficult social transformations of the post-socialist societies following 1989 or 1991 respectively illustrates how needed the intervention this volume offers really is. This book offers 12 individual essays whose thematic build-up and interdisciplinary breadth will speak to a varied audience, and in particular to historians, anthropologists, policy-oriented researchers and sociologists. The book covers a historical period spanning from the welfare aftermath of World War II to the current post-socialist and post-Soviet developments. This book aspires to accomplish an intervention that no single volume can do. And this ambition is in fact another of its considerable achievements as it opens up avenues of thought and questions with which scholars will undoubtedly engage with in future work. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)