1. Deployment of institutions of special education and legislative framework of the system.

This stage arrives in Russia during the period from 1806 to 1927. It is unique in that it was interrupted by two revolutions that led to a restructuring of thegovernment and society at its very roots. The preconditions for forming a nationalsystem of special education took shape under Tsarist Russia, and the system was formulated in Soviet Russia, as a result of which, from that moment on the domesticsystemof special education in Russia has differed fundamentally from Western-European, namely because it is constructed with the logic of the Soviet government on principally new ideological and philosophical hypotheses, values and a completely differentunderstanding of humanrights. The beginning of this stage is well knownfor the opening of the first school for the deaf and mute (1806) and the blind (1807). Throughout this period three primaryareas of rendering assistance to children withdevelopmental disabilities takeshape in Russia: Christian-philanthropic, healing-pedagogical, and pedagogical. By the start of the 20^th century there were 61 institutions in operation in Russia for deaf and 30 institutions for blind children, and it is at this moment in time that the Russiansscientificschool of surdopedagogy – theteaching and training of the deaf-mute – and methods of teaching the blind started to take form.

Introduction of legislative acts on universal compulsory primary education and universal compulsory military service and the turn of the 19^th and 20^th centuries lead to an unavoidable introspection on the part of the government and society with respect to the presence of children and adults with mental retardation in society. In both Western Europe, and Russia, it is namely these social factors that engendered the organization of a system of institutions for children with mental retardation. Prior to the 1880’s no attempts to teach people with mental retardation were made, and their problems were primarily the concern of psychiatrists. Starting in 1880, it is namelythe Russian Society of Psychiatrists that actively attempts to organizea network of institution for the psychiatrically ill and the mentally deficient.By 1917, ancillary schools(for children with mental retardation) were in operation in 11 Russian cities and educated approximately 2,000 children. So, by the beginning of the 20^th century a significant number of special education institutions spring up in Russia, as well as in Western Europe, for three categories of children: deaf, blind and children with mentalretardation . However, there is no basis for thinking that a national system of special education had been created or formulized in pre-revolutionary Russia. Unlike WesternEurope, the Russian Law on Universal Primary Education (1908), which took 10 years to actually realize, simply remained a declaration. The government did not extend the due process of the Law to children with any developmental deviations from the norm, did not stipulate for thedevelopment and implementation of the necessary regulatory and legal documentation, and did not include it in the federal budget. The pre-revolutionary network of specialized educational institutions were formed and were essentially a part of philanthropic and charitable initiatives and the public, and the government essentially did not finance it, nor did it regulate the activities of this system of institutions with the law.

After the 1917 revolution, the national system of special education is built “in the war againstphilanthropic principles of child rearing and educating children with disabilities”,and for the first time becomes a part of the government system of education. Within the context of Communist ideology, civil rights, and goals and objective of education are being rethought, the foundations for the reformation of the state school are being laid, and the responsibility for educating children with developmental disabilities is rested upon the People’s Commissariat for Public Education(currently – the Ministry of Education).The policies with respect to children with expresseddeviations from the norm in both mental and physical development became a part of government polity with respect to socially troubled categories of children (homeless children, under-aged criminals). One sign of evidenceof this is the kind of terminology used in this period of time “mentally defective”, “bodily defective”, “morally defective”children. The Fundamental objective with respect to all categories of troubled children was considered by organizers of education and pedagogy to be the task ofturning these children into viable citizens (mycursive).The system of specialized institutions was createdas a system of institutions, in which defective children were isolated from society.Trends to isolate the system of special education from other humanitarian institutes are characteristic for analogous stages in western countries. The foundations laid in the “school of psychiatry”, are tied to the names of truly outstanding scholars.While in that historical period these foundations were in many ways innovative, in modern days they have really become serious problems, due to changes in world outlook, the philosophy of a new society,and correspondingly the view and principlesthat exist with respect to people with limitations (well -known problems of the Psycho-Medical-Pedagogical Commission (PMPK) with “diagnoses” from psychiatry) M.Sokolov, in Europe, was intensified many fold in Russia because of economic and ideological factors. As a result, in our country a distinctive type of system of special education arises, as a system in which the child is isolated in a particular socio-group,resulting in the predominant type of institution in that group which in Russia is called internat(*Translator’s note - we have also translated this term as “residential facilities”. It is a place where these children live and receive their schooling, but is not comparable to the U.S. system of boarding schools, which are elite secondary schools that foster entrance into stronger colleges and universities). Children with developmental disabilities could receive their education only in a special school-internat, upon entrance to which they became considerably isolated, both from theirfamilies and from their normally developing peers. Children with developmental disabilities and their loved ones were denied support, both from the church and from charitable organizations. They wound up trapped within a particular socio-group (“a defectological box [a box of mental defects and physical handicaps]”), within which special education was carried out (N.N.Malofeev).In the first decade of its existence the Soviet government, in the throes of an economic crisis and political and class warfare, was able to provide special education to only an insignificant portion of the children in need of it. Compared to the pre-revolutionary period, the numberof institutions and the number of children in them not only does not increase, but in fact decreases.The formation of a domestic system of special education took place at the end of the 20^th century and wasintroduced by the government asuniversalprimary education and the principles of building a school network(documents 1925-27). In the documents adopted, the state, for the very first time, formulates the goals for special education: “preparing for socially beneficial activities through schooling and labor”; and defines the structure of the institutions, introduces the rules on how special institutions should be staffed. NARKOMPROS [People’s Commissariat for Public Education] is instructed to put together a plan for introducing universal education for the blind and the deaf-mute. GOSPLAN (the State Planning Committee) is instructed to deploy a network of ancillary schools and classes for children with mental retardation.Within the framework of the proposed segmentation of historical periods, the first period is characterized by the transition from opening the first secular special education facilities for the deaf-mute and blind to the creation of a parallel education system – a system of special education, including three types of special schools. However, the differences between the European and our domestic system of special education are fundamental and lie within the realm of their ideological, legal and financial roots. In Western Europe the system of special education is formulated based on the development of citizens’ constitutional rights to education, including the rights of children with developmental disabilities to special education; outpacing public initiative andfinancial support by philanthropic movements, i.e. under conditions of specific coordination between the government, society and public interest groups. In Russia, on the other hand, the system of special education is formulated within the context of the government’s understanding of what is required of citizens to be useful to society, the absence of a law on education, a lack any dialogue with non-governmental movements and parents, and under a ban on philanthropic-charitable activitieswith the only source of funding being the federal budget, i.e. within a context of the logic of a totalitarian state.