Thanks Yoshi for forwarding the new stuff on Vygotsky. I forwarded it to deaf husband who may or may not read it but I found it interesting.
I am not a great fountain of historical info at this time of night, but I have a couple data points aboutt he deaf in Russia / the Soviet Union from husband's experience.
--Stalin liked hiring deaf people to work in defense plants because he figured they couldn't blab secrets very freely to foreigners. You all can fit this into whatever framework about production you want to.
(As an aside, the philologist of all philogist's ideas about secrecy are possibly a little whacked. Consider that Russian Sign Language was standardized at about the same time as several other sign languages in Europe were being standardized. A number of the sign languages from that period have a lot in common. I actually saw that in action one time at the Vnukovo airport in St Petersburg. Husband's deaf friends who took us to the airport were yakking away wtih some Italian guys who had come to Russia hoping to hook up with eligibile deaf women.)
--The All-Russian Deaf Society has long enjoyed some kind of special trade concession through the Russian government. During Soviet times I think that allowed some members to make a lot of money selling nested dolls and other domestic handicrafts on the streets of majoy cities. After the fall of Communism that concession created some opportunities for nasty entanglements between Deaf Society officials trying to improve their budgets and organized crime, with pretty violent results. I know outlines of this partly because of stuff husband heard and partly because it got close enough to an international hotel chain to make the Wall St Journal, but so far it's one of those paper topics I have not had time fully to research or to write up.
DoreneC