As usual, there were many strange things in the Soviet Union: the production of only and strictly galoshes, the fashion for red flags and the almost unhealthy craving of general secretaries for kissing men. To a heap, the industry of the Soviet Union produced strange curved spoons. For some citizens, to this day, these can lie somewhere in a dusty closet. Why was such a strange cutlery needed?
The fact is that these spoons were in a sense "medical". They were created to retrain left-handed children in order to turn them into right-handers or ambidexters (people who are equally good at right and left hand). Ambidextrous, for example, was Charlie Chaplin. Despite the fact that from birth the famous actor was right-handed, he performed many actions in life, including playing the violin, with his left hand. In most cases, anyone can develop ambidexterity. As for curved spoons, it’s enough to take a good look at one to understand that you won’t be able to eat such a spoon with your left hand.
In the 20th century, it was believed that left-handedness is a kind of pathology that needs to be corrected. And any adjustment is easiest to make in childhood. Therefore, they tried to retrain Soviet left-handers, starting from the school bench. What is there, in children's periodicals, even poems were published that subjected left-handedness to soft, comic, not offensive, but still ostracism. Rumor has it that some teachers even tied the hands of left-handers to chairs, but this is not certain.
Was there such an attitude towards left-handers strictly in the USSR? No, lefties were subjected to "discrimination" until the end of the second half of the 20th century in many countries, including the "civilized" world. For example, the American magazine TIME in 1967 even devoted to the problem of retraining and ostracism left-handers an entire article, comparing existing prejudices against such people with medieval superstitions.
However, it would be a mistake to believe that bias towards left-handers in the 20th century, including in the Soviet Union, grew from scratch. According to various sources, left-handers in the world make up from 5 to 15% of the population. In other words, our world is a right-handed world. A left-handed person is forced to adapt to many things that a right-handed person does not even notice. Therefore, it was believed that it would be nice to retrain such people from childhood.
All this acquired a special meaning in the army: weapons for both grips (from the left hand and from the right hand) began to be massively designed and produced only in the 21st century. Finally, until the 1980s, Soviet schools taught to write with ink pens. And for left-handed people, even this was a problem, since they followed the pen straight through the fresh ink with their working hand, smearing everything written in a predictable way.
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In conclusion, it remains to be noted that the attitude towards left-handers changed towards the end of the 20th century. Specifically, in the Soviet Union, official documents in defense of left-handers were adopted by the Ministry of Health in 1985 and the Ministry of Public Education in 1986. The adopted laws were after Soviet doctors and scientists proved that attempts to forcibly retrain left-handed people, especially in children's age, with a high degree of probability lead to the development of complications and psychological abnormalities, primarily the formation of numerous neuroses. This state of affairs may seem terrible to some, but, unfortunately, in homo sapiens societies, something is done only after stuffing cones. Blood cones.
If you want to know even more interesting things, then you should read about 7 samples of household appliances, which are considered symbols of the Soviet era.
Source: https://novate.ru/blogs/070622/63170/