Autism Lights in Russia: Sergei Morozova – Svetlana Morozova

October 16, 2011January 17, 2021 Alan Stokes

Sergei Morozova and his daughter Svetlana Morozova run the main autism charity in Moscow, Russia called the Dobra Association for Autistic Children. Sergio and Svetlana are Autism Lights because of the leadership and advocacy they are doing for the needs of people with autism in Russia.

Sergei and Svetlana Morozova run The Dobra Association for Autistic Children, which was founded in 1989. Dobra means “good” in Russia. The organizations has a school component that uses a variety of techniques in order to meet individual needs of students.

Sergei is a professor that, in addition to leadership of the Dobra Association, teaches autism at three Moscow universities. Sergei and his daughter Svetlana have found that Russia has some of the same needs regarding autism as the rest of the world like early intervention and how to help adults with autism find productive employment. However, some of their concerns are unique to Russia. Sergei Morozov said this about autism in Russia:

We have no legislation specifically for autism here. We have laws referring to mental retardation, deafeness or blindness-but not autism. So even if parents receive the correct diagnosis, they cannot find where to go. There are simply not enough professionals capable of working with children with autism (Source).Sergei and Svetlana Morozova were mentioned in Adam Feinstein’s book A History of Autism: Conversation with the Pioneers, which was published in 2010. Sergei and Svetlana are advocates and experts on the history of autism in Russia. They mention that Samuil Mnukhin (independently of Leo Kanner) discovered autism cases as early as 1947 in Lenningrad, Russia.

Svetlana Morozova is also a Russian author and has written two books on autism which were called:

Autism: The treatment of severe and combined forms
The principles for creating individual treatment programs for children with autism.

For more information on Sergio and Svetlana Morozova reference these online articles.

Special thanks to Sergei Morozova and Svetlana Morozova for shining a light for autism in Russia.

Autism Light is a daily look at diverse heroes to the world of autism.

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