The paper focuses on Emanuel Almborg’s movie Talking Hands (2016)—the documentary that presents a perspective on the Zagorsk experiment, an educational project directed by Meshcheryakov in the Soviet Union that challenged the notions of disability, thinking, and education by teaching deaf-blind children to become independent and intellectually capable individuals. The text deals with the experiment’s legacy along with the voice of Alexander Suvorov, one of the participants of the Zagorsk experiment, and raises questions about humanness, education, and the bond between a teacher and student. The relationships, as well as the origin of humanness, are revealed in the analysis of the educator’s role in their deaf-blind students’ mental development, where at first there is a constant and necessary presence of the educator, which is then followed by their disappearance. The poignant impact of Ilyenkov’s absence on Suvorov sheds light on the importance of an educator as a guide not only to understand the objects which surround us, but also to comprehend the self as an independent subject.

KEYWORDS: Zagorsk Experiment, Education, Ilyenkov, Meshcheryakov, Vygotsky, deaf-blind children, cognitive development, humanness.