Real USSR » family institution

Myth Busting: Free Medicine, You Say?

eugenia — Wed, 16 Feb 2011 01:56:30 +0000

Mid 1980s. Image courtesy of Life magazine.

Whenever there is a heated argument whether things were better during the USSR times, this statement invariably pops up as a mighty ace: At least they had free medical care in the Soviet Union! This is supposed to bring the opponent to the knees and make them beg mercy and forgiveness for betraying the Great October achievements.

Well well well. Let’s have a close look at what really was free then.

After the events of October 1917, the Bolsheviks chose to nationalise all hospitals and medical practices previously founded by various state and charitable organisations. This would have been a feasible plan, had they not chosen to class all doctors as “rotten bourgeois” which meant that they had to emigrate from the “Red Terror” or face death.

Even Vladimir Lenin in a letter dated of Nov 1918 wrote to an acquaintance: Please go abroad to see a doctor – they have wonderful specialists in Switzerland and Vienna… Our so-called doctors are fools.

In early 1920s various medical experiments became popular and acquired great support of the state: without much of a theoretical base or substantial research, a lot of time and money was poured into genetical experiments to breed a new type of person – of a Socialist kind.

Al in all, the years in which the Bolsheviks were starting off were very tough: the country was in a run-down state after the WWI; there was a severe famine; pandemics of cholera, typhoid, malaria; as well rising numbers of people dying of various infections and malnutrition. From a health perspective, the state of many medical practices and hospitals was borderline catastrophic. The buildings were getting old without any hopes for repair; central heating often failed; medical supplies were insufficient and irregular. The food supplies were often short, and the burial of the dead was an issue as well.

The state spending on medicine was low to start with, and it was gradually declining: it was 3.9% of the total budget in 1927; 3.6% in 1928; 3.5% in 1929 and 3% only in 1930. The severe skill shortages in the health industry were imminent, and there was a strong urban focus in health providers’ locations – given that the supply was already short, the villages were even worse off.

In the late 1920s industrialisation, as per Stalin’s orders, aimed at developing the heavier industrial machinery production – so the times which what was already bad was turning even more foul. Bureaucracy was starting to settle in, while the budget cuts continued (2.5% of the total budget in 1932, 2.7% in 1933). On paper, as often in the USSR, things looked if not rosy but at least decent: the attention was drawn to preventative measures and the importance of the population’s health; whereas in reality it was very ugly.In our old post about the life in the 1920s, the images of those time were indeed scary, if you remember.

During the Second World War, the main beneficiary of medical help was, understandably, the army – the rest of the population, fair to say, was abandoned. Various types of typhoid, TB, dysentery, malaria, cholera and even plague were not uncommon– the diseases were spreading very rapidly due to the poor supply of drugs and increasing numbers of migrants.

When the war was over, the main efforts (as well as financial means) were generated towards rebuilding the towns and getting the economy back up – and as always, there was no room for medicine research and development. The health industry salary bands were among the lowest in the country. In 1940 the doctors were earning 255 roubles per month, as compared with 399 roubles average. In 1955 it was 521 roubles against 711 average. In August 1945 a group of doctors sent an open letter to Stalin describing the abhorrent situation in the health industry. It mentioned the factory workers with high-school qualifications were earning 1300–1400 roubles per month, whereas the hospital manager, a doctor with 8 years of education and years of experience would be fortunate enough to earn 800 roubles.

A paramedic on call.

The change was brought upon by Nikita Khrushchev, who was slowly setting new goals and getting his government to redevelop many facets of Soviet life. But the late fifties were also the times when the famous free Soviet medical care system stopped being free. The doctors became less covert in taking cash from patients in exchange for medical services, for medical supplies, for drugs. The less-qualified medical staff (nurses and caregivers) were making some extra cash by providing extra-nice services to patients – for 10 roubles per night you could have a nurse by your bed taking care of you – obviously, all other patients would have been neglected. Midwives in birthcare institutions were bribing the fathers – one would pay a one off 25 roubles for the girl and twice as much for the boy as to “take them home”.

Among the key problems were:

Alcoholism and drug use – extremely widespread.
Bad ecology – due to heavily exploited plants and factories, many towns were below par – the Southern republics, Moldavia, some parts of Ukraine, industrial central Russia and Siberia.
Food shortages – especially in the rural areas and small towns with the population of less than 100,000 people; as well as the appalling quality of food.
Extremely high rates of abortions (100 for every 1000 women in the age of 15–49; or 200 abortions for every 100 of births). Also, the actual procedure was a very primitive one which lead to the death of a woman in almost 25–30% of cases.
Health and Safety in employment – extremely high industrial accident rates
Road death tolls

Also, in early 1980s the widespread of sexually transmitted diseases started to take its toll. In 1970 more than 12% of women of reproductive age were diagnosed and treated from STD, many of whom suffered from syphilis. In 1987 the first case of HIV was registered, after which the disease had escalated to the point of people panicking.

The Soviet doctors had all the pressure to catch up with their Western counterparts, and they did their best, given the circumstances. The first successful heart transplant attempt did not happen until March 1987, which was almost 20 years after the American debut. Such a significant delay was not just due to the budget cuts and low financing – the appropriate legislative framework was missing, and so was the concept of organ donors.

This is how the free Soviet medicine had met the death of the Soviet state. It almost seems like the 70 years of the 20^th century did not provide any move forward – despite the antibiotics, vaccination and hundreds of thousands of graduate doctors, the overall state of the health industry was just ever so slightly better than at the end of the Tsar times. And then, of course, the typically Soviet traits of doing things: bureaucracy, corruption, the notoriously abhorrent levels of customer service and the low priority that the state would give the health industry.

This does not deny the Soviet doctors their achievements – over the course of 70 years, there would have been plenty – but nothing was easy and nothing was certainly free.

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A Trip Around the USSR: Leningrad 1972

eugenia — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 12:53:25 +0000

The Griboedov Channel. The bridges St Petersburg is so famous for.

By many, St Petersburg (Leningrad in 1924–1991) is often considered to be so beautiful due to its architecture of Italian origin. Quite strange to see these fine buildings embellished by the symbols of the Soviet Era. Let’s take a walk around this fine city in the summer almost 30 years ago.

When I was 7 years old, there was a flower market just like that next to our house. By Erhard K.

Image by Erhard K.

Peterhof, the Russian Versailles, by Erhard K.

Peterhof by Erhard K.

The Smolny Cathedral, by Erhard K.

The Neva River embankment, Rostral Pillars. Image by Erhard K.

The Dvortsovaya Embankment. Image by Erhard K.

Summer river cruises. By Erhard K.

St Isaac’s Cathedral, the monument of Peter the Great. By Erhard K.

The Winter Palace close up, Dvortsovaya Embankment. By Erhard K.

The Winter Palace, from the Palace Bridge, by Erhard K.

Peter the Great was the one to build this city on the swamps. During the Khruschev Era, the city was further decorated.

Nevsky Avenue, by Erhard K.

The Neva embankment, the Aurora cruiser, by Erhard K.

In 1925, the Aurora cruise ship played a major part in the October Revolution: the city was flaming with revolutionary spirit and so the Revolutionary Committee was created. On 25 October 1917, Aurora refused to carry an order to take off to sea, which sparked the Revolution. At 9.45 p.m. on that date, a blank shot from her forecastle gun signalled the start of the assault on the Winter Palace.

The Church of the Saviour on Blood (Spas na Krovi), by Erhard K.

The main street: Nevsky Prospect (Avenue). By Erhard K.

The Dvortsovaya Square, Aleksandriysky Stolp, by Erhard K.

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USSR, the Birthplace of Feminism

eugenia — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 04:46:11 +0000

From the very dawn of Soviet power and development, due to a series of tragic events, women significantly outnumbered men by about 20 mln. The Revolution of 1917, first World War, Stalin’s political repressions, second World War, tough recovery periods — all of this contributed to the number of men steadily decreasing. Not only it affected the marriage market — it had a few more severe implications to the canvas of the Soviet life altogether.

Love is in the air.

Firstly, industrialisation was extremely labour intensive, and with manpower shortages, women had to step in to keep the processes going. It didn’t matter too much whether the jobs were mundane, or physically demanding, or simply tough — they had to be done. Thus women were trained as construction site workers, crane or digger operators, foundry workers, oil rig workers, asphalt layerers and so on — there was not a job considered “too manly” or female unsuitable.

Two is better than one.

The Revolution of 1917 gave the women their right to vote, be educated, and, in contemporary jargon, have equal employment opportunities. This allowed the Soviets to call the USSR one of the most advanced feminist country in the world. However, all of the industrialisation of the USSR never provided women with enough of the home help — and women, coming home after an 8-hour shift at a factory, still had to take care of their families.

Nonetheless, the USSR was notorious for its bad roads.

Everyday appliances, like washing machines, so widespread in the West, were still scarce in the USSR — and, according to the statistical data, on average a Soviet woman would spend another 6 to 8 hours a week hand-washing, ironing and mending clothes. These extra 8 hours of unpaid labour did not include cooking or cleaning time. Scary, really.

Ms Kiseleva has achieved a 414% excess on her production plan by 8 March, the board boasts.

Very few women of those times were officially housewives. Firstly, anybody without a job could easily be labelled a vagrant, and that was a jailable crime in the USSR. More importantly, the wages were still fairly low and a family of four would need two incomes to survive. The state would also try hard to get as many people out into the workforce as possible; hence the image of a housewife was far from a Western pin-up beauty with a steaming hot pie in her hands.

Quite the opposite: in the Soviet books and movies, housewives were portraited as slothful women of no education, lacking social graces and ambitions — in other words, not good citizens at all. To be fair, though, the state would provide financial maternity support — women can stay at home to look after the newborns for up to three years. In a way, that was a win-win situation: women could stay home providing they popped a baby every fourth year, and the state had its birth rates up. Not too bad, after all.

They wouldn’t miss.

As the marriage market was skewed due to the lack of men, the government, in a bid to raise the birth rates, issued a bylaw, allowing the men not to pay alimony on their children born out of wedlock, thus indirectly encouraging single motherhood and, in a way, adultery. Financial support was provided by the government, as well as a range of social security measures.

She looks young, grumpy and not very motherly.

Being a woman was challenging. All those pretty shiny things that women need were not to be found in the Soviet shops. The state, however, realised that and issued appropriate propaganda lines. Like, spending time on beautifying was announced to be wasteful, as this time could be spent on education and self-improvement.

Hard to call these lingerie! Also, it does not look like there was much of a variety in colour, model range or sizes, for that matter

All in all, there is much to be continued about here. The list of issues and challenges that women faced in the USSR can be extended for many pages, from Soviet cosmetics industry to the basic non-existence of hygienic goods; the high morale of a woman-member of the Communist Party and double standards in the society. Stay tuned. Also, if there is anything that particularly interests you, please let us know — new topics for investigation are always welcome.

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