Christopher Williams - Health and Welfare in St. Petersburg, 1900–1941: Protecting the Collective

In the first book to chart late Imperial and Soviet health policy and its impact on the health of the collective in Russias former capital and second regime city, Christopher Williams argues that in pre-revolutionary St. Petersburg radical sections of the medical profession and the Bolsheviks highlighted the local and Tsarist governments failure to protect the health of poor peasants and the working class due to conflicts over the priority and direction of health policy, budget constraints and political division amongst doctors. They sought to forge alliances to change the law on social insurance and to prioritise the health of the collective. Situating pre- and post-revolutionary health policies in the context of revolutions, civil war, market transition and Stalins rise to power, Williams shows how attempts were made to protect the Body Russian/Soviet and to create a healthier lifestyle and environment for key members of the new Soviet state. This failed due to shortages of money, ideology and Soviet medical and cultural norms. It resulted in ad hoc interventions into peoples lives and the promotion of medical professionalization, and then the imposition of restrictions resulting from changes in the Party line. Williams shows that when the health of the collective was threatened and created medical disorder, it led to state coercion.

Christopher Williams is former head of the Department of History and Politics and Professor of Modern History at Liverpool Hope University, UK.

The History of Medicine in Context

Series Editors: Andrew Cunningham (Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge) and Ole Peter Grell (Department of History, Open University)

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Health and Welfare in St. Petersburg, 19001941

Protecting the Collective

Christopher Williams

For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge.com/The-History-of-Medicine-in-Context/book-series/HMC

Health and Welfare in
St. Petersburg, 19001941

Protecting the Collective

Christopher Williams

First published 2018

by Routledge

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2018 Christopher Williams

The right of Christopher Williams to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Williams, Christopher, 1959- author.

Title: Health and welfare in St. Petersburg, 19001941 : protecting the collective / by Christopher Williams.

Description: New York : Routledge, 2018. | Series: History of medicine in context | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2017060791 (print) | LCCN 2018000393 (ebook) | ISBN 9780429507205 (ebook) | ISBN 9780754655343 (hbk : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780429507205 (ebk)

Subjects: | MESH: Public Healthhistory | Social Welfarehistory | History, 20th Century | Russia (Pre-1917) | Soviet Union

Classification: LCC RA395.R9 (ebook) | LCC RA395.R9 (print) | NLM WA 11 GR9 | DDC 362.10947/21dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017060791

ISBN: 978-0-7546-5534-3 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-0-429-50720-5 (ebk)

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My own interest in the question of Russian, then Soviet, public health goes back to my days as an undergraduate of Russian & Soviet Studies at the University of Portsmouth in the late 1970searly 1980s where Dr. Frances Millard (now at the University of Essex) first encouraged me to embark upon historical research on Soviet public health for my BA Dissertation. The late Dr. Michael Ryan and Prof. Roger Pethybridge of Swansea University, then enabled me through a Welsh scholarship, to carry out two years valuable Masters research under their valuable guidance in the early to mid-80s on health care under Brezhnev, which formed the basis of my MSc (Economics).

My greatest debt of gratitude however must go to Professor Stephen A. Smith of the Department of History, University of Essex (now of All Souls College, Oxford), who was extremely generous with his time advice and support when I undertook my UK Economic and Social Research Council funded PhD on Soviet Public health: A Case study of Leningrad, 191732 at the University of Essex 198589 under his guidance. Dr. Christopher Davies of CREES, Birmingham (now of Nuffield College, Oxford) as my PhD external examiner also supported and encouraged me. Both have continued encouraging me over the last two decades.

This 1989 PhD was written and completed before widespread access to newly opened Russian archives was possible. The original PhD explored the relationship between the one-party state and Soviet health care professionals based upon an extensive reading of Soviet newspapers, medical and other journals and official documents covering the period from the start of the October Revolution until the end of the First five-year plan.

Now nearly 20 years after its completion, some of the questions posed have changed, as the debate moved on and as our knowledge and interest in Soviet health care increased. More importantly the source base for this work has been significantly expanded to include Moscow and St. Petersburg based archives. This has enabled not just greater insights into Soviet thinking and the expansion of the time frame to 1941, but also a change of focus onto three main areas: state, medical profession and the collective (