p Even the reader who is totally uninformed on questions of medicine and public health, must realise that the health of the population and the available medical services are very largely dependent on a country’s economy, science and culture. Moreover, many medical specialists working in the developing countries say that the main enemy of the people’s health is not so much the causative agents of infectious and parasitic diseases or other direct causes of ailments as the low level of economic development. The position can be stated quite simply: a weak economy is an enemy of health. This thesis could be directly applied to pre-revolutionary Russia. This vast country covering a large part of the world’s territory and inhabited by industrious and talented people was dependent on more developed capitalist countries. No wonder, therefore, that the standard of health of its people was considerably lower than that of the people of many other countries.

p Although books dealing with public health and medical science do not usually dwell on special problems of economics, welfare, culture and science, we think it to the point to start our narrative about Soviet medicine with at least a brief outline of these problems.

p In October 1917 a gunshot from the Cruiser Avrora heralded the beginning of a new era in Russia—the era of socialism. Theses of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union On the Centenary of the Birth of V. I. Lenin read:

p “The Great October Socialist Revolution gave the world an example of how to solve fundamental social problems: the 10 overthrow of the power of the exploiters and the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the turning of the private property of the bourgeoisie and landlords into public socialist property, the just solution of the agrarian problem in the peasants’ favour, the liberation of the dependent peoples from colonial and national oppression, and the creation of the political and economic prerequisites for the building of socialism.”  [10•* 

p For the first time in history, the new socialist stale upheld (he interests of the working people as its main concern, and provided the necessary economic, social and political conditions to put this idea into practice. The socialist state was built according to the plans and under the leadership of the party that expresses the hopes and aspirations of the industrial workers, peasants and all working people—-the Party of Communists headed by V. I. Lenin.

p Under the extremely hard conditions of the economic chaos and famine caused by the war, armed foreign intervention and internal counter-revolution the Communist Party and the Soviet Government led the people in their efforts to reconstruct the economy on socialist principles.

p To build socialism was neither simple nor easy. The Soviet people were able to build a socialist state only at the cost of privation and rigorous economy.

The following very brief information on the Soviet socialist state should give the reader an idea of the multiformity and complexity of the problems Soviet medicine has to tackle.