Mikhail Aleksandrovich Semenov,
Candidate of Historical Sciences, Institute of History of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Novosibirsk, Russia, е-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Soviet Healthcare During the Great Patriotic War: the Transformation of Ideological Foundations
DOI: 10.31518/2618-9100-2021-6-12
The article shows the peculiar features of formation and tupical charactiristies of the ideological foundations of Soviet healthcare in the pre-war years. The paper indicates dynamism and a high degree of adaptation to environmental conditions. It is noted that a sharp increase in the burden on health authorities, coinciding with a sharp weakening of their capabilities, made the adaptation of ideological principles of health care inevitable. Based on the study of the administrative documentation of the health authorities, the changes in the understanding of the role and place of health care in the life of Soviet society in the conditions of the Great Patriotic War are reconstructed. Its main goal, instead of fighting for the preservation of life and health of the population, is the fight against fascism, through the struggle for the preservation of life and health of the population. Instead of an activity having an independent value, health care became only one of the means to achieve Victory in the war. The slogan “Everything for the front – everything for Victory” became a reality in relation to healthcare. The change in the ideological component led to the priority development of areas of military-defense importance: the healing of soldiers wounded at the front, the provision of medical care for workers in the defense industry, the struggle for the sanitary well-being of the rear. It has been revealed that the change in ideological foundations also changed the role of health authorities in the state system. If in the pre-war years, the preservation of the health of citizens remained largely a departmental task of the People's Commissariat of Health, then in the war years successful ideological adaptation allowed other party and Soviet bodies to be largely involved in solving the tasks faced by the health care, which now had a military-defense nature. Paradoxically, the leveling of the independent importance of health protection led to an increase in the importance of health care during the war period.
Publishing: 28/12/2021
The article has been received by the editor on 01/12/2021
How to cite: Semenov M.A. Soviet Healthcare During the Great Patriotic War: the Transformation of Ideological Foundations // Historical Courier, 2021, No. 6 (20), pp. 142–148. [Available online: http://istkurier.ru/data/2021/ISTKURIER-2021-6-12.pdf]
Links: Issue 6 2021
Keywords: ideology; healthcare; medicine; the Great Patriotic War; The Soviet Union
Acknowledgments: The reported study was funded by RFBR, project number 20-09-00397 “Civil health care of the rear areas of the USSR during the Great Patriotic War”.