The Communists immediately saw what their party was becoming. For example, already in 1921, at the plenum of the Central Committee, the prominent communist L. Krasin expressed this in numbers: “The source of all the troubles and troubles that we are experiencing at the present time is that communist party consists of 10 percent convinced idealists who are ready to die for an idea, and 90 percent of unscrupulous opportunists who joined it to get a position.”
And V.I. Lenin, in his well-known work at that time, “The Infantile Disease of Leftism in Communism,” wrote: “We are afraid of excessive expansion of the party, because careerists and scoundrels who deserve only to be shot inevitably try to attach themselves to the government party.”
Lenin was a pure fanatic of Marxism, who did not need anything other than the victory of the proletariat (the victory of his Leninist ideas). Lenin was absolutely indifferent to food, clothing and entertainment, and in fact he is well characterized by this note:
"May 23, 1918
Council Manager People's Commissars
Vladimir Dmitrievich Bonch-Bruevich
Due to your failure to comply with my urgent demand to indicate to me the reasons for increasing my salary from March 1, 1918 from 500 to 800 rubles. per month and in view of the obvious illegality of this increase, which you made arbitrarily by agreement with the Secretary of the Council Nikolai Petrovich Gorbunov in direct violation of the decree of the Council of People's Commissars of November 23, 1917, I severely reprimand you.
Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars V. Ulyanov (Lenin).”
Stalin was similar to Lenin, but his fanaticism extended not to Marx, but to a specific Soviet people- Stalin served him fanatically. He was not an ascetic, but he simply did not need anything extra. Very for a long time He and his family lived extremely modestly, and his wife did not always have enough money even for such a life. They had no cooks; When, after the death of his wife, the housekeeper prepared dinner for Stalin, the dinner consisted of cabbage soup for the first course, porridge with boiled cabbage soup for the second course, and compote for dessert. Or they brought him lunch from the canteen of the regiment guarding the Kremlin. From the surviving correspondence of that time, it is clear with what joy Stalin’s children received the parcels of fruit that their father sent them when he was resting and receiving treatment in the Caucasus.
Henri Barbusse describes Stalin's housing and life in the early 30s.
“Here in the Kremlin, which resembles an exhibition of churches and palaces, at the foot of one of these palaces stands a small three-story house.
This house (you wouldn’t have noticed it if it hadn’t been shown to you) was previously an office building at the palace; Some royal servant lived in it.
We go up the stairs. There are white linen curtains on the windows. These are three windows of Stalin's apartment. In the tiny entrance hall, a long soldier's overcoat catches the eye, with a cap hanging above it. The three rooms and dining room are simply furnished, as in a decent but modest hotel. (By Decree of the Council of People's Commissars of December 1, 1917, Lenin determined that for people's commissars "no more than 1 room per family member is allowed in apartments.")
The dining room has oval shape; Lunch is served here - from the Kremlin kitchen or homemade, prepared by the cook. In a capitalist country, the average employee would not be satisfied with such an apartment or such a menu. A little boy is playing right there. Yasha's eldest son sleeps in the dining room - they make a bed for him on the sofa; the youngest is in a tiny room, like a niche. After finishing his meal, the man smokes a pipe in a chair by the window.
He is always dressed the same. Military uniform? - this is not entirely true. Rather, a hint of uniform - something that is even simpler than the clothes of an ordinary soldier: a tightly buttoned jacket and khaki-colored trousers, boots. You think, you remember... No, you have never seen him dressed differently - only in the summer he wears a white linen suit. He earns several hundred rubles a month - the modest maximum for a party worker (one and a half to two thousand francs in French money).
According to the recollections of the head of his security in 1927, Stalin’s dacha had neither amenities nor servants (Stalin passed a decree that the dachas of party workers could not be larger than 3-4 rooms. Nevertheless, the “victims of Stalinism” Rudzutak, Rosengoltz, Mezhlauk, Karakhan, Yagoda and others had managed to build palaces with 15-20 rooms by the time of their arrest16), and he and his family came there on weekends with sandwiches prepared at home.
Over time, his life was improved, which was caused rather by the need to receive foreign guests, but his indifference to everyday life remained: he had practically no personal belongings, not even an extra pair of shoes or some clothes. (Colonel N. Zakharov in 1953 was the head of the government security department and described Stalin’s property after his death. Almost 50 years later, Zakharov recalled with surprise: “When I opened Stalin’s wardrobe, I thought that I was richer than him. Two jackets, an overcoat , boots, 2 pairs of felt boots - new and hemmed, new ones have never been put on. That's it!").
With such a leader, his companions were selected accordingly, especially when he was in ideological struggle with Trotsky he did not yet have an overwhelming advantage.
Trotsky was the direct opposite of Stalin on this issue. This required the results of victory in material form. If you travel, then on the Tsar’s train, if you live, then in the palace, if you eat, then only the food of your personal chef, if you are a prostitute, then only the high society. You took power - have fun! True, Trotsky himself modestly called this “concern for comrades.” It goes without saying that thanks to this “care” there were never any scoundrels among Trotsky’s comrades and his ideological allies.
Genrikh Yagoda photo
These are the comparisons. There is not a single hint that Stalin or Molotov, or Kaganovich ever spent an evening in a restaurant in their lives. But, let’s say, Trotsky’s supporter G. Yagoda, who actually headed the country’s state security agencies (OGPU), in honor of the tenth anniversary of his organization, rented all the most expensive restaurants in Moscow. By the way, during a search of this baboon, in addition to an abundance of velvet, a huge collection17 of pornography, which was then extremely scarce throughout the world, was found. (According to Article 1821 of the then Criminal Code, the court could give up to 5 years in prison for importing pornography into the country.) This is the question of where he directed the money allocated for exploration.
Neither Stalin nor his comrades were ever treated or vacationed abroad. But future “victims of Stalinism” preferred to be treated only at foreign resorts. For example, N. Krestinsky, whom we will remember later, having gone abroad in 1922 to widen the air passages in his nose, spent several months in German resorts and on the Riga seaside, bringing suitcases of junk and at once spending the entire amount planned for dozens really sick revolutionaries. In the same year, I. Smilga, also a future “victim of Stalinism,” went abroad. When he returned, he couldn’t account for the 2,000 rubles in gold, so he simply wrote: “I didn’t skimp on food.”
In this regard, the transcript of the court hearing in the case of the so-called “right-Trotskyist bloc”, which took place on March 2-12, 1938, is interesting, about which more details below. From the interrogations of the defendants (and no attention is paid to this) it follows that almost all of them, Trotsky’s supporters, including personal doctors, spent their vacations abroad, naturally, at state expense. This, by the way, interesting point, which shows how and with what help Stalin’s opponents recruited supporters.
A I Rykov photo
One of the defendants M.A. Chernov worked in the People's Commissariat of Trade of Ukraine. In the summer of 1928 he was official affairs calls the People's Commissar who is on vacation in Crimea foreign trade USSR, in those years Stalin's ally A.I. Mikoyan. Please note: the People's Commissar of the USSR is only vacationing in Crimea. Here Chernov was lucky enough to meet with the then head of the USSR - A.I. Rykov. A.I. Rykov, who was also a defendant in the mentioned trial, testified in cross-examination with Chernov about this meeting:
“I saw Chernov and tried to convince him of the correctness of my then counter-revolutionary activities, I was going to make him my supporter, but I found a ready supporter in Chernov.” The material result of the recruitment for Chernov personally was almost immediate: he was immediately transferred to work in Moscow and almost immediately sent “for treatment” to Germany at state expense and foreign currency. Note that this is immediately after 1927, when there was a famine in the USSR, and the only source of foreign currency was grain exports.
And yet, currency was immediately found for Chernov. But that’s not enough for him, and he reports: “I called Rykov’s secretary Nesterov that I’m going abroad and I need to talk to Rykov on currency matters, on the issue of increasing the currency...” The head of the USSR was impudent, but already his supporter, naturally, accepts, gives currency and anti-Stalinist assignments.19. That is, being an anti-Stalinist was financially very profitable even when Trotsky was exiled abroad.
But in those years, under Stalin, they tried to fight the greedy opportunists. The party regularly underwent purges, that is, at open party meetings in the presence of non-party members, business and moral character communists, and if it turned out that he was an opportunist who had crept into the party for a position or other benefits, then he was expelled from both the party and his position. However, it was more difficult with high-ranking employees, whose performance was assessed ordinary people are not capable, and the scoundrels strived for these positions with terrible force.
This is obvious, and I think there is no need to prove it: where else did all these Gorbachevs, Shevardnadzes, Yeltsins, Yakovlevs, Kravchuks and other Shushkeviches come from in the Communist Party in the 90s? During the Great Patriotic War on the fronts and in partisan detachments Almost every second communist laid down his head, but the communists defended both the cause of building Communism and Soviet Union, and the whole world was saved from Nazism.
And in 1991, the 18 million herd of CPSU members not only allowed the USSR to be destroyed, but did not even defend the property that was created with their own membership fees. Why? There is no other answer: because by 1991, the CPSU no longer had not only 10, but even 1 percent of communists, and all more or less leadership positions in the party and the country were occupied either by weak-willed opportunists or inveterate scoundrels. This is what being in power means for a party.
But this situation was also the death of Communism, since it was a dead end for it. Under Communism, power belongs to all citizens equally, and Communism is fundamentally impossible if power belongs to the party, that is, to a part of these citizens, even if this part is communist. And this must be clearly understood: the communist Stalin could in no way recognize as satisfactory the situation in which power in the country belonged to the party, he could only tolerate this situation for the time being. And such a time came in the mid-30s, about 20 years after the communists came to power in Russia.
Economic feat
During these 20 years, the communists accomplished a managerial feat in Russia that has never happened in the history of the world. They are beggars agrarian Russia, in which 85% of the population barely fed themselves in a village destroyed during the First World War and lasting until the end of 1920 Civil War, rebuilt and brought it to second place in the world in terms of economic well-being, after the United States.
The Kremlin hospital celebrates its 60th anniversary. It was here that Soviet leaders, members of the Politburo, writers and actors were treated. The slightest ailment of one of the elite became the subject of study by Soviet and foreign doctors.
Why did Lenin not trust domestic specialists, what kind of patient did Khrushchev turn out to be, and was it difficult to force Brezhnev to go to the pool every morning?
Vladimir Lenin
Lenin's health worsened in 1921. According to contemporaries, he suffered from dizziness and lost consciousness more than once. Vladimir Ilyich worked “exhaustively” and wrote to Gorky: “I’m so tired that I can’t do anything.” Maria Ulyanova recalled: “Vladimir Ilyich came in the evening, or rather at night, at about 2 o’clock, completely exhausted, pale, sometimes he could not even speak or eat, but only poured himself a cup of hot milk and drank it, walking around the kitchen where we usually had dinner.”The Soviet leader was examined by famous specialists from Germany. At first, they believed that his illness was due solely to overwork. In May 1922, Lenin's condition worsened. According to surgeon Yuri Lopukhin, the cause could have been an assassination attempt in August 1918. Then Lenin was seriously wounded, he was operated on by the Latvian surgeon Vladimir Mints. Some experts claimed that the illness was related to lead poisoning due to a bullet in the right shoulder.
Otfried Förster, one of the founders of German neurosurgery, became Vladimir Ilyich’s chief physician. He wrote a dissertation on movement disorders in pathologies nervous system. In treating Lenin, the doctor relied not on medications, but on long walks and special “calming” exercises. In the late 1920s, the name Foerster was known to the medical community around the world. It should be noted that Lenin was skeptical about his compatriot doctors. “God forbid from comrade doctors in general, Bolshevik doctors in particular! Really, in 99 cases out of 100, fellow doctors are “donkeys,” as I was once told good doctor. I assure you that treatment (except for minor cases) should only be done by first-class celebrities. Trying a Bolshevik’s invention on yourself is terrible,” he told Gorky.
Despite walking and exercising, Lenin suffered from severe headaches. Brief paralysis occurred right hand or legs. Professor G.I. Rossolimo said that the disease has a “peculiarity that is not characteristic of the usual picture of general cerebral arteriosclerosis.” In January 1924, after deterioration, Vladimir Ilyich died.
Joseph Stalin
The medical report stated that the cause of Stalin's death was a cerebral hemorrhage. Some biographers note that the leader’s attitude towards medicine was disdainful. He trusted his health only to the chief Kremlin therapist - academician Vladimir Vinogradov. In 1952, Vinogradov was arrested in the “Doctors’ Case” and accused of working for American intelligence. Now there was no one to examine the Soviet leader. Svetlana Alliluyeva recalled: “On December 21, 1952, I saw my father for the last time. He looked bad. Apparently he felt signs of illness. Obviously he felt high blood pressure, but there were no doctors. Vinogradov was arrested, but he didn’t trust anyone else and didn’t let anyone get close to him.”
Joseph Vissarionovich died on March 5, 1953.
Nikita Khrushchev
The Secretary General was in good health and rarely visited the Kremlevka. Already in old age, Nikita Sergeevich developed coronary heart disease. He was admitted to the hospital with a heart attack. Cardiologist Evgeniy Chazov, who treated several leaders of the USSR, wrote about Khrushchev’s stay in the hospital: “Khrushchev was in the hospital on Granovsky Street due to a myocardial infarction. One late evening I was in the department and needed a nurse. Looking into the medical staff’s room, I saw a strange picture: the nurses on duty and orderlies were sitting around an old patient, wrapped in a hospital gown, who was loudly proving something to them and asking with passion: “Well, is your life better under Brezhnev?”
Chazov also advised Yuri Andropov, noting low level training of a number of “Kremlin” doctors: “The local doctors and consultants, without understanding the nature of the disease, decided that Andropov was suffering from severe hypertension, complicated by acute myocardial infarction, and raised the question of his transfer to disability. Fate was being decided political career Andropov, and therefore his life. Tareev and I, considering that Andropov long time suffered from kidney disease, it was decided that in this case we're talking about about increased production of the hormone aldosterone (aldosteronism). This disorder was then little known to Soviet doctors. Research on this hormone at that time was carried out only at the institute that I headed. The analysis confirmed our assumption, and the prescribed drug aldactone, which reduces the content of this hormone, not only led to normalization blood pressure, but also restored the electrocardiogram. It turned out that it did not indicate a heart attack, but only indicated a change in the content of potassium ion in the heart muscle. As a result of the treatment, not only did Andropov’s well-being improve, but the issue of disability was completely removed, and he returned to work again.” It is worth noting that Chazov invited foreign specialists to treat the Secretary General.
Leonid Brezhnev
Leonid Ilyich suffered from a disease of the cardiovascular system. According to eyewitnesses, since the early 1970s, logical inconsistencies were sometimes observed in the speech of the Soviet leader. This is how Chazov wrote about it: “Losing the ability analytical thinking, speed of reaction, Brezhnev more and more often could not withstand workloads, difficult situations. Disruptions occurred that were no longer possible to hide. They tried to explain them in different ways: violation cerebral circulation, heart attacks."
Brezhnev's attending physician was Mikhail Kosarev. He noted that the Soviet leader abused sedatives. On Kosarev’s recommendation, the Secretary General began going to the pool every morning. Already in old age, he quit smoking and weaned himself off pills, which affected his diction and caused muscle weakness.
In March 1982, an accident occurred in Tashkent - a structure on which people were standing collapsed on Brezhnev. His collarbone was broken. In November of the same year he appeared in public for the last time. The politician died on the night of November 10 from cardiac arrest.
Since today is the anniversary of the collapse of the USSR and Soviet system, let's remember Soviet medicine, supposedly “good” and supposedly “free”.
IN Western world A former Soviet man, like a horse, is recognized by his teeth. If you see a person of Eastern European appearance on the streets of London, Paris or New York, they immediately look at the mouth to clarify the diagnosis. There, in the mouths of former Soviets, there is always a mess going on. Stamp of traditional medicine. Even the Poles, Czechs and Bulgarians, that is, comrades who have gone a little further from socialism than us, have neater mouths.
In Latin rima oris. Or "mouth gap".
This is what Soviet dentists called our mouths. “Open your mouth!” - a man in a white coat barked imperiously, seating a man with a face white with fear under the drilling machine...
Yesterday I saw a campaign banner by the roadside from the leader of one of our few parliamentary parties: “Let’s bring back decent free healthcare!” Probably, before we had decent medicine, but today it is no good. Oh, I wish this leader could go to a Soviet clinic for at least an hour. Better dental.
Any exploitation of false longing for non-existent Soviet happiness must be punished with at least a ruble, because playing on Soviet mythology results in infantilization of the population. It ceases to really perceive the world and its responsibility for it, preferring to escape from reality into the languid past.
People who believe that there was good free medicine in the USSR are twice mistaken, because it was not free and it was not good either.
The income level of Soviet citizens lagged behind almost all countries except Africa, India, China and Latin American juntas. For free medicine free education and free apartments soviet man paid at least 2/3 of his real earnings. In the early 1970s, each Soviet person had less than 65 rubles of net income, which even in the Party Central Committee was considered to be living below the poverty line. This is how 3/4 of the country's population lived. And 40% did not even reach the subsistence level.
In Soviet times, people were fleeced by the state brazenly, hypocritically, and cruelly. And for all those modest benefits that the state called free, they paid in full. And then they paid above the norm.
In 1965, ten tablets of chloramphenicol cost 64 kopecks, while their production, according to the State Planning Committee, cost the state only 18 kopecks. The famous Soviet “head remedy” based on analgin, banned in Europe, and even more dangerous pyramidon and caffeine, cost 45 kopecks in pharmacies, and 8 kopecks were spent on its production. It was called “Troychatka”.
Imagine that today a blister of antediluvian citramone would cost more than 100 rubles. What was truly affordable in the Brezhnev pharmacy were iodine and brilliant green - 4 kopecks.
These simple remedies, plus cough lozenges, cough tablets, penicillin and the bronchodilator solutan - these are, perhaps, all the medicines that an ordinary Soviet citizen knew. In the 1970s, they were joined by noshpa and Indian festal, but they were sold through connections or at exorbitant prices. In large cities, a recipe could be used to prepare sulfur powder, calendula tincture or anti-acne lotion. In small cities there were interruptions even with the pyramidon.
Remember the satirical miniature by Kartsev and Ilchenko “Warehouse”.
Pyramidon and analgin were already known then for their severe side effects. Noshpa outside the socialist camp was considered a placebo with long-term side effects, including on the intrauterine development of the child. Festal is today called a pseudo-medicine.
The entire Soviet Union used brilliant green to disinfect scratches, while in the rest of the world it was used to dry the edges of wounds. Soviet drug addicts made “vint” from solutan.
Contrary to the memories of patriots, even these meager medicines were not free in Soviet times. All pharmacies in the USSR were divided into outpatient, that is, self-supporting, and hospital. In the first, medicines were sold for money. Pensioners at the pharmacy were entitled to only one benefit - out-of-turn service. Disabled people and war veterans, disabled people of the first two groups and children under one year old received medicines free of charge. Group III disabled people and children from one to three years old were given a discount. Beneficiaries formed their own queue.
Diabetics bought their own insulin. And seriously ill patients also bought pain relief. Both were chronically unavailable in pharmacies; injections were often obtained only at a doctor’s appointment. The luckiest ones, with connections and money, injected insulin at home from reusable syringes. They were boiled. As a rule, there was one syringe per family, and they took care of it. By the way, diabetics Soviet country Life was very bad: the insulin was homemade and couldn’t cope with the carbohydrate diet. The country lived on potatoes, pasta and bread. Only two products were produced for diabetics - sorbitol and buckwheat. Both were not given out free of charge, but were sold at market prices. And according to recipes.
Buckwheat - according to the recipe! Did you know?
In the Soviet Union, it was necessary to live young and healthy, because any disease brought a person to the sidelines. The words “cancer”, “stroke”, cerebral palsy in Russia are still synonymous with death or lifelong misfortune, because they were not treated in the USSR, people died quietly, secretly, children with cerebral palsy were hidden.
This is because there were no effective medicines freely available outside of Moscow, and in Moscow they were rare and expensive. Soviet people they died not only from strokes, but also from diseases that are ridiculous by today’s standards: bronchitis, pancreatitis, asthma, from inflammation of the plenum, from a simple cut on the hand or an abscess.
There were no good antibiotics available for public sale, which is why a huge share of child mortality was due to respiratory diseases. There were no drugs like pancreatin. Asthmatics were injected with hormones in the hospital, during a planned hospitalization, the person could not relieve the asthma attack himself. Chief Engineer The housing office from Mamin's film "The Fountain" used an inhaler for asthmatics - a miracle unprecedented even in the late Soviet Union.
People watched the film and understood that this wonderful romantic was an ordinary thief, because the inhaler, and even with a prescription, was not given to thieves.
Any more or less serious illness resulted in huge expenses, even if the person was admitted to a hospital: medicines in the hospital, like other shortages, were obtained through connections. It happened that tests were done through acquaintances and procedures were carried out for bribes. Clinics often had no reagents, no laboratory equipment, and no dressing material. What was available was distributed corruptly, taken home by staff.
They carried everything: droppers for crafts, bandages for reserve, alcohol for vodka, tweezers, lancets, clamps for the kitchen. A person who ended up in a Soviet hospital without money or acquaintances could simply lie under a glucose drip for 20 days, since there was often nothing in hospitals. Almost everyone had to lie like this, because people with a salary of up to 135 rubles, that is, at least 4/5 of the population, did not have access to the illegal drug market.
However, even the medicines distributed through connections hardly treated anyone, because they were Soviet medicines. Truly effective Western drugs penetrated illegally - mainly through traveling diplomats, athletes, and trade mission workers. And they were a drop in the ocean. We produced almost nothing. In a closed country, science was also closed. The technical, medical, natural science intelligentsia did not know foreign languages, and the damned bourgeoisie did not translate their publications into Russian. Contrary to proud myths, the Soviet pharmaceutical industry did not make any breakthrough discoveries.
Today, about 5 thousand effective original drugs are known in the world of evidence-based medicine. Of these, less than twenty were discovered by Soviet pharmacology.
The KGB had a powerful pharmaceutical intelligence service - security officers from all over the world brought other people's developments to the Union.
Against the backdrop of a total shortage of pharmaceuticals, the Soviet people were treated with whatever was necessary. Nowadays it is common to remember salt rooms in schools, wet salt mats in kindergartens, morning exercises before classes. This is all very good, of course. But apart from salt treatments and massage mats, there was virtually nothing in the country.
Visiting doctors was free, but what kind of doctors did they see in regular hospitals and clinics? They also did not know languages. They were taught by teachers who themselves learned in isolation from world science. Therefore, various obscurantist medical practices flourished in the Union. Especially in the field of physical therapy.
UHF, polarized light, electrophoresis, UV, electrosleep, cups, leeches and mustard plasters were perhaps the only weapons of the Soviet doctor.
They fought against all diseases - from the consequences of perinatal hypoxia and pathologies of placental development to ischemia and osteoporosis.
A sick Soviet worker came under double pressure. On the one hand, helpless medicine awaited him, which took a month and a half to treat ear inflammation or mastitis. On the other hand, the poor guy was lying in wait sick leave. The country had standard periods for being on sick leave. After a heart attack and ischemia, 20 days of rest were given. For all illnesses, sick leave had to be extended every three days; it was forbidden to stay on sick leave for more than 10 days without a medical commission.
For colds and acute respiratory viral infections without a fever, sick leave was not required - they went to work snotty. Longer than seven calendar days It was impossible to sit at home with a sick child - sick leave was closed, even if the child had whooping cough. For two years, being on sick leave for more than a week was collectively not encouraged; everyone knew this and took time off at their own expense.
Paid sick leave in in full only to people with extensive experience - over eight years. In Soviet times, people got sick with their own money. But dues to the trade union were required to be paid - 1% of the salary, including vacation pay. The teacher paid 12–14 rubles a year to the trade fund. And I was sick 2.5 working days a year. And once every ten years I went on a trip to a sanatorium. That is, the Soviet people paid for their medical care themselves.
Things were a little better in departmental hospitals - valuable workers were taken care of, so bosses went on sick leave several times a year. But another problem was lurking in the special institutions - they received scarce Western equipment and Western medicines. For this reason, good hospitals were extremely corrupt, jobs were grain-based and distributed among their own. And where there is a lot of cronyism, there is no place for qualifications. And they stole more in special hospitals than in district ones.
I personally know the family former judge Supreme Court and the family of one of the first secretaries of the regional committee of a non-poor region. Both were afraid to be treated in departmental clinics.
What can we say about ordinary outpatient clinics and hospitals? These establishments were scary. Chambers for 12 people and one toilet for two departments are the standard design of the clinic. In maternity hospitals there were ten people in a ward. There were five to ten chairs in the maternity room.
Soviet obstetrics and pediatrics are the main enemies of Soviet citizens. All pediatrics in the first year of a child’s life was aimed at separating the baby from the mother as early as possible so that she could enter production as quickly as possible. Therefore, until the 1960s, a woman did not have the right to babysit for more than three months. Then she was given first six months, then a year, but unpaid leave.
Until 1982, a woman could stay at home with her child in the first year of life only at her own expense.
At the same time, all obstetrics in the USSR was organized so that a woman would go on maternity leave as late as possible. For this purpose, antenatal clinics specifically reduced the duration of pregnancy and issued a certificate stating that it was time to go on maternity leave at 39 weeks. Women gave birth without having time to convey this certificate to their accounting department.
However, obstetrics and pediatrics were not the most terrible areas Soviet medicine- otolaryngology and dentistry were worse. ENT doctors performed almost all operations without anesthesia: puncture of the nasal sinuses, removal of tonsils, tonsils, adenoids, puncture of the eardrum, cleaning of the middle ear - all in best case scenario with novocaine, that is, live.
And in the USSR, teeth were treated using pre-war machines, cement fillings were placed, the nerve was removed with arsenic, and the pain was anesthetized with the same novocaine. People were afraid of this kind of dentistry. Any effective anesthesia, foreign fillings or good prosthetics cost more than a worker’s monthly salary and appeared only in large cities; there was a queue for them for years to come. War veterans and disabled people, and labor veterans received preferential places in the queue. A woman under 60 did not have the opportunity to get teeth inserted without a huge bribe - she could not get through the beneficiaries.
People who yearn for free medicine today simply do not remember the millions of toothless mouths. And in Soviet times they didn’t suffer from anything serious.
Surprisingly, both ultra-liberal and ultra-conservative citizens today equally criticize modern medicine for the fact that it does not live up to the Soviet one. And thank God, I’ll tell you that it doesn’t live up to it!
Almost all diseases without exception are now treated in Russia without crazy queues and bribes. Yes, our medicine is not of a Western level. Yes, not everything is free. Yes, not everyone is treated with everything. But the situation is not as bad as some nostalgic alarmists imagine. At least parents today don't have to sell their wedding rings to pay the nurse for injections.
Maybe that’s why hospitals these days are so far from ideal that they are constantly compared not with American or European clinics, but with Soviet institutions, where people were 12 people in a ward and where medications cost literally more expensive than gold?
Soviet healthcare cannot stand any comparison with modern healthcare. Moreover, if only because over the course of several decades, medicine and medical practice throughout the world have made a breakthrough. And in our country too. Denying the superiority of post-Soviet healthcare, people, in addition to common sense, deny progress. Because even if the USSR was a super-open power, its medicine would still seem backward to us. Just because of progress.
Memories of good Soviet medicine are of the same romantic order as longing for Brezhnev's ice cream. Most of those who today still have the strength to discuss the advantages of socialist health care were young in the USSR, for this reason they were happy and, by the way, very healthy. They simply did not have time to encounter the system. And, to be honest, they have nothing to compare Russian medicine with. But for those who really want to compare, I advise you to risk pulling out a tooth without anesthesia. I have never heard of such bold experimenters in the 21st century.
What is the difference between these papers?
The document signed by Getye said: discovered sudden changes blood vessels of the brain, fresh hemorrhage, which was the cause of death...” Dr. Getye agreed with this. But his signature is not under the conclusion that “the cause of the deceased’s illness was atherosclerosis of wear and tear...” The diagnosis of Abnutzungsclerose did not exist either then or now. At the beginning of the last century, theories about the wear and tear of blood vessels were recognized as untenable by all specialists in the world. And the number one pathologist in the country and the world, Alexey Abrikosov, who opened the body, could not help but know this. Just as his colleagues invited to Gorki couldn’t help but know. The autopsy lasted 3 hours and 10 minutes, as stated in the report. In his memoirs, Abrikosov indicated the time as 3 hours 50 minutes. Doctors can pay attention to this nuance.
Is the duration of the procedure an important detail?
Such an autopsy should have taken no more than two hours. What did you do for the remaining two hours? There was a telephone in Gorki, and, most likely, Extra time it took the diagnosis to be agreed upon with the Politburo. That is, two pages of the act were written by doctors, and final paragraph about unusual atherosclerosis is lowered from above. But if you carefully read the pathological report, then a person with medical education It will become clear that Lenin did not have any atherosclerosis.
What is atherosclerosis? It is characterized by certain morphological changes. The first is necessarily lipid (fat) stains on the walls of blood vessels, the second is atherosclerotic plaques. Plaque is a structural morphological formation, which has edges. With the sharp development of atherosclerosis, the number of plaques becomes very large, they partly merge with each other and give the inner surface of the affected arteries over a long distance a rough, bumpy appearance.
In the autopsy report of Lenin it is written: vessels are like cords. And other details. All this describes another disease: meningovascular syphilis of the brain. The chief pathologist of Moscow in those years, Ippolit Davydovsky, has detailed description characteristic features this pathology. If his definition is superimposed on Lenin’s autopsy report, specialists’ doubts will disappear.
Doctors saw syphilis at the autopsy, but were afraid to make it public?
IN open documents Lenin's doctors clearly wrote that during his lifetime the patient received treatment corresponding to the diagnosis. And Lenin was treated only with antisyphilitic drugs. These are heavy metals: mercury, bismuth, arsenic, large doses of iodine every day. All this is described by Academician Lopukhin. At that time, this was the only way to fight syphilis throughout the world.
The composition of the team of doctors who treated Lenin can also say a lot. For example, his main attending physician Kozhevnikov in those years was considered the leading specialist in Russia on neurosyphilis. Also, Max Nonne, Europe’s leading specialist in the treatment of neurosyphilis, was called from Germany specifically for Lenin’s consultation.
Do you want to say that Lenin’s illness was not a secret to those closest to him?
Lenin had a standard for that time clinical picture. In psychiatric wards Russian hospitals patients with exactly the same symptoms ranged from 10 to 40 percent. Therefore, everyone understood perfectly well what it was. Including this patient, because it was no coincidence that he asked for poison. He saw how this disease usually ends: progressive paralysis, dementia. The chief pathologist of Moscow, Ippolit Davydovsky, wrote: “According to the data of the sections (autopsies - approx. "Tapes.ru"), the number of patients with syphilis in 1924-25 was 5.5 percent of the population." That is, out of a hundred Muscovites, at least five were sick. And these statistics are incomplete. The regions were very different from each other. In Kalmykia, for example, up to 43 percent of the patients were payroll population. General inspections in the 1920s showed that in some villages Central Russia Up to 16 percent of residents suffered from syphilis.
So there was a syphilis epidemic in Russia?
Syphilis was a colossal problem not only for Russia, but also for Europe. When antibiotics were discovered in 1940, the disease became quite easy to treat. Before that he was a threat. state security. We don’t know exactly how Lenin became infected; the history is poorly collected. But I want to emphasize that at that time household syphilis was widespread. Well, the path of infection itself is not interesting to me. For me, this is a common disease, which has become the most confusing event in the history of not only our medicine, but also the medicine of the whole world.
If syphilis is common, in theory, there is no shame in talking about it. Anyone could become infected, even a child. Why was everything classified?
Syphilis, no matter what, has always been considered an “undignified” disease. It had many names: French, Polish, rotten disease, French Venus. For doctors, it doesn’t matter who and what to treat: be it white or red. There is deontology - the science of what should be done. The doctor chose his path, followed the path of duty. But then politics intervened in medicine. What did the revolutionaries build? A new type of man. Syphilis did not fit into this “red project” in any way.
You mentioned the science of what should be. But isn’t the fact that doctors made a deal with the authorities and hid the truth a violation of deontology?
No one harmed the patient. The deal with the authorities was that the doctors remained silent and participated in a political game with the printing of false bulletins with information about the health of the head of state. A total of 35 bulletins were issued during the illness. Even Lenin laughed when he read these medical reports. There is an entry about this in the diary. “I thought that the best diplomats were in The Hague, but in fact they were my doctors,” he said. But it wasn’t the doctors who wrote the bulletins reporting that Lenin had gastroenteritis.
By that time, many Russian doctors who accepted the revolution and served the Soviet regime were demoralized. In the archives I found a letter from the organizer of Soviet medicine Nikolai Semashko, addressed personally to Vladimir Lenin and members of the Politburo. There he says that All-Russian Congress Many doctors opposed “Soviet medicine” and praised “insurance” and “zemstvo”. And on May 22, 1922, Lenin instructed Dzerzhinsky to deal with the doctors. Everyone knows how things were sorted out at that time.
Photo: courtesy of Valery Novoselov
Let's say the Russians were afraid. But there were nine foreigners in the “Leninist” medical team. Why didn't any of them spill the beans?
GPU (Main Political Directorate under the NKVD - approx. "Tapes.ru") walked around Europe as if at home. In addition, the foreigners received a lot of money. Some 50 thousand, some 25 thousand gold rubles. Today this amount is equivalent to millions of dollars.
What happened to Soviet doctors who treated Lenin?
I think there was an unspoken agreement: as long as the doctors are silent, the authorities will not touch them. Nikolai Semashko, People's Commissar of Health, ensured its implementation. He served as a buffer between the doctors and Stalin, trying to smooth out the rough edges. The only thing that didn’t work out was Fyodor Getye, who refused to sign Lenin’s autopsy report. They treated him very cunningly. Old Getye had an only son, Alexander Fedorovich, at that time a famous boxing trainer. He was shot in 1938. My father couldn’t stand it and died two months later. Nikolai Popov was also shot. In the Lenin brigade, he was the youngest doctor, he had just entered residency and served as an orderly for a famous patient. In 1935, he tried to question Nadezhda Krupskaya about Lenin’s life and illness.
Well, did the fates of the others turn out well?
According to my calculations, the foreign doctors who treated Lenin lived on average 12 years longer than the Russians. For the first, the average life expectancy was 80 years, and for ours - 68.5 years. This a big difference. I attribute this to a state of extreme stress. I met with the granddaughter of Academician Abrikosov, who performed Lenin’s autopsy, Natalya Yuryevna. When her grandfather died, she was six years old. She doesn't remember much. But she said clearly: everyone in the family understood that Abrikosov before and after Lenin’s autopsy were two different people.
Photo: courtesy of Valery Novoselov
Is there a connection between Stalin’s “Doctors’ Plot” and Lenin’s illness?
In 1949, Nikolai Semashko, the guarantor of the unspoken agreement between Stalin and the doctors, dies. Himself, by his death. And then you can put forward many versions. Perhaps Stalin remembered how the doctors “agreed.” And he just imagined what could happen to him. And the “Doctors’ Plot” was born. In 1953, about 30 leading professors of medicine were arrested in Moscow and Leningrad. No one counted how many ordinary doctors there were. At the end of March 1953, they were to be publicly hanged in the squares of both capitals. But - lucky. Stalin died. However, the consequences of all these cases are still being felt.
How?
I believe that the current attitude of Russians towards doctors is partly due to the incident with Lenin. I talked a lot with people, outstanding historians of the country and the world, great doctors, scientists and ordinary citizens. The majority believes that Vladimir Ilyich was treated “for the wrong reasons.” As a result, many people have a deep-seated mistrust of doctors. Therefore, we must show that our hands are clean, that Lenin was treated according to the most highest standards At that time, doctors did everything they could. Maybe then at least one small percentage of Russians will understand that doctors should not be treated like pests. Our colleagues, the doctors from that story, have earned the right to the truth.
Can modern scientific methods establish an official diagnosis of Lenin?
We need political will. Since the collapse of the USSR, 38.5 million people were born in Russia and 52 million died. The population is completely different than in Lenin's times. When those who studied scientific communism in universities and the former Octoberists finally become a thing of the past, perhaps then changes will become possible. History needs to be studied and published so that it does not happen again. Now, observing the speed of initiating criminal cases against doctors, it seems to me that the authorities have again begun to play their games with doctors. Maybe there was no direct order to imprison the doctors. But there are also non-verbal signals.
State dachas have become a separate phenomenon Soviet period. Summer residences were not just a place to relax Soviet leaders: They often had to work there and receive foreign guests. Moreover, some state dachas, such as Foros, are today associated with important milestones history of the USSR.
Crimea
Crimea was a favorite holiday destination Soviet leaders. This is confirmed by the fact that there are eleven former state dachas here. The first of them, which received No. 4, was located in the Yusupov Palace, built at the beginning of the 20th century. architect Nikolai Krasnov. Since the 1920s The leadership of the NKVD rested here. Stalin also liked to stay at the Yusupov Palace, which served as the residence of the Soviet delegation during Yalta Conference 1945
Another palace of the tsarist period - Massandra - did not please Joseph Vissarionovich. Stalin's dachas were distinguished by their simplicity - the leader of the people did not like luxury and, in addition, suffered from agoraphobia, preferring to live in small rooms. However, the pine forest located nearby pleased the leader. In 1949, a wooden house was erected here, delivered disassembled from Moscow. Stalin’s modest dacha was named “Malaya Sosnovka” (state dacha No. 3). In 1973, by order of L.I. Brezhnev, the “Tent” pavilion was built next to it, which housed meeting and banquet rooms.
Leonid Ilyich, in turn, preferred state dacha No. 1 in Novaya Oreanda, built in 1955 under his predecessor. Brezhnev often visited here in the summer. As the head of the Secretary General’s security, Vladimir Medvedev, recalled, Leonid Ilyich got up early and loved to swim for a long time. In addition, at State Dacha No. 1, the Secretary General often met with foreign leaders. So, for example, in 1974 I stopped here American President Richard Nixon, who arrived from the USSR for his third meeting with the Soviet leader.
But the most famous Crimean state dacha can be considered the one built under M.S. Gorbachev object "Zarya" in Foros. At the Foros dacha, Mikhail Sergeevich and his wife Raisa Maksimovna, who took an active part in the construction of the residence, rested from 1988 to 1991. “Zarya” can be called the most luxurious of all the residences of Soviet leaders. There is even an escalator leading to the sea. However, Zarya became an unhappy place for the last Soviet leader. In August 1991, he actually found himself hostage to his residence during the GKChP putsch.
Sochi
In the 1920s members of the Poliburo who came to Sochi for treatment and recreation stayed in old pre-revolutionary dachas. In 1933, a decree “On the construction of dachas in the Sochi-Matsesta region” was signed on the territory of the former estate of M.A. Zenzinova. M.I. was appointed as the project architect. Merzhanov, who built Stalin’s “nearby” dacha in Volynskoe. The Sochi dacha was one of Stalin's favorites. The only wish he expressed during the construction of his future residence was “no fountains.” Stalin remained true to his love of simplicity. The house in which the leader rested several times a year, not only in the summer, but also often in autumn period, is truly distinguished by modesty. But this simplicity is compensated by the beauty of the surrounding areas. The dacha is located on a hill between the Agur Gorge and the Matsestinskaya Valley. It is literally surrounded by greenery, and the windows offer views of Stalin’s native Caucasus Mountains.
Today the only Black Sea residence is located in Sochi Russian President“Bocharov Stream”, built in the same period by the architect Merzhanov, and then reconstructed in the 1950s.
Abkhazia
The first state dacha in Abkhazia was built under Stalin in 1935. Until 1947, four more mansions were built here. Most of all, Stalin loved the secret dacha on the Kholodnaya River near Gagra (state dacha No. 18). In some ways it resembles the leader’s Sochi dacha. This is a two-story building, painted in green color, is located at an altitude of more than 300 m above sea level and hidden in the thick of forests. Another picturesque Abkhaz state dacha, built under Stalin, is located on Lake Ritsa. However, the leader of the peoples visited here only a few times.
N.S. Khrushchev, who refused to rest in Stalin’s houses, built two more mansions in Abkhazia, one of which is located next to Stalin’s residence on Lake Ritsa, where Nikita Sergeevich met with Fidel Castro. Subsequently, Leonid Brezhnev connected the two buildings with a corridor.
But the most luxurious mansion was built in Abkhazia by Mikhailov Gorbachev. His dacha in Musser is comparable to a real palace: stained glass windows, marble, porcelain and bronze chandeliers... As in the case of the Foros dacha, construction was carried out under the strict control of the wife of the Secretary General Raisa Maksimovna.
Unfortunately, in our time, many Abkhaz dachas of Soviet leaders are in a semi-desolate state due to a lack of funds to maintain them. An exception can be considered the dacha on the Kholodnaya River, where today the residence of the Abkhaz president is located.