ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses the shift from zemstvo medicine to socialist health care and the emergence of a Ministry of Public health (modelled on the Petrograd health service) in the context of the aftermath of the October Revolution, a continuing First World War from October 1917 to November 1918 and the outbreak of the Russian civil war from November 1918 to November 1920. This was a period when the Bolsheviks (Reds) were fighting the Whites (Opposition and their foreign allies) and trying to build a new public health system based on socialist principles. This led to suspicion of the Tsarist medical profession. Some fled, others remained. This chapter challenges the traditional view of conflict between the new Soviet state and old bourgeois doctors and argues that a common concern for the health of the collective and a belief that the environment was responsible for bad health enabled former tsarist doctors to cooperate with Lenin and the Bolsheviks and build a new health care system run along class lines and based on prophylaxis. Due to the civil war, this system existed more on paper than in practice, but the Tsarist medical profession, against great odds and shortages of medical facilities, provided indispensable help, knowledge and medical expertise to ensure that Pervukhin, the head of the Petrograd health service, combated infectious and other diseases, hunger etc, as far as possible and in the process, they secured state patronage, gained professionalization and found a place in the new socialist state.
