ABSTRACT
This conclusion presents some closing thoughts on the key concepts discussed in the preceding chapters of this book. The book explores public health and medicine in one city–St. Petersburg/Petrograd/Leningrad from 1900 until 1941. It highlights the incompetence of the city's authorities and their inertia in dealing with the public health challenges. The book analyses how the Soviet state sought to intervene in public health affairs, regulate health behaviour and to implement and construct a 'collectivist lifestyle' among the inhabitants of Petrograd and Leningrad. It argues that the Tsarist medical profession played a major part at least prior to the Great and mass terrors, 1934–38. The book also argues that there was a continuity of earlier War Communism policies evident under the New Economic Policy. It shows that it was not just the latter but more importantly medical disorder that led to calls for vigilance and the checking of the Party credentials of all health service staff.
