ABSTRACT
Soviet industry has been unable to satisfy the demand for medical goods or to produce many of the medicines commonly available in the West. The exceptionally high figures for hospitalization in the USSR— William A. Knaus remarked that people in the Soviet Union "are among the most hospitalized in the world"—are by no means evidence of solid medical care for the population in general or for the elderly in particular. In 1956-1957, Soviet scholars specializing in the field of social security established a definition and a measure of "poverty" in their country. The term they used was maloobespechennye; families whose per capita monthly earnings were less than 25-30 rubles were included in this category. Decades of failed economic programs, inadequate social-security arrangements, and a health-care system far more interested in keeping people at work than in providing quality care of the elderly, have conspired to offer most senior citizens little more than financial and medical insecurity.
