ABSTRACT
The notion of “good care” in Russian maternity care is constant nor consistent, but rather an issue of negotiation. Global neoliberal tendencies, along with the Soviet legacy and the post-Soviet reforms of maternity care, have resulted in notable changes in the care practices and ideals of both medical providers and receivers. In Soviet maternity care, women had no choice, were vulnerable and experienced a great deal of suffering in industrialized, conveyer-like maternity hospitals. Therefore, women’s strategies are individualistically oriented; they try to personalize relations with obstetricians and midwives by carefully choosing and, officially or informally, paying them in order to receive more personalized and humanistic care. In addition to the State rules, every maternity care facility or ward works out a specific set of local rules, maintaining them differentially, and this creates even more institutional inconsistencies and organizational gaps between different facilities, leading to discontinuity of care.
