ABSTRACT
The problem of human poverty is of considerable rhetorical and practical concern to contemporary Marxist-Leninist governments. Western nations have offered their own response to the problem of poverty. Its articulation includes the tradition of private and voluntarily supported charities, the evolution of the "welfare state," and the invention of a form of government-to-government resources transfers known as "foreign aid." Eastern Europe's stagnation, and even decline, in health can be better understood by decomposing the problem. Outer Mongolia was the first country in which a Marxist-Leninist government was brought to power with Soviet assistance. One of the principal reasons for the slow pace of overall health progress in the early 1970s, as reflected in these life expectancy estimates, was the trend in infant mortality. According to Cuba's own life tables, infant mortality did not decline in the early 1970s.
