Health Care in Prisons, Labour and Concentration Camps in Early Soviet Russia, 1918–1921

Abstract

IF MATERIALS IN THE STATE ARCHIVE of the Russian Federation dealing with health care and hygiene in the prisons, concentration and labour camps of Russia from 1918 through 1921 are authentic, they provide additional insights into medical practice and also into the economic and political dynamics in early Soviet Russia. Unfortunately, the correspondence and reports of the Commissariat of Justice, the Commissariat of Health, and local health care professionals do not discuss the charges or crimes for which prisoners were incarcerated nor what sort of work those in labour camps performed. These four years' worth of documents do, of course, shed more light on conditions in early Soviet prisons and camps, the kinds and intensity of diseases that racked various areas, and the mind-set of health-care specialists.' We especially notice that these specialists were dedicated and overworked. Yet conditions in the prisons and camps did not improve much during the four years covered by the archival materials. Obviously, prisons in any country at any time are not pleasant places and Russia was embroiled in Civil War for a great part of the period in question. Additionally, however, health care in prisons and camps was bound up with the fate of the pharmaceutical industry, which was brought low during the Civil War by nationalisation, shrivelling up of sources and supplies, and lack of investment.2 A look at health care in early Soviet prisons and camps emphasises this and also underscores how cumbersome were the Soviet government's early economic policies, particularly the attempts to centralise distribution and financing. This dysfunctional economy, coupled with the war and Russia's isolation from international trade and investment, had a negative impact on prison health care reform and, by extension, ambitious health care plans for the general population. Finally, the topic of prison health care highlights politics in early Soviet Russia. Developments in this area make clear the differing agendas and turf wars that splintered the Soviet government from its inception. Additionally, the issue of prison health care illustrates both the unbounded idealism of Soviet officials manning central agencies and the increasing bureaucratisation of the central government, whose stream of directives and orders became increasingly difficult for local officials to fulfil.3 George Leggett's pioneering work on the Cheka, or more accurately the Vecheka, the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission formed soon after the Soviet accession to power in October-November 1917 to investigate and subsequently combat economic