Symposia on the History of Medicine USSR-GDR: Bridging Medical Historians Through Scientific Exchange (1975‒1989)

Notes on Contributors

Notes on Contributors

Notes on Contributors

Notes on Contributors

Notes on Contributors

Pioneers of the Free Market Economy? Unofficial Commercial Exchange between People from the Socialist Bloc Countries (1970s and 1980s) The article presents Eastern Central European societies’ transnational strategies of dealing with the domestic «Economics of Shortage» which developed during the 1970s and 1980s. In this context, special emphasis is given to the People's Republic of Poland. East Germans, Poles, Czechs, and Hungarians have crossed the borders into neighboring states since the mid 1950s, but only the 1970s brought a radical quantitative as well as qualitative change. The unofficial «Tourism Trade» evolved into arguably the most used platform for multilateral, transnational communication. The number of participants in this «informal exchange» multiplied due to the liberalization of passport and visa regulations. At least for some participants, geographical horizons and goals likewise changed; they often shifted to the professionally organized increase of profits. During the 1970s, the groundwork was laid for the even less controlled development of the next decade: As the long obvious economic crisis in Poland gradually spread to the ČSSR, the GDR, and Hungary, the unofficial, usually illegal, trade reached its peak. Drawn from this perspective, the year 1989 marks the nearly natural end of a development which undermined and thwarted the norms of state socialism from the very start.

The history of medicine during the Safavid period (907-1135 AH) in Iran, as one of the important periods, has always been the focus of researchers. The main objective of this study was to conduct a quantitative evaluation of articles related to the “history of medicine in the Safavid period” in Iran. This descriptive-analytical, applied study was conducted using a quantitative approach. The statistical population of the study comprised all scientific productions on the history of medicine in the Safavid period indexed in domestic and international scientific databases over 22 years, from 2001 to March 2024. During the period under review, a total of 247 articles in the field of the history of medicine in the Safavid period were published with the participation of 542 authors. In terms of thematic orientation, 18.2% of the published works were on the biographies of physicians, while research, translation, and editing of medical manuscripts ranked next with 16.1%. Among universities and scientific centers, Tehran University of Medical Sciences and Islamic Azad University ranked first. Male participation accounted for approximately 60%, exceeding that of female authors, and about 68% of the works were the result of collaborative research. The Journal of Islamic and Iranian Traditional Medicine published the highest number of articles. The most common type of publication was original research articles. Content analysis showed that, despite significant growth in this research field, an excessive concentration on specific topics, such as physicians’ biographies, has limited scholarly attention to other dimensions of medical history in this period, highlighting the need for broader and more balanced research perspectives.

While source countries of migrants also face intricate ethical dilemmas-for example, the medical brain drain-this special issue focuses on the challenges that arise in destination countries.

This study analyses why Cuba, the Soviet Union, Bulgaria and Czechoslovakia attempted to establish air transport agreements with Chile, as well as their objectives and those of their airlines. It also examines the response of the Allende government and other Chilean key actors. The paper shows that the interest in signing these agreements lay in the Socialist bloc countries. Their reasons varied depending on their particular situation and foreign policy goals. By contrast, Chile saw the negotiation of agreements as a means of strengthening its ties with the Soviet bloc.

ABSTRACTDoes ethnopopulism increase domestic support for revisionist foreign policies? This question is especially relevant for former socialist bloc countries, where claims regarding cross-border kin and lost homelands imbue ethnopopulist discourse. Distinguishing between hawkish and irredentist publics, this article argues that irredentists’ ideological commitments actually limit their receptivity to ethnopopulists’ non-ideological claims. This proposition is tested via survey experiments in Serbia and Israel: two formal democracies with assertively nationalist publics and disputed international boundaries in dissimilar geopolitical contexts. Common findings suggest generalisable limits on ethnopopulists’ ability to mobilise popular support even among core constituencies, with critical implications for Eastern Europe and beyond.

The given article examines the processes of West Africa's involvement in the Cold War in 1958—1961 through the lens of the foreign policy emergence in the Republic of Guinea, the first independent African country that began to foster close relations with the socialist bloc countries and attempted to make this cooperation a driver of its socio-economic development. The article examines the major reasons for the shaping of this course during this period, divided into several categories. First of all, the significance of the influence great powers actively involved in the Cold War’ had on Guinea is considered. Separate special attention is allocated to impact on Guinea exerted by regional neighbors utilizing cooperation with great powers to pursue their own regional agenda. And finally, a special emphasis in the study of the aspects of the Guinean foreign policy course emergence in 1958—1961 is drawn to the analysis of the internal political features of the newly independent state. Based on the results of this factor analysis relying on an array of previously unpublished sources, an assessment of their hierarchy is carried out, with attention to the features of Guinean politics later adopted by other African states that declared a socialist orientation.

British policy towards the Socialist bloc countries in the 1970s is fertile ground for analysing the relationship between commerce and the Foreign Office. At the domestic level, the 1964–77 period saw three committees inquiring into the diplomatic service’s organization and tasks, and calling for a tighter relationship between diplomacy and trade. At the international level, this long decade was characterized by the consolidation and deepening of a web of contacts, exchanges and mutual treaty obligations between West European capitalist countries and East European Socialist states, a process known as detente.

The paper researches the quality of life, namely the dimension of material living conditions in the Visegrad Group countries (hereinafter V4 countries) represented by the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia.The main value-added of the paper is a development analysis of the most important indicators of material living conditions recommended by Eurostat and calculations of the integrated indices which enable us to make comparisons among the V4 countries in 2005-2013.According to our results, the Czech Republic achieved the first position among the V4 countries, mainly due to the highest values of income indicator and GDP per capita and the lowest levels of income inequality, relative poverty and proportion of the materially deprived people.Slovakia came second and recorded improvement especially in the income indicator and the proportion of materially deprived people.Hungary yielded worsening of material living conditions mainly in the indicators of self-reported evaluation of poverty, social inclusion and material deprivation.Poland achieved relative improvement almost in all analysed indicators and moved from the last to the third position among the V4 countries.

This paper reveals the theoretical framework and practical experience of Ernesto Guevara, investigating how he got involved in the specific task of building socialism in Cuba. Guevara studied Marxist literature extensively, and the changes experienced by socialist bloc countries in the 1960s. He elaborated the Budgetary Finance System which was opposed to the auto-financing defended by Carlos Rafael Rodrígues. This opposition was embodied in the Great Economic Debate. A crucial point of the discussion was the view on planning and the law of value. For Guevara, the latter could not be used to build socialism, whilst centralised planning was the ‘defining category’ of socialism. Explaining the context and the main measures of the New Economic Policy (NEP) applied in Soviet Russia in 1920s, this paper investigates Guevara’s critical view on it, based on his methodological approach to Das Kapital. Guevara revealed a link between the NEP and market experiments of the 1960s, forecasting a return to capitalism in the USSR. Guevara’s radical political economy is crucial for understanding his legacy holistically and may be considered a message to the countries and social movements of the Global South in their struggle for socialism, warning them away from distortion of Marxism.

Since the establishment of the Lao People's Democratic Republic (Lao PDR) in 1975, the development of the country has been uneven both due to domestic policy deficiencies as well as changing international environment. The aim of the article is to provide an overview of the domestic situation in the Lao PDR in connection with the position of the country at the world arena from the 1970s up to date. The study is based on the country-specific research issued abroad in the 1990s-2000s as well as individual papers provided by Russian authors in the 2000s. The sources used for the study include the World Bank and the UN agencies data as well as information from specialized bodies dealing with development including the USAID and the EEAS. The peculiarities of the political system attributed to the Lao PRD include one-party rule, state dominance on most spheres of life and high level of corruption. The economy of the country used to suffer from the land-locked character but nowadays the country strives to gain advantage from being a transit territory in the Mekong River region. Due to sharp turns in the state economic policy from nationalization and collectivization to market orientation, the economy has been rather weak. The efforts to make tourism one of the drivers of economic development along with mining, hydropower production and agriculture, were devalued by the pandemic. The opportunities for receiving education in the country are especially limited for the poor, representatives of ethnic minorities, and women. Due to the continuing growth of the population, it may become even more difficult to provide education in the country largely. The healthcare system is also understaffed and underfunded. Malnutrition is wide-spread among the poor population. However, the healthcare system has improved a lot during the last 30 years. Many social problems of the country are not duly solved partially due to large state deficit that is somehow balanced by foreign aid. Laos was acknowledged a least developed country (LDC) in 1971. Thus, Laos relied a lot on foreign aid. The volumes of official development aid provided to the Lao PDR by the OECD Development Assistance Committee in 1971-2020 changed a lot due to the changes in the main donors of development aid from France and the US at the beginning of the 1970s, then the Soviet Union and Socialist bloc countries in 1975-1990, then again Western states, Japan, UN agencies gaining the main donor position for the Lao PDR. Countering poverty and other social problems were declared the priorities for both Lao authorities and international aid donors, certain success was achieved: the average poverty rate has decreased, the GDP per capita has been growing, the public debt remained large, though. Since the country is expected to be deprived of the LDC status in 2026 due to achieving relatively good results, it is time for the Lao PDR to reformulate its domestic and foreign policy approaches.