MEDICINE IN RUSSIA [To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.] SIR,—Mr.
Charnock thinks he has proved that there was no " mass neglect of the Russian population " when he informs us that there were 22,000 doctors in the Tsarist Empire, or one for 7,800 inhabitants. In reality, he has only demon- strated the opposite.
In Great Britain, in 1910, for a population of just under 41,000,000, there were 35,520 doctors, according to the Medical Register : or one for 1,150 inhabitants. In the Soviet Union today there are just over 80,000 doctors for 166 million people : roughly one for 2,000 inhabitants. These figures enable one to judge a little more accurately of the " social development " of Tiarist Russia. So does the remark in the Russian Year Book for 1914: " In European Russia there is 1 doctor for 1,300 inhabitants in the towns, and 1 for 21,900 in the villages ; in Asiatic Russia, one doctor for 2,800 towns- people, and 1 for 37,600 villagers ", (p. 610). Mr. Charnock's 8,000 hospitals likewise recede modestly into their due perspec- tive when we learn from the Russian Year Book (loc. cit.) that in 1910 7,700 hospitals contained only 202,000 beds : as many as two or three of the large cities in Great Britain, with perhaps one-twentieth of the population of Tsarist Russia.
It is interesting to learn that the infant mortality was " not above some of the districts in the United Kingdom." I find that the highest mortality in England in 1912 was 145, in Burnley ; the average for European Russia in 1909-10 was 265. Nor is it any use Mr. Charnock advancing his re- markable theory that a high birth-rate " invariably " tends to " give " a heavy infant mortality. That probably is true of capitalist countries. It simply is not true of the U.S.S.R., where the birth-rate is no smaller than in 1913, and the infantile mortality was already halved five years ago. Not bad habits, but bad conditions, is the reason why babies die 275 to the thousand.
As for the factory medical service, I can enlighten Mr. Charnock. After the cholera epidemic in 1866, a law was issued in August of that year, laying down that all factories with over 1,000 workmen had to provide a hospital with 10 beds for the first 1,000 employees and 5 beds for each additional 1,000. But, as Professor J. P. Mayor mildly put it (Economic History of Russia, 1914, vol. ii, pp. 408-9) : " This law has not, however, been rigidly carried out. At many of the
factories hospital accommodation is merely fictitious. In the absence of proper governmental inspection and organization, the law remains in practical abeyance, excepting in the case of some of the larger factories." Thus the same applies to this law as I showed in my previous letter was the case with the law of 1912. The vast majority of the Russian working class was untouched by medical aid.
I must also respectfully point out that the satisfaction, " partially or wholly," of 60 per cent. of petitions lodged with factory inspectors has nothing to do with the case. Reference to the Russian Year Book for 1914 (p. 616) will show that these dealt with such questions as wages, pensions and sickness allowances. Mr. Charnock originally mentioned the " strict control " of the 191 factory inspectors (for all Russia !) in connexion with the health regulations, i.e., with complaints of breaches of the km It was in these cases that the figures show that the " control " was a farce—as it was bound to be. In the Baku oil strike of 1914, for example, the factory inspectors reported that they visited the enterprises once in two and a half years !
Perhaps I may be permitted to make one point in reply to Mr. Marcus Samuel. Like many other people since the revolu- tion, he draws conclusions of horrible conditions, exploitation and failure from the vast mass of self-criticism which appears in the Soviet Press. Mr. Samuel, like his predecessors, has not noticed the reason why the Soviet regime encourages, and indeed depends upon, this self-criticism--instead of driving it underground or abroad, as Tsardom did. The reason is that the Soviet regime is confident that it possesses in its own ranks—i.e., in the sense of responsibility of the workmen and peasants—everything requisite for overcoming the weaknesses revealed. Ignoring this, Mr. Samuel is led (again like very many more) into methods of proving his point which are somewhat awkward • to describe. Thus, in the very first example he quotes from the Moscow Daily News of March 24th, about excessive hours at Cherepet,sk, the paper proceeds : " When the Provincial Committee of the Metal Workers' Union took drastic action and removed the chairman of the shop committee, and reprimanded the director, over- time stopped, without the fulfilment of the plan suffering in the least."—I am, Sir, &c., ANDREW ROTHSTEIN. Friends of the Soviet Union, 33 Ormond Yard, W.C. 1.
Previous page
