Guest Editor’s Introduction: Health sciences in communist Europe (original) (raw)

The history of health, wellness, and illness has the potential to be the next thriving field of research in the Eastern European context, bringing much needed transnational and comparative perspective. The communist regimes developed unique approaches and contributions to health, which were then radically challenged during the post-socialist transformation. The Soviet Union certainly had a significant influence in postwar Eastern Europe, but even during the dominance of Soviet models, ideas about health were not necessarily isolated within the borders of the Eastern Bloc. Soviet approaches were re-interpreted and adapted in each local context. Transnational collaborations and the circulation of ideas were often intense, while scientists and practitioners carefully balanced their professional approaches, individual preferences, and the dominant ideology. This created similar experiences of health across the region, but also distinctiveness for scholars to explore. The articles in this special issue are connected by the period and region, and by the similar ideological underpinnings that influenced health policies and practices across the Eastern Bloc. These connections are sometimes evident, but often implicit within broader political and cultural history. Some medical diagnoses were unique to the Soviet Union, as we will see in this volume, but many practices were part of broader medical trends, as this special issue explores in the case of Hungarian psychiatry. These practices were also renegotiated in local settings. Common socialist values and understandings also played an important role. For example, shared socialist ideas about work and productivity informed views on health and disability, creating many similarities between the perception of Soviet and Polish disabled subjects. The authors have used a variety of methods and sources in exploring these issues, adding to the richness of the special issue. They explore topics from the Soviet Union, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Poland, ranging from examining a uniquely Soviet disease diagnosis, work therapy in psychiatry, abortion and eugenics, and notions of disability. The issue starts with Anastasia Beliaeva's article on "The Case of Vegetovascular Dystonia (VVD)," showing how it was constructed to be one of the most common Soviet diseases, despite the disease not existing in the World Health Organization's International Classification of Diseases. Beliaeva looks at the origins of the Soviet invention of the VVD, and changes in the diagnosis practices, while connecting it with the broader political environment. The author, who has also discovered VVD in her own medical record, examines the production of medical knowledge, the state influences on the medical profession, and the consequences of diagnosing people with VVD, opening important questions of the cultural construction of disease.