Education and Art in Soviet Russia/Document 13

DOCUMENT No. 13

Essential Problems Connected with the Organization of
Medical Aid Throughout the Russian Socialist
Federal Soviet Republic

At the present moment, when the People's Commissariat of Education is approaching the question of education, and is attempting to direct it in a manner necessary for a thoroughgoing development of the individual, a great demand for physician-pedagogues is being felt. This question is naturally closely interrelated with the organization of medical-sanitary aid in the Republic. At the congress of medical-sanitary boards attached to the various local Soviets of workmen's deputies, held during the summer of 1918, in Moscow, the following resolution was adopted:

"1) The most essential organization task of medical aid in localities under the Soviet Government has been the removal of old inter-departmental limitations and their unification. 2) Therapeutics must be built on a basis of a consistent realization of the following principles: a) general accessibility, b) free treatment. 3) It is necessary to immediately take steps toward raising the quality of medical aid (special hours for treatment, ambulatories, special dispensaries). 4) Only the Soviet Government, firmly pursuing the policy of abolishing social inequality, can build a firm foundation for an organization capable of fighting successfully social diseases (tuberculosis, venereal diseases, child mortality, etc.) as well as anti-sanitary housing conditions. 5) It is necessary to immediately begin an extensive sanitary-educational propaganda among the population (readings, lectures, exhibitions, etc.). 6) Forms of the population's participation in medical and sanitary activities, and forms of its self-activity must be radically changed: a most extensive participation in those activities by organized labor and poor peasants is required."

For this purpose a People's Commissariat to safeguard health has been established. Around this Commissariat are grouped various medical and sanitary branches at the present time functioning in different localities. The central Commissariat has been in charge of the whole medical business and issues directions to local Commissariats of kindred nature.

A physician, engaged in school work, must raise the whole spirit of the school, which is a laboratory for the forging of the man of the future. The proletariat has lit the torch of education and has for its object—the utilization of all the progressive methods of Western pedagogy, school sanitation and general science subjects.

After the November Revolution a school-sanitary Soviet was established at the People's Commissariat of Education, its object being the protection of the children's health, as an essential prerequisite for a high standard of health for the population in general.