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Reviewed by:
  • Medicines for the Soviet Masses during World War II
  • Dennis B. Worthen, PhD
Mary Schaeffer Conroy . Medicines for the Soviet Masses during World War II. Lanham, MD, University Press of America, Inc., 2008. xiv, 256 pp. $36.00

Medicines for the Soviet Masses during World War II is the third of Mary Schaeffer Conroy's trilogy on the pharmaceutical industry in Russia following In Health and in Sickness: Pharmacy, Pharmacists and the Pharmaceutical Industry in Late Imperial, Early Soviet Russia (1994) and The Soviet Pharmaceutical Business during Its First Two Decades (1917–1937) (2006). Consequently, expectations were for a well-researched and written history of a subject that has received scant coverage in English language publications.

Conroy starts this book with an examination of health care and medical supplies in the pre-war days of Soviet Russia. Her examination of a health care industry gone dysfunctional under complete government control is excellent. Chapter 1 sets the stage of government mandated and controlled production that chronically under-produced and a distribution system beset by problems of distance and poor communications. Non-intelligent [End Page 440] governmental interference is well exemplified in the artificial assignment of production and departmentalization, such as the separation of soap production from the pharmaceutical industry which resulted in smaller amounts being produced than had been available in Imperial Russia (25–26).

The remainder of the work is split into two sections; the first section covers the first two years of World War II (1939 to June 1941). This is the period when Russia and Germany were allies, and joined in partitioning Poland, and Russia invaded Finland. The second section begins in June 1941, when Germany invaded Russia, through 1945; the period titled the "Great Patriotic War" by Russian historians. This division is somewhat foreign to Westerners who see World War II as a continuum starting with the invasion of Poland through the fall of Nazi Germany. However, Conroy's approach makes imminent sense given the need for a dramatic shift in health care delivery in a nation under siege.

The work attempts to cover the pharmaceutical enterprise at three levels: research, manufacturing, and distribution to the retail or consumer level. Researchers were hampered by state mandates over what lines of exploration were worthy of pursuing. Of particular note was the effort to produce bacteriophages while the rest of the world had turned to sulfas for the treatment of many bacterial infections (98–100). Conroy noted that this decision may have been based more on the reality of shortages of antibacterials and soap rather than proven effectiveness or superiority of phage therapy. Manufacturing faced challenges in Russia just as it did in the United States, the differences between the two being the physical disruption of production and distance in addition to war priorities. Russian consumers certainly suffered from a greater extent of shortages at the pharmacy than their American contemporaries, forcing reliance on traditional or folk medicine. Conroy attempts to put a personal face to the issue of shortages with memories from some who survived the conflict and now live in the United States. However, the commentaries might have better served the purpose if they had been edited as a separate section to show the endpoint of the chaos in Soviet Russia at war.

Folk medicines, natural remedies, or Narodnaia Meditsina played a far-greater role in medicine in Russia and Germany than they did in the United States. The focus in Germany was fueled by Hitler's push to return to natural versus chemical pharmaceuticals. The attention in Russia was based more on the limited access to modern medicines, especially in the rural areas, than in political exigencies. Conroy's exploration of the topic provided a good example of differentiation between the Soviet and Fascist politics and the practical needs of providing health care for a civilian population whose health care requirements were frequently different from military needs. [End Page 441]

Unfortunately, the book also had some major flaws that limit its readability and usefulness. Given the unfamiliarity with Russian trade names, manufacturers' nomenclature, and frequently lack of a clear therapeutic indication, it was difficult to follow the text in terms of what products were...

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