Introduction

Abstract

This volume analyzes Russian (that is, pre-revolutionary Russia) and Soviet nurses, physicians, and psychiatrists, placing these workers in a comparative and international framework. There are three sections, each organized chronologically, including chapters that deal with the late nineteenth century as well as international health care. First, the volume asks how medical workers in Russia and the Soviet Union compared to one another, and how health care was realized in practice. Such an approach provides a greater sense of professional identities and hierarchies within Russian and Soviet health care, yielding important insights into how the Soviet state envisioned the organization of health care and how medicine was implemented in practice. In the Soviet health care system nurses constituted the majority of "middle" medical workers but are overlooked in the literature.1 How did the professional experience of nurses differ from that of physicians or psychiatrists? Where did these workers fit in to the overall system of health care?