The early days of the HIV/AIDS: Epidemic in the former soviet union

Abstract

Like many problems in the final years of the USSR, incongruity between state practices and reality fueled the spread of HIV. Denial of the existence of promiscuity, homosexuality, drug use, and commercial sex work in the Soviet Union created an atmosphere of ignorance about the danger that these practices presented in intersection with the worldwide spread of HIV. In October 1985 (prior to the first recorded case of HIV in the USSR), Pyotr Nikolayevich Burgasov, USSR deputy minister of public health, chief state public health physician, and member of the USSR Academy of Medicine, made a statement in which he spouted the “party line” on social propaganda but, at the same time, admitted that HIV was a dangerous problem that needed to be addressed: AIDS is a dangerous disease; it must not be underestimated. No cases of this disease have been reported here in our country. The reason for this is that the problem is largely a social one, since it is connected with sexual promiscuity-this, alas, is tolerated in certain circles in the West, but it is unnatural for our society … Nevertheless, we are carefully studying all aspects of the new disease, for we do not live in isolation in the world. (“Portrait …," 1985).