WHEN Olga Betkin was elected by her wood-working department as their representative in the Podolsk Soviet, she chose to work in the council's health section. "My own experience has shown me how important this work is," she says. "Besides, as a mother of five, I am particularly interested in the welfare of children.
"When Victor, my oldest, was born, twenty-two years ago, I stayed by the machine until within three hours of his birth. At that time, nobody knew about pregnant women having doctors. I didn't even know when to expect my baby, but figured it up the best I knew how. Well, that day at my work, the pangs came on so, I got blinded with pain. Another woman ran to tell the foreman. I set out for the hospital, feeling my way along, clinging to doorways. By the time my husband got word and reached the hospital, my baby was already born." Eyes sparkling, the tired droop about her mouth lifts as she describes the changes that the revolution brought about. Today, there are free clinics where every expectant mother receives the best medical care, and a layette for her infant. For a period before childbirth, ranging from six weeks for office workers and eight weeks for industrial women, she is freed, with pay, from her work. Likewise, after the child's arrival she continues her test period with pay for another six or eight weeks' period.
Thus the tiny Soviet citizen is well started on his career. Each child, Olga explains, has his special health card filed in the Children's Consultation Section of the Institute for Mother and Child. There are regular medical examinations, and any idiosyncrasies which his tiny organism may develop are duly, noted and watched after. When the day at the plant is ended, Olga goes with other committee members to supervise the work of the Institute, and children's day nurseries. The city hospital as well as general health conditions also come under their watchful eyes. Regular reports are made by the doctors to the health sector, and they agree jointly what are the next steps to be made. When the vaccination campaign against smallpox was on, Olga covered every house in her district, persuading its occupants to present their reluctant arms to the doctor's sharp, protective needle.
Discovering unhealthy conditions, due to overcrowding, in the temporary dormitories put up to house those waiting for more permanent quarters, she followed up her report to the soviet with such persistency that the Housing Section hastened to complete its construction program for the factory, greatly relieving the congestion.
Someone asks Olga, "Well, how does it feel to be a member of the government?"
"Not bad," she replies. "You remember what Lenin told us. This work has taught me a lot."
Around noontime one day, we drop in on a children's nursery, attached to the machine plant. A roomy structure, it is half hidden by trees. Sun and wind throw darting shadows along the glistening snow. On the side porch there are rows of waiting baby carriages, mounted on steel runners.
In the old days, this had been the residence of Dixon, Singer's representative in Russia. Today it cares for a hundred and fifty tots beginning with tiny newcomers to three-and-a-half-year-olds. Each morning they are brought by their mothers who work in the nearby plant, and called for after work.
We wait a moment in the broad entrance-way while an attendant calls the director, Doctor Ogelova. Several working women come in, arriving from the plant to nurse their babies. Beaming at her unexpected visitors, the doctor hustles us into white uniforms. We begin out rounds. First through roams lined with white cots, filled with sleeping infants, and uniformed attendants standing silent guard. Although it is midwinter, windows are wide open. The rosy cheeks of the sleepers and their charts show us, however, that they thrive on these great lungfulls of January air.
To the rear of the house, a wing is being added, with, sleeping porches and glassed-in playrooms. In the last room, the youngsters are rousing. Gurgling, one curly-head wriggles herself sideways, fixing on us a friendly, curious stare. Her neighbour decides it is mealtime. Hardly has he begun telling the world about it, when an attendant, clucking softly like a hen to her chicks, makes off with him to the room where his mother is waiting.
We go along. Mary Chebokova, the young mother, has changed her work dress for a freshly ironed costume, supplied by the nursery. The baby makes a leap for her sterilized full breast. Stroking the child's head, Mary tells us that she works in one of the factory restaurants. She has only been back a few weeks from her four month's leave. When she brings the child in the morning, she gives it a feeding, then again at eleven, and at half past two. For this time-off from the restaurant she cannot be docked. In fact, until the child is nine months, she receives an extra allowance in addition to her regular pay. "I feel more satisfied to have my baby here than if I stayed at home to care for it," she says. "Here, they have everything and know just how to look after it. My Valya is getting a fine start." When three years old, she will be transferred to a kindergarten.
Dixon's former living room, with its oak paneling and huge windows, has an converted into a nursery for one-to-two-year olds. The toddlers are playing with toys, in groups of three and four. In the centre of the room, a half dozen are rolling a huge, brightly-coloured, cotton ball. "Most of the toys are the kind which are better-used in common," the doctor comments. "Our children learn habits of co-operation early. We are preparing them to be members of a socialist society."
Each baby has on a clean smock, which he dons when he arrives in the morning. Over his cot there hangs a small cardboard painted with some particular animal or flower, so that each infant can locate his place. The same is true for the tiny towel racks and toothbrush stands in the child-size, immaculate bathrooms.
The two-year olds we find seated in their play room. Feet straddling before them, they form a circle around orderly piles of red, blue, yellow and green blocks. Blocks not made in dull square cubes, like the ones we used to play with, but in modern fashion into cones, rectangles, triangles and all kinds of fascinating shapes. In the middle they have built a skyscraper, while to each side smaller objects are being constructed, torn down and re-modeled to fancy.
A woman leader is pointing out objects. "And what is this?"
"An engine," a boy answers.
"And what does it do?" The children tell the story of men who drive big black engines,through the day and far into the night, from Moscow all the way to the Pacific Ocean. She points to another structure. "And this?" One petite creature nearly tumbles over in her eagerness to answer. "That's the factory where my Pop works."
"And mine." "And mine."
A photographer who has come along, adjusts his apparatus, cautioning the group leader, "Stay just as you are." The flash powder explodes. Instantly twenty baby faces turn on him, screw up, emitting one prolonged, collective howl. The startled cameraman grabs his apparatus and flees! The play re-begins, but we get no more pictures that day.
Later, in the town editor's office, we accidently meet Doctor Kimbarofsky, head surgeon of the City Hospital. A small, composed type of man, but utterly lacking that bedside manner, he has come to bring a promised article and enjoy a chat with the editor, before turning in. The hour is late, yet the hot tea and talking about city health problems make him animated as a boy.
Remarkable, the keen edge that work and life have for these Russians! Yet many learned professors back in the States are opining that no society can run, except as private gain is the dominating note.
When Singer controlled Podolsk, there were only thirty hospital beds and one doctor for the city and whole region_surrounding it. Today, there are eighty doctors, two hundred and eighty-four beds, mother and child clinics and several dispensaries in every factory. All treatments are free, the expenses being borne by the state and institution for whom the sick person works. Besides that, Doctor Kimbarofsky takes for granted that we know all about the complete system of social insurance which covers all types of disability.
A new hospital is to be built, with two thousand beds, at a cost of over two-and-a-half million rubles. The Moscow Soviet has appropriated two million of the sum needed, and local factories another six hundred thousand.
"Have,you all the doctors you need?" we inquire. He lifts his shoulders in a characteristic Russian gesture. "Well, life is growing so fast, every time we think we have enough, we and we haven't! Each of us is carrying from one-and-a-half to two jobs. In America I read there is a surplus of doctors, that medical schools are putting up 'Keep out' signs. Here, we doctors welcome the younger corps who come to join us. In our scheme of things, there is a place for all."
We ask about the doctors' life, before the revolution and now. Before, he answers, those who practised among the rich lived well, but the majority, who worked in institutions or practised among the masses, lived badly. Today, the Soviet doctor works for the state. The state gives its medical staffs both security and a fair living. Payment varies according to experience and skill. As a highly skilled surgeon, working overtime, he receives 535 rubles a month, a free apartment, light and heat. His wife, who is a nurse, makes 105. When apartments are not supplied with the job, fifteen per cent to cover rent is added to a doctor's or nurse's salary.
Doctor Kimbarofsky sets down his empty glass. "For the doctor with any social outlook and genuine interest in his work, there is no comparison between the old days and now. Formerly, his work was like pouring water into a sieve. Now, every resource and energy of the state is mobilized for producing healthy communities. Also; we medical workers have our representatives in government, and a full say in all civic affairs." The majority of medical students today come from the labouring classes. Two-thirds of them are women. Kimberofsky himself was an office employee. In 1918 his trade union gave him a medical scholarship which included all expenses and an allowance of 42 rubles a month. As chief surgeon at the City Hospital, those staff includes three assistant surgeons and seven interns, he makes some fifteen hundred operations a year. Although working about ten hours, he squeezes in time for daily study, frequently traveling up to Moscow, both to attend lectures and to give them.
"What are our results!" He pours forth figures and facts so fast, my pencil can barely keep up with him Here are a few. Since the revolution, one-third fewer babies in Podolsk die in their first year. Malaria-breeding swamps surrounding the city have been cleared; and the dread fever wiped out. There has never been much consumption here, due to the climate and industries, but the high rates of rheumatism, heart and other diseases which formerly existed have been considerably reduced. This is due to better working conditions, regular vacations and the periodic health examinations given to all employed, as well as in the schools.
Some of the most interesting work being done by the medical staff is their promotion of healthy conditions of labour. Our machine plant has nine doctors assigned to it, conducting its free dispensaries, carrying on hygienic and safety propaganda, and supervising general working conditions. In the needle department, where Sonya works, it was discovered that there was a peculiar monotony and strain to the ceaseless pounding of tiny needles, which developed nervousness and chronic fatigue. One reason for this proved to be the over-taxing of the muscles of the left arm, which must remain for several hems in the same position, keeping the needles in place while they were being tapped into exact shape.
A Comsomol invented a special type of chair with arm rests that relieved the muscles of strain, while at the doctor's initiative, two ten-minute periods a day of physical culture were introduced.
In the beginning, the department head was fearful that this twenty minutes' time lost from the bench each day would lower production. Their monthly record was 111 per cent, it would be a pity to spoil it. His fears proved groundless. By March, some time after the corrective exercises had been introduced, production rose to 14.4 per cent of the plan, while damage fell from 16.7 to 7 per cent. Most important, the girls' health and mood greatly improved. Absence due to sick headaches practically disappeared, as well as petty accidents that once occurred from overwrought nerves. Doctor Tikhov, reporting these results m the local press, called on the factory committee and Comsomols to utilize this experience in other departments.
One statement I questioned a bit at the time--that, according to the report of the Podolsk Scientific Association, not a single new case of syphilis had developed in the district during the past year and a half. This, however, was simply my ignorance. Information given us later on in Moscow by the country's outstanding expert on social diseases, Doctor Bronner, fully explained how this situation had come about, not only in Podolsk, but in many regions. Social education and prophylactic treatment, the wiping gut of the blade institution of prostitution with its disorderly houses and red light district (although there are still individual prostitutes left), and the increase in the masses general cultural level and class-consciousness, are producing changes which to a Westerner or Oriental must seem nothing short of the miraculous.
We begin to shiver in the midnight cold of the deserted office. Kimbarofsky alone remains warm, alert. "Our main now," he adds briskly, "are to produce an absolutely healthy generation of children, to reduce accidents to the minimum, and arrange work processes so that labour is not a heavy task, but enjoyable for all." As we bump our way down the dark stairs, he concludes, "Since the state is taking care of health, in our country no one is interested any longer in having people sick!"