Pirogov Society

PIROGOV SOCIETY, CONGRESSES. The Pirogov Society—a shortened form of the official name 'Society of Russian Physicians in Memory of N.I. Pirogov'—was an association of Russian physicians, created in 1883. Initially, the society was founded under the name 'Moscow-Petersburg Medical Society'. The society's charter was approved on November 23, 1883, and then amended with the renaming of the society on July 15, 1886. According to this charter, the purpose of the society consisted of the scientific and practical development of medical, sanitary, and medical-lifestyle questions by the combined efforts of Russian physicians, medical societies, and other collegiate medical institutions, for which it organized general and special all-Russian congresses of physicians. In the intervals between congresses, a board elected at the congresses operated, which carried out the decisions of the congresses. There were no other structural forms in the P.S., if one does not count the rather numerous commissions of a permanent nature, which worked on various issues raised by the congresses, and several meetings convened by the society's board on various special issues. The Pirogov congresses*—the total number of which (together with extraordinary ones) exceeded 15 over 35 years—represent a unique 'history of Russian social medicine in the 1890s and the beginning of the 20th century. A remarkable characterization of the intelligentsia of that era is given by Lenin (1903) ['Tasks of the Revolutionary Youth' (Vol. V, 3rd ed., 1929)]: 'For all of Russian society, with its relatively nascent development of class antagonisms, with its political virginity, with its oppression and suppression of the enormous and most enormous masses of the population by police despotism, are characteristic precisely these six groups: reactionaries, indifferent ones, culturalists, liberals, socialist-revolutionaries, and social democrats'. Culturalists, as Lenin explains, are supporters of legal progress without political struggle, progress on the soil of autocracy. The history of the P.S. fully confirms that profound analysis which Lenin gave of the class nature of the intelligentsia. 'We could perhaps be told that the above division into six groups is incorrect, because it does not correspond to the class division of Russian society. But such an objection would be untenable. Class division is, of course, the deepest foundation of political grouping; it ultimately always determines, of course, this grouping. But this deep foundation is revealed only as the historical development proceeds and as the consciousness of the participants and creators of this development increases. This 'last count' is only drawn up by political struggle, sometimes as a result of a long_g stubborn struggle, measured by years and decades, sometimes flaring up in various political crises, sometimes subsiding and as if stopping for a time' (Lenin, ibid.). The development of capitalism in Russia, such events as the revolution of 1905, the reaction, the world war, the February revolution, October—all increasingly revealed the class face of the P.S. In the period approximately from the founding of the society to the V congress (1894), leadership belonged to the 'indifferent ones' and even reactionaries. The members of the boards of the first four congresses—these were influential professors of Petersburg, connected with the upper strata of the nobility and partly with large capital. They were also the founders of the society (Sutugin, I. Bertenson, Eber-man, Krassovsky, Slavyansky, Sklifosovsky, etc.). Many of them after the revolution of 1905 became members of the Octoberist party (Anrep_g S.V. Shidlovsky, etc.). The section of zemstvo medicine at these congresses still occupied a very modest place. Individual voices of representatives of zemstvo medicine—who demanded that the P.S. subject the sanitary issues raised by life to thorough and comprehensive scientific development and be a competent leader of sanitary affairs in the country—found no support. The leaders of this period tried to limit questions of social medicine and give the activities of the P.S. an academic, narrowly professional character. Resolutions adopted in some cases on general questions in the field of social medicine usually resulted in respectful petitions to the bureaucracy (and 'the issues on which petitions are raised—in the opinion of Anrep, the leader of the society at that time—should be timely and truly deserving of attention'). / A new period—1895-1905 'Gg., covering the IV-IX Pirogov congresses, coincides with the growth of the workers' movement, when 'The strikes of 1895 and especially the enormous strike of 1896 strike fear into the government (especially because with the workers now systematically go hand-in-hand social democrats)' (Lenin, Vol. IV, 3rd ed., 1929). The revolutionary wave is accompanied by a revival of the zemstvo movement. 'The authors of the letter to the zemstvo men themselves indicate how the movement, begun by the workers, which spread to students, now taken up by the zemstvo men, expanded. All these three social elements are thus arranged in the correct order according to the decrease in their social strength, their social mobility, their socio-political radicalism, their revolutionary determination' (Lenin, t.V, 3rd ed., 1929, 'Letter to the Zemstvo Men'). Shifts in the economic and political life of the country, the growth of the revolutionary movement, as well as the development of zemstvo medicine lead to a radicalization of the composition of the P.S. congresses. Zemstvo physicians increasingly come to the fore, reflecting for the most part the aspirations of the peasantry, mainly its kulak upper strata. The petty bourgeoisie class, 'especially numerous in Russia with its still relatively weak development of capitalism, on the one hand, begins undoubtedly to supply reactionaries, conscious and consistent, on the other hand, and incomparably more often, it is still weakly emerging from the mass of gray and oppressed 'working people', finding its ideologists in the broad strata of the raznochintsa¹ intelligentsia with a completely unsettled worldview, with an unconscious mixing of democratic and primitive socialist ideas. It is precisely this ideology that is characteristic of the old Russian intelligentsia, both as the right flank of its liberal-populist part and as the very left: 'socialist-revolutionaries'' (Lenin, 'Tasks of the Revolutionary Youth'). These layers of the raznochintsa medical intelligentsia began to set the tone for the speeches and resolutions of the congresses with a clear tendency to speak 'on behalf of the people and for the people, with dreams of the small zemstvo unit, while at the same time advancing and constantly upholding the theory that the organization of healthcare is the prerogative of only the physician. During the V-IX congresses, a whole series of commissions arose, which developed significant activity. Here in first place stands the permanent 'Commission for the dissemination of hygienic knowledge among the people', established at the V congress in 1895, a commission on the question of reviewing, changing and supplementing the laws on factory medicine of 1866 and 1886 (between the V and VI congresses), on coordinating methods of sanitary-statistical research (1898), the medical-provision committee (1899), a commission for the study of tuberculosis (1900; in 1902 it was transformed into a permanent commission), for the study of malaria in Russia (1902; worked until 1907). During this period, the P.S. continued to petition the tsarist government. A picture of their fate is given by the 'report for 20 years' compiled by the P.S. itself. 'In the overall total ²/₃ of all petitions remained fruitless, namely 43% received no answer at all, in 20% the answer was negative and in 2% cases it was of the nature of a formal brush-off'. Usually only petitions on organizational questions of the society itself were satisfied. Petitions on questions of social medicine usually remained fruitless. ^Thus, petitions were rejected on the right of zemstvos to issue mandatory sanitary regulations for factories and plants, on the repeal of the article of the law by which a worker who fell ill with an infectious disease could be dismissed (to this petition the ministers of finance and internal affairs replied: 'There is no basis for obliging employers to treat at their own expense a worker who has fallen ill with an infectious disease...'). With the further growth of the revolutionary movement and the strengthening of liberal sentiments among the intelligentsia, the P.S. at the IX congress (1904) adopted a resolution not to raise any petitions before the government, but to limit itself only to principle resolutions. The change in the composition of participants of the Pirogov congresses and the direction of its work was also reflected in the elections of the board at the VII-VIII congresses, mainly from the liberal Moscow professorship (election as chairmen of the society Erisman, Bobrov, Korsakov, Gabrichevsky); and finally in 1904, a significant part of the board was already composed not of professors, but of zemstvo figures, mainly from Moscow (Kurkin, Molkov, Zhbankov, Chertov, Shidlovsky, Popov).

The events of January 9, 1905 contributed to the further radicalization of the medical intelligentsia, which was expressed at the extraordinary congress for the fight against cholera (1905) in the following resolution: 'The Pirogov Congress declares the necessity for doctors to organize themselves for an energetic fight hand-in-hand with the working masses against the bureaucratic system for its complete elimination and for the convocation of a constituent assembly.' During the period of the P. o.'s activity from 1905 to 1917, during a period of declining revolutionary wave and temporary triumph of counter-revolution, prominent places in the leadership of the board and at congresses were held by representatives of the k.-d. party (Salazkin, Shingarev, Rejn, Diatropov and others). Radical speeches subsided; the essence of the main speeches and decisions of the congresses consisted in the struggle for progress on a legal basis. In the composition of the Pirogov congresses, no substantial changes occurred; the significant majority continued to be zemstvo doctors. With the insignificant development of medical organizations serving workers, the number of doctors who in their activity came into contact with the working class was small. Characteristic of this period was the struggle that unfolded within the P. o. on two main questions: about the direction of activity of sanitary doctors and about social insurance according to the law of 1912. The development of industry, the growth of cities, raised the necessity for the development of sanitary activity of cities, moreover specialized, for the creation of factory sanitary supervision. A small group of radical doctors demanded the reorganization of the activity of the sanitary doctor in the direction of organizing consultative-technical work under the conditions of the developing bourgeois city. The zemstvo group won, which saw a firm base for sanitary organization in the needs of the 'laboring' peasantry and insisted that there was no need to make changes in the program and methods of sanitary activity indicated 30-40 years earlier by Lovtsov', Molleson, Osipov and others. No definite decision was made, and the question was essentially postponed until the next congress. In the debates at the XII congress (1913) on the question of sick benefit funds, the same alignment of forces occurred. In the adopted resolution, the transfer of medical aid to workers from the hands of sick benefit funds to the zemstvo was not directly stipulated, but the meaning hidden behind vague phrases and the speeches in the debates by zemstvo doctors, who clearly expressed distrust of the organizational abilities of sick benefit funds and the self-activity of workers, in essence defended the transfer to the zemstvo of medical aid to workers. Thus, from the point of view of the development of public health and the creation of public opinion around questions connected with the medical servicing of workers, the P. o. occupied the most backward positions. The world war gave occasion for the convocation of two extraordinary congresses on medical-sanitary questions (1916 and 1917). At the April congress of 1916, with extremely thorough discussion of the tasks of medical organization on the front and in the rear, the position of defense of the fatherland was clearly expressed, and the opposition of the congress to the government followed from the same interests of ensuring victory, demands for the reorganization of power in the name of the same cause of war. 'The moment we are living through requires intense work, it is required by the feeling of national honor and dignity of the country. Doctors, gathering at the Pirogov Congress, showed that they are aware of their not only professional but also civic duty, and in a number of adopted resolutions revealed the defects of the existing organization of national defense in that part which concerns the protection of the health of the army and population, and outlined the conditions under which our work can prove fruitful.' I. Strashun. In March 1917, the P. o. in its political speeches differed in no way from all sorts of other societies of the petty-bourgeois intelligentsia. It greeted the Provisional Government in the person of Prince Lvov, sent greetings to the Petrograd Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies, and in the latter address unequivocally demanded discipline and responsibility before 'Great Russia.' In relation to the war, the P. o. joined the appeal of the Petrograd Soviet to the peoples of the whole world, but at the same time 'as long as the war lasts and the young Russian freedom and our allies are threatened by the armies of Wilhelm II..., it calls on the citizens of Russia to mobilize all forces... for the defense of the country and the conquests of the revolution.' After the October Revolution, the P. o. openly took up positions of counter-revolution. In November 1917, it issued an appeal against Soviet power—'To Comrade Doctors,' signed by all members of the board (except two). In this appeal, 'all that is healthy in the medical family' is called upon 'to find in themselves the resolve' according to the duty of civic conscience 'sharply and definitely to dissociate themselves from doctors acting in the camp of oppressors.' With a sharp rebuke to the board of the P. o., Z. P. Solovyev and I. V. Rusakov came out. The P. o. headed the sabotage and strike of doctors. On the pages of the journal 'Public Health' there appeared a rubric 'Doctors in the Camp of the Bolsheviks' with a campaign of persecution against doctors who began to build Soviet medicine, and first of all against Bolshevik doctors who had left the P. o. In response to the abolition of the Central Medical-Sanitary Council (see Public Health), the Pirogov conference of 1918 organized an independent epidemiological commission, in which it tried to organize counter-revolutionary elements of doctors, opponents of the revolution. In response to the organization of the People's Commissariat of Health, 'Public Health' wrote: 'The old command medicine will be born,' and in every way discredited the formed professional union Medsantrud, which was recognized as doomed to 'professional barrenness' due to its resolve to work with the party and in every way support the worker-peasant power. In the second half of 1918, the disintegration of the P. o. begins. The best of the doctors begin to break away from it. These vacillations are especially aggravated by the speech at the Pirogov Congress in the same year by N. A. Semashko, who gave the first outlines of the organization of Soviet medicine at the new stage. Part of the board members (Tarasevich, Diatropov, I. V. Popov) entered the presidium of the Scientific Medical Council at the NKZdrav. The October Revolution settled the 'final account' of the P. o. Only one structural part of the society, namely the Pirogov Commission for the dissemination of hygienic knowledge (headed by Mol'kov) at the end of 1918 arbitrarily broke away from its metropolis and went over to the 'camp of the Bolsheviks' with its literary property. After October, the P. o. acted only in the struggle against the revolution. Its influence on the main masses of doctors began to fall rapidly; the victorious course of the revolution more and more attracted doctors to its side. However, its hostile attempts to offer resistance to the Soviet government, the P. o. continued until 1922, until its complete liquidation. Part of the active leaders of the former P. o., who had gone over to the ranks of workers of Soviet health, and in the further, preserving the principles and methods of zemstvo medicine, tried to introduce ideas into Soviet medicine, introduced alien theories into Soviet social hygiene (see) and practice of public health. For the study of the history of Russian medicine, the literature of the P. o., containing a large amount of factual material, presents great interest. This includes above all the large collections (zemstvo-medical, on urban medical-sanitary affairs, on public sanitation), as well as the works of conferences on sanitary-statistical and sanitary questions. The most complete information about the work of zemstvo doctors can be found in the bibliographical guides of Zhbankov (see). Popular works of the society—publications of the Commission for the dissemination of hygienic knowledge (leaflets, brochures, reference books, albums)—represent an interesting monument to that essential organizational role which they played for their time. Bibliography of materials of the Pirogov Society. Preparatory activity of the Board for the congresses.-Protocols of meetings of the Board of 4 congresses of the Society of Russian Doctors in memory of N. I. Pirogov, M., 1896, SPB, 1891-93; Report of the Board to the VI congress (in Kiev), M., 1896; Report of the Board to the VII congress (in Kazan) with appendices (report of the commission), M., 1899; Report of the Board to the VIII congress (in Moscow) with appendices (reports of the commission), M., 1902; Report of the Board and existing commissions to the IX congress (in SPB), M., 1904; Reports of the Board and commissions to the X congress (in Moscow), M., 1907; Reports of the Board and commissions to the XI congress (in SPB), M., 1910; Reports of the Board and commissions to the XII congress (in SPB), M., 1913. Diaries, works and reference materials of the congresses.-Diaries of I and II congresses, SPB-M., 1886-1887; Diary of the III congress, SPB, 1889; Diary of the IV congress, M., 1891;'-Diary of the VI congress, Kiev, 1896; Diary of the VII congress, Kazan, 1899; Works of the II congress, M., 1887; Works of the IV congress, M., 1892; Works of the V congress, vol. I, SPB, 1894; VIII Pirogov Congress, issues 1-7, Moscow, 1902-1903; Works of the IX congress, vols. I-VI, SPB, 1904-06; Works of the XI congress, vols. I-III, SPB, 1911-12; XII Pirogov Congress, issues 1-2, SPB, 1913; Pirogov Congress for the fight against cholera, issues 1-2, M., 1905; Reference leaflet of the V congress, SPB, 1893-94;'Reference leaflet of the VIII congress (nos. 1-10), M., 1902; Reference leaflet of the IX congress, SPB, 19.04;

Reference sheet for the X Congress in Moscow (with congress resolutions), M., 1907; Reference sheet for the XI Congress in St. Petersburg, St. Petersburg, 1910; Reference sheet for the XII Congress in St. Petersburg, 1913; Proceedings of the extraordinary Pirogov Congress, Moscow, April 1917, M., 1918. Congress resolutions and reviews. - General information on the first six Pirogov Congresses (wall chart), M., 1899; Shidlovsky K., Collection of resolutions and works of I-VI All-Russian Congresses of Physicians, M., 1899; ibid., Summary of petitions of the Pirogov Society to government institutions for 20 years (1883-1903), M., 1904; Napalkov N. and Ven-glovsky G., Summary of works of I-VI Congresses on the department of surgery (60 pp.), Mch, 1903; Resolutions of the VIII Pirogov Congress, M., 1902; Res. IX Piro. Congress, M., 1904. Organizational questions of public medicine.-Zhbankov D., Zemsky medical collection, issues 1-7 and bibliographic index, M., 1890-93; Osipov E., Popov I. and Kurkin P., Russian zemstvo medicine, Moscow, 1899; Chertov A., Urban medicine in European Russia, collection of information on the organization of the medical-sanitary part in cities, Zh., 1903; Zhbankov D., Collection on urban medical-sanitary affairs in Russia, M., 1916; Proceedings of the conference on sanitary-statistical and sanitary questions, M., 1900; Proceedings of the commission on organizational questions of public medicine, M., 1904; Review of medical societies and congresses of physicians, M., 1905; Zhbankov D., On the activities of sanitary bureaus and public health institutions in zemstvo Russia, M., 1910; Proceedings of conferences on bacteriology, epidemiology and leprosy , St. Petersburg, 1911; Proceedings of the second conference on questions of bacteriology and epidemiology (March 28-April 1, 1912 in Moscow), Moscow, 1912; Proceedings of the conference on sanitary and sanitary-statistical questions (March 31 - April 3, 1912), Moscow, 1912; Proceedings of the conference of bacteriologists and representatives of medical-sanitary organizations on the fight against infectious diseases in connection with wartime, M., 1915; Conference of physicians and representatives of medical-sanitary organizations on the question of the fight against alcoholism, M., 1915; Pirogov collection, M., 1909; Pirogov handbook, M., 1910; Granovsky L., Public health and capitalism, M., 1908. Sanitary and Epidemiological Statistics.--Report and works of the commission on the question of uniting sanitary-statistical research, M., 1899; Program for medical registration and processing of materials on morbidity, developed by the Society of Russian Physicians in memory of N. I. Pirogov in 1900, M., 1900; Nomenclature of diseases, developed by the Pirogov Society on a separate sheet in the form of a wall chart, 3rd ed., M., 1908; Kurkin I., Zemstvo sanitary statistics, issues 1-Zemstvo statistics in general and sanitary statistics in the provinces of Voronezh, Vologda, Yekaterinoslav, and Kursk, M., 1904; ibid., Sanitary-statistical tables, M., 1910 (reprinted in 1925); Proceedings of the conference on current questions of sanitary statistics April 14-16, 1910, at the Board of the Pirogov Society in Moscow, Zh., 1910. Malaria.--Proceedings of the commission for the study of malaria in Russia, issues 1-3, M., 1903-04; Proceedings of the commission for the study of malaria in Russia, vol. II, M., 1915. Bibliography.--Zhbankov D., Bibliographic index of zemstvo medical literature, M., 1890; ibid., Bibliographic index of public medical literature for 1890-1905, M., 1907; Klikrikova O., Bibliographic index of public medicine for 1914, M., 1916 (also in 'Public Physician'); Bibliographic index of books and separate articles available in the Pirogov Malaria Commission, part 1, M., 1912; Bibliographic index of popular medical literature-List of popular publications on medicine and hygiene published before 1904, and brief information on popular publications reviewed by the commission before 1904, 2nd ed., M., 1904.; Handbook No. 2-Bibliographic index of popular medical literature-List of popular publications on medicine and hygiene published from 1904 to 1907, and brief information on popular publications reviewed by the commission until 1907, M., 1907; Handbook No. 3-Short catalog of shadow pictures on medicine, hygiene, natural science and veterinary medicine made by the commission, M., 1909; Supplement to the catalog of shadow pictures, M., 1912; Handbook No. 4-Demonstration exhibition on the fight against national diseases, M.; Reviews of popular publications on medicine and hygiene, issues 1-5, M., 1898-1905, etc. Periodicals.-Journal of the Pirogov Society of Physicians, M., 1895-1908; Public Physician, M., 1909-1919 and 1922.