VARNITSO

VARNITSO, the All-Union Association of Scientific and Technical Workers for Assistance to Socialist Construction in the USSR. The declaration of the VARNITSO initiative group appeared in the press on October 15, 1927. According to the charter approved by the Central Executive Committee of the USSR on February 13, 1928, VARNITSO studies and develops issues related to the socialist construction of the Union, in particular, issues of the development of the country's productive forces and plans for economic and cultural construction; it assists in the training of beginning scientific and technical workers who are closely connected with the broad masses of working people; it organizes lectures and reports, particularly at enterprises, and publishes periodic and non-periodic publications on issues related to the activities of the Association (cf. § 4 of the charter). Members of VARNITSO may consist of: a) corresponding republican societies, and b) workers of science, technology, the national economy, and cultural construction living in union republics where there are no corresponding societies, who stand on the basis of the conquests of the October Revolution, actively assist in the construction of socialism in the USSR, accept the VARNITSO charter, and work actively in one of its organizations (§5). Within VARNITSO, healthcare, industrial-manufacturing, and agricultural sections were formed. In the theses for the report on the tasks of the healthcare section (Prof. A. N. Sysin) at the I All-Union Conference of VARNITSO, held in Moscow in April 1928, the following topics for the section's activities were outlined: a) the economic value of health; b) problems of healthcare and labor protection as part of the general problem of the development and rise of the national economy; c) prospective plans for the development of healthcare in connection with the plans for the general construction of the country; d) issues of nutrition, housing provision, and municipal improvements for the broad masses of the population; e) organization of health protection for the most vulnerable groups of the population (children, women, the disabled, the elderly); f) the fight against traumatism; g) professional selection of workers; h) the fight against mass diseases, especially social and occupational ones; i) the legal and material status of medical personnel, especially those working in rural conditions; j) issues of the proper distribution of medical forces in the country; k) sanitary agitation and propaganda.—The problem of the protection of intellectual labor and mental hygiene was put forward separately. Thus, the tasks of the VARNITSO healthcare section include the public development and assistance in resolving the most important problems of protecting the health of the USSR population by socialist-minded specialists. In the Ukrainian SSR, UVARNITSO was organized. In the Byelorussian SSR, an initiative group of the Byelorussian society (BORNITSO) was organized; upon the approval of the charters of both societies by the corresponding republican bodies, these societies will join VARNITSO. Lit.: "Bulletin of VARNITSO," 1928, No. 1; Stenographic Report of the I All-Union Conference of VARNITSO, Moscow, 1928.