Authors

Discussion

This paper analyses the late Soviet phenomenon of the re-coding of medical expertise created for the needs of state administration into a civic initiative of regional solidarity.

The intensive industrial development of the eastern and northern parts of the USSR, which began in the late 1960s, led to an increase in mortality from infections, injuries and poisoning. In the "most peaceful" decade (as researchers call it), demographic and morbidity statistics were comparable to those of the war years. The situation in Siberia, the Arctic and the Far East was critical. The government was deprived of labour resources and could not provide industry with the infrastructure to settle there. Mobilised to work in Siberian construction and extractive industries, workers died young or became disabled. Fertility rates fell and infant mortality rose. Attempts to explain this by the improved registration of infant mortality in the Central Asian republics were unconvincing.

In this situation, the Soviet rulers resorted to emergency spending - to finance large-scale medical research in the country's resource zone. Established in 1971, the Siberian Branch of the Academy of Medical Sciences and the Institutes of Medical Problems of the North, Clinical and Experimental Medicine, the Institute of Occupational Diseases and the Laboratory of Arctic Medicine received not only funds, infrastructure and specialists, but also the opportunity for direct contacts and cooperation with Canadian and Danish researchers. Their main goal was to find ways and means to strengthen the human body's ability to adapt to extreme living conditions (cold climate, polar night, magnetic radiation, "ancient" infections, heavy metal factories and toxic substances).

The results of medical laboratory examinations of the inhabitants of Siberian settlements and enterprises showed the terrible situation and were classified. Nevertheless, they were known thanks to the reports of Siberian scientists at international congresses. Based on them, they created an original concept of health as a planetary biosystem and developed health criteria for a "Siberian nation". This construct included people with similar biomedical problems and conditions. When Soviet censorship was relaxed on the basis of this data during perestroika (1985-1990) and during Russia's liberalisation years in the 1990s, Siberian doctors became advocates of Siberia as a bioregion and Siberians as subaltern in the face of the Yeltsin government.