Categorized Soviet Citizens in the Context of the Policy of Fighting Venereal Disease in the Soviet Latvia from Khrushchev to Gorbachev (1955–1985)

In the Soviet period, the incidence of venereal diseases (VDs) 2 was ideologically interpreted by authorities as a deficiency inherent in capitalist countries. It was stated that VDs would be eliminated in the Soviet Union at the earliest possible date. Compared to the independent Republic of Latvia (1918–1940), during the Soviet period, despite a larger population, the number of registered VDs infected patients was significantly lower. In such a historical context, a strange ideological obsession could be observed in the activities pursued by Soviet authorities when fighting VDs. The notion of the VDs as a remnant of the capitalist system determined the treatment of Soviet citizens infected by the VDs as marginalised populations. In order to achieve the goal of becoming a country where the VDs were eliminated, the Soviet Union practised a drastic dispensarisation system in the treatment of VDs, which was focused only on certain groups of the population that were identified in the documents of internal use for 1 The author’s work on this article constitutes a part of the University of Latvia project No. ZD2015/AZ85. 2 The term “sexually transmitted disease” has now replaced “venereal disease”. ““Venereal disease” was used from the eighteenth to the late twentieth centuries to refer mainly to syphilis and gonorrhea.” See: Pamela Cox, “Compulsion, Voluntarism, and Venereal Disease: Governing Sexual Health in England after the Contagious Diseases Acts”, Journal of British Studies 46, no. 1 (January 2007): 91–115. Acta medico-historica Rigensia (2019) XII: 92-122 doi:10.25143/amhr.2019.XII.04