Editing Soviet Union (section)

=== Health ===
{{Main|Healthcare in Russia#Healthcare in the Soviet Union|l1=Health care in the Soviet Union}}
[[File:RussianAbortionPoster.jpg|thumb|An early Soviet-era poster discouraging unsafe abortion practices]]
In 1917, before the revolution, health conditions were significantly behind those of developed countries. As Lenin later noted, "Either the lice will defeat socialism, or socialism will defeat the lice".<ref>{{harvnb|Lane|1992|p=353}}</ref> The Soviet health care system was conceived by the [[People's Commissariat for Health]] in 1918. Under the [[Semashko model]], health care was to be controlled by the state and would be provided to its citizens free of charge, a revolutionary concept at the time. Article 42 of the [[1977 Soviet Constitution]] gave all citizens the [[right to health]] protection and free access to any health institutions in the USSR. Before [[Leonid Brezhnev]] became general secretary, the Soviet healthcare system was held in high esteem by many foreign specialists. This changed, however, from Brezhnev's accession and [[Mikhail Gorbachev]]'s tenure as leader, during which the health care system was heavily criticized for many basic faults, such as the quality of service and the unevenness in its provision.<ref>{{harvnb|Lane|1992|p=352}}</ref> [[Ministry of Health (Soviet Union)|Minister of Health]] [[Yevgeniy Chazov]], during the [[19th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union]], while highlighting such successes as having the most doctors and hospitals in the world, recognized the system's areas for improvement and felt that billions of [[Soviet ruble|ruble]]s were squandered.<ref>{{harvnb|Lane|1992|pp=352–353}}</ref> <!-- Billions in the previous line was prior milliard, but was changed according to [[WP:MOSNUM]]. Don't be fooled by the surrounding British English. I checked the rest of the article: All other named numbers were either "million" (same on both scales) or "trillion USD", where a value of $10^18 is completely implausible. -->

After the revolution, life expectancy for all age groups went up. This statistic in itself was seen by some that the [[Socialist mode of production|socialist system]] was superior to the [[capitalist system]]. These improvements continued into the 1960s when statistics indicated that the life expectancy briefly surpassed that of the United States. Life expectancy started to decline in the 1970s, possibly because of [[Alcohol consumption in Russia|alcohol abuse]]. At the same time, infant mortality began to rise. After 1974, the government stopped publishing statistics on the matter. This trend can be partly explained by the number of pregnancies rising drastically in the Asian part of the country where infant mortality was the highest while declining markedly in the more developed European part of the Soviet Union.<ref>{{cite journal |author=Dinkel, R.H. |title=The Seeming Paradox of Increasing Mortality in a Highly Industrialized Nation: the Example of the Soviet Union |journal=Population Studies |pages=155–177 |year=1990 |volume=39 |issue=1 |doi=10.1080/0032472031000141296 |pmid=11611752}}</ref>

==== Dentistry ====
Soviet dental technology and dental health were considered notoriously bad. In 1991, the average 35-year-old had 12 to 14 cavities, fillings or missing teeth. Toothpaste was often not available, and toothbrushes did not conform to standards of modern dentistry.<ref>{{cite news |last1=Niedowski |title=Dentistry in Russia is finally leaving the Dark Ages behind |url=https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-2007-03-04-0703040477-story.html |agency=[[Chicago Tribune]] |date=2007 |access-date=30 April 2021 |archive-date=5 April 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210405013455/https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-2007-03-04-0703040477-story.html |url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last1=Ferber |first1=Irwin |last2=Bedrick |first2=Anthony E. |title=Dental survey of 620 Soviet immigrants |journal=JADA |date=1979 |volume=98 |issue=3 |pages=379–383 |pmid=283158 |url=https://jada.ada.org/article/S0002-8177(79)83017-2/pdf |access-date=14 July 2021 |archive-date=24 April 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220424221556/https://jada.ada.org/article/S0002-8177%2879%2983017-2/pdf |url-status=live}}</ref>