[The Appointment of Paediatric Professorships in the Soviet Occupation Zone and the early GDR. The Impact of the Political System Change after 1945]. / Die Besetzung der pädiatrischen Lehrstühle in der SBZ und frühen DDR. Personeller Umbruch im Zeichen des politischen Neuanfangs nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg?

This paper examines the impact of the political system change after 1945 on the appointment of paediatric professorships in the Soviet Occupation Zone and the GDR up until the time the Wall was built in 1961. It can be demonstrated that the political purge in the post-war period had only minor impact on the appointment of professorships and the National Socialist past no longer mattered after the conclusion of denazification. In 1957, the proportion of former NSDAP members among East German university professors of paediatrics was 100 per cent. When it came to new appointments, both members of the "bourgeois" academic non-professorial teaching staff from the GDR as well as paediatricians from West Germany, who had largely gained their scientifically qualifications under National Socialism, were in the running. A politically-controlled elite exchange did not take place until the construction of the Wall. State and party organs generally followed the personnel proposals of the universities since an insufficient number of qualified candidates was available for the systematic appointment of ,,progressive" paediatricians. Given the lack of staff, the SED personnel policy was aimed at the integration of previous elites, as long as they behaved loyally towards the new state. Since the East German faculties continued to make the questioning of the professionally competent professors in West Germany and East Germany the basis for their appointment lists, West German university paediatricians were able to exert considerable influence on the appointment of East German paediatric professorship until 1960s.

[The influence of the devotion movement on the health care in North Korea].

Since the early 1960s, North Korea has conducted 'devotion movement' under the directorship of Kim Il Sung across the nation. As a matter of fact, the movement was not a novel invention at all. When North Korean Temporary People's Polity was established in 1946, North Korea emphasized the importance of the devoted care of health personnel. It meant to reform the people's thought and mind along with complementing the lack of human and material resources. Thought reform was not a peculiar phenomenon observed in North Korea only. It was particularly stressed out among communist countries, including the Soviet Union. However any other communist country stresses the importance of thought reform. Devotion movement should be viewed as part of this process. As shown in many cases, the extent and degree of devotion movement and care are beyond our imagination, which does not intend to mean that North Korean health personnel's attitude towards patients is superior to the counterparts in South Korea. Indeed human being's behavior cannot be understood without taking account of society in general. The question can be raised as to whether or not North Korean health personnel's devoted care is really voluntary. To put aside the testimony that the most powerless group in a society can fall prey to victims, if social environment, whether directly or indirectly, is action on the people's thought and mind even in a subtle way and thus influence one's decision power, it is hard to highly evaluate the devoted care in North Korea. Moreover it seems like that the internal conflict exists surrounding devotion. In conclusion, I think that North Korean devotion movement has enforced health personnel to reform their thought and mind to adapt to North Korean regime and has played an important role to accomplish the purpose of North Korean Labor Party to realize essential constituents of its health system, in such a situation in which essential medical supplies are severely lacking. But it seems like that it plays reverse action to develope sound North Korean health system.

[Soviet politics of breaking international war law. Representatives of medical professions among the victims of the Katyn crime]. / Die Sowjetpolitik und die Verletzung der Kriegsrechte. Die Vertreter der medizinischen Berufe, zwischen den Opfern von Katyn.

In April 1940 the Soviet authorities murdered nearly 25 thousand Polish citizens belonging mainly to the intelligentsia. The crime is known as the Katyn Crime because Katyn was the first place where the victims had been discovered. Representatives of different medical specializations were one of the most numerous groups among the victims. Despite of the sixty-year period from their death the identity of many of them has not been found out. In the years 1994 - 1995 the author participated in exhumations made in the Katyn Woods. As an expert of the Government Board he was responsible for identifying, describing and cataloguing all objects found during the exhumation works. It was then when he started to gather information on medical doctors killed in 1940. The data verification has not been terminated yet as many of the data are incomplete and ambiguous. Publication of the partial and incomplete data is necessary to complete estimative information found in literature. The author considers that wider research works on the subject will deepen reflections on effects of the Katyn Crime.

[Evolution of village doctors from the communist regime to contemporary China: reeducation of the "barefoot doctors" in rural communities].

To modernize health care in China, much emphasis is currently being put on the in-service training for the remaining group of its medical paraprofessionals known as the "barefoot doctors". They have functioned differently from the conventional professional physicians. They were farmers, yet they took care of the primary health care needs in their communes even without proper medical education. The manner in which they trained and practiced their profession as barefoot doctors was a unique modality of China's health care system during the Cultural Revolution. When the revolution ended, the economic reforms placed the barefoot doctors in a bad light. They were negatively perceived and their credibility as health care workers continued to be a major health management issue since the barefoot doctors reflected the strong ideals of the revolution. Despite this criticism from central government and the general public, their professional growth has been encouraged because of the insufficiency of local physicians who can 1 provide appropriate health care for the rural peasants. This study describes their historical evolution in the paraprofessional medical manpower development of China, to explore further directions of primary health care in contemporary China.

Dr. Peress and the downfall of Senator Joseph McCarthy.

McCarthy came down to Camp Kilmer, and to the Army's distress He uncovered a pink-tinted dentist, by the name of Irving Peress. That was the start of the struggle, that was the start of the strife And look at the uproar resulting; O take to the hills for your life!--Anonymous around the Pentagon, 1954.

History of the terror of the communist regime of the Soviet Union in relation to doctors of Soviet Ukraine.

This paper presents information about the victimization of doctors, medical scientists and the staff of scientific and medical schools of soviet Ukraine, during the years from 1919 to 1953. It includes details of 622 doctors who were persecuted, of whom 142 were shot and 337 were deported to concentration camps. It describes the repression of Ukrainian medical scientists, of whom nearly 50 were arrested and 7 were shot. It also gives details of the "Doctors' Plot" of 1952-53, which was initiated by Stalin.

[Not Available]. / [Considerations on some medico-historical prospects]

In the paper a number of problems are discussed from the history of medicine--from ancient times up to the present days. The positive experience is pointed out of the centuries-long development of medicine and its enormous significance for the education and correct thinking of the doctor of today. History of medicine is considered as a living source of an exact ethics and doctrinary behaviour, as a powerful beacon enlightening the present and future of medical practice. The author supports the statement that the marxism-leninism philosophy is the only one securing correct medical thinking and action and the only one that might provide for eliminating the blind doctrinairism and various narrow-minded deviations from the research work and practice.

[Not Available]. / [Two Bulgarian physicians--struggling philosophers-Marxists]

The theoretic concepts and social merits are dealt with of the scarcely known Bulgarian doctors--struggling philosophers-marxists (Dr. Peter Genov, 1880-1923, and dr. Stamen Iliev, 1883-1923). Their bold and never retreating struggle against the bourgeois philosophy and ideology in the field of natural history and sociology is outlined. Both are defensors and supporters of the philosophical and methodological basis of marxism-leninsm during one of the most difficult periods in the developent of Bulgarian and international labour and communist movements.

[Mikhail Bulgakov--a colleague and cult figure]. / Mikhail Bulgakov--kollega og kultforfatter.

Mikhail Bulgakov (1891-1940) was medically qualified, but practised as a doctor only a few years before he launched on a full time career as a writer. His writings are marked by exuberant satire and burlesque phantasy, a genre condemned anti-Sovietic. Throughout his writing life, Bulgakov found it extremely difficult to get his writings published. He did not become known to the reading public inside and outside USSR until 30 years after his death.