INTRODUCTION

For historical and geographical reasons, medical ethics in Russia prior to the Revolution of 1917 has distinctive characteristics. As Peter Chaadaev wrote in 1829 “we lived and continue to live only to give a certain important lesson for generations to come which will be able to understand it; in any case, at the present moment we constitute a gap in a moral universe. I cannot but be amazed by this unusual emptiness and uniqueness of our social being” (Chadaaev 1906, 14). For centuries Russia was a backward rural country. Obshina (community) was the basis of social life. One can track from this origin of the emergence to supremacy of the community over the individual, the state over the personality. Such terms as sobornost and soviety (“The Soviet power”) are absent from other European languages (Makshantseva 2001, 112–19). Correlatively, one does not find a Russian analog for privacy – this term simply does not exist in the language.

Christianity was adopted in Russia in 988 in its Byzantine or Orthodox version. From the thirteenth to the fifteen centuries, Mongolian hordes occupied most of the country. These two factors contributed to a prolonged isolation of Russia from the mainstream of European civilization. Complicating matters further, from the fourteenth to the twentieth centuries, Russia was at war 329 of 525 years (Makshantseva 2001, 114). Under these circumstances the value attributed to human life was significantly eroded. Severe spiritual and political censorship hindered the development of secular philosophical thought.