After the October Revolution of November 1917, Semashko served as head of the Health Department of the Moscow City Council, and from July 1918 to 1930 he held the post of Commissar of Health of the RSFSR. Under Semashko's leadership, work was carried out to combat epidemics, the foundations of Soviet public health were laid, and a system of protection of motherhood and childhood and the health of children and adolescents and a network of medical research institutes were created.

In the Semashko model, medical services are provided by a hierarchy of state institutions under the supervision of Ministry of Healthcare and are financed from the national budget.[1] For the country's citizens, medical services are free and equal, with an emphasis on social hygiene and prevention of infectious diseases.[1] The model features publicly owned medical facilities, salaried health workers, large providers of primary healthcare and an exceptionally high degree of governmental administration, providing a universal healthcare.

Also he was apparently a big proponent of gay right in the USSR.

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[–] HexBeara@hexbear.net 18 points 1 year ago (9 children)

I just skimmed around (sorry not reading it all right now looking for funny hahas) but it's very cool to see an og commie not have the knee jerk reaction to associate homosexuality with bourgeoisie decadence. If ever I speak to a fellow member of the alphabet mafia and talk about socialism/communism and they say yada yada homophobia, I can now properly counter without having to just use modern day Cuba as an example. Very cool.

[–] Diuretic_Materialism@hexbear.net 15 points 1 year ago (8 children)

If you skim the Wikipedia page for "homosexuality in Russia", even they admit many of the early Bolsheviks had pretty progressive views on gay rights for the time. Issue was they only really ever had luck enacting anything in major city centers like Moscow and St Petersburg. Turns out you can just magically make an undeveloped, mostly rural agrarian society become socially progressive by just willing it to be.

[–] HexBeara@hexbear.net 7 points 1 year ago (7 children)

Hell yeah. Why did Stalin roll it back though?

[–] JoeByeThen@hexbear.net 4 points 1 year ago

I think it was the Stalin Proles of the Round Table episode of RevLeft where they posited a possibility I found interesting in that it may have been a form of infighting or personal attacks within Stalin's administration. So and So's Son is homosexual and I can't attack So and So directly, but I can make his life more difficult and his existence more precarious kind of thing.

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