The COVID-19 curtain: Can past communist regimes explain the vaccination divide in Europe?

As of December 2021, all former Communist countries from Central and Eastern Europe were still lagging behind in terms of COVID-19 vaccination rates in Europe. Can institutional legacy explain, at least in part, this heterogeneity in vaccination decisions across Europe? To study this question we exploit novel data from the second wave of the SHARE (Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe) COVID-19 Survey fielded in Summer (2021) that covers older individuals in 27 European countries. First, we document lower COVID-19 vaccine take-up amongst those who were born under Communism in Europe. Next, we turn to reunified Germany to get closer to a causal effect of having lived behind the Iron Curtain. We find that exposure to the Communist regime in East Germany decreased one's probability to get vaccinated against COVID-19 by 8 percentage points and increased that of refusing the vaccine by 4 percentage points. Both effects are large and statistically significant, and they hold when controlling for individual socio-economic and demographic characteristics. We explore several possible mechanisms. The East-West Germany gap does not seem to be explained by differences in the impact of the first wave of the pandemic or in general exposure to vaccines. We find that East Germans have lower social capital than West Germans and that social capital correlates negatively with Covid-10 vaccine uptake, but only a small fraction of the East-West Germany Covid-19 vaccination gap can be explained by our measures of social capital.

Does democracy make taller men? Cross-country European evidence

We study whether a democracy improves a measure of individual wellbeing: human heights. Drawing on individual-level datasets, we test the democracy and height hypothesis using a battery of eight different measures of democracy and we account for several potential confounders, regional and cohort fixed effects. We document that democracy - or its quality during early childhood - shows a strong and positive conditional correlation with male, but not female, adult stature. Our preferred estimates suggest that being born in a democracy increases average male stature from a minimum of 1.33 to a maximum of 2.4 cm. We also show a positive association when democracy increases from childhood to adolescence, and when we adopt measures of existing democratic capital before birth, and at the end of height plasticity in early adulthood. We also document that democracy is associated with a reduction in inequality of heights distribution. Our estimates are driven by period-specific heterogeneity, namely, early democratizations are associated with taller people more than later ones. Results are robust to the inclusion of countries exposed to communism.

Public Health, Democracy, and Transition: Global Evidence and Post-Communism

Democracy is generally associated with governmental accountability, better public policy choices and public health. However, there is limited evidence about how political regime transition impacts public health. We use two samples of the states around the world to trace the impact of regime transition on public health: the first sample comprises 29 post-communist states, along with 20 consolidated democracies, for the period of 1970-2014; the second sample is a subsample of the same 29 post-communist states but only for the period of transition, 1990-2014. We find that the post-communist states experienced some decline in life expectancy in the first few years of transition (1990-1995). Yet, with a steady increase in the measure of democracy from 1995 onwards, life expectancy significantly improved and infant mortality decreased. Therefore, in the long run, democratization has had a positive impact on both the life expectancy and infant mortality of citizens of the post-communist states.

Neurasthenia, psy sciences and the 'great leap forward' in Maoist China

The present study looks into the much-neglected history of neurasthenia in Maoist China in relation to the development of psy sciences. It begins with an examination of the various factors that transformed neurasthenia into a major health issue from the late 1950s to mid-1960s. It then investigates a distinctive culture of therapeutic experiment of neurasthenia during this period, with emphasis on the ways in which psy scientists and medical practitioners manoeuvred in a highly politicized environment. The study concludes with a discussion of the legacy of these neurasthenia studies - in particular, the experiment with the famous 'speedy and synthetic therapy' - and of the implications the present study may have for future historical study of psychiatry and science.

Suggestion, persuasion and work: Psychotherapies in communist Europe

This article traces what recent research and primary sources tell us about psychotherapy in Communist Europe, and how it survived both underground and above the surface. In particular, I will elaborate on the psychotherapeutic techniques that were popular across the different countries and language cultures of the Soviet sphere, with a particular focus upon the Cold War period. This article examines the literature on the mixed fortunes of psychoanalysis and group therapies in the region. More specifically, it focuses upon the therapeutic modalities such as work therapy, suggestion and rational therapy, which gained particular popularity in the Communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe. The latter two approaches had striking similarities with parallel developments in behavioural and cognitive therapies in the West. In part, this was because clinicians on both sides of the 'iron curtain' drew upon shared European traditions from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Nevertheless, this article argues that in the Soviet sphere, those promoting these approaches appropriated socialist thought as a source of inspiration and justification, or at the very least, as a convenient political shield.

War on Two Fronts: The Fight against Parasites in Korea and Vietnam

The Vietnam War has long been regarded as pivotal in the history of the Republic of Korea, although its involvement in this conflict remains controversial. While most scholarship has focused on the political and economic ramifications of the war - and allegations of brutality by Korean troops - few scholars have considered the impact of the conflict upon medicine and public health. This article argues that the war had a transformative impact on medical careers and public health in Korea, and that this can be most clearly seen in efforts to control parasitic diseases. These diseases were a major drain on military manpower and a matter of growing concern domestically. The deployment to Vietnam boosted research into parasitic diseases of all kinds and accelerated the domestic campaign to control malaria and intestinal parasites. It also had a formative impact upon the development of overseas aid.

Imperial Queerness: The U.S. Homophile Press and Constructions of Sexualities in Asia and the Pacific, 1953-1964

This essay examines the ways in which U.S. homophile magazines represented and constructed Asia and the Pacific from 1953 to 1964. Through an analysis of 209 items that referenced Asia and the Pacific in ONE, Mattachine Review, and the Ladder, the essay argues that U.S. homophiles referenced the region in three primary ways: first, to create relationships, allies, and exchanges with people living in the region; second, to highlight the inferiority of the East and superiority of the West; and, third, to reveal the cross-cultural and transhistorical nature of homosexuality. These references were influenced by Orientalism, colonialism, and the Cold War, which framed Asia and the Pacific as both sexually and culturally backward, but also as a potential tourist destination for gay men and lesbian women.

Therapeutic Fascism: re-educating communists in Nazi-occupied Serbia, 1942-44

This article probes the relationship between psychoanalysis and right-wing authoritarianism, and analyses a unique psychotherapeutic institution established by Serbia's World War II collaborationist regime. The extraordinary Institute for compulsory re-education of high-school and university students affiliated with the Communist resistance movement emerged in the context of a brutal civil war and violent retaliations against Communist activists, but its openly psychoanalytic orientation was even more astonishing. In order to stem the rapid spread of Communism, the collaborationist state, led by its most extreme fascistic elements, officially embraced psychotherapy, the 'talking cure' and Freudianism, and conjured up its own theory of mental pathology and trauma - one that directly contradicted the Nazi concepts of society and the individual. In the course of the experiment, Serbia's collaborationists moved away from the hitherto prevailing organicist, biomedical model of mental illness, and critiqued traditional psychiatry's therapeutic pessimism.

Weight discrepancy and body appreciation among women in Poland and Britain

Previous studies have suggested that the process of transmigration has detrimental effects on the body image of migrants relative to women in the country of origin. In the present work, we examined the body image of Polish migrants in Britain (n=153), Polish women in Poland (n=153), and a comparison group of British White women (n=110). Participants completed a measure of actual-ideal weight discrepancy and the Body Appreciation Scale (BAS). Contrary to hypotheses, our results showed that Polish women in Poland had significantly higher weight discrepancy than their counterparts in Britain. Further analyses showed that the BAS reduced to two dimensions among Polish participants, with Polish participants in Poland having significantly lower body appreciation than Polish migrants. We suggest that the sociocultural changes that have taken place in Eastern Europe may place women in that region at relatively high risk for developing negative body image.

Polish migration policies: challenges and dilemmas

Following a brief historical overview of Polish migration policies and trends, current post-Communism migration is examined. The focus is on "two...types of Polish emigration.... The first, continuing over the last two decades, is temporary labor emigration, when emigres spend two to three years (especially overseas) or a few months (in Western Europe) working outside of Poland. The second model of movement of Poles abroad is short-term private business excursions to different regions of Europe and Asia." The author examines "which migration policies will be beneficial to Poland's political and economic systems, as the country enters a new phase of development."

The politics of reproduction in Ceausescu's Romania: a case study in political culture

The author analyzes "the politics of reproduction in Romania...[in order] to comprehend better the...legacy of the Ceausescu era.... This study also enables us to focus on the social implications and human costs of restrictive reproductive legislation and policies, especially as they impact on the lives of women and children.... In this report, I will explore the relationship between official rhetoric, policy, and everyday practice through an analysis of the politics of reproduction during Ceausescu's reign. I will discuss Ceausescu's pronatalist policies, and comment on the human dramas born of them: illegal abortion, child abandonment, infant AIDS, and international adoption."

The demographic responses to famine: the case of China 1958-61

The author uses recently available official data from China to examine the demographic impact of the previously unpublicized famine that occurred during the period 1958-1961, after the Communists came to power. "Over the four years..., China suffered some 25-30 million more deaths and experienced some 30-35 million fewer births than might have been expected under normal conditions."

Health education in Cuba: a preface

Critics of health education policy in the United States fault it for ignoring the unequal ability of Americans to adopt more healthy behavior and for underestimating the social, economic, and political causes of disease. Many critics hypothesize that health education in a less bourgeois society would be more equitable and less individualistic. This article tests that hypothesis by analyzing the current Cuban health education program aimed at the reduction of chronic diseases. It argues that while the Cuban program appears to be every bit as individualistic as the North American program, theirs may not be comparable to ours because Cubans are less likely than Americans to reify the state. At least among supporters of the revolution, Cubans do not automatically make a conceptual distinction between the individual and the society. Discussions about responsibility for disease prevention take on new meaning in this light.