Arstide töölesuunamine Eesti NSVs

Mandatory appointment of medical graduates in the Soviet Estonia

Abstract

From 1930ies the graduates of Soviet facilities of higher education
were appointed mandatorily for five years to employments prescribed
by the state. In 1948 this period was diminished to three years.
The process of distributing „young specialists“ was to be run by the
universities and institutes themselves, an obligation demanding a lot
of administrative energy. In 1946 the practice was introduced also in
Estonia. Here under special scrutiny occurred the medical profession,
as the Soviet state had grand plans concerning the rearrangement of
the public health system of this recently annexed territory.
The practice of mandatory appointment included controversies
– on one hand there were positions and locations preferred by the
graduates and on the other there were these preferred by the state.
During the more than 40 years during which the system of mandatory
appointments existed, the state practiced different methods
to succumb the graduates under its will. These extended from the
draconic measures taken during the Stalinist era to the rather loose
atmosphere in the final years of the Soviet Empire. The practice ended
in 1990 during the era of Perestroika.