Historian Rustam Alexander, writing about Soviet healthcare, argues that medicine shortages in the USSR were not isolated disruptions but a systemic problem. Prompted by the recent disappearance of essential drugs from Russian pharmacies, he shows that similar situations repeatedly occurred in Soviet times.
One example is a letter sent by a resident of Arkhangelsk to the newspaper Trud in 1974. The man complained that necessary remedies had vanished from pharmacies in both Arkhangelsk and Leningrad, including heparin ointment, and warned that unlike shortages of household goods, the absence of a cheap medicine could lead to a severe worsening of illness.
In the autumn of 1976, during an influenza outbreak in Moscow and other cities, a reporter for the same newspaper searched more than ten pharmacies for interferon and found none, although the epidemic risk had been known in advance. That same year, residents of Krasnodar region filed mass complaints about the lack of validol, potassium permanganate, bandages, and even cotton wool. The newspaper linked this to planning errors, uneven production, and poor delivery.
At times the shortages became almost absurd. In 1973, Ogonyok told the story of a Moscow doctor who could not find lithium carbonate for her patients. The substance was eventually located in a chemical reagents shop opposite the Central Pharmacy, where it was sold not as a medicine but for photographers and pyrotechnicians. Patients and nurses had to divide the powder into proper doses by hand, and some people asked acquaintances to buy lithium in Leningrad, where it was more readily available.
Similar difficulties affected aminazine, one of the first Soviet antipsychotic drugs. People obtained it through personal connections, hospital staff, or the black market. In 1974, Izvestia, after inspecting pharmacies in Tbilisi, found that they refused to dispense or prepare medicines because of shortages of glycerin, iodine, ammonia, and hawthorn extract, even though substantial stocks were sitting in the central warehouse.
As Soviet press reports suggested, the problem lay not only in production but also in distribution: some pharmacies received most of the scarce drugs, while others received almost nothing. The planned pharmaceutical system malfunctioned at every stage, and the chronic lack of medicines fueled the black market and forced patients to search on their own for the drugs they needed.