History of pharmacy. The 1992/1993 drug famine: the summands of the collapse

Objective: to conceptualize the phenomenon of the 1992-1993 drug famine in Russia. Information basis. On the basis of publications in the pharmaceutical periodicals, the reference books of the Russian Statistics Agency, the interviews with the participants about events, on the basis of the texts of state reports on the health status of the population and the analytical reports of pharmaceutical companies, the authors of the article identify the quantitative and qualitative measures of hunger. Research approaches and methods. The gathered collection of historical sources is analyzed using the methods of behavioral economics, historical sociology, and neoinstitutionalism. This combination could identify transaction costs in the implementation of government decisions, determine the pattern of drug supply and import, and track an increase in prices and production volumes. The obtained quantitative data show a regression in meeting the country’s need for medicines. Results. The authors of the paper argue that not every drug shortage can be called hunger. A drug famine manifested in a total shortage of medicines in retail sales and in healthcare facilities. Like a food famine, the drug famine took a heavy toll on human lives, and therefore its depth is quite measurable in numbers. Zatravkin and Vishlenkova prove that the reasons for the acute shortage of certain drugs and the total absence of other medicines in 1992-1993 were the specific characteristics of the socialist pharmaceutical industry and the destruction of the Soviet-type economy, the financial deficit of the state budget, the crisis of credit confidence by foreign partners, and government mistakes in regulating the pharmaceutical market.