Sanitation

Sanitation. The promotion and maintenance of health by applying principles of hygiene, in order to prevent disease and enhance the well-being of the environment. Sanitation in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic was governed from Moscow, with delegated authority to the republic, municipal, and rural levels. In theory public health measures were to address separately industrial sanitation, sanitation of the home and community, radiation sanitation, food sanitation, and sanitation of schools. Some of these programs were carried out by sanitary-epidemiological stations, but there was no identifiable government regulatory organ to take responsibility or control. In theory Soviet sanitary legislation also provided for the sanitary protection of water reservoirs, air, soil, and borders. In reality it was difficult to obtain an accurate assessment of the sanitation situation in Soviet Ukraine. After the Chornobyl nuclear disaster and with the implementation of economic reforms, the government began to acknowledge that there were enormous problems in cleaning up the environment and the country’s establishments. Among others the Green Party of Ukraine put forward as its platform an ecologically clean, nuclear-free Ukraine.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Nikitin, A. (ed). Sbornik rabot sanitarnoi inspektsii na Ukraine (Kharkiv 1923)
Nikitin, A.; Pasternak, A. (eds). Sbornik rabot sanitarnoi inspektsii na Ukraine (Kharkiv 1924)
Medychno-sanitarna sprava v mis'kykh selyshchakh Ukraïny na 1 zhovtnia 1924 r. (Kharkiv 1925)
Materiialy sanitarnoï statystyky Ukraïny, 1876–1914 rr. (Kharkiv 1926)
Tomilin, S. Sproba sanitarnoho opysu Ukraïny (Kharkiv 1928)
Kaliuzhnyi, D.; Grando, A. (eds). Materialy k istorii gigieny i sanitarii na Ukraine, 2 vols (Kyiv 1962)

Paul Dzul

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 4 (1993).]