FORMER SOVIET CITIZENS' ATTITUDES TOWARD THE SOVIET, THE GERMAN AND THE AMERICAN MEDICAL SYSTEMS.

In the course of a study of the medical profession in Soviet society undertaken as part of a larger project on the Soviet Social System by the Russian Research Center, it was decided to tap former Soviet citizens' attitudes as patients toward the Soviet system of medical care and the Soviet physician. Refugees were asked to fill in a medical questionnaire in Russian. Two-thirds of these were administered in Munich and the rest, in New York. There can be no question but that the use of refugees as informants presents methodological problems. Disaffected people are hardly the type to give the West an objective picture of Soviet society. Moreover, there is often a suspicion that refugees tend to flatter Western inquirers by telling them what they think will please them, rather than the truth about the Soviet system. The present paper is limited to delineating certain meaningful patterns within the sample at hand. Finally, as will be seen below, if it is assumed that the refugee sample was strongly and consistently biased against the Soviet Union and its institutions, or that it consistently tended to flatter the U.S. and its institutions. then this assumption is certainly not borne out by the evidence.