Les démocraties populaires d'Europe de l'Est ont-elles protégé la santé de leurs travailleurs? La Tchécoslovaquie socialiste face à la silicose

Abstract

Did East-European people's democracies protect their workers’ health? Socialist Czechoslovakia and silicosis

The article studies how Socialist Czechoslovakia coped with silicosis, one of the worst industrial diseases in the twentieth century. The regime claimed to guarantee workers’ sanitary protection through generous legal arrangements and an ambitious network of industrial medicine. It also glorified its financial compensation scheme and its active policies of occupational rehabilitation of diseased workers. Despite these pretensions, post-war mechanization contributed to a quick degradation of health conditions in the mines. Silicosis became a mass disease while prevention, labour organization, radiological detection, dust measurement and statistical investigations were largely ineffective. In the context of labour shortage, young unskilled workers drawn from the countryside and political dissidents were employed for high-risk operations in the mines. In the midst of the Cold War, Czechoslovakia tried to be a kind of balance between the International Labour Office and the Soviet Bloc but it could only regain its role within the important international conferences during the /Détente/. By outlining a comparison with France, the article also offers a more general reflection about health in the workplace in the countries of the former socialist bloc.