The History of Abortion Statistics in Russia and the USSR from 1900 to 1991

Abstract

In the USSR and in present-day Russia alike, abortion has always been a sensitive issue. Legalized very early, it later followed the winds of political change. It has also been a perpetual source of conjecture, abortion statistics having been `highly confidential' for a very long time. Although these data are now accessible, foundless estimates continue to appear in the Russian press, and are used to fuel political argument over the contemporary situation. Prior to 1986, when the first complete abortion statistics were published, and with the exception of the yearbooks of 1925 and 1926 which went practically unnoticed in the west, the available figures (C. Tietze, S. Henshaw, 1986) were risky extrapolations based on a handful of scattered survey data. Thanks to Alexandre Avdeev, Alain Blum and Irina Troitskaya, we can now look at the reality of abortion and shake off its mantle of fantasy.