After the Soviet Union fell apart, Russia ran out of many medicines, so people and businesses started making up their own ways to get drugs—like trading or buying on the black market. The authors say these unofficial systems, not just government rules, helped shape how medicine was sold and distributed in the 1990s.

1

Pro

0

Against

Evidence from Studies

Supporting (1)

1

Community contributions welcome

1

[THE REVIEW OF THE MONOGRAPH BY S. N. ZATRAVKIN, E. A. VISHLENKOVA AND F. V. GENIN "THE ONE'S GAME: THE HISTORY OF PHARMACEUTICAL MARKET IN RUSSIA" (MOSCOW: SHIKO; 2025. 480 p.)].

Narrative Review

2026 Dec 15

The study looked at how people in Russia figured out how to get medicine when the system broke down after the Soviet Union fell, and found that unofficial networks and practices played a big role — just like the claim says.

Contradicting (0)

0

Community contributions welcome

No contradicting evidence found

Gold Standard Evidence Needed

According to GRADE and EBM methodology, here is what ideal scientific evidence would look like to definitively prove or disprove this specific claim, ordered from strongest to weakest evidence.

Source Study

[THE REVIEW OF THE MONOGRAPH BY S. N. ZATRAVKIN, E. A. VISHLENKOVA AND F. V. GENIN "THE ONE'S GAME: THE HISTORY OF PHARMACEUTICAL MARKET IN RUSSIA" (MOSCOW: SHIKO; 2025. 480 p.)].

Score: 1

DOI: 10.32687/0869-866x-2026-34-1-159-161

Similar Assertions

This book is the first to tell the full story of how Russia’s medicine industry rebuilt itself after the Soviet Union fell, showing how it went from chaos to a new market system.

1

0

84%

This book about Russia's drug industry says it got its inside info from talking to dozens of people who worked in the business back in the 1990s — and no one else has used those same interviews before.

1

0

72%