The Soviet export of sleep therapy to the Eastern Bloc countries after the Pavlovian session in 1950

Following the decisions of the scientific session 'For the further flourishing of Pavlov's doctrine' of the Academy of Sciences and the Academy of Medical Sciences of the USSR in 1950, important reforms were introduced under political control in the USSR and the Eastern Bloc countries. Research plans of science institutions and medical university curricula were changed according to these decisions. Scientists and university professors were forced to adopt courses in Pavlovian doctrine. The reforms affected the work of hospitals and sanatoriums, whose staff was instructed to reform the everyday practice. Regarding the clinical work, the session had two main consequences: the introduction of the so-called Curative-Protective Hospital Regime and the introduction of sleep therapy for the treatment of psychiatric diseases, hypertension, ulcers, rheumatism, and other diseases. As a widespread therapeutic method, it was established in the 1950s in the USSR and in the countries of the Eastern Bloc as a general reform of health politics. Political (Soviet influence), ideological (dialectical materialism), theoretical (Pavlovian teaching), and practical medical considerations intersected in the implementation of the therapeutic methods which made patients objects of this treatment. This study explores the process of dissemination and establishment of sleep therapy in Bulgarian hospital practice based on the hospital documentation of the Pediatrics Clinic at the Medical Academy and the Clinic of Cardiac Diseases in Sofia in 1952-1953.