Suffering as a "Social Leveler"

As we mentioned in class last week and as numerous people have pointed out on their blog posts, the idea that the government incentivized people to get worse in order to "qualify" for healthcare is frustrating. It is a problem that the Ukranian government dealt with after Chernobyl, and it is a problem many countries deal with in today's political discourse. While I felt that this was, once again, one of the most striking themes of this week's reading, I was also drawn to the small part of Chapter 4 in which Petryna discusses how suffering functioned as a "social leveler." Petryna explains that "rural workers, industrial workers, professionals, intelligensia - laborers of unequal status under state socialism - became parts of a novel national collectivity of Chernobyl sufferers transcending class, educationa, and employments categories" (83). This idea was fascinating to me, especially in light of the idea that we discussed last class that Ukraine was an emerging sovereign state. We compared the Ukrainian governments actions with those of the Soviet Union, and we raised the question of the extent to which Ukraine's government made these healthcare provisions because they believed they were just, or so that they could establish legitimacy as a sovereign state. I believe in some combination of both, but I also believe that the unintended consequences of suffering as a "social leveler" played a significant role. When new states become independent, the most important indicator of its future success is a shared identity and a shared belief system. That shared identity is one of the major reasons why I believe the United States still uses the same governmental framework outlined in Constitution that was written over 200 years ago. In Ukraine, I would be very interested to probe deeper into the idea about whether this shared bond over suffering mitigated social class distinctions enough so that it was easier to become an independent and unified state.