Today, December 1, World AIDS Day Igor Sadreev’s film *Alone* has been released on *Medusa*. This investigative documentary tells the story of the first “patient zero” in the USSR. Simply put, it’s about a man who "brought AIDS to the USSR".
The first cases of HIV in the USSR were officially detected in 1986. They were found among foreigners and Soviet citizens who had returned from abroad. This was a time when very little was known about the virus, and the authorities tried to pretend that “we don’t have anything like that here.” As a result, the issue was almost immediately swept under the rug, with secret reports and classified statistics.
Who is considered the "index" HIV patient?
Technically, no one. In documents from the late Soviet era, there is no figure equivalent to the Western concept of “Patient Zero.” More often, the first recorded group of infected people is mentioned—sailors, students, and people who worked abroad. But the actual first person infected certainly existed earlier; it’s just that doctors hadn’t yet figured out how to diagnose it.
The authorities viewed HIV as a “disease of the decaying West” and associated it with sex education, gay culture, and “deviant behavior.” This contradicted the official ideology, so the issue was simply swept under the rug. As a result, the USSR missed the opportunity—there were no prevention measures, few tests were available, and people were getting infected without understanding what was happening.
Interesting facts from that era
• The first HIV tests were purchased abroad; there were none produced domestically.
• The term “HIV” appeared in the press considerably later than it did in the medical field. Before that, vague terms such as “dangerous infection” were used.
• They conducted random checks on sailors, migrants, and performers—essentially “profiling by occupation.”
• In 1988, the Soviet Union established the Center for AIDS Prevention—one of the last among major countries to do so.
• By the late 1980s, the country already had public awareness campaigns, but they had a very Soviet feel to them: posters with slogans like “Stay alert.”
• Classified reports acknowledged that the infection may have first appeared in the USSR as early as the first half of the 1980s, but there was no direct evidence to support this.
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