It does in the US too. But I've never met a surgeon that would remove an appendix w/o it. (and are we talking about the vaunted pre-Gorby Russia with healthcare for all?)
It is fucking barbaric to do such a procedure w/o anethesia. --- Dunno how it was in Soviet days. It costs extra now (not much, though). I had an operation on my lower job and was offered with-pain and without-pain options. Anesthsia cost I think 5 bucks.
-It also happened in my country. Until 3 years ago, our public healthcare -system din´t pay for analgesia during delivery (so we had a extremely -high index of cesarean delivery, since women usually didn´t have the -money to pay for analgesia, and weren´t stupid enough to have delivery -withouth analgesia).
Alexandre Fenelon