Soviet Medicine - (Niu Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies) by Frances Lee Bernstein & Christopher Burton & Dan Healey (Hardcover)

About the Book

Thanks to the opening of archives and the forging of exchanges between Russian and Western scholars interested in the history of medicine, it is now possible to write new forms of social and political history in the Soviet medical field. Using the lenses of critical social histories of healthcare and medical science, and looking at both new material from Russian archives and interviews with those who experienced the Soviet health system, the contributors to this volume explore the ways experts and the Soviet state radically reshaped medical provision after the Revolution of 1917.

Soviet Medicine presents the work of an international group of leading scholars. Twelve essays--treating subjects that span the 74-year history of the Soviet Union--cover such diverse topics as how epidemiologists handled plague on the Soviet borderlands in the revolutionary era, how venereologists fighting sexually transmitted disease struggled to preserve the patient's right to secrecy, and how Soviet forensic experts falsified the evidence of the Katyn Forest massacre of 1940. This important volume demonstrates the crucial role played by medical science, practice, and culture in the shaping of a modern Soviet Union and illustrates how the study of Soviet medical history can benefit historians of medicine, science, the Soviet Union, and social and gender historians.

Book Synopsis

Thanks to the opening of archives and the forging of exchanges between Russian and Western scholars interested in the history of medicine, it is now possible to write new forms of social and political history in the Soviet medical field. Using the lenses of critical social histories of healthcare and medical science, and looking at both new material from Russian archives and interviews with those who experienced the Soviet health system, the contributors to this volume explore the ways experts and the Soviet state radically reshaped medical provision after the Revolution of 1917. Soviet Medicine presents the work of an international group of leading scholars. Twelve essays--treating subjects that span the 74-year history of the Soviet Union--cover such diverse topics as how epidemiologists handled plague on the Soviet borderlands in the revolutionary era, how venereologists fighting sexually transmitted disease struggled to preserve the patient's right to secrecy, and how Soviet forensic experts falsified the evidence of the Katyn Forest massacre of 1940. This important volume demonstrates the crucial role played by medical science, practice, and culture in the shaping of a modern Soviet Union and illustrates how the study of Soviet medical history can benefit historians of medicine, science, the Soviet Union, and social and gender historians.

Review Quotes

A significant contribution to the field. It provides very important empirical information as well as intellectual insights on subjects of vital concern to all students of the Soviet period.

--Samuel C. Ramer, Tulane University

Covers a wider range of topics than previous histories of Soviet medicine in English and has the advantage of spanning the entire Soviet period. Most important, the book challenges the field to take medical history more seriously and to think about its larger implications for our understandings of the Soviet past. There is nothing else like it in the field of Soviet medical history.

--Kenneth Pinnow, Allegheny College

About the Author

Frances L. Bernstein is Associate Professor of History at Drew University and author of The Dictatorship of Sex. Christopher Burton is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada. Dan Healey is Reader in the Department of History, Swansea University, and author of Bolshevik Sexual Forensics.