From the “family of nations” to Homo Soveticus: Medical biopolitics in the USSR

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Elena Vishlenkova
• Subject Area: Modern and Contemporary History
• Term: since 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 522699240

This project will be the first comprehensive, archive-based history of more than seventy years of Soviet medical biopolitics. Biopolitics are understood as strategies of the modern state aiming at the control of the population and the bodies of its citizens, and medicine is a key element of this endeavor. It provides scientific legitimation as well as a means of social disciplining (through sanitary and hygiene rules, body norms or medical check-ups). The main argument is that in the USSR the regulation of human bodies, of health and diseases was not only central for the project of an alternative modernity; it was also the Soviet social experiment that had the most extensive and lasting impact. However, this success did not take the form of improved life expectancy or the containment of epidemics. Rather, medical biopolitics were meant to promote the cohesion of the Soviet population. They helped merge the “old” ethno-cultural nations of the Tsarist Empire into a “new” civil nation, the Soviet people. National differences were to be overcome not only through Bolshevik ideology, but also through the creation of a New Man. He (and less so: she) has been studied mainly as a cultural-literary figure and heroic ideal. Yet the idea was very much anchored in the bodily practices, physical education and health regimes that were supposed to produce such citizens – i.e., medical biopolitics. But the results were not particularly heroic in the end. The healthy and super-mighty transhuman “Homo Creator” envisioned in the 1920s eventually evolved into a servile and distrustful “Homo Soveticus”. The legacy of these efforts can be seen even today in Russia with its cult of military masculinity – accompanied by indifference towards corona vaccination or political protests. Building on case studies – from genetics to women’s health to public discourses – the project examines how the biosocial goals were put into practice by medical experts and how the Soviet ideal of biopolitical homogenization triggered anti-Soviet nationalisms. Two geographical focuses are set within Russia (Siberia and Tatarstan), and two in former Soviet republics (Latvia and Georgia), where physicians played an important role in the national movements. The results of the project will be published in a monograph. The book will help understand not only the rise of late Soviet nationalisms, but also the spread of racism, the internalization of the rhetoric of body purity and national hygiene. Furthermore, the project aims to establish Soviet biopolitics as a new research field.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants