A Ghost Textbook on the History of Medicine: A Case Study of the Legacy of a Stalinist Scholarly Canon

Abstract

Utilizing the minutes of preparations of a manuscript textbook on the history of medicine (1948-1953), the authors reconstruct how it was decided to depict the history of world and Russian medicine; in so doing sacralizing the Soviet state and wildly overstating its care for the health of Soviet people. The archival documents allowed the authors of the article to show how the aspirations and interests of the medical elite in the sacralization of their own role encouraged historians of medicine to develop not a scientific, but an epic version of the past and to repress other versions through political accusations and condemnation of colleagues. The textbook, which had been created and discussed for a long time in the 1940s, was never published. Nevertheless, the authors' reconstruction of its aborted conception made it possible to reveal its enduring formulations in later Soviet and even present-day textbooks, and enduring capacity to shape a Soviet style historical imagination in doctors.

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to the anonymous reviewers for their comments and to Ben Eklof, professor of Indiana University, coeditor of the issue, for his many valuable suggestions to improve draft material and help to manage the translation difficulties during the work on our article.

Notes

1 For example, a textbook that has thirteen editions: Sorokina, 1992 (Recommendation by Ministry of Science of Russian Federation); second edition – 1994 (recommendation by Ministry of Health Care); third – tenth editions –2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2009, 2014, 2016, 2016, 2018 (recommendation by Federal Institute of Education for all medical schools).

2 A thorough review of the post-war drift of Soviet historiography in the direction of Russocentrism and nationalism is in the work of Larry Holmes (Holmes, 2012, pp. 78–80, 194–195).

3 The first university textbook on the history of medicine, which talked about the Russian medicine, was edited by M.K. Kuz'min, the chair of the department of the History of Medicine, in 1978.

Additional information

Funding

The article was prepared within the project №. 19-48-04110 supported by Russian Science Foundation and the state assignment of the N.A. Semashko National Research Institute of Public Health № AAAA-A19-119012290152-7.

Notes on contributors

Sergey Zatravkin

Sergey Zatravkin, Doctor of Science in Medicine, Professor of the History of Medicine, Head of the Department of the History of Medicine; Semashko’ Institute of Public Health (Moscow, Russia) and Head Researcher of the A. Poletaev Institute for Theoretical and Historical Studies in the Humanities (IGITI), National Research University Higher School of Economics (Moscow, Russia) Author of the books and articles on history of medicine and science Email address; [email protected] Website: https://www.hse.ru/org/persons/217817885

Elena Vishlenkova

Elena Vishlenkova, Doctor of Science in History, Professor of the History Department and Head Researcher of the A. Poletaev Institute for Theoretical and Historical Studies in the Humanities (IGITI), National Research University Higher School of Economics (Moscow, Russia); Author of the books and articles on university studies, visual culture and educational history of the Russian empire and Soviet Union email address: [email protected] website: https://www.hse.ru/org/persons/10226487