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A Gulag orvosai
Orvosi ellátás a büntetőtáborokban, ahol az igazságtalanság, a szenvedés és a halál uralkodik? Bármilyen meglepő, a szovjet Gulag, amely 1930–53 között 18 millió ember munkaerejének kizsákmányolásáért és 2,5 millió haláláért volt felelős, mintegy 10 ezer orvost, ápolót és felcsert foglalkoztatott, hogy a fogvatartottak egészségügyi ellátását biztosítsa. Valójában persze azért alkalmazta őket, hogy az utak építésén, a fakitermelésben, a bányákban rettenetes körülmények között dolgozó, végletesen kimerült, lesoványodott, beteg rabokat életben tartsák, és további munkavégzésre kényszerítsék.
Dan Healey történész a részben szintén fogoly egészségügyi személyzet élettörténetein keresztül mutatja be, hogyan küzdöttek az orvosok és a nővérek nap mint nap az elnyomó hatalommal, az ellátási hiányokkal és a teljes elszigeteltséggel. Hogyan alapítottak kórházakat, kezeltek betegségeket, gondoztak és tápláltak pácienseket, végeztek kutatásokat, neveltek tanítványokat, miközben maguk is megpróbáltak életben maradni. Az életben maradásuk pedig sokszor azon múlott, hogyan döntenek: őrzőik hatalmának és érdekeinek megfelelően engedelmeskednek vagy orvosi szakértelmük és etikájuk alapján cselekszenek? A kettő kizárta egymást. Ettől is olyan megrázó, egyben felszabadító emberi történeteiket olvasni.
Dan Healey történész a részben szintén fogoly egészségügyi személyzet élettörténetein keresztül mutatja be, hogyan küzdöttek az orvosok és a nővérek nap mint nap az elnyomó hatalommal, az ellátási hiányokkal és a teljes elszigeteltséggel. Hogyan alapítottak kórházakat, kezeltek betegségeket, gondoztak és tápláltak pácienseket, végeztek kutatásokat, neveltek tanítványokat, miközben maguk is megpróbáltak életben maradni. Az életben maradásuk pedig sokszor azon múlott, hogyan döntenek: őrzőik hatalmának és érdekeinek megfelelően engedelmeskednek vagy orvosi szakértelmük és etikájuk alapján cselekszenek? A kettő kizárta egymást. Ettől is olyan megrázó, egyben felszabadító emberi történeteiket olvasni.
424 pages, Hardcover
Published October 2, 2025
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
March 25, 2024
Thoroughly researched and supported by interviews, reminiscences, and memoirs, THE GULAG DOCTORS: LIFE, DEATH, AND THE MEDICINE IN STALIN'S LABOUR CAMP opens a new page in the development of the Gulag topic.
Have you ever thought of a Soviet labor camp as an apprenticeship spot or a career booster? Have you ever imagined conferences of medical professionals held amidst the crushing brutality of a mining camp? Have you ever wondered where prisoners with psychiatric disorders went? Dan Healey shatters the fixed, negative image of the Gulag by addressing the understudied topic of medicine and medical workers, free or imprisoned, within the camp system. Arguing with Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, an author of a well-known trilogy, Dan Healey shows that medicine, even advanced medicine like psychiatry, did exist, and people practicing it did have human faces.
One of the NKVD's goals in Gulag expansion was exploring the farthest reaches of Russia and searching for helpful fossil fuels. Medical professionals, voluntarily or involuntarily, followed explorers and built hospitals from scratch. Work assignment commissions sent medical institutes' graduates from Leningrad and Moscow to Magadan and Ukhta. Finally, capable prisoners with no prior experience in the medical field could learn the craft on the spot, and some continued their medical careers after the end of their terms.
Dan Healey pays close attention to how doctors and their contributions to the cities' founding are remembered. He interviewed witnesses and witnesses' children, traveled around Russia's far east and north, and talked with historians on the spot. The book THE GULAG DOCTORS conveys a disturbing yet logical message that people's memory may be distorted, some facts suppressed, to fit into the picture suitable for current political discourse.
The author couldn't have chosen a better time for his book's publication, as Russia is closing its archives to foreigners and banning historical societies. I assume, the research isn't meant for an ordinary reader, especially since the first 20-25 percent of the book uses the academic style with its heavy constructions. However, as the narrative progresses and different medical aspects, be it psychiatry or prisoners' exploitation in work with radioactive material, come into focus, the language 'softens,' and one may find himself/herself/themselves unable to put the book down. At least some - in the best case, a deep - knowledge of Soviet history is required to benefit from this seminal research.
I received an advanced copy through Netgalley, and I'm leaving this review voluntarily.
Have you ever thought of a Soviet labor camp as an apprenticeship spot or a career booster? Have you ever imagined conferences of medical professionals held amidst the crushing brutality of a mining camp? Have you ever wondered where prisoners with psychiatric disorders went? Dan Healey shatters the fixed, negative image of the Gulag by addressing the understudied topic of medicine and medical workers, free or imprisoned, within the camp system. Arguing with Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, an author of a well-known trilogy, Dan Healey shows that medicine, even advanced medicine like psychiatry, did exist, and people practicing it did have human faces.
One of the NKVD's goals in Gulag expansion was exploring the farthest reaches of Russia and searching for helpful fossil fuels. Medical professionals, voluntarily or involuntarily, followed explorers and built hospitals from scratch. Work assignment commissions sent medical institutes' graduates from Leningrad and Moscow to Magadan and Ukhta. Finally, capable prisoners with no prior experience in the medical field could learn the craft on the spot, and some continued their medical careers after the end of their terms.
Dan Healey pays close attention to how doctors and their contributions to the cities' founding are remembered. He interviewed witnesses and witnesses' children, traveled around Russia's far east and north, and talked with historians on the spot. The book THE GULAG DOCTORS conveys a disturbing yet logical message that people's memory may be distorted, some facts suppressed, to fit into the picture suitable for current political discourse.
The author couldn't have chosen a better time for his book's publication, as Russia is closing its archives to foreigners and banning historical societies. I assume, the research isn't meant for an ordinary reader, especially since the first 20-25 percent of the book uses the academic style with its heavy constructions. However, as the narrative progresses and different medical aspects, be it psychiatry or prisoners' exploitation in work with radioactive material, come into focus, the language 'softens,' and one may find himself/herself/themselves unable to put the book down. At least some - in the best case, a deep - knowledge of Soviet history is required to benefit from this seminal research.
I received an advanced copy through Netgalley, and I'm leaving this review voluntarily.
May 2, 2024
Not an easy read in any sense, but the research gone into this is incredible. An important book for various reasons, I think the most important being that it continues to take the history into the future.
There is ample personal detail about the doctors in this book - how they dealt with camp life and the system. How in this particular evil, they chose to do a little bit of good at personal risk.
But of course, it's also an important portrayal of Stalin's regime and how people, no matter how intelligent and valuable to society, were only suitable for hard physical labor that likely killed them when they happened to speak against the Soviet.
In cases you could see how one human went from a prisoner being the victim of and hating the system, to making their way to a position of comfort - e.g. no longer in the mines or hard labor, and instead to a position of a nurse. Once a nurse, they settled into it, some even becoming doctors later in life, and thus becoming a cog in the system. In a sense, they paid the good deed done to them forward by helping others, but at the same time, the system was not so bad to them anymore so why shake the status quo. I know, it's a bit harsh, but it is what it is.
It never ceases to amaze me how humans alone can make this world a hell on earth. It never ceases to amaze me how every now and again there is one human who seems to garner a mass following, or causes a mass hysteria that transcends generations... and all of it to do horrible things. These "great" leaders who are an immovable tank in the face of the few who will try to fight it... secretly, silently, at great risk, by helping. I mean, mind blowing.
Anyway... some quotes:
"In Berzin's first year as a Dalstroi chief executive, he delivered half a tonne of gold; the rates climbed dramatically in the mid 1930s, until in 1937 alone Dalstroi gave 51.4 tonnes to the Soviet state. Dalstroi's gold fed Stalin's Five-Year-Plan hunger for imported Western technology to fuel industrialisation. It also fed the Berzin team's love of flashy cars: the Dalstroi chief drove a Rolls Royce, and other officials brought - to this roadless corner of Eurasia - at least one all-terrain Citroen and a Mercedes. Yet as late as 1939 Magadan's Sanotel only had one automobile at its disposal for ambulance duties."
*
"The Gulag made some prisoners so desperate to be ill that they literally became mentally ill."
*
"'You're not mentally ill,' he said to me softly and assuredly. 'You are in a reactive condition tied to extraordinary psychic burdening. Do not make anything up: there's no need to play at being mad. I do not intend to send you back. Act naturally and do not do anything stupid.' I looked at Sokolovsky with mistrust. When you have seen so much evil from people it is hard to believe in the benevolence and noble intentions of a stranger. I was 25 years old."
*
"In Glazov's own words: 'The Sangorodok was not so much a hospital, as a throng of the dying. A transport of prisoners arrived with many dead, and he notes how their frozen remains made a grim impression: These corpses were brought to us in the morgue. In the morning we were to conduct several autopsies. We entered the morgue; it was crowded with frozen corpses. [...] Some of the dead were standing on their legs and leaned against a warm stove. The sight of reclining corpses surprised no one, but the dead standing on their feet and warming up by the stove was unusual and unpleasant.'"
There is ample personal detail about the doctors in this book - how they dealt with camp life and the system. How in this particular evil, they chose to do a little bit of good at personal risk.
But of course, it's also an important portrayal of Stalin's regime and how people, no matter how intelligent and valuable to society, were only suitable for hard physical labor that likely killed them when they happened to speak against the Soviet.
In cases you could see how one human went from a prisoner being the victim of and hating the system, to making their way to a position of comfort - e.g. no longer in the mines or hard labor, and instead to a position of a nurse. Once a nurse, they settled into it, some even becoming doctors later in life, and thus becoming a cog in the system. In a sense, they paid the good deed done to them forward by helping others, but at the same time, the system was not so bad to them anymore so why shake the status quo. I know, it's a bit harsh, but it is what it is.
It never ceases to amaze me how humans alone can make this world a hell on earth. It never ceases to amaze me how every now and again there is one human who seems to garner a mass following, or causes a mass hysteria that transcends generations... and all of it to do horrible things. These "great" leaders who are an immovable tank in the face of the few who will try to fight it... secretly, silently, at great risk, by helping. I mean, mind blowing.
Anyway... some quotes:
"In Berzin's first year as a Dalstroi chief executive, he delivered half a tonne of gold; the rates climbed dramatically in the mid 1930s, until in 1937 alone Dalstroi gave 51.4 tonnes to the Soviet state. Dalstroi's gold fed Stalin's Five-Year-Plan hunger for imported Western technology to fuel industrialisation. It also fed the Berzin team's love of flashy cars: the Dalstroi chief drove a Rolls Royce, and other officials brought - to this roadless corner of Eurasia - at least one all-terrain Citroen and a Mercedes. Yet as late as 1939 Magadan's Sanotel only had one automobile at its disposal for ambulance duties."
*
"The Gulag made some prisoners so desperate to be ill that they literally became mentally ill."
*
"'You're not mentally ill,' he said to me softly and assuredly. 'You are in a reactive condition tied to extraordinary psychic burdening. Do not make anything up: there's no need to play at being mad. I do not intend to send you back. Act naturally and do not do anything stupid.' I looked at Sokolovsky with mistrust. When you have seen so much evil from people it is hard to believe in the benevolence and noble intentions of a stranger. I was 25 years old."
*
"In Glazov's own words: 'The Sangorodok was not so much a hospital, as a throng of the dying. A transport of prisoners arrived with many dead, and he notes how their frozen remains made a grim impression: These corpses were brought to us in the morgue. In the morning we were to conduct several autopsies. We entered the morgue; it was crowded with frozen corpses. [...] Some of the dead were standing on their legs and leaned against a warm stove. The sight of reclining corpses surprised no one, but the dead standing on their feet and warming up by the stove was unusual and unpleasant.'"
March 30, 2024
The Gulag Doctors: Life, Death and Medicine in Stalin's Labour Camps by Dan Healey a Canadian and English Slavist.
Dan Healey delves into the history of the atrocities which not only exploited doctors and nurses but prisoners too who had to endure surviving at Stalin's Gulag camp. From 1930 to 1953 and 18.000,000 people passed through and roughly 1,600.000 died through malnutrion, exhaustion, forced labour and preventable diseases.
These times were known as The Great Terror or Purge of of 1936 by Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin. Anyone who publicly disagreed or considered to be a threat to Stalin would either be executed or sent to a Gulag camp even though many were completely innocent. Around 750,000 people were executed during the Great Terror which ended in 1938. More than a million survivors were sent to forced labour camps known as Gulags.
Statistics showed there were 15.3 doctors per 10,00 Gulag prisoners. Dan Healey draws upon records of 35 mid level Gulag medical staff, 19 nurses, of whom were freely hired (this meant that it was there choice to work at Gulag camp), 7 prison feldshers (medical assistants), 5 orderlies, 4 other workers, Pharmacists and lab assistants were excluded in records also dentists and vetinary staff in these collections.
This book opened my eyes to how Stalin and his followers tried to keep atrocities which took place in Gulag camps hidden by ensuring everyone who worked in the hospital camp sign a non-disclosure agreement.
Prisoners and rabbits were used as guinea pigs in the trials of radiation treatment in order to promote spas within the camps. Prisoners and doctors were initially working without any protective clothing or gloves hence exposing themselves to radiation diseases such as cancer, skin burns and cardiovascular.
Some prisoners had to work in mines, timber felling, oil and gas also the introduction of radioactive spas and ended up with bronchial infections, cancer and heart problems due to failures to comply with hygiene standards. Doctors who tried to give respite to prisoners who were overworked and underfed through medical tufta (work rota) were overruled by their superiors.
Doctors even resorted to bartering for medical supplies from vets in order to treat patients as medical supplies were in short supply. Some doctors did not have a conscience as they sent prisoners who were deemed unfit b back to hard labour in forests or mines.
NKVD - The secret Police had a lot to do with getting trumped up charges of medical doctors who were in training to become prisoner doctors within gulag camps.
Feldshers - known as medical assistants, Sanchast - known as medical unit, Checkist known as member of secret police agency. Zeks - known as not free prisoners more likely criminals. Sanitary known as hygiene.
Beyond the barbed wire was the point of no return as it was the morgue where the dead from Gulag would be mutilated in the name of science or just through pure brutality by their own kind who worked at the morgue.
These memorrabila was gathered by the grown children of ex prisoners who wanted to reveal what went on behind the barbed wire.
Dan Healey delves into the history of the atrocities which not only exploited doctors and nurses but prisoners too who had to endure surviving at Stalin's Gulag camp. From 1930 to 1953 and 18.000,000 people passed through and roughly 1,600.000 died through malnutrion, exhaustion, forced labour and preventable diseases.
These times were known as The Great Terror or Purge of of 1936 by Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin. Anyone who publicly disagreed or considered to be a threat to Stalin would either be executed or sent to a Gulag camp even though many were completely innocent. Around 750,000 people were executed during the Great Terror which ended in 1938. More than a million survivors were sent to forced labour camps known as Gulags.
Statistics showed there were 15.3 doctors per 10,00 Gulag prisoners. Dan Healey draws upon records of 35 mid level Gulag medical staff, 19 nurses, of whom were freely hired (this meant that it was there choice to work at Gulag camp), 7 prison feldshers (medical assistants), 5 orderlies, 4 other workers, Pharmacists and lab assistants were excluded in records also dentists and vetinary staff in these collections.
This book opened my eyes to how Stalin and his followers tried to keep atrocities which took place in Gulag camps hidden by ensuring everyone who worked in the hospital camp sign a non-disclosure agreement.
Prisoners and rabbits were used as guinea pigs in the trials of radiation treatment in order to promote spas within the camps. Prisoners and doctors were initially working without any protective clothing or gloves hence exposing themselves to radiation diseases such as cancer, skin burns and cardiovascular.
Some prisoners had to work in mines, timber felling, oil and gas also the introduction of radioactive spas and ended up with bronchial infections, cancer and heart problems due to failures to comply with hygiene standards. Doctors who tried to give respite to prisoners who were overworked and underfed through medical tufta (work rota) were overruled by their superiors.
Doctors even resorted to bartering for medical supplies from vets in order to treat patients as medical supplies were in short supply. Some doctors did not have a conscience as they sent prisoners who were deemed unfit b back to hard labour in forests or mines.
NKVD - The secret Police had a lot to do with getting trumped up charges of medical doctors who were in training to become prisoner doctors within gulag camps.
Feldshers - known as medical assistants, Sanchast - known as medical unit, Checkist known as member of secret police agency. Zeks - known as not free prisoners more likely criminals. Sanitary known as hygiene.
Beyond the barbed wire was the point of no return as it was the morgue where the dead from Gulag would be mutilated in the name of science or just through pure brutality by their own kind who worked at the morgue.
These memorrabila was gathered by the grown children of ex prisoners who wanted to reveal what went on behind the barbed wire.
March 9, 2024
An academic study of medical workers (including doctors) in the Soviet Gulag. Due to the nature of the sources available, Healey tends to focus on specific workers in each section rather than giving a more comprehensive overview. I found it interesting, although occasionally dry, but it's very firmly focused on a specific aspect of Gulag life rather than the Gulag itself; if I hadn't read a lot of more general works - Anne Applebaum's history of the Gulag, Solzhenitsyn, Varlam Shalamov's Gulag stories, Evgenia Ginzburg's memoirs - I would have been totally adrift. Healey does expect a certain amount of familiarity with that source material also, and doesn't revisit much of it - very little time is devoted to the sections of any of the "famous" memoirs which touch on the medical facilities and personnel, Healey is focused on his own sources and research.
Overall, I would classify this as "interesting but not approachable" - if you're interested in the Gulag and have read a lot about it, this is worth reading and may be interesting to you, particularly given that with the shutdown of Memorial and the closing of archives in Russia this kind of research isn't going to be done again anytime soon, but if you don't have that background with the subject, you're better off reading a more comprehensive history of the Gulag or specific memoirs for a more humanized approach.
I received an ARC for free but opinions are my own.
Overall, I would classify this as "interesting but not approachable" - if you're interested in the Gulag and have read a lot about it, this is worth reading and may be interesting to you, particularly given that with the shutdown of Memorial and the closing of archives in Russia this kind of research isn't going to be done again anytime soon, but if you don't have that background with the subject, you're better off reading a more comprehensive history of the Gulag or specific memoirs for a more humanized approach.
I received an ARC for free but opinions are my own.
March 13, 2024
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.
So while this was a book that I did not finish, I cannot give it a rating based on that.
The reason I decided it was not for me was because it was more of a complete research book and not quite a story or book you can easily follow.
If you are looking for a cohesive story to follow this is not it.
But for someone who is in research and history then this is for you. It is extremely well researched and documented with information that is no longer able to be accessed.
So while this was a book that I did not finish, I cannot give it a rating based on that.
The reason I decided it was not for me was because it was more of a complete research book and not quite a story or book you can easily follow.
If you are looking for a cohesive story to follow this is not it.
But for someone who is in research and history then this is for you. It is extremely well researched and documented with information that is no longer able to be accessed.
May 23, 2024
'The Gulag Doctors: Life, Death, and Medicine in Stalin's Labour Camps' is a brilliantly researched book by Dan Healey. Because of the disturbing content, this book is a difficult read. Based on interviews conducted with those who lived this fate or their relatives. Between 1930 and 1953, approximately 18,000,000 people were housed in these Russian Labor Camps. This would be referred to as the Purge of 1936 by Stalin. A person who publicly disagreed or was considered a threat would either be executed or sent to a Gulag camp. Innocence was irrelevant.
In the camp system, both free and imprisoned medical workers were forced to work. Prisoners without medical training became apprentices and learned about medicine during their imprisonment.
This is utterly incomprehensible, "The Gulag made some prisoners so desperate to be ill that they literally became mentally ill." There was no compassion for human life. Once, prisoners arrived at the camp dead and frozen solid. "A transport of prisoners arrived with many dead, and he notes how their frozen remains made a grim impression..."
Some prisoners were employed in the mining industry, logging, and oil and gas extraction. Furthermore, they were exposed to radiation, which eventually led to heart problems, cancer, and infections. For furthering medicine, many prisoners were experimented on.
I have just given you a very brief overview of the book. The author did an excellent job gathering the information for this book, as I mentioned earlier. This is a book I would recommend.
In the camp system, both free and imprisoned medical workers were forced to work. Prisoners without medical training became apprentices and learned about medicine during their imprisonment.
This is utterly incomprehensible, "The Gulag made some prisoners so desperate to be ill that they literally became mentally ill." There was no compassion for human life. Once, prisoners arrived at the camp dead and frozen solid. "A transport of prisoners arrived with many dead, and he notes how their frozen remains made a grim impression..."
Some prisoners were employed in the mining industry, logging, and oil and gas extraction. Furthermore, they were exposed to radiation, which eventually led to heart problems, cancer, and infections. For furthering medicine, many prisoners were experimented on.
I have just given you a very brief overview of the book. The author did an excellent job gathering the information for this book, as I mentioned earlier. This is a book I would recommend.
May 3, 2026
Kívülről, és időbeli távlatból szemlélve egyszerűen rá lehetne sütni a Gulagon dolgozókra, hogy egy elnyomó és kizsákmányoló rendszer cinkosai voltak, azonban A Gulag orvosai című könyv számomra elsősorban ezt az egyébként meg nem fogalmazott sztereotípiát rombolta le. Mert elsősorban fogoly orvosokból és egészségügyi személyzetből álltak ezek a kórházak, másrészt pedig a szabadon elszegődötteknek nevezett férfiak és nők sem teljesen a saját szabad akaratukból kerültek a Gulag orvosi részlegére.
Dan Healey könyve számomra brutális erejű volt, pontosan azért, mert a rendszer nagyon sok árnyalatát megmutatta. Az írásmódon és a szerkesztésen nagyon erősen érződik az akadémiai háttere, és ha egyébként nem kedvelném a sokak szerint száraz és túlságosan tényszerű stílust, akkor ezt valószínűleg felhánytorgatnám neki. Viszont úgy gondolom, hogy ez egy kőkemény téma, aminek a szerző ezzel adta meg a maximális tiszteletet.
A könyv számomra egyik kiemelkedő nagyszerűsége, hogy nevekkel, fényképekkel, rövid előzménnyel mutatja be az alanyait, akik így sokkal inkább tűnnek hús-vér embereknek, mintsem csak neveknek és statisztikáknak a történelem viharában. Nekem pedig pontosan ezt jelenti a történelem: emberi sorsokat és életutakat.
Bővebben: https://www.gyorgytekla.hu/2026/04/da...
Dan Healey könyve számomra brutális erejű volt, pontosan azért, mert a rendszer nagyon sok árnyalatát megmutatta. Az írásmódon és a szerkesztésen nagyon erősen érződik az akadémiai háttere, és ha egyébként nem kedvelném a sokak szerint száraz és túlságosan tényszerű stílust, akkor ezt valószínűleg felhánytorgatnám neki. Viszont úgy gondolom, hogy ez egy kőkemény téma, aminek a szerző ezzel adta meg a maximális tiszteletet.
A könyv számomra egyik kiemelkedő nagyszerűsége, hogy nevekkel, fényképekkel, rövid előzménnyel mutatja be az alanyait, akik így sokkal inkább tűnnek hús-vér embereknek, mintsem csak neveknek és statisztikáknak a történelem viharában. Nekem pedig pontosan ezt jelenti a történelem: emberi sorsokat és életutakat.
Bővebben: https://www.gyorgytekla.hu/2026/04/da...
April 21, 2024
An important and valuable exploration of the role of doctors and nurses within the Gulag system, the first book to explore in depth medicine and health care in the camps. An impressive amount of research has gone into it, based on archive material, interviews and witness statements, practitioner reminiscences and official documents. Many of the health care workers were inmates, but others volunteered to work there. It’s an academic and scholarly work, not for the faint-hearted, and will probably be of less interest to anyone not already familiar with the history of the camps, but I found it riveting – if sometimes repetitive – and it opened up a whole new area of Soviet studies for me.
June 17, 2024
The Gulag Doctors is a well=researched, well-written and harrowing expose on the realities of the Gulag and all that suffered within it. This is a raw account of the atrocities that were committed in Stalin's labor camp. It goes without saying that this is an incredibly heavy read, but so worth it.
September 3, 2025
Much has been written - and read - of medics in concentration camps, medics in Apartheid South Africa, medics in Tuskegee. But I have never read a non-fiction account of healthcare providers in Soviet gulags. And there was such a things as healthcare. But who was their loyalty to: state, or patient? How did their mandate to keep an imprisoned workforce well enough to work conflict with their duty of care? And why is looking into this so very relevant in a time of war and genocide?
From the word “go”, author Dan Healy splendidly relays information as a historian, but maintains a lens of humanity by holding subjects accountable to their deeds. Nobody gets off with a “they were a product of their times” or “the State gave them no choice.” He steers clear of the trap of glorifying medics simply for their profession, and examines closely their personal writings, the recollections of them by prisoners and colleagues, and interviews in their later lives. Subjects are not taken simply at their word, even if they are unavailable to comment for themselves: their recollections are teased apart for veracity.
While I am neither Russophile nor apathetic, Healy’s research does what all readable historic non-fiction must do: it connects the past with the present. It does not simply recollect, it reflects.
When history comes knocking, nobody will be able to hide.
Thank you to Netgalley and Yale University Press for this eARC.
From the word “go”, author Dan Healy splendidly relays information as a historian, but maintains a lens of humanity by holding subjects accountable to their deeds. Nobody gets off with a “they were a product of their times” or “the State gave them no choice.” He steers clear of the trap of glorifying medics simply for their profession, and examines closely their personal writings, the recollections of them by prisoners and colleagues, and interviews in their later lives. Subjects are not taken simply at their word, even if they are unavailable to comment for themselves: their recollections are teased apart for veracity.
While I am neither Russophile nor apathetic, Healy’s research does what all readable historic non-fiction must do: it connects the past with the present. It does not simply recollect, it reflects.
When history comes knocking, nobody will be able to hide.
Thank you to Netgalley and Yale University Press for this eARC.
May 19, 2024
thank you to netgalley and yale university press for providing me with this arc of dan healey's the gulag doctors!
DNF @ 68%
i really have no negative things to say about this book! the only reason i DNF'd it was because i've been so consumed with my uni work and my placement this semester that i've had no time to read at all!! the book has really good details about the doctors involved during stalin’s dictatorship over russia during the gulag period and looks at not only male doctors but female doctors as well. it's a really good read if you're interested in this topic and i highly recommend!
DNF @ 68%
i really have no negative things to say about this book! the only reason i DNF'd it was because i've been so consumed with my uni work and my placement this semester that i've had no time to read at all!! the book has really good details about the doctors involved during stalin’s dictatorship over russia during the gulag period and looks at not only male doctors but female doctors as well. it's a really good read if you're interested in this topic and i highly recommend!
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews