Body Soviet: Propaganda, Hygiene, and the Revolutionary State

by Tricia Starks

In 1918 the People’s Commissariat of Public Health began a quest to protect the health of all Soviet citizens, but health became more than a political platform or a tactical decision. The Soviets defined and categorized the world by interpreting political orthodoxy and citizenship in terms of hygiene. The assumed political, social, and cultural benefits of a regulated, healthy lifestyle informed the construction of Soviet institutions and identity. Cleanliness developed into a political statement that extended from domestic maintenance to leisure choices and revealed gender, ethnic, and class prejudices. Dirt denoted the past and poor politics; health and cleanliness signified mental acuity, political orthodoxy, and modernity.

            Health, though essential to the revolutionary vision and crucial to Soviet plans for utopia, has been neglected by traditional histories caught up in Cold War debates. The Body Soviet recovers this significant aspect of Soviet thought by providing a cross-disciplinary, comparative history of Soviet health programs that draws upon rich sources of health care propaganda, including posters, plays, museum displays, films, and mock trials. The analysis of propaganda makes The Body Soviet more than an institutional history; it is also an insightful critique of the ideologies of the body fabricated by health organizations.

352 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2008

Reviews

[Ietrio · Rating 1 out of 5]

The author is strikingly ignorant for the theme of the book. I started by browsing for the photos which I have enjoyed. Than I have turned to the text and everything went down down down.

> Only dreamers could hope to build a Marxist, industrial utopia upon the
ruined Russia of 1917. Russia entered the twentieth century too weak to bat-
tle with the forces of the modern age even as leaders pressed for conflict with
the industrialized nations of Europe. Russian agriculture could barely feed
the nation, and despite extraordinary growth in the 189os, Russian industry still
could not compete with the rest of Europe.

Actually the bolsheviks highjacked a previous revolution. They wanted the power. The rest was secondary. Proven in the years of purges. The industry was a dream for any informed politician of the day. Russia was not weak: nothing but the despot changed. The new despot was nothing special either: the ones before him wanted to conquer the world too. The agriculture could not feed the people. That was the reality all over the world a century before that and still is in too many places. What people call "the West" changed the sick cycle of reproduction than starvation than reproduction and so on by applying science and mechanization. Russia will do the same only six decades later than the change of regime. And so on.

[Benemint · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nothing so fascinating but reasonably interesting. So similar to the development of concerns over hygiene in other countries, making me wonder what exactly was the "Soviet" or "Leninist" element in this history.