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Scientists: Degeneration, Eugenics and the Scientific Approach to Alcoholism in Interwar Bulgaria

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Abstract

From the end of the First World War, a new set of temperance activists took central stage in Bulgaria. The new organizations catered to the (still) emerging professional class in towns and cities and employed a language that emphasized the scientific merits of temperance. This transformation can be best illustrated by one discursive shift—drunkenness increasingly becoming alcoholism. Mirroring developments elsewhere in Europe and the United States, the temperance movement in Bulgaria also became a stage for the promotion of social hygiene and medicine as well as a vehicle for the dissemination of ideas of eugenics (or racial hygiene).

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Central State Archive in Sofia, from now on CSA, 1072 K, au 2, pp. 16–23. See also Kamenov, Nikolay (2014): Globale Ursprünge und lokale Zielsetzungen. Die Anti-Alkoholbewegung in Bulgarien 1890–1940. In Steffi Marung, Katja Naumann (Eds.): Vergessene Vielfalt. Territorialitat und Internationalisierung in Ostmitteleuropa seit der Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, pp. 208–10.

  2. 2.

    CSA, 713 K, Историческа Справка.

  3. 3.

    CSA, 1072 K, au 2, p. 67.

  4. 4.

    CSA, 1072 K, au 2, p. 106.

  5. 5.

    CSA, 1027 K, au 5, p. 47, handwritten.

  6. 6.

    See for example Weir, Ron B. (1984): Obsessed with moderation: The drink trades and the drink question (1870–1930). In British Journal of Addiction 79 (1), pp. 93–107, particularly pp. 101–4, discussing the case of England. See also Schmidt, Hans (1925): Warum haben wir den Krieg verloren?: das Scheitern des deutschen Angriffs im Frühjahr und Sommer 1918. Hamburg: Neuland-Verlag.

  7. 7.

    CSA, 1027 K, au 6, p. 18, handwritten.

  8. 8.

    CSA, 1027 K, au 6, p. 22, handwritten.

  9. 9.

    CSA, 1027 K, au 7, p. 60.

  10. 10.

    CSA, 1027 K, au 1, 68, handwritten.

  11. 11.

    CSA, 1027 K, au 5, p. 63.

  12. 12.

    CSA, 1027 K, au 7, p. 85.

  13. 13.

    CSA, 1027 K, au 7, p. 33, my translation.

  14. 14.

    CSA, 1027 K, au 33, pp. 76–7, handwritten.

  15. 15.

    CSA, 1027 k, au 1, p. 74, handwritten.

  16. 16.

    CSA, 1027 K, au 2, p. 6 and pp. 12–6, handwritten.

  17. 17.

    Vuzdurzhatel , XII:5.

  18. 18.

    CSA,t5 1027K, au 50, p. 257.

  19. 19.

    Ibid., my italic.

  20. 20.

    CSA, 1027 K, au 7, p. 24.

  21. 21.

    CSA, 1027 k, au 11, 108, bold in original.

  22. 22.

    CSA, 1027 K, au 10, p. 32.

  23. 23.

    CSA, 1027 K, au 1, p. 61, handwritten cf. CSA 1027 K, au 2, p. 11, handwritten.

  24. 24.

    CSA, 1027 K, au 11, p. 97.

  25. 25.

    Although admittedly Bulgaria was still a very rural and agrarian country, by the 1920s–30s there were more than incremental changes in terms of professionalization. See for example Daskalov, Rumen (2005): Bulgarskoto obshtestvo, 1878–1939. Sofia: Gutenberg. For a strikingly similar argument concerning professionalization and temperance for the case of tsarist Russia, see Transchel, Kate (2006): Under the influence. Working-class drinking, temperance and cultural revolution in Russia. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, pp. 44–53.

  26. 26.

    CSA, 1027 K, au 1, handwritten.

  27. 27.

    See for example Elshakry, Marwa (2007): The Gospel of Science and American Evangelism in Late Ottoman Beirut*. In Past & Present 196 (1), pp. 173–214.

  28. 28.

    For the most pointed critique on the teleological character of modernization theories see Cooper, Frederick (2005): Colonialism in question. Theory, knowledge, history. Berkeley: University of California Press, pp. 113–49.

  29. 29.

    Bayly, C. A. (2004): The birth of the modern world, 1780–1914. Global connections and comparisons. Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 330–3.

  30. 30.

    Larsen, Timothy (2008): Crisis of doubt. Honest faith in nineteenth-century England. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 1–17.

  31. 31.

    For a classical account see Hobsbawm, Eric (1975): The age of capital, 1848–1875. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, pp. 251–76.

  32. 32.

    Tambiah, Stanley (1990): Magic, science, religion, and the scope of rationality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

  33. 33.

    Ibid., p. 1, my italic.

  34. 34.

    Foucault, Michel (1980): Power/knowledge. Selected interviews and other writings, 1972–1977. New York: Pantheon Books, pp. 112–3.

  35. 35.

    Levine, Harry (1978): The discovery of addiction. Changing conceptions of habitual drunkenness in America. In Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs 39 (1), pp. 143–174, here p. 143.

  36. 36.

    Porter, Roy (1985): The Drinking Man’s Disease: The ‘Pre-History’ of Alcoholism in Georgian Britain. In British journal of addiction 80 (4), pp. 385–396; See also May, Carl (1997): Habitual drunkards and the invention of alcoholism: Susceptibility and culpability in nineteenth century medicine. In Addiction Research 5 (2), pp. 169–187.

  37. 37.

    Porter, Roy (1988) Introduction. In: Trotter, Thomas [1804] An Essay, Medical, Philosophical, and Chemical on Drunkenness and its Effects on the Human Body. London: Routledge, p. xii.

  38. 38.

    McCandless, Peter (1984): ‘Curses of civilization’: insanity and drunkenness in Victorian Britain. In British Journal of Addiction 79 (4), pp. 49–58, here p. 51.

  39. 39.

    Appel, Jacob M. (2008): “Physicians are not Bootleggers”: The short, peculiar life of the medicinal alcohol movement. In Bulletin of the History of Medicine 82 (2), pp. 355–386; see also Zimmerman, Jonathan (1993): “When the Doctors Disagree:” Scientific Temperance and Scientific Authority, 1891–1906. In Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 48 (2), pp. 171–197.

  40. 40.

    Zimmerman, Jonathan (1999): Distilling democracy. Alcohol education in America’s public schools, 1880–1925. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas.

  41. 41.

    Rimke, Heidi; Hunt, Alan (2002): From sinners to degenerates: The medicalization of morality in the 19th century. In History of the Human Sciences 15 (1), p. 61.

  42. 42.

    Ibid., p. 59.

  43. 43.

    Erdozain, Dominic (2011): The secularisation of sin in the nineteenth century. In The Journal of Ecclesiastical History 62 (1), pp. 59–88.

  44. 44.

    Johnstone, Gerry (1996): From vice to disease? The concepts of dipsomania and inebriety, 1860–1908. In Social & Legal Studies 5 (1), pp. 37–56.

  45. 45.

    CSA, 1027 K, au 1, p. 33, handwritten.

  46. 46.

    CSA, 1027 K, au 1, p. 76, handwritten.

  47. 47.

    CSA, 1027 K, au1, p. 102; see also Vuzdurzhatel, 1924, 10:4, pp. 68–71.

  48. 48.

    CSA, 1027 K, au 9, p. 10.

  49. 49.

    CSA, 1027 K, au 1, p. 45, handwritten.

  50. 50.

    For example CSA, 1027 K, au 1, p. 58, handwritten.

  51. 51.

    For example CSA, 1027 K, au 1, p. 86.

  52. 52.

    Vuzdurzhatel , 1910, 7:1, p. 1, my italic.

  53. 53.

    Vuzdurzhatel , 1926, 12:2, p. 19.

  54. 54.

    Vuzdurzhatel , 1928, 14:7, pp. 97–9.

  55. 55.

    Borba s Alkoolizma, 1922, 1:1, p. 2.

  56. 56.

    Uzunov, Georgi (1937): Healing chronic alcoholics [Лекуване на храничните злкохолици, sic!]. In Студентско Въздържателно Дружество (Student Temperance Union) (Ed.): Scientific Anniversary Volume [Юбилеен Научен Сборник]. Sofia: Student Temperance Union, pp. 135–142, here p. 135.

  57. 57.

    Two major trends have been singled out as formative for these processes in the literature. For the ‘biologization’ of social thought and the rise of social Darwinism see for example Jones, Greta (1980): Social Darwinism and English thought. The interaction between biological and social theory. Brighton: Harvester. For similar early study of the ‘medicalization’ of power following Foucault see Armstrong, David (1983): Political anatomy of the body. Medical knowledge in Britain in the twentieth century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

  58. 58.

    For a recent and excellent account on bio-politics and moral reforms between 1880 and 1950 see Tschurenev, Jana; Spöring, Francesco; Große, Judith (2014): Einleitung. Sittlichkeitsreform, Biopolitik und Globalisierung. In Judith Große, Francesco Spöring, Jana Tschurenev (Eds.): Biopolitik und Sittlichkeitsreform. Kampagnen gegen Alkohol, Drogen und Prostitution 1880–1950. Frankfurt am Main: Campus Verlag, pp. 7–46. On ‘crafting humans’ and ‘better’ nations, see also Turda, Marius (Ed.) (2013): Crafting humans. From Genesis to eugenics and beyond. Goettingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.

  59. 59.

    For the idea of sickness as a social phenomenon see for example Baldwin, Peter (1999): Contagion and the state in Europe, 1830–1930. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 21–3; Porter, Dorothy; Porter, Roy (1988): What was social medicine? An historiographical essay. In Journal of Historical Sociology 1 (1), pp. 90–109, here pp. 94–5; Waitzkin, Howard (1981): The social origins of illness: a neglected history. In International Journal of Health Services 11 (1), pp. 77–103. Even at its peak, bacteriology never completely dispelled environmentalist causes.

  60. 60.

    For a longue durée perspective, taking as case studies different national projects in a discussion of the relation between public medicine and the modern state, see Porter, Dorothy (Ed.) (1994): The history of public health and the modern state. Amsterdam: Rodopi; Porter, Dorothy (1999): Health, Civilization and the State. A History of Public Health from Ancient to Modern Times. London: Routledge.

  61. 61.

    Luker, Kristin (1998): Sex, social hygiene, and the state: The double-edged sword of social reform. In Theory and Society 27 (5), pp. 601–634, here p. 614.

  62. 62.

    Egan, R. Danielle; Hawkes, Gail (2009): Childhood sexuality, normalization and the social hygiene movement in the Anglophone West, 1900–1935. In Social History of Medicine 23 (1), pp. 56–78, here p. 58; see also Egan, Danielle; Hawkes, Gail (2010): Theorizing the sexual child in modernity. 1st ed. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 51–73; Imber, Michael (1984): The First World War, sex education, and the American Social Hygiene Association’s campaign against venereal disease. In Journal of Educational Administration and History 16 (1), pp. 47–56; on the issue of mental hygiene and education in the United States see Cohen, Sol (1983): The mental hygiene movement, the development of personality and the school: The medicalization of American education. In History of Education Quarterly 23 (2), pp. 123–149.

  63. 63.

    Berridge, Virginia (1990): Prevention and social hygiene 1900–1914. In British Journal of Addiction 85, pp. 1005–1016.

  64. 64.

    Zimmerman, Jonathan (1992): “The Queen of the Lobby”: Mary Hunt, Scientific Temperance, and the Dilemma of Democratic Education in America, 1879–1906. In History of Education Quarterly 32 (1), pp. 1–30, particularly pp. 28–9.

  65. 65.

    Weindling, Paul (1989): Health, race and German politics between national unification and Nazism, 1870–1945. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 342–68.

  66. 66.

    Solomon, Susan Gross (1990): Social Hygiene and Soviet Public Health, 1921–1930. In Susan Gross Solomon, John Hutchinson (Eds.): Health and society in revolutionary Russia. Bloomington: Indiana University Press (Indiana-Michigan series in Russian and East European studies), pp. 175–199; Solomon, Susan Gross (1990): Social hygiene in Soviet medical education, 1922–30. In Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 45 (4), pp. 607–643; for a different interpretation see Hoffmann, David L. (2011): Cultivating the masses. Modern state practices and Soviet socialism, 1914–1939. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, kindle positions 2155–637.

  67. 67.

    Schneider, William H. (Ed.) (2002): Rockefeller philanthropy and modern biomedicine. International initiatives from World War I to the Cold War. Bloomington: Indiana University Press; Weindling, Paul (Ed.) (1995): International health organisations and movements, 1918–1939. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; Weindling, Paul (1993): Public health and political stabilisation: The Rockefeller Foundation in Central and Eastern Europe between the two world wars. In Minerva 31 (3), pp. 253–267; Roemer, Milton (1994): Internationalism in Medicine and Public Health. In Dorothy Porter (Ed.): The history of public health and the modern state. Amsterdam: Rodopi, pp. 403–423.

  68. 68.

    Baloutzova, Svetla (2011): Demography and nation. Social legislation and population policy in Bulgaria, 1918–1944. Budapest: Central European University Press, p. 62.

  69. 69.

    Weindling, Paul (1995): Introduction: constructing international health between the wars. In Paul Weindling (Ed.): International health organisations and movements, 1918–1939. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 1–16.

  70. 70.

    Zemstvo medicine was a particular form of public health aiming at rural populations. Zemstvo came into being in the latter half of the nineteenth century and was marked by its social character and mistrust in the private praxis. For the premature ‘death’ of the zemstvo and its continuities after 1919 see Hutchinson, John (1990): “Who Killed Cock Robin?”. An Inquiry into the Death of Zemstvo Medicine. In Susan Gross Solomon, John Hutchinson (Eds.): Health and society in revolutionary Russia. Bloomington: Indiana University Press as well as Hoffman, Cultivating, kindle positions 2155–637.

  71. 71.

    Daskalov, Bulgarskoto, p. 50.

  72. 72.

    Crampton, R. J. (2007): Bulgaria. Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. 305.

  73. 73.

    Baloutzova, Demography, pp. 64–8.

  74. 74.

    Kamenov, Nikolay (2014): Globale Ursprünge und lokale Zielsetzungen. Die Anti-Alkoholbewegung in Bulgarien 1890–1940. In Steffi Marung, Katja Naumann (Eds.): Vergessene Vielfalt. Territorialitat und Internationalisierung in Ostmitteleuropa seit der Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht (Transnationale Geschichte, 2), pp. 194–220.

  75. 75.

    CSA, 713 K, Историческа Справка. Narodniks were the members of the nineteenth century Russian, socialist movement who hoped to reform and liberalize society through propaganda among and politicization of the peasantry.

  76. 76.

    Neichev , Hralampi (1919): Санитарно-социалната политика на Българската Работническа Социалъ-демократическа партия (Обединена) [Sanitary-social politics of the Bulgarian Workers’ Social-democratic Party (unified)]. Sofia: Unknown, p. 12.

  77. 77.

    Borba s Alkoolizma, 1922, 1:1, p. 1, my italic.

  78. 78.

    For example Forel, Auguste (1908): Die sexuelle Frage. Eine naturwissenschaftliche, psychologische, hygienische und soziologische Studie für Gebildete. München: Ernst Reinhardt, p. 286.

  79. 79.

    Borba s Alkoolizma, 1926, 5:2, p. 24.

  80. 80.

    Ibid., p. 26.

  81. 81.

    Ibid., pp. 19–20.

  82. 82.

    Valverde, Mariana (2000): “Racial Poison”: drink, male vice, and degeneration in first-wave feminism. In Ian Christopher Fletcher, Philippa Levine, Laura E. Nym Mayhall (Eds.): Women’s suffrage in the British Empire. Citizenship, nation and race. London: Routledge, pp. 33–50.

  83. 83.

    Borba s Alkoolizma, 1926, 5:2, p. 20. This, however, should not discredit Miss Stankova as any way reactionary. As elsewhere, it was both feminists and anti-feminists who saw the reproduction ‘duty’ as an inextricable part of national/imperial/racial politics. For excellent discussion of the ‘Mother of the Race’ see Valverde 1992.

    Borba s Alkoolizma, 1926, 5:2, p. 26.

  84. 84.

    CSA, 372 K, a. 2292. See also Ivanova, Evguenia (1993): Le Mouvement d’Astenance Alcoolique a Stara Zagora Pendant les Annees 20 -40 du XXe Siecle. In Bulletin des Musees de la Blgarie du Sud-Est XVI, p. 367.

  85. 85.

    Borba s Alkoolizma, 1929, 8:8, p. 119.

  86. 86.

    Crampton, Bulgaria, p. 251; cf. Daskalova, Krassimira (1999) Bulgarian Women in Movements, Laws, Discourses (1840s-1940s), in Bulgarian Historical Review (1–2), pp. 180–96; Daskalova, Krassimira (2004) The Women’s Movement in Bulgaria in a Life Story, in Women’s History Review 13 (1), pp. 91–103.

  87. 87.

    Daskalova, (1999) Bulgarian Women, p. 189.

  88. 88.

    Borba s Alkoolizma, 1938/9, 18:4, p. 62.

  89. 89.

    Borba s Alkoolizma, 1925, 4:9–10, pp. 138–40.

  90. 90.

    Foucault, Michel (1990): The history of sexuality. New York: Vintage Books, p. 53.

  91. 91.

    Mircheva, Gergana (2007): ‘Училищна хигиена’ в България от началото на ХХ век: културни образи, институционални роли и практики. School hygiene in Bulgaria at the beginning of the 20th century: Cultural Images, Institutional Roles and Practices. In Sociological problems (Социологически проблеми) (3–4), pp. 238–265.

  92. 92.

    Ibid.

  93. 93.

    An early but still useful account, sketching the history of the frightful consequences of onanism and the medical concerns related to it, is MacDonald, Robert H. (1967): The frightful consequences of onanism: Notes on the history of a delusion. In Journal of the History of Ideas 28 (3), pp. 423–431. See also Jordanova, Ludmilla (1987): The popularization of medicine: Tissot on onanism. In Textual Practice 1 (1), pp. 68–79; Egan, R. Danielle; Hawkes, Gail (2007): Producing the prurient through the pedagogy of purity: Childhood sexuality and the social purity movement. In Journal of Historical Sociology 20 (4), pp. 443–461.

  94. 94.

    Vuzdurzhatel , 1910, 7:1, p. 6.

  95. 95.

    Vuzdurzhatel , 1910, 7:1, p. 7.

  96. 96.

    Vuzdurzhatelni vesti, 1935, 3:1–2, pp. 1–2.

  97. 97.

    Konsulov , Stefan (1937): Heredity and alcoholism. In Студентско Въздържателно Дружество (Student Temperance Union) (Ed.): Scientific Anniversary Volume [Юбилеен Научен Сборник]. Sofia: Student Temperance Union, pp. 148–153, here p. 153.

  98. 98.

    Ibid.

  99. 99.

    Stepan, Nancy (1991): The hour of eugenics. Race, gender, and nation in Latin America. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, p. 3.

  100. 100.

    Ibid., pp. 4–5.

  101. 101.

    Kline, Wendy (2001): Building a better race. Gender, sexuality, and eugenics from the turn of the century to the baby boom. Berkeley: University of California Press; Ordover, Nancy (2003): American eugenics. Race, queer anatomy, and the science of nationalism. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press; Stern, Alexandra (2005): Eugenic nation. Faults and frontiers of better breeding in modern America. Berkeley: University of California Press; Pernick, Martin S. (1999): The black stork. Eugenics and the death of “defective” babies in American medicine and motion pictures since 1915. New York: Oxford University Press; McLaren, Angus (1990): Our own master race. The eugenic crusade in Canada. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart.

  102. 102.

    Kline, Building, p. 6.

  103. 103.

    Dikötter, Frank (1998): Race culture: recent perspectives on the history of eugenics. In The American Historical Review 103 (2), pp. 467–478, here p. 472.

  104. 104.

    See Hodges, Sarah (2006): Indian Eugenics in an Age of Reform. In Sarah Hodges (Ed.): Reproductive health in India. History, politics, controversies. New Delhi: Orient Longman, pp. 115–138; Hodges, Sarah (2008): Contraception, colonialism and commerce. Birth control in South India, 1920–1940. Aldershot: Ashgate.

  105. 105.

    Savary, Luzia (2014): Vernacular Eugenics? Santati-Śāstra in Popular Hindi Advisory Literature (1900–1940). In South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies 37 (3), pp. 381–397.

  106. 106.

    Chung, Yuehtsen Juliette (2020): Struggle for national survival. Chinese eugenics in a transnational context, 1896–1945. New York: Routledge.

  107. 107.

    Kuhl, Stefan (1994): Nazi Connection. Eugenics, American Racism, and German National Socialism. New York: Oxford University Press.

  108. 108.

    Adams, Mark B. (Ed.) (1990): The Wellborn science. Eugenics in Germany, France, Brazil, and Russia. New York: Oxford University Press; Bashford, Alison; Levine, Philippa (Eds.) (2010): The Oxford handbook of the history of eugenics; Kühl, Stefan (1997): Die Internationale der Rassisten. Aufstieg und Niedergang der internationalen Bewegung für Eugenik und Rassenhygiene im 20. Jahrhundert. Frankfurt am Main: Campus; see also Solomon, Susan Gross (2006): Introduction. Germany, Russia, and Medical Cooperation between the Wars. In Susan Gross Solomon (Ed.): Doing medicine together. Germany and Russia between the wars. Toronto, Buffalo: University of Toronto Press (German and European studies), pp. 3–31.

  109. 109.

    Turda, Marius; Weindling, Paul (Eds.) (2007): “Blood and homeland”. Eugenics and racial nationalism in Central and Southeast Europe, 1900–1940. Budapest: Central European University Press; Promitzer, Christian; Troumpeta, Sevastē; Turda, Marius (Eds.) (2010): Health, hygiene and eugenics in Southeastern Europe to 1945. Conference on ‘Hygiene – health politics – eugenics: engineering society in twentieth century Southeastern Europe’. Budapest: Central European University Press.

  110. 110.

    Bucur, Maria (2010): Eugenics in Eastern Europe, 1870–1945. In Alison Bashford, Philippa Levine (Eds.): The Oxford handbook of the history of eugenics. With assistance of Alison Bashford, Philippa Levine. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 398–412, here p. 403.

  111. 111.

    Ibid.

  112. 112.

    Cleminson, Richard (2000): Anarchism, science and sex. Eugenics in Eastern Spain, 1900–1937. Berne: Peter Lang; Krementsov, Nikolai (2010): Eugenics in Russia and the Soviet Union. In Alison Bashford, Philippa Levine (Eds.): The Oxford handbook of the history of eugenics. With assistance of Alison Bashford, Philippa Levine. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 413–430; Adams, Mark B. (1990): Eugenics as Social Medicine in Revolutionary Russia. Prophets, Patrons, and the Dialectics of Discipline-Building. In Susan Gross Solomon, John Hutchinson (Eds.): Health and society in revolutionary Russia. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, pp. 200–223; see also Krementsov, Nikolai (2006): Eugenics, Rassenhygiene, and Human Genetics in the Late 1930s: The Case of the Seventh International Congress. In Susan Gross Solomon (Ed.): Doing medicine together. Germany and Russia between the wars. Toronto, Buffalo: University of Toronto Press, pp. 369–404 for the failed international congress on genetics in 1937 in Soviet Russia.

  113. 113.

    Gawin, Magdalena (2007): Progressivism and Eugenic Thinking in Poland, 1905–1939. In Marius Turda, Paul Weindling. In Marius Turda, Paul Weindling (Eds.): “Blood and homeland”. Eugenics and racial nationalism in Central and Southeast Europe, 1900–1940. Budapest: Central European University Press, pp. 167–183, here p. 167; see also Turda, Marius (2010): Modernism and eugenics. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan; also on progressivism and eugenics in Kemalist Turkey Alemdaroğlu, Ayça (2005): Politics of the body and eugenic discourse in early republican Turkey. In Body & Society 11 (3), pp. 61–76, particularly pp. 68–74.

  114. 114.

    Schwartz, Michael (1995): Sozialistische Eugenik. Eugenische Sozialtechnologien in Debatten und Politik der deutschen Sozialdemokratie 1890–1933. Bonn: Dietz.

  115. 115.

    Schwartz, Michael (1994): “Proletarier” und “Lumpen”. Sozialistische Ursprünge eugenischen Denkens. In Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 42 (4), pp. 537–570.

  116. 116.

    Niemann-Findeisen, Sören (2004): Weeding the garden. Die Eugenik-Rezeption der frühen Fabian Society. Münster: Westfälisches Dampfboot. For the question of alcohol see in particular pp. 93–4.

  117. 117.

    See for example how a medical investigation translated into a campaign against maternal drinking in Edwardian England in Gutzke, David W. (1984): ‘The cry of the children’: the Edwardian medical campaign against maternal drinking. In British Journal of Addiction 79 (4), pp. 71–84.

  118. 118.

    Weindling, Health, race and German politics, p. 185.

  119. 119.

    Ibid.

  120. 120.

    Weiss, Sheila Faith (1987): The race hygiene movement in Germany. In Osiris 3, pp. 193–236.

  121. 121.

    Kuechenhoff, Bernhard (2008): The psychiatrist Auguste Forel and his attitude to eugenics. In History of Psychiatry 19 (2), pp. 215–223.

  122. 122.

    Weiss, The race, p. 200. On the intersection of psychiatry and the temperance movement see Lengwiler, Martin (2014): Im Zeichen der Degeneration. Psychiatrie und internationale Abstinenzbewegung im ausgehenden 19. Jahrhundert. In Judith Große, Francesco Spöring, Jana Tschurenev (Eds.): Biopolitik und Sittlichkeitsreform. Kampagnen gegen Alkohol, Drogen und Prostitution 1880–1950. Frankfurt am Main: Campus Verlag, pp. 85–110. A small omission in this otherwise excellent study is the work of Sergei Korsakoff on alcoholic paralysis and psychosis—the latter also known as alcohol amnestic disorder.

  123. 123.

    Weindling, Health, race and German politics, p. 185.

  124. 124.

    Ibid., pp. 185–6; See also the bio-political debates on alcoholism and eugenics in late tsarist Russia in Felder, Björn (2014): “Volksgesundheit” und Modernisierung. Temperenz, Eugenik und Nation in den biomedizinischen Debatten des späten Zarenreichs, 1890–1914. In Judith Große, Francesco Spöring, Jana Tschurenev (Eds.): Biopolitik und Sittlichkeitsreform. Kampagnen gegen Alkohol, Drogen und Prostitution 1880–1950. Frankfurt am Main: Campus Verlag, pp. 217–251.

  125. 125.

    Stepan, The hour, p. 85. For ‘racial poisons’ see also Weindling, Health, race and German politics, pp. 171–88; Valverde, “Racial poison”.

  126. 126.

    See for example Bynum, William F. (1984): Alcoholism and degeneration in 19th century European medicine and psychiatry. In British Journal of Addiction 79 (1), pp. 59–70; Pick, Daniel (1989): Faces of degeneration. A European disorder, c. 1848–c. 1918. Repr., transferred to digital print. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

  127. 127.

    Snelders, Stephen; Meijman, Frans J.; Pieters, Toine (2007): Heredity and alcoholism in the medical sphere: The Netherlands, 1850–1900. In Medical History 51 (2), pp. 219–236, here p. 227.

  128. 128.

    Mircheva, Gergana (2010): Marital Health and Eugenics in Bulgaria, 1878–1940. In Christian Promitzer, Sevastē Troumpeta, Marius Turda (Eds.): Health, hygiene and eugenics in Southeastern Europe to 1945. Conference on ‘Hygiene – health politics – eugenics: engineering society in twentieth century Southeastern Europe’. Budapest: Central European University Press (CEU Press Studies in the history of medicine, 2079–1119, 2), pp. 233–269, here p. 241; For earlier statutes with similar eugenic hue see Promitzer, Christian (2007): Taking Care of the National Body. Eugenic Visions in Interwar Bulgaria, 1905–1940. In Marius Turda, Paul Weindling (Eds.): “Blood and homeland”. Eugenics and racial nationalism in Central and Southeast Europe, 1900–1940. Budapest: Central European University Press, pp. 223–4.

  129. 129.

    Baloutzova, Demography, p. 49; Mircheva, Marital Health.

  130. 130.

    Promitzer, Christian (2011): Degeneration, Darwinism and the Development of Eugenics in Bulgaria (1890–1929). In East Central Europe 38 (1), pp. 44–63, particularly pp. 56–7.

  131. 131.

    Ibid., p. 57.

  132. 132.

    Ibid., p. 59.

  133. 133.

    Mircheva, Marital Health, p. 269.

  134. 134.

    Roll-Hansen, Nils (2005): Conclusion: Scandinavian Eugenics in the International Context. In Gunnar Broberg, Nils Roll-Hansen (Eds.): Eugenics and the welfare state. Sterilization policy in Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Finland. East Lansing, Mich.: Michigan State University Press, p. 259.

  135. 135.

    Baloutzova, Demography. Многодетни translates literally ‘with/of many children’.

  136. 136.

    Schneider, William H. (1990): Quality and quantity. The quest for biological regeneration in twentieth century France. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 116–145.

  137. 137.

    Borba s Alkoolizma, 1925, 4:2, p. 18.

  138. 138.

    Baloutzova, Demography, p. 177; CSA 619 K, Историческа справка.

  139. 139.

    Burilkov , Dimo (1937): Social Fight against the Venereal Diseases. Unknown: Issue of the Union of the sanitary and veterinary personnel in Bulgaria, p. 15, bold in original.

  140. 140.

    Burilkov , Dimo (undated): Fight for Sobriety. Sofia: Bulgarian Temperance Federation., p. 5.

  141. 141.

    Ibid., pp. 11–2; for Burilkov’s thoughts on hereditary see Sober society [Трезво обшество], 1928, 2:7, pp. 185–8.

  142. 142.

    CSA 1043 K, op 2, au 404, p. 28 [from a newspaper Полет, 20.4.1936].

  143. 143.

    CSA 1043 K, op 2, au 405, pp. 26–8 cf. CSA 1043 K, op 2, au 321, pp. 1–14 [handwritten]; CSA 1043 K, op 2, au 412, p. 64.

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Kamenov, N. (2020). Scientists: Degeneration, Eugenics and the Scientific Approach to Alcoholism in Interwar Bulgaria. In: Global Temperance and the Balkans. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41644-7_4

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