Cutting and Counting: Forensic Medicine as a Science of Society in Bolshevik Russia, 1920–29

Abstract

One of the tangible accomplishments of the early Soviet regime was the creation of a far-reaching, and highly coordinated, administrative apparatus capable of producing a vast array of information about the population. In the 1920s, the rise of centralized medical, statistical, and political organs resulted in an avalanche of both published and secret materials, including survey forms, time budgets, statistics, medical case studies, and political reports on ‘mood’ or ‘attitude’. For historians, the significance of this development extends beyond the narrow, and ultimately unsatisfying, question of whether the products of this institutional set are reliable, and hence useful, for an ‘authentic’ reconstruction of everyday experience under the Bolsheviks. We should instead examine these ‘social facts’ as part and parcel of the larger political landscape which took form in Russia during the 1920s. In particular, this means making the very premise of ‘society’ and its scientific investigation a historical problem, rather than taking it for granted and proceeding directly to the analysis of its material legacy.