Gulag Doctors - Life, Death, and Medicine in Stalin''s Labour Camps

A pioneering history of medical care in Stalin’s Gulag—showing how doctors and nurses cared for inmates in appalling conditions
 
A byword for injustice, suffering, and mass mortality, the Gulag exploited prisoners, compelling them to work harder for better rations in shocking conditions. From 1930 to 1953, eighteen million people passed through this penal-industrial empire. Many inmates, not reaching their quotas, succumbed to exhaustion, emaciation, and illness.
 
It seems paradoxical that any medical care was available in the camps. But it was in fact ubiquitous. By 1939 the Gulag Sanitary Department employed 10,000 doctors, nurses and paramedics—about 40 percent of whom were prisoners.
 
Dan Healey explores the lives of the medical staff who treated inmates in the Gulag. Doctors and nurses faced extremes of repression, supply shortages, and isolation. Yet they still created hospitals, re-fed prisoners, treated diseases, and “saved” a proportion of their patients. They taught apprentices and conducted research too. This groundbreaking account offers an unprecedented view of Stalin’s forced-labour camps as experienced by its medical staff.

Info autore

Dan Healey is an expert on the social and cultural history of modern Russia and the Soviet Union. He is the author of Homosexual Desire in Revolutionary Russia, Bolshevik Sexual Forensics, and Russian Homophobia from Stalin to Sochi. He is professor emeritus of modern Russian history at the University of Oxford.

Riassunto

A pioneering history of medical care in Stalin’s Gulag—showing how doctors and nurses cared for inmates in appalling conditions

Dettagli sul prodotto

• Autori: Dan Healey, Healey Dan
• Editore: Yale University Press Ltd
• Lingue: Inglese
• Formato: Copertina rigida
• Pubblicazione: 01.02.2024
• EAN: 9780300187137
• ISBN: 978-0-300-18713-7
• Pagine: 368
• Categorie: Scienze umane, arte, musica > Storia > XX° secolo (fino al 1945); European History, 20th Century, 20th century history: c 1900 to c 2000, MEDICAL / History, History of Medicine, Early 20th century c 1900 to c 1950, Penology and punishment, Penology & punishment, Former Soviet Union, USSR (Europe), USSR, Soviet Union, Political oppression & persecution, HISTORY / Modern / 20th Century / General, HISTORY / Russia / General