Bolshevik Sexual Forensics: Diagnosing Disorder in the Clinic and Courtroom, 1917–1939

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Dan Healey

Bolshevik Sexual Forensics

Diagnosing Disorder in the Clinic and Courtroom, 1917–1939

Dan Healey

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English

Northern Illinois University Press
15 November 2022

Gender studies, gender groups; Forensic science; Courts & procedure; Forensic medicine

Series: NIU Series in Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies

"In an effort to modernize criminal and civil investigations, early Bolsheviks gave forensic doctors-most of whom had been trained under the tsarist regime-new authority over issues of sexuality. Revolutionaries believed that forensic medicine could provide scientific and objective solutions to sexual disorder in the new society. Bolshevik Sexual Forensics explores the institutional history of Russian and Soviet forensic medicine and examines the effects of its authority when confronting sexual disorder. Healey compares sex crime investigations from Petrograd and Sverdlovsk in the 1920s to the numerous publications by forensic doctors and psychiatrists of the prerevolutionary and early Soviet periods to illustrate the role that these specialists played. In addition, Healey presents a fascinating look at how doctors diagnosed and treated hermaphroditism, showing how Soviet physicians revolutionized the standard scientific view in these cases by taking into account individual desire.

This study sheds light on unexplored radical and reactionary forces that shaped the Bolshevik ""sexual revolution"" as lawmakers defined new ways of seeing sexual crime and disorder. Forensic doctors struggled to interpret the replacement of the age of consent with a standard of ""sexual maturity,"" a designation that made female sexuality a collective ""resource,"" not part of an individual's personality. ""Innocence,"" ""experience,"" and virginity played a major role in the expertise doctors furnished in rape and abuse trials. Psychiatrists recoiled from the language of sexual psychology in their investigations of sex criminals. Yet in the clinic, Soviet physicians probed the desires of the two-sexed citizen, whose psychology served as the basis for a distinctly modern approach to the ""erasure"" of the hermaphrodite.

Healey concludes that the vision of men and women as equals after a ""sexual revolution"" was undermined from the outset of the Soviet experiment. Law and medicine failed to protect women and girls from violence, and Soviet medicine's physiological and biological model of sexual citizenship erased the vision of sexual self-expression, especially for women. This groundbreaking study will appeal to Soviet historians and those interested in gender studies, sexuality, medicine, and forensics."

By: Dan Healey
Imprint: Northern Illinois University Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 229mm, Width: 152mm, Spine: 19mm
Weight: 454g
ISBN: 9781501768217
ISBN 10: 1501768212
Series: NIU Series in Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies
Pages: 264
Publication Date: 15 November 2022
Audience: College/higher education , A / AS level , Further / Higher Education
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Dan Healey is a reader in the Department of History, Swansea University (Wales, UK). He is the author of Homosexual Desire in Revolutionary Russia and articles on the history of gender, sexuality, and medicine in Russia.

Reviews for Bolshevik Sexual Forensics: Diagnosing Disorder in the Clinic and Courtroom, 1917–1939

Healey's book contains much that will be of interest to historians of sexuality. * American Historical Review * In this fascinating study Dan Healey goes beyond the 'axiomatic' view that Russia experienced a liberating 'sexual revolution' in 1917, to be followed by retrenchment and reaction under Stalin. Healey presents a much richer and more nuanced picture of how sexual questions were really affected by the revolution and its aftermath. * European History Quarterly * In this fine book, Dan Healey provides the first historical examination of Soviet forensic medicine's entanglement in matters concerning sexual maturity, violence, and identity, exposes a range of scientific practices surrounding human sexuality, and offers glimpses of ordinary people who had to navigate the medico-legal terrain being mapped out by the experts. * Bulletin of the History of Medicine * With its clear arguments and excellent sections providing context for both Russia and the world, this book is a must for those interested in the revolutionary era and would be a superb addition to undergraduate and graduate courses in gender, medical, and Soviet history. * Slavic Review * The story that emerges is a compelling one, made more engaging by Healey's clean, crisp prose and his excellent preparatory digest of the institutional and ideological factors which shaped the operative discourses of the revolutionary environment. * European Historical Review *