Tricia Starks - The Body Soviet. Propaganda, Hygiene, and the Revolutionary State [2008][A]

Book Description
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.

Reviews
“The Body Soviet is the first sustained investigation of the Bolshevik government’s early policies on hygiene and health care in general.”—Louise McReynolds, author of Russia at Play: Leisure Activities at the End of the Tsarist Era

“A masterpiece that will thoroughly fascinate and delight readers. Starks’s understanding of propaganda and hygiene in the early Soviet state is second to none. She tells the stories of Soviet efforts in this field with tremendous insight and ingenuity, providing a rich picture of Soviet life as it was actually lived.”— Elizabeth Wood, author of From Baba to Comrade: Gender and Politics in Revolutionary Russia

“Starks has produced a meticulous examination of written and visual propaganda, published sources, and archival holdings on public health and hygiene that assesses the goals and achievements of Soviet health policy as well as popular resistance to them. The volume provides a welcome contribution to the growing historical scholarship on everyday life in the early Soviet period. . .Well written and richly illustrated with reproductions of hygiene posters, it should find a wide audience among scholars interested in issues of public health, hygiene, sexuality, modernization, state intervention, and women’s issues.” —Sharon A. Kowalsky, The Journal of Interdisciplinary History

“A welcome contribution to a now extensive literature on the New Economic Policy, building in particular on the existing scholarship of propaganda and posters, sexuality, public health, and women. Starks’s account is engaging (and sometimes humorous), and the volume as a whole provides a vibrant portrait of a wide range of propaganda sources.”—Susan K. Morrissey, Medical History

“Stark’s prose is vivid, and her analytical tools sharp when she dissects theorists’ contradictory and muddled recommendations. Readers learn much about the messy reality of the Soviet byt in the 1920’s.”—Slavic Review

“Serves to show how the ideals of those in power were far removed from the harsh realities experienced by those living in the filthy streets and overcrowded homes of the Soviet state.”—Susan Grant, Revolutionary Russia

About the Author
Tricia Starks is associate professor of history at the University of Arkansas.