Description
Book SynopsisRenovating Russia is a richly comparative investigation of late Imperial and early Soviet medico-scientific theories of moral and social disorder. Daniel Beer argues that in the late Imperial years liberal psychiatrists, psychologists, and criminologists grappled with an intractable dilemma. They sought to renovate Russia, to forge a modern...
Trade ReviewBeer offers a wealth of new material on the pre-revolutionary roots of the intellectual apparatus used by the Bolsheviks to make sense of their society. The book offers a convincing case in favor of seeing the Soviet modernization project, not as a deviation from European modernity, but as 'a legitimate offspring of the modern spirit,' as Zygmunt Bauman has put it. The book also effectively challenges a common perception that the biological paradigm for understanding social issues was completely marginal to the Russian intellectual tradition.... Daniel Beer succeeds in offering an unexpected perspective on Russian and pan-European influences on Soviet socialism.
* Times Literary Supplement *
Table of ContentsIntroduction
Chapter 1. "Morel's Children"
Chapter 2. The Etiology of Degeneration
Chapter 3. “The Flesh and Blood of Society”
Chapter 4. “Microbes of the Mind”
Chapter 5. Social Isolation and Coercive: Treatment after the Revolution
Conclusion
Bibliography of Primary Sources
Index
