Constructing the Ideal Physician: Soviet Doctors and the International Discourse of Medical Ethics in the 1920s and 1930s

• In Event: Circulation of Medical Knowledge in Imperial Russian, Soviet, and Post-Soviet History

Abstract

This paper will examine the debates on Soviet medical ethics and law during the 1920s and 1930s within the framework of the circulation of transnational and transhistorical ideas. It suggests a process of adaptation and translation shaped Soviet medical ethics. While many of the words and concepts used by Soviet practitioners are recognizable to us, their content and form reflected the particular context of socialism, which precluded and promoted certain logics and notions of the ideal physician.

Author

• Kenneth Martin Pinnow, Allegheny College