(Re)Making a 'Homo Pavlovius': Labor Therapy, Pavlovian Conditioning, and the Stalinist Gulag

• In Event: Laboring Bodies, New Soviet Subjects: Socialist Imaginaries at the Peripheries of Science, Medicine, and Technology

Abstract

This paper traces the fascinating and controversial trajectory of Ivan Pavlov’s ideas in physiology, as they found their application in the peripheral spaces of the post-WWII Gulag scientific laboratories. What eventually resulted in the establishment of Pavlovian dogmatism in late Stalinist science and in Western “red scare” of alleged communist brainwashing of people into "homo pavlovius," had been unfolding as part of both enthusiastic and coercive experiments of the Bolsheviks of transforming human nature. In this paper, I explore how post-1917 scientific theories and practices, including research of Ivan Pavlov, were reimagined to devise carceral technologies, therapies, and remedies of transforming human beings. I use unique primary sources from the Gulag Medical Department to discuss how Pavlovian conditioning acquired an afterlife in the peculiar environment of the Soviet carceral spaces. The so-called “labor therapy” as it was theorized and practiced in the Gulag lay at the crossroads of several scientific and medical fields: the studies of industrial labor, the studies of nutrition, and occupational therapy. The creative use of Pavlovian physiology allowed the Gulag medical practitioners to routinely cross the fine line between rehabilitation and exploitation.

Author

• Alexandra Noi, UC Santa Barbara