Session Submission Summary
Share...

Direct link:

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

Sun, November 23, 8:00 to 9:45am EST (8:00 to 9:45am EST), -

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

This panel explores how Soviet scientific, technological, and medical practices beyond central regions shaped socialist imaginaries of selfhood sustaining the socialist political project until its collapse. Alexandra Noi reveals that Pavlovian dogmatism extended beyond central medical institutions to influence carceral technologies and therapies within the Gulag system. The sciences of physiology and psychology of labor informed by the ideas and experiments of Ivan Pavlov and his followers acquired a peculiar afterlife in the peripheral spaces of the post-WWII Gulag scientific laboratories. Asif Siddiqi and Ksenia Tatarchenko study how Norilsk in the Arctic and Tashkent in Central Asia exemplify the Soviet urban ideals and their adaptation to extreme natural conditions of permafrost and seismicity. Siddiqi examines the lives of architects, engineers, and geoscientists, many of whom were Norillag prisoners, revealing how their work co-constructed both the labor camp and the city, generating an idealized vision of an Arctic city and a contested commemoration of its builders. In late Soviet Tashkent, post-earthquake reconstruction was tied to Cold War geopolitics, showcasing Soviet technological imperatives in the domain of microelectronics. Tatarchenko investigates the model factory “Algorithm,” focusing on the mostly female workforce. Through their recollections, she explores the interplay between the built environment, computation, and the formation of late Soviet feminine subjectivity, highlighting how socialist modernity shaped women’s identities and roles. Together, these studies illustrate how Soviet practices in science, technology, and medicine were deeply intertwined with the socialist project across the USSR’s diverse peripheries.

Sub Unit

Chair

Papers

Discussant