Red sanitary enlightenment: medicine, culture and society during the 1920s

The article examines the specificity of sanitary education and propaganda in the 1920s as a hybrid phenomenon between the history of medicine and the history of society. To understand the specificity, one must refer to the history of cultural ideas and of mass sentiments in the post-revolutionary times, to the study of professional examinations, scientific conventions and academic as well as literary circles. Following D. Beer and L. Engelstein, the authors consider the combination of “social engineering” approaches of a part of the medical intelligentsia with the radical transformative plans of the Bolsheviks - under the sign of the science of man and their health. The features of the NEP social medical discourse were progressivism, the fight against religious superstitions, the attack on social diseases (tuberculosis, alcoholism, venereal diseases) and their origins. The authors analyse (1) the stylistic features and genre diversity of this discourse: plays, propaganda materials, pseudo-folklore texts (M. Utenkov, S. Zayitsky, et al.); (2) the activities of institutions: museums of medicine and hygiene, houses of sanitary education; (3) the biographies of the psychiatrist Lazar Sukharebsky (1899-1986) as the editor of a catalog of educational and scientific medical films and Alexander (Aetius) Ranov (1899-1979), a prominent enthusiast sanitary education in the Ural region and in Ukraine. In the early 1920s, at the dawn of the NEP, both Sukharebsky and Ranov belonged to a short-lived yet assertive group “Nichevoki”, which was close to the experience of European Dadaism. The recipient’s activity was stimulated in every possible way and was not limited to a simple assimilation of the finished image - the literary tradition, stage techniques and visual innovation were attracted as allies. Mass publications of sanitary education plays often included guidelines on the desirable format of the stage version, “tips” for the director, advice to avoid exaggeration and stiltedness. The authors pay particular attention to the “national” and regional versions of this discourse, its transformation and flattening already in the 1930s. After the end of the NEP, the activities of the Red Cross Societies were maximally nationalized -participation in collective production, and especially defence, rather than the fear of illnesses of a person or their family, became the engine of sanitary propaganda. “Red sanitary enlightenment” still seems to be a characteristic “hybrid” manifestation of the complex, multidimensional and instructive, though relatively short, NEP period.