Psychiatry, hereditarianism and mental illness: the politics of "socially dangerous" exclusion in late imperial Moscow

The paper considers how Russian psychiatry, both institutionally and conceptually, marginalized certain social groups with the degeneration concept. The degeneration theory and biomedical discourse in late Imperial Russia were extensively studied by cultural and conceptual historians. Still, there is a lack of studies on human sciences' influence on the social policy in post-reform era. At the turn of the 20th century, Moscow became an urban giant: one of the most populated cities in the Empire, yet the most "peasant" metropolis in Europe. At the same time, Moscow was a center of public and academic life, where the new elite of scientists, professionals and reformers tried to modernize the city and provide it with efficient medical care and infrastructure. In the era of explosive urban growth and influx of migrants in Moscow, degeneration theory supplied clinicians with particular narrative structure, argumentative base and conceptual framework for the description of changes and "damaged" individuals. Psychiatrists emphasized potentially decisive role of the environment. In their view, the urban milieu, its extreme conditions and demands exceeded normal human abilities, leading to mental disorder. While they consider lower urban classes (peasants and factory workers) as victims of deleterious urban environment and consequences of modernizations, those social groups most commonly were subjected of coercive placement and treatment in psychiatric institutions. The research is based on archives of city hospitals and municipal government's files, scientific texts, and periodicals.