Continuity and Change in Russian Therapy, University of Oxford, 5-6 June 2014. (360G-Wellcome-104100_Z_14_Z)

This workshop of social historians of Russian/Soviet medicine will discuss new research on the theme of therapy in Russian medical history. The papers critiqued at this workshop will be published in an edited volume. The meeting will enable us to renew and expand our international research network of social and cultural historians of Russian medicine. Histories of Russian and Soviet medicine typically concentrate on the institutions, professions, and research that framed the discipline. Less att ention however has focused on the therapeutic relationship between Russian/Soviet doctors and their patients. Risse's observation (1991) that treatment is a social ritual very much shaped by the prevailing cultural milieu, the patient-healer relationship, current medical knowledge and experience, the actual therapeutic setting, and more recently, the contours of medical technology , may be fruitfully applied to the Russian and Soviet case. This workshop will therefore explore the broad category of lechenie (i.e., therapy, or treatment) as a window on the political, social and cultural history of Russian and Soviet medicine, but also as a way of illuminating wider problems in the history of the individual in Russia.