The aim of the international historical conference was to provide a forum for discussion on the social determinants of health and the interdependencies between political authorities, agency and medical expertise in East Central Europe, Russia, and the Caucasus from a historical perspective. One of the further ambitions of the conference organizers was to tackle and reflect on the questions of the public and political approaches to human and public health across time and space, as well as to explore the complexities of relationships between rulership and governance, on the one hand, and medical expertise, on the other hand.

The conference comprised of five panels and a project presentation. It brought together 21 researchers on different stages of their career to present and discuss their work-in-progress, as well as original results of their research in the fields of the history of medical knowledge, expertise and manifold politization(s) throughout the 18th and 20th centuries. The lion’s share of the conference papers, however, focused on the long 20th century, with the specific focus on the developments after Second World War, and the Eastern Block and Soviet contexts. The three papers in the first section discussed the developments in the contexts of the ancien regime, histories of empires, in East Central Europe. They focused on multifaceted discourses of and practices concerning madness in Hungary from 1780 to 1830, medical orientalism in 19th and 20th century Czech culture, and discussions on obstetrics in late partitioned Poland.

The conference offered a solid geographical representation of topics, and brought together a diversity of case studies, perspectives on the issues discussed. The papers addressed and conceptualised the objectives of the conference from different spheres of scientific knowledge and medical disciplines such as epidemiology, venereology, dermatology, forensic psychiatry, and gerontology.

The presentations held at various panels also witnessed a variety of approaches and methodological inspirations, ranging from Edward Said’s orientalism, Michel Foucault’s biopolitics and governmentality, to critical discourse analysis and microhistory. The aim of the conference was addressed and comprehended by the panellists from gender and environmental perspectives, cultural studies, as well as from bottom-up (for example, the case studies about visiting nurses in Stalinist Poland and socialist Hungary) and top-down vantage points (for example, the papers on politization of women’s health in socialist Poland, Czechoslovakia, and East Germany). Focusing on practices and policies in a diversity of national and local contexts, the conference papers made use and comprehended rich source material, ranging from archival materials, memoirs, and sources of personal origin, policy documents, to visual material. The cross-cut topics that surfaced during the presentations and discussions were, among others, professionalization of medical expertise; politics-science nexus; violence, discipline, and correction; biopolitical techniques and logics; knowledge transfer over borders and its adaptation(s); sexuality, reproduction, and body politics.

The first day of the conference was concluded by the keynote lecture by SVEN OPITZ (Marburg). Using the example of vital atmosphere research (aerosols) on spreading the corona virus during the current pandemic, he clearly revealed the influence of medical authority on societies as well as on political actors. The conference was concluded by a final discussion, guided by two viewpoints: shifting gender regime(s) and its imprint(s) on socialist and Soviet medicine, as well as the concept of the “preventive medicine,” and the interplay between “prevention” and “curation” in Soviet medicine. The panellists also made general observations on presented papers, conducted panel discussions, and raised further questions concerning the instrumentalizations of medical knowledge and expertise, as well as politization of health issues and health care.

Focusing on previously understudied and neglected aspects of both medico-scientific and socio-political histories, the conference presentations, in my opinion, showed a great epistemological potential in bringing late imperial, Soviet and socialist contexts into a dialogue with more widely studied Anglo-American / Western European cases. Medical humanities is a blossoming field of East Central European Studies, as the conference encounters witnessed.

Conference overview:

Heidi Hein-Kircher (Marburg): Welcome on Behalf of the Organizing Team

Fritz Dross (Erlangen): Conceptualizing Authority and Medical Expertise

Section 1: Dynamics and Perception of Medical Knowledge
Chair: Julia Malitska (Södertörn)

Janka Kovács (Budapest): Protecting the Individual and Society. The Pursuit of Appointing a Place for the Mentally Ill in the Habsburg Monarchy (1780–1830): The Case of Budapest

Vladan Hanulík (Pardubice): Construction of Medical Orientalism in 19th and 20th Century Czech Culture

Stefan Schmidt (Fribourg): Medicine with Ethnography. L. Krzywicki’s and B. Pilsudski’s Discussions on Obstetrics in Late Partitioned Poland

Łukasz Mieszkowski (Warsaw): Violence and Epidemic in 1918–1922 Poland. An Attempt at Problematization

Section 2: Knowledge and Politization of Women’s Health in Socialism
Chair: Heidi Hein-Kircher (Marburg)

Anastasiia Zaplatina (Bielefeld): “Herald of Venereology and Dermatology” in 1924–1953 as a Barometer of a Political Climate and Scientific Trends

Kateřina Lišková (Brno): Making Marriage Healthy or Equal? Political Authority and Expertise at the Time of Regime Change in Late 1940s Czechoslovakia and Political Argument in Eastern Europe, Russia and Beyond

Natalia Jarska (Warsaw): Marriage, Health, and Expertise. Debates on Compulsory Premarital Medical Examination in Postwar Poland (1940–1960s)

Andrea Bělehradová (Brno): Indestructible Venus and Vulnerable Man: Ageing Sexuality in Czechoslovak Expert Knowledge during State Socialism

Keynote

Sven Opitz (Marburg): Ecologies of Breath: Vital Atmospheres in Times of COVID-19

Section 3: Instrumentalizing Medical Expertise in a Stalinist Style
Chair: Julia Obertreis (Erlangen-Nürnberg)

Oksana Vynnyk (Alberta): Medical Practices during the Famine of 1932/33 in Soviet Ukraine

Mikhail Pogorelov (Moscow): Diagnosing 58-10: The Role of Forensic Psychiatric Expertise in the Stalinist Repressions

Pavel Vasilyev (St. Petersburg): Soviet Dreams of Rejuvenation: Stalinist Science in Search of a Miracle Drug Against Reproductive Ageing

Isaac McKean Scarborough (Liverpool): Kiev, 1972: The World Congress of Gerontology and Soviet Biomedical Messaging

Section 4: Politizing Healthcare and Spreading of Medical Knowledge
Chair: Fritz Dross (Erlangen-Nürnberg)

Markus Wahl (Stuttgart): Political Change, Predicaments, and Epidemics. Medical Expertise and Authority in Postwar East Germany

Viola Lászlófi (Budapest): Changing Political Norms of Healthcare in State Socialist Hungary: The Case of the “Medical Ethics Committees”

Ewelina Szpak (Marki): “When the Word ‘Cancer’ is Uttered, People Begin to Whisper”. Cancer Policy in Polish People’s Republic

Melanie Foik (Münster): Health Promotion and Ideological Education. The Ambivalent Role of Visiting Nurses in Stalinist Poland

Irina Andryushchenko / Klaus Gestwa (Tübingen): Project Presentation Envirohealth: The Interplay of Environmental and Health Issues as a Threat for the Late Soviet Empire and as a Legacy for Post-Socialist Transformation

Section 5: Promoting Health Care
Chair: Melanie Foik (Münster)

Illona Kappanyos (Budapest): Defending the Health of the People: The Role of Visiting Nurses in State Socialist Hungary

Ulrike Lang (Dresden): Stretching for Socialism: The Promotion of Modern Postural Yoga as a Preventive Health Practice in Poland, 1956–1981

Julia Obertreis (Erlangen): Smoking in Eastern Europe – Prevalence, Meanings, and Public Health Campaigns

Fritz Dross (Erlangen-Nürnberg), Melanie Foik (Münster), Heidi Hein-Kircher (Marburg): Wrap up and final discussion