Gulag Doctors

Dan Healey is an expert on the social and cultural history of modern Russia and the Soviet Union. He is the author of Homosexual Desire in Revolutionary Russia, Bolshevik Sexual Forensics, and Russian Homophobia from Stalin to Sochi. He is professor emeritus of modern Russian history at the University of Oxford.

“Healey is careful and scrupulous, respectful of and sympathetic to his protagonists while always alert to the possibility of self-misrepresentation.”—Sheila Fitzpatrick, London Review of Books“[Healey] draws on a combination of central and local archival and museum collections to detail the stories of professional doctors and their experiences when confronted with the extreme conditions of the Gulag.”—Cameron Manley, Moscow Times“Healey’s research is truly prodigious. . . . This is a book that should be read by historians of medicine as eagerly as it is by Soviet or Gulag historians.”—Steven A. Barnes, Russian Review“Healey tells a very human story. Each chapter centres on two or three Gulag medics who went on to write memoirs.”—Miriam Dobson, Times Literary Supplement“Impressive and vivid. . . . The Gulag Doctors by Dan Healy is like a treatise on beautiful rare species that grow in environments so brutal they kill countless would-be survivors.”—Vic Peterson, Rights in Russia (British-based charity)“Gulag Doctors has a great deal to offer for both the academic and general interest reader. . . . Each chapter offers fascinating snapshots of a group of people that, until this excellent book, has largely been overlooked.”—Robert Hornsby, BBC History Magazine“This book, based upon wide-ranging archival research . . . presents quite a few glimmers of light amidst the darkness offering ample evidence that, despite the undeniable brutality at the heart of the system, the Gulag hospital or clinic could still sometimes manage to be ‘a place of healing.’”—Michael Biddiss, British Society for the History of Medicine“The Gulag Doctors is a prodigiously researched and elegantly written study of the practice of medicine in Stalin’s notorious labour camps. This pioneering work allows the reader to peer into this previously secret backstage of the Gulag with all its deadly contradictions.”—Lynne Viola, author of The Unknown Gulag“With its evocative life-stories of doctors, nurses and medical researchers from across the Soviet Union, this masterfully researched and beautifully written book immerses us in the personal, political and professional dilemmas of patient care and medical ethics within, and beyond, the Gulag.”—Polly Jones, author of Revolution Rekindled“The Gulag Doctors confronts a central paradox of the Stalinist Gulag: brutal exploitation of prisoners coexisted with a substantial health care apparatus intended to preserve their labour power. Using personal narratives, Healey leads us into the heart of this paradox and paints a profoundly human picture of an inhumane system.”—Alan Barenberg, author Gulag Town, Company Town