Revolution in health: Nervous weakness and visions of health in revolutionary Russia, c.1900-31

Abstract

This article examines anxieties about nervous illness, and the positive visions of health that emerged in response to them, in works written for popular audiences in late imperial and early Soviet Russia. It deepens our understanding of revolutionary change by exploring the role of conceptions of health and illness in efforts to make sense of social and cultural change and in structuring visions of individual and social transformation. It also contributes to reassessments of the chronology of revolutionary change in this era by focusing on gradual shifts and significant continuities across the period.