"Curing and Crippling": Biomedical and Alternative Healing in Post-Soviet Russia

UNCG Author/Contributor (non-UNCG co-authors, if there are any, appear on document)
Julie V Brown, Associate Professor and Head (Creator)
Institution
The University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG )
Web Site: http://library.uncg.edu/

Abstract: From its inception after the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, the centrally controlled Soviet medical system attempted to monopolize medical practice-stigmatizing and punishing alternative practitioners who worked outside the state system. Nonetheless, alternative medical practitioners survived the seven decades of Soviet power. Ordinary people never stopped seeking them out, and since the late 1980s, the number of alternative healers in the Russian Federation has increased astronomically. The aim of this article is to analyze the forms of alternative medicine that exist in contemporary Russia and to offer an explanation for their continuing popularity in terms of popular conceptions of health and healing, the functioning of the state medical care system, and the attitudes of Russian physicians toward alternative healing.

Additional Information

Publication
The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science Vol. 583:160-172. DOI: 10.1177/000271620258300110
Language: English
Date: 2002
Keywords
Soviet Union, medical systems, alternative healing, Russian Federation, Russia, attitudes

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