-
Views
-
Cite
Cite
Greta Bucher, Susan Grant. Soviet Nightingales: Care under Communism., The American Historical Review, Volume 129, Issue 3, September 2024, Pages 1341–1342, https://doi.org/10.1093/ahr/rhae292
- Share Icon Share
Extract
In this first comprehensive study of Soviet nursing, Grant “analyzes the Bolshevik effort to define the ‘Soviet’ nurse and organize a new system of socialist care,” as well as the “living and working conditions, nurse-patient relations, international contact and education to piece together a holistic picture of the Soviet nurse” (3). Nursing is a contested occupation, situated between a professional vocation and a humanitarian avocation, but Grant argues that nursing was particularly problematic in the Soviet context. With its roots in Christian and international charitable organizations supported very publicly by royal patronage, nursing sat uneasily in the Soviet atheistic and “classless” reconstruction of society even though no one doubted its necessity.
Grant’s multi-faceted analysis is based on research in physical and online archives, newspapers and journals, fiction and films, as well as interviews. She teases out the ways the Soviets attempted to reconceptualize nursing into a humanitarian (rather than Christian) service that combined the latest in scientific medicine with compassionate caregiving. Nurses also struggled to define themselves as professionals without compromising their dedication to patient care. Grant provides unique insight not only into the medical establishment but into the struggle for a professional identity for an overwhelmingly feminized occupation situated in the middle of a medical hierarchy negotiating the larger shifting political landscape.