Prof. Dr. Elena Vishlenkova

CV

Prof. Elena Vishlenkova is a professor of history, specialist in History of Soviet Union and Russian Empire, author of books and articles on the history of imperial and Soviet medicine, visual studies of nationalism, history of Russian universities, and confessional politics in the Russian Empire. In 2012, she established and ran the Centre for University Studies and, as of 2019, the Centre for the History of Medicine. She has been a visiting professor at the Universities of Tübingen, Mainz and Regensburg and led an international project with the University of Munich (2019-2021). Current research interests focus on Soviet biopolitics, the history of the pharmaceutical market, Soviet health care reforms

Selected Publications

• Klubi i getto sovetskogo zdravoochranenija (‘Clubs’ and ‘Ghettos’ of Soviet Health Care). Moskau: SHIKO, 2022. 347 S. - zusammen mit S. Zatravkin
• Istorija mediciny i medicinskoj geograffii v Rossijskoj Imperii (History of Medicine and Medical Geography in the Russian Empire). Moscow: «SHIKO», 2021 - zusammen mit A. Renner

• Russkie Professora: Universitetskaja korporativnost’ ili professional’naja solidarnost’ (Russian professors: University corporation or professional solidarity). Moskau 2012. 567 S. - zusammen mit R. Galjulinna, K. Il’ina
• Vizual’noe narodovedenie ili: Uvidet’ russkogo dano ne každomu, Moskau 2011. 390 p.
• Terra Universitatis: Dva veka universitetskoj kul’tury v Kazani (Terra Universitatis: Two century of University Culture in Kazan). Kazan, 2005. 500 S. zusammen mit S. Ju. Malyševa und A.A. Salnikova

FRIAS Research Project

Research on the subject of Soviet health care with a focus on "The Family of Nations“: Biosocial Foundations of Nation-Building in the USSR“

The purpose of this study is to investigate the involvement of medical and biosocial knowledge in the formation of Soviet modern population politics (from grassroots anti-imperialist nationalism and domestic racism to the Soviet social policy and state-building projects) in the long 20th century.

This project encourages a rethinking of the experience of Soviet modernity as a whole and an analysis of the relationship between the universal and the national/national in it through the prism of medical biopolitics, that is, the history of medicine, sanitation and regulation of bodily practices. The study of biopolitics is not limited to the empirical investigation of power relations in such areas as public health or sexuality, hygiene or the upbringing of children, but rather pertains to the mode in which political power takes life as its object, the manner in which power engages with life, for example as an object of protection, regulation, transformation, and so on. It is expected that the results of this study will make it possible to understand not only the reasons for nationalization in the late Soviet Union and the rise of post-Soviet nationalisms, but also to explain the spread of racism and the internalization of the rhetoric of purity and national hygiene.