%0 Journal Article
%T Early Soviet medicine: digital and narrative utopias
%A Vishlenkova, Elena
%A Zatravkin, Sergiei
%J Quarterly Journal of the History of Science and Technology
%V 2019
%R 10.4467/0023589XKHNT.19.032.11040
%N Volume 64, Issue 4
%P 83-106
%K Soviet Union, history of medicine, medical statistics, official discourse of public health, history of science
%@ 0023-589X
%D 2019
%U https://ejournals.eu/en/journal/kwartalnik-historii-nauki-i-techniki/article/early-soviet-medicine-digital-and-narrative-utopias
%X Having found conflicting versions of the past in publications on the history of Soviet medicine, the authors of the article problematized the evidence with which historians work. This led to the study of the production and interaction of statistical and narrative statements of the health care authorities of the 1930s, that is, their reporting and futuristic pipe dreams. The comparison of the medical statistics published in the official directories and the current reporting of medical institutions revealed discrepancies between the published and collected information. Criticism of the official figures by contemporaries gave researchers the opportunity to reveal material and construction technologies of a utopian reality, from the power of which even modern researchers find it hard to free themselves.