Authors

Discussion

This paper considers Soviet fears about deviant and imperfect bodies that stood in the way of the transition to socialism. While certain bodies were singled out as uniquely problematic and difficult to 'overcome' -- from peasants, to women and those with disabilities -- the Soviet regime also expressed wider fears about the notion of embodiment, which did not sit easily with ideas about the importance of rationality, consciousness, and the sublimation of human instincts and desires to the demands of the revolution. The paper will explore how these fears were expressed in theoretical texts and enacted through policies of transformation, quarantine and wholesale human destruction, policies which would haunt the Soviet system until its collapse.