Soviet Medical Representations of the Traditional Buryat Lifestyle in the Context of a Campaign against Social Diseases (1920s – Early 1930s)

The article considers the early Soviet medical representations of Buryat everyday life when the newly established Buryat-Mongolian ASSR underwent rapid social transformation from the traditional lifestyle to a modernist socialist one. Health protection for national minorities, such as Buryats, was one of the main objectives of sovietization. At that period they did, indeed, face a serious problem of social diseases. Despite the fact that social diseases had long been a common problem in the Russian Empire, the Bolsheviks particularly highlighted this issue in the Buryat context, blaming tsarist colonial exploitation. In contrast, their efforts in helping Buryats overcome health problems represented concern of the Soviet government about their future and a well-calculated geopolitical strategy. The Bolsheviks endued the Buryats with a mission to propagate proletarian revolution in the ‘Buddhist Orient’ and envisaged Buryat-Mongolia as a positive example of Socialist transformation in the broader Mongolian world. Consequently, social diseases in Buryat-Mongolia had to be eradicated quickly, efficiently, once and for all. Thus, fighting social diseases turned into a campaign involving considerable healthcare workforce of highly skilled physicians from the People’s Commissariat of Health of the RSFSR.
Traditionally, Russian socio-medical discourse on social diseases concentrated on living conditions and lifestyle of unprivileged strata. As a result, abundant written accounts of Soviet physicians on venereal disease and tuberculosis in Buryat-Mongolia rendered traditional Buryat lifestyle as backward and anti-sanitary. Venereologists saw the causes of rampant syphilis in certain habits of Buryats, such as the use of shared kitchenware and utensils, smoking pipes and bedclothing. Moreover, sex life of Buryats was considered unhealthy and conducive to venereal disease. Soviet physicians and health activists unanimously claimed that the traditional Buryat lifestyle, from hospitality traditions to sex habits, was deeply outdated and urgently needed transformation through the adoption of European hygienic skills and medical assistance. Notably, the Soviet physicians did not see much difference between eastern and western Buryats, as well as Buryat-Russian half-bloods when it came to personal and communal hygiene. The descriptions of their traditional lifestyle were equally negative, sometimes close to depreciative ones and, to a modern eye, full of Orientalist clichés.
In this connection, a serious question arises whether Soviet physicians, despite their internationalist stance and, often, Bolshevik background really saw Buryats as uncultured autochthones in need of medical disciplining. Superimposing medical accounts on Soviet political goals in the region and professional background of the physicians, the paper concludes that critical descriptions of the Buryat lifestyle served a purpose of attracting Moscow’s attention to health problems, securing the support in finance and health workforce, and highlighting what was perceived by the doctors as deviations from the hygienic norm. Taking into account the political goals of spreading Communist ideas to Mongolia, this strategy appears beneficial to all stakeholders. The Buryats were the prime beneficiaries since they finally resolved the long-ignored health problems and received assistance in building a Socialist healthcare system.

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