Yakov Stechkin: Portrait of a Provincial Surgeon in the Realities of the 1920s

Abstract

The article provides an analysis of professional formation and conditions of development of practical medicine in a provincial city of central Russia in the 1920s. For the first time, the authors introduce materials from the personal archive of surgeon Yakov Sergeyevich Stechkin, the brother and father of famous constructors Boris and Igor Stechkin. Yakov Stechkin practiced in Aleksin in 1922–1935. Based on statistical reports from his personal archive, the article reveals the peculiarities of provincial surgery. It analyzes such features as the range of operations performed, the use of anesthesia, and the level of lethality. Main attention is paid to the analysis of the mutual interweaving and transformation of various professional and cultural components in the activity of an ordinary physician: the traditions of zemstvo medicine, military surgery, and Soviet medicine of the 1920s. Each of these components made a contribution to behavioral models of the provincial doctor. Traditions of medicine with its principles of accessibility and free service correlated with the declared norms of Soviet health care system, versatility of military surgeon was more than necessary in terms of personnel lack, while material devastation was offset by broad professional freedom, permeated with the atmosphere of research and experimentation. Based on the memoir sources, the authors show the specific ways of communication between a doctor and his patients, typical of a small provincial town. The authors of put particular emphasis on the fact that an ordinary provincial surgeon resorted to trends of the time, such as experiments in eugenics, endocrinology, and rejuvenation. The article highlights factors that led the Russian physician, who treated the power of the Bolsheviks without reverence, to be integrated into the Soviet health care system.