Poisons of Civilization, Remnants of Capitalism, or Jewish Disease? Drug Addiction in Russian and German Medical Texts from the 1879s to the 1930s

Table of contents

Copyright Notice

Abstract

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Chapter 1: Medical Texts and their Authors: Description and Critique of Primary Sources
1.1. Description of Medical Texts
1.2. Personalities of Authors
1.3. Dilemmas of Jewish Doctors

Chapter 2: Poisons of Civilization? Medicine and Drug Addiction in Russia and Germany, 1871-1914
2.1. Social Context of the Problem in the Late 19th and Early 20th Centuries
2.2. Medical Theory Around Fin-de-Siècle
2.2.1. Origins of Drug Addiction
2.2.2. Images of Drug Addicts
2.2.3. Possible Solutions

Chapter 3: Constructing the Social Problem: Drug Addiction in Russian and German Medical Texts, 1914-1933
3.1. Radical Changes in Russia and Germany, 1914-1922
3.2. Medical Theory after the First World War
3.2.1. Origins of Drug Addiction
3.2.2. Images of Drug Addicts
3.2.3. The Ways of Solving the Social Problem

Conclusion

Bibliography

Copyright Notice

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Abstract

This thesis looks at Russian and German medical texts related to recreational drugs that were written in the period that witnessed the emergence of drug addiction as a social problem (late 19th – early 20th centuries). An important part of the argument is the analysis and critique of primary sources that I undertake in order to investigate various theories, images, and practices related to drug addiction.

This work shows how drug addiction was eventually constructed as a social problem related to modernity, capitalism – and Jewishness. Drug addiction research appears to be one of the attractive fields for Jewish scientists, who used this opportunity to contemplate, negotiate, and re-define the new Jewish identity in a rapidly changing modern world. As evident from the analysis of the solutions proposed in medical texts and their influence on practical drug policy, medical science in both Russia and Germany (though with substantial variations due to political, cultural and scientific differences) played a major role in marginalizing and repressing drug addicts while rejecting other emerging alternatives.

Acknowledgements

The past is an ocean, and it is easy to get lost if you do not know where to navigate or just do not put enough effort. I am very happy to have Professor Michael Laurence Miller as my supervisor on this difficult – yet exciting – journey. He was always ready to provide me with necessary information and wisely guided my work during this academic year. I am also very grateful to Professor Karl Hall, who always served as an example of inspiring teacher and original thinker. My thanks go to Professor Ohad Parnes as well, as his comments and suggestions greatly shaped my thinking about medical texts and drug addiction. During my coursework, I also benefited greatly from the courses by Professors Victor Karady, Markian Prokopovych, András Kovács, and Carsten Wilke.

On my research break in Berlin, I received a great deal of support from Ursula Marx of Walter Benjamin Archive and the folks at the Mediathek of the University Library of the Humboldt University of Berlin. They made my stay in the German capital easy, productive, and exciting. I also want to thank fellow CEU students, who were always ready to provide me with critique, support or distraction – depending on what I needed in any particular moment. Last but not least, I am very much indebted to Hungarian mushroom soup, Counter-Strike, and Skype – albeit for very different reasons. Writing this thesis made my think that sometimes we owe a great deal of our inspiration to such seemingly minor things.

Introduction

Ohne Antwort bleibt die Frage,

Ob dich lieben oder hassen.^[1]

Drug addiction is universally recognized as a crucial problem of the contemporary world, and there is a heated debate about it everywhere – Central and Eastern Europe being no exception. It is striking, however, that there is a clear lack of attention towards the historical roots of the problem in this area. This condition appears even more surprising if we consider that interdisciplinary research on the history of drug addiction allows for the exploration of the intersection of medical theory, practical policy, social context, and cultural values. Given the special place that the Jews occupy within European medical discourse,^[2] such an investigation will also provide some insights into Jewish history – both by analyzing why so many Jews were engaged in addiction research and unveiling how exactly drug addiction was constructed as a social problem. While there is a growing interest in the history of medicine among Jewish Studies scholars, there was no attempt to link history of drug addiction with the specific status of the Jews in the medical profession and in medical discourse in Central and Eastern Europe.

In my thesis I focus specifically on the period that witnessed the emergence of drug addiction as a social problem (late 19th – early 20th centuries) and compare two major (in demographic, political and scientific senses alike) countries of the region - Russia and Germany. The topic remains largely unexplored, even though several authors briefly discussed the developments that took place throughout the period. For some obvious reasons, Soviet historiography largely ignored the history of drug addiction in 20th century Russia,^[3] but it is interesting that German scholarship (which enjoyed a more relaxed ideological climate in the second half of the 20th century) did not produce any major works on the subject either.

In both countries, however, new authors interested in drug addiction emerged since the late 1980s, but the historical picture that they tried to reconstruct remains largely fragmentary. In the German context, the most important contribution was Claudia Wiesemann's Die heimliche Krankheit^[4] that explored the history of the concept of addiction with references to the situation in Germany. However, it remained confined to the field of the history of ideas and did not explore the actual social developments related to drug addiction. On the contrary, many scholars published articles and book chapters that at least touch upon social history of drug addiction in Russia,^[5] but there is no major contribution from the perspective of intellectual history or history of science. Some important conclusions were made about 'democratization' of drug addiction during the First World War,^[6] connections between drug addiction and other 'negative deviations',^[7] social structure of the addict subculture in the 1920s^[8] and virtual elimination of the problem by the early 1930s.^[9] However, no major book was published on the subject, and (perhaps even more importantly) most studies confined themselves to the Petrograd-Leningrad region and the narrow period from 1917 to the early 1920s.

Stanislav E. Panin's 2003 article^[10] was the first attempt to construct a model of drug abuse in early Soviet Russia on a national scale. While we should acknowledge the importance of some of Panin's conclusions, it is also necessary to recognize limitations of the work. First, the scope and nature of primary sources analyzed are inconsistent with the ambitious goal. Secondly, it is evident that Panin's treatment of medical texts lacks in-depth analysis and a critical approach – a problem he shares with other authors. This is even more surprising if we consider that medical texts serve as the major primary source for all historians of drug addiction. The situation in Central and Eastern Europe is therefore different from Western Europe and America, where several major books traced the history of drug addiction with particular attention towards interrelations between medical science and narcotic policy.^[11] Fortunately, the methodology and findings of these works can be integrated (though somewhat reinterpreted) into my Central and Eastern European research agenda.

The scarcity of works on the particular topic of drug addiction urges us to look more attentively at the literature about history of medicine in Russia and Germany in general. Indeed, here one can find that the questions that the authors are asking are relevant for the more specific field of addiction research. John F. Hutchinson's book^[12] is particularly interesting in revealing the interrelations between politics and public health by employing the metaphor of o zdorovlenie Rossii (“healthifying” of Russia) – the claim that combined programs of both medical (“making healthy”) and political (“putting things into proper order”) change. Hutchinson's ideas are therefore important for my argument, which views physicians as active actors and claims makers,^[13] who perceived the solution of social problems related to health (e.g., drug addiction) as the crucial element of the transformation of the society on the whole. A similar type of argument can be found in the works of Daniel Beer,^[14] who has recently revisited the debate about continuity/rupture between late Imperial and early Soviet periods of Russian history in regard to the history of science. In the German context, Paul Lerner's Hysterical Men^[15] convincingly shows how early 20th century medical specialists tried to use their scientific expertise to solve Germany's social, political and economic problems while pursuing their own professional agenda.

There is also another reason why Hysterical Men is so interesting for my subject. Lerner devotes a major part of his book to the discussion of the ideas and career of German Jewish neurologist Hermann Oppenheim – thus contributing to the debate about the special place that the Jews occupied within Wilhelmine and Weimar medical discourse. In my opinion, this trend reflects a more general interest in the history of medicine and science that has recently emerged among scholars dealing with Jewish history. A number of studies dealt with the specific status that the Jews and the Jewish bodies occupied within fin-de-siècle medical discourse.^[16] While there are still no books that focus specifically on the connection between drug addiction and the Jews, it is important to look at those 'parallel' studies that ask questions about complicated relationships between the Jews and the medical/scientific discourses.

One of the most interesting examples is John M. Efron's Medicine and the German Jews^[17] which focuses on the history of interrelations between medicine and the Jews in Germany from the Middle Ages until the emergence of the Nazi regime. For my purposes, the most important parts of the book are those dealing with the specific dual status of Jewish physicians and the alleged 'pathologies' of Jewish health.^[18] Another interesting example is Harriett P. Freidenreich's Female, Jewish and Educated.^[19] This book is an important contribution to the history of the Jews in Central Europe, because the author managed to link Jewish history and the ambiguities of emancipation with such rapidly developing fields as gender studies and history of science. In particular, Freidenreich does an excellent job in tracing links between the Jewish background of a person and the nature of the scientific agenda she pursues.

As we have seen, the existing literature on the subject has been able to establish basic facts and locate some problematic points. However, much more detailed empirical investigation is needed to understand the complex relationships between drugs, medical science and government regulation and to place Jewish doctors, drug dealers and addicts in this picture. Moreover, most studies on the subject lack a comparative perspective and a critical approach towards primary sources (especially medical texts). It seems that contemporary historians tend to perceive these texts as unquestionably objective and forget that they were also written by some particular authors.

The picture is further complicated by the fact that the very basic terms that are used in this thesis were often subject to constant negotiations and re-definitions in the period under discussion. There has always been a major debate about various conflicting definitions of 'drugs' and 'addiction',^[20] since the decisions to prohibit or legalize one or another psychoactive substance (be it alcohol, marijuana or tobacco) are often arbitrary, historically conditioned and not related to the actual degree of psycho-physical harm and addictiveness. Moreover, in the period under investigation there was no unanimity in regard to what constitutes 'drugs' (tea, coffee, tobacco...)^[21] and which terms should be used to describe them (cf. iady, narkotiki, durmany in the Russian context, and Gifte or Rauschgifte in German)^[22] and conditions that arise (narkomaniia, narkotizm, Giftsucht, Narkomanie or more specific morfinizm/Morphinismus, kokainizm/Cokainismus...).^[23] For the purposes of this thesis, I adhere to the present-day understanding of drugs (i.e., cocaine, morphine, hashish, opium, ether etc. – but not coffee). I am aware, however, of the limitations of such an approach and the implications that it has for the analysis of medical texts.

To a certain degree, this work is rather descriptive, since the history of drug addiction and addiction research in both Russia and Germany is not very well known, and the sources that I consult are rather rare. However, there is also a major evaluative/conceptual part in it. Since professional definitions coined by turn-of-the-century physicians often had direct social implications, I challenge the existing scholarship by focusing specifically on medical texts and presenting physicians as active claims-makers who eventually exercised a visible influence on the practical narcotic policy. I also devote much more space to the problem of authors' identity, try to detect the real living persons behind the figures and the specialized vocabulary of medical texts, and also specifically consider the issues of Jewishness, since the overwhelming majority of addiction researchers in both countries were Jewish. Ultimately, my thesis will serve as an attempt to construct a bridge between social and intellectual histories of drug addiction in Russia and Germany.

Accordingly, in my thesis I analyze and compare late 19th and early 20th century Russian and German medical texts related to recreational drugs in order to show how drug addiction was constructed as a social problem related to modernity, capitalism – and Jewishness. Such an analysis also proves that addiction research greatly influenced practical narcotic policy – and shows specific ways in which it did so. Finally, my work investigates how definitions of drug addiction in Germany and Russia were in a way similar, and still varied – due to differences in the political situation, the role of science and the scientists, and also the place of the Jews in medical and cultural discourse in the two countries.

I recognize the limitations of my research. These limitations are defined both by geographical borders of Russia and Germany and by the chosen chronological boundaries of the late 19th – early 20th century (ca. 1871-1933). While I do not intend to stick to particular years, 1871 is noteworthy in several aspects: it witnessed the unification of Germany, the final emancipation of the German Jews and the first major outburst of morphine addiction in Europe in the aftermath of Franco-Prussian War. Similarly, the beginning of the 1930s in Russia and Germany was marked by the rise of totalitarian regimes (with special implications for the Jews) and also by the alleged elimination of drug addiction in both countries (see above). It is important to mention here that the ultimate results of the thesis are also determined by the sources available to me at the moment. When choosing my sources, I preferred the works that had been highly reputed and often cited in the period under discussion.

In order to accomplish the paramount goal of my thesis, I had to fulfill several research objectives. First, it is necessary to determine how medical science in Russia and Germany constructed drug addiction as a social problem, which alternative definitions were ultimately rejected and why. Another important aim is to explain why so many drug addiction researchers were Jews and how drug addiction was linked to various aspects of Jewish history. I will also look at the implications that scientific research had for practical drug policy.

The method that I plan to use in my thesis is essentially historical and comparative, but – due to the specificity of the topic - with a significant interdisciplinary component (employing several elements related to sociology, law, and medical science). An important part of the thesis is the analysis and critique of primary sources – mostly medical texts (monographs, articles in professional journals and newspapers, medical-legal, polemic and popular medical literature, and also documentation of medical, administrative, and research institutions). Consequently, I will employ some techniques of discourse and structural functional analysis in order to investigate various theories, images, and practices related to drug addiction. In dealing with the problems of narcotic policy and drug regulation, I would like to stress the importance of classical liberal approach, which rejects the essentialist perception of recreational drugs as an unequivocal social evil and calls for a more weighted evaluation of the role of the state in managing the problem.^[24]

There are several important findings in my thesis. As I already mentioned, drug addiction in the period under consideration was constructed as a social problem related to modernity, capitalism – and Jewishness. Medical science in both Russia and Germany (though with substantial variations due to political, cultural and scientific differences) played a major role in marginalizing and repressing drug addicts while rejecting other emerging alternatives. Drug addiction research also appears to be one of the attractive fields for Jewish scientists, who used this opportunity to contemplate, negotiate, and re-define the new Jewish identity in a rapidly changing modern world. Confronted with the association between drug addiction and Jewishness, they struggled to offer possible solutions to this specific problem – and concurrently constructed larger projects of the improvement of Jewish health and social change.

Since a major part of my thesis is based on the analysis of primary sources of medical origin, Chapter 1 introduces the most important primary sources and their authors and provides some guidelines for the critical analysis of these writings. In particular, it considers the specific status of Jewish physicians and Jewish patients within late 19th and early 20th century medical discourse. The second chapter describes the social context of the problem of drug addiction in the years preceding the Great War and considers the contradictions in the medical theory at that time. Chapter 3 deals with various issues (origins of drug addiction; addicts and drug-related practices; the ways of solving the social problem) that Russian and German physicians confronted while constructing drug addiction as a social problem after the First World War brought a dramatic increase in the number of drug addicts in both countries. It also discusses how associations between modernity, drug addiction and Jewishness were developed and strengthened in the post-war context. In the conclusion I summarize the main findings of the thesis, compare Russian/German and Jewish/non-Jewish perspectives and also designate some prospects for future research.

Chapter 1: Medical Texts and their Authors: Description and Critique of Primary Sources

My thesis makes extensive use of various medical texts related to drug addiction, that serve as the major and the most important primary source for this matter. In doing so, to a certain degree I follow an already established trend, since many scholars recognized the importance of sources of medical origin for historians of drug addiction and actively cited monographs and articles that were written by the physicians of the early 20th century.^[25] It is highly probable that the seemingly scientific nature of these texts made later historians perceive them as objective sources and simply take figures and statements from them without much previous consideration. However, I am much more critical in my treatment of medical texts. In fact, since my subject is not so much drug addiction per se, but rather addiction research and the construction of drug addiction as a social problem, various medical texts (monographs, articles in professional journals and newspapers, medical-legal, polemic and popular medical literature, and to a lesser degree also documentation of medical, administrative, and research institutions) emerge to occupy an even more central place as the object of my study. Moreover, it can be noted that political and social agenda of many addiction researchers actually had an impact on their medical texts.

1.1. Description of Medical Texts

Dealing with medical texts presents many challenges, since they are rather unusual historical sources. They appear to be appropriate dry scientific documents that communicate universal and a-historical truth about healthy and diseased bodies and minds – and do it in an objective impersonal fashion. Medical texts can also easily scare away an inexperienced scholar who would assume that (s)he would require some special medical knowledge to understand something from them.

There were, however, different types of texts (from short memo to comprehensive monograph) that came in a whole range of styles from articles in a popular newspaper to the proper footnote-laden scientific text. Moreover, for my purpose medical texts are actually the most useful sources that can communicate the information that would otherwise be certainly missed. The printed works of Russian and German physicians are the only primary sources providing us with specific facts and definitions – and not vague phrases.^[26] Medical texts dealing with drug addiction are also interesting in another respect – they remarkably differ from their 'neighbors' in thick professional journals in abandoning medical vocabulary and engaging in discussion about large-scale social problems and their causes.

[...]

^[1] Poem “Cocaine”, from the notes of a German cocaine addict, cited in Ernst Joël and Fritz Fränkel, Der Cocainismus: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte und Psychopathologie der Rauschgifte (Berlin: Julius Springer, 1924), 103.

^[2] John M. Efron, Medicine and the German Jews: A History ( New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001).

^[3] For the critique of Soviet Marxist historiography with its tendencies to mythologize and conceal, see Mikhail V. Khodiakov, ed., “Goriacheshnyi i triumfal'nyi gorod”: Petrograd: ot voennogo kommunizma k NEPu: Dokumenty i materialy [“Feverish and Triumphant City”: Petrograd from War Communism to the NEP: Documents and Materials] (St. Petersburg: SPbGU, 2000), 11-12; Nataliia B. Lebina, “O pol'ze igry v biser: (Mikroistoriia kak metod izucheniia norm i anomalii sovetskoi povsednevnosti 20-30-kh godov),” [On the Utility of Casting Pearls: (Microhistory as the Method to Examine Norms and Anomalies of Soviet Everyday Life in the 1920s - 1930s)] in Normy i tsennosti povsednevnoi zhizni: Stanovenie sotsialisticheskogo obraza zhizni v Rossii, 1920-30e gody [Norms and Values of Everyday Life: The Establishment of the Socialist Life-Style in Russia, 1920s - 1930s], ed. Timo Vihavainen (St. Petersburg: Neva, 2000), 7; and Vadim I. Musaev, Prestupnost' v Petrograde v 1917-1921 gg. i bor'ba s nei [Crime in Petrograd in 1917-1921 and the Struggle Against It] (St. Petersburg: Dmitrii Bulanin, 2001), 5.

^[4] Claudia Wiesemann, Die heimliche Krankheit: Eine Geschichte des Suchtbegriffs (Stuttgart: Frommann-Holzboog, 2000).

^[5] Viktor A. Popov, “Bor'ba s narkomaniei i toksikomaniei detei i podrostkov v 20-30-e gody,” [The Struggle Against Drug Addiction Among Children and Teenagers in the 1920s and 1930s] Sovetskoe zdravookhranenie no. 5 (1989): 67-70; Mary Schaeffer Conroy, “Abuse of Drugs other than Alcohol and Tobacco in the Soviet Union,” Soviet Studies 42 (1990): 447-480; Mikhail V. Shkarovskii, “Leningradskaia prostitutsiia i bor'ba s nei v 1920-e gody,” [Prostitution in Leningrad and the Struggle Against It in the 1920s] in Nevskii arkhiv: istoriko-kraevedcheskii sb. [Neva Archive: Regional History Collection], issue 1 (Moscow, 1993), 387-411; Lebina, “Tenevye storony zhizni sovetskogo goroda 20-30-kh godov,” [Dark Side of the Soviet City of the 1920s and 1930s] Voprosy istorii no. 4 (1994): 30-42; Conroy, “Drug Use and Abuse in Tsarist Russia,” in Eadem, In Health and in Sickness: Pharmacy, Pharmacists and the Pharmaceutical Industry in Late Imperial, Early Soviet Russia (Boulder: Columbia University Press, 1994), 200-218; Lebina, “Narkoman iz narkomata i klub morfinistov revoliutsionnogo Baltflota,” [Narcomaniac from the Narkomat and the Morphinist Club of the Revolutionary Baltic Fleet] Vechernii Peterburg, 12 April 1996; Eadem, “Belaia feia, ili Kak “navodili marafet” v Sovetskoi Rossii,” [The White Fairy, Or How They Powdered Their Noses in Soviet Russia] Rodina no. 9 (1996): 64-66; Shkarovskii, “Sem' imen “koshki”: Rastsvet narkomanii v 1917-1920-e gody,” [Seven Names of the “Cat”: Heyday of Drug Addiction from 1917 to the 1920s] in Nevskii arkhiv, issue 3 (St. Petersburg, 1997), 467-477; Lebina, Povsednevnaia zhizn' sovetskogo goroda: Normy i anomalii: 1920-1930 gody [Everyday Life of a Soviet City: Norms and Anomalies: 1920s - 1930s] (St. Petersburg: Neva: Letnii Sad, 1999), 28-33, 46; Musaev; Lebina and Aleksandr N. Chistikov, Obyvatel' i reformy: Kartiny povsednevnoi zhizni gorozhan v gody nepa i khrushchevskogo desiatiletiia [An Average Man and Reforms: Scenes from the Everyday Life of Urban Population during the NEP and Khrushchev Years] (St. Petersburg: Dmitrii Bulanin, 2003). See also Lebina and Shkarovskii, Prostitutsiia v Peterburge: (40-e gg. XIX v. - 40-e gg. XX v.) [Prostitution in St. Petersburg: (1840s - 1940s)] (Moscow: Progress-Akademiia, 1994).

^[6] Lebina, Povsednevnaia zhizn', 29.

^[7] Ibid., 28.

^[8] Lebina and Shkarovskii, 89-90; Shkarovskii, Sem' imen “koshki”, 467, 468, 470; Lebina, Povsednevnaia zhizn', 29-32; Musaev, 180.

^[9] Shkarovskii, Sem' imen “koshki”, 472, 474, 476; Lebina, Povsednevnaia zhizn', 32-33.

^[10] Stanislav E. Panin, “Potreblenie narkotikov v Sovetskoi Rossii (1917-1920-e gody),” [Drug Addiction in Soviet Russia (from 1917 to the 1920s)] Voprosy istorii no. 8 (2003): 129-134.

^[11] David T. Courtwright, Dark Paradise: Opiate Addiction in America before 1940 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982); David F. Musto, The American Disease: Origins of Narcotic Control ( New York: Oxford University Press, 1999); Caroline J. Acker, Creating the American Junkie: Addiction Research in the Classic Era of Narcotic Control ( Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006); Nancy D. Campbell, Discovering Addiction: The Science and Politics of Substance Abuse Research (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2007); Louise Foxcroft, The Making of Addiction: The 'Use and Abuse' of Opium in Nineteenth-Century Britain (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007).

^[12] John F. Hutchinson, Politics and Public Health in Revolutionary Russia, 1890-1918 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990).

^[13] In regard to the construction of social problems, sociologists define claims makers as individuals “making assertions of grievances and claims with respect to some putative conditions” (Malcolm Spector and John I. Kitsuse, Constructing Social Problems (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 2006), 75). On claims making related to drugs, see: Peter Meylakhs, “Narkotiki: Ideologiia, narkopolitika i moral',” [Drugs: Ideology, Narcotic Policy, and Morality] http://www.regioncentre.ru/generation/publications/publication41 (accessed June 2, 2010); and Idem, “Opasnosti moral'noi paniki po povodu narkotikov,”
[The Dangers of the Drug Moral Panic] Credo New no. 1 (2003).

^[14] Daniel Beer, “Blueprints for Change: the Human Sciences and the Coercive Transformation of Deviants in Russia, 1890-1930,” Osiris, 2nd Series 22 (2007): 26-47; Idem, Renovating Russia: The Human Sciences and the Fate of Liberal Modernity, 1880-1930 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2008)

^[15] Paul Lerner, Hysterical Men: War, Psychiatry and the Politics of Trauma in Germany, 1890-1930 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003).

^[16] Sander L. Gilman, The Jew's Body (New York: Routledge, 1991); Idem, The Case of Sigmund Freud: Medicine and Identity at the Fin-de-siècle (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993); Efron, Defenders of The Race: Jewish Doctors and Race Science in Fin-de-Siècle Europe (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994).

^[17] Efron, Medicine.

^[18] Ibid., 105-185. On the perceived 'pathological' aspects of the Jewish body, see also Klaus Hödl, “Der jüdische Körper als Stigma,” Österreichische Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaften 2 (1997): 212-230; Idem, “Medizinischer Antisemitismus oder Antisemitismus in der Medizin? Historische Wurzeln und Charakterisierungsversuche eines Phänomens,” in Antisemitismusforschung in den Wissenschaften, ed. Werner Bergmann and Mona Körte (Berlin: Metropol: 2004), 161-185; and Idem, “Der “jüdische Körper” in seiner Differenz. Textuelle und performative Konstruktionen,” in Marginalisierte Körper. Beiträge zur Soziologie und Geschichte des anderen Körpers, ed. Torsten Junge and Imke Schmincke (Münster: Unrast, 2007), 63-77.

^[19] Harriet P. Freidenreich, Female, Jewish, and Educated: The Lives of Central European University Women (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002).

^[20] For a half-successful attempt to resolve the existing contradictions, see Vladimir T. Lisovskii and Elina A. Kolesnikova, Narkotizm kak sotsial'naia problema [Drug Addiction as a Social Problem] (St. Petersburg: SPbGU, 2001), 12.

^[21] For a perspective that combines cocaine with tea, coffee and beer, but excludes heroine, see Aleksandr S. Sholomovich, “Narkotizm kak sotsial'no-patologicheskoe iavlenie i mery bor'by s nim sredi rabochikh,” [Drug Addiction as a Pathological Social Phenomenon, and the Measures Against Its Spreading Among the Workers] in Idem, ed. Voprosy narkologii: Sb. no. 1 [Problems of Narcology: Collection no. 1] (Moscow, Moszdravotdel, 1926).

^[22] For a critical treatment of poison/medicine contradiction in the history of addiction research, consider Alfred R. Lindesmith and John H. Gagnon, “Anomie and Drug Addiction,” in Anomie and Deviant Behaviour: A Discussion and Critique (London: The Free Press of Glencoe, 1964), 162-163.

^[23] Cf. internal definitional inconsistencies in the major Soviet edited collections Voprosy narkologii: Voprosy narkologii: Sb. no. 1; Sholomovich, ed. Voprosy narkologii: Sb. no. 2 [Problems of Narcology: Collection no. 2] (Moscow: Moszdravotdel, 1928).

^[24] For a general critique of the government regulation of the drug market, see Ethan A. Nadelmann, “Drug Prohibition in the United States: Costs, Consequences, and Alternatives,” Science 245 (1989): 939-947.

^[25] For examples of works that have frequent and rather uncritical borrowings from medical texts consider Mikhail V. Shkarovskii, “Sem' imen “koshki”: Rastsvet narkomanii v 1917-1920-e gody,” [Seven Names of the “Cat”: Heyday of Drug Addiction from 1917 to the 1920s] in Nevskii arkhiv: istoriko-kraevedcheskii sb. [Neva Archive: Regional History Collection], issue 3 (St. Petersburg, 1997), 467-477; Nataliia B. Lebina, Povsednevnaia zhizn' sovetskogo goroda: Normy i anomalii: 1920-1930 gody [Everyday Life of a Soviet City: Norms and Anomalies: 1920s - 1930s] (St. Petersburg: Neva: Letnii Sad, 1999); and Stanislav E. Panin, “Potreblenie narkotikov v Sovetskoi Rossii (1917-1920-e gody),” [Drug Addiction in Soviet Russia (from 1917 to the 1920s)] Voprosy istorii no. 8 (2003): 129-134. Shkarovskii, Sem' imen “koshki”, 476 is especially remarkable in this respect, since the author actually misspells the name of the early Soviet physician (should be Tu t olmin, not Tu sh olmin), but uses the authority of his citation to make the point about “strengthening of cocaine addiction – as well as other addictions – among both children and adults” in the 1920s.

^[26] In comparison to other sources (administrative documentation, legal works, newspaper reports, fiction) medical texts eventually emerge as the most coherent, structured and informative.