In The Body Soviet, history professor Tricia Starks argues that hygienic thought and health institutions were central to the creation of the new state and its citizens. She places these in international context demonstrating the most pervasive application of early health initiatives in the world.

In 1918 the People's Commissariat of Public Health began a quest to protect the health of all Soviet citizens. Health became more than a political platform or tactical decision. The Soviet people defined the existing world by interpreting political orthodoxy and citizenship in terms of hygiene. Cleanliness developed into a political statement that extended from domestic maintenance to leisure choices and revealed prejudices. Dirt denoted politics; health and cleanliness signified mental acuity, political orthodoxy and modernity.

By examining sources of health care propaganda and medical monitoring institutions of the Soviet state, this book places hygiene and the rhetoric of health at the heart of the revolutionary endeavor. Soviet health programs were more thoroughly applied, more intensely monitored and more radically conceived than anywhere else in the world.

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