Madness and the Mad in Russian Culture

Angela Brintlinger is an associate professor in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at Ohio State University.Ilya Vinitsky is an assistant professor in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of Pennsylvania.

"This collection is an important contribution to our understanding of the ways in which the shifting discourse of madness offers a rich and varied lens through which to explore Russia's troubled experience of modernity." - D. Beer (Slavonic and East European Review/vvol88:03:10) ‘A series of fascinating essays that approach the problem of insanity in Russian culture from wide-ranging disciplinary angles.’ - Valeria Sobol (The Russian Review) ‘The most comprehensive interdisciplinary survey of its kind.’ - Dmitri Shalin (Russian Journal of Communication) ‘A cornucopia of delights for specialists and generalists alike.’ - Scarlet Marquette (Slavic and East European Journal) ‘The volume is a broad mosaic ... exciting and kaleidoscopic.’ - Elena L. Grigorenko (PsycCRITIQUES) ‘This collection of essays is both an excellent introduction to madness and an opportunity to probe this fascinating terrain in depth.’- Nigel Raab (Left History vol 20:01:2016)

• AcknowledgmentsNote on Translation and TransliterationIntroduction: Approaching Russian MadnessANGELA BRINTLINGERPART ONE: MADNESS, THE STATE, AND SOCIETY1 A Cheerful Empress and Her Gloomy Critics: Catherine the Great and the Eighteenth-Century Melancholy ControversyILYA VINITSKY2 The Osvidetel’stvovanie and Ispytanie of Insanity: Psychiatry in Tsarist RussiaLIA IANGOULOVA3 Madness as an Act of Defence of Personality in Dostoevsky’sThe DoubleELENA DRYZHAKOVA4 Vsevolod Garshin, the Russian Intelligentsia, and Fan HysteriaROBERT D. WESSLING5 On Hostile Ground: Madness and Madhouse in Joseph Brodsky’s‘Gorbunov and Gorchakov'LEV LOSEFFPART TWO: MADNESS, WAR, AND REVOLUTION6 The Concept of Revolutionary Insanity in Russian HistoryMARTIN A. MILLER7 The Politics of Etiology: Shell Shock in the Russian Army, 1914–1918IRINA SIROTKINA8 Lives Out of Balance: The ‘Possible World’ of Soviet Suicide during the 1920sKENNETH PINNOW9 Early Soviet Forensic Psychiatric Approaches to Sex Crime, 1917–1934DAN HEALEYPART THREE: MADNESS AND CREATIVITY10 Writing about Madness: Russian Attitudes toward Psyche and Psychiatry, 1887–1907ANGELA BRINTLINGER11 ‘Let Them Go Crazy’: Madness in the Works of ChekhovMARGARITA ODESSKAYA12 The Genetics of Genius: V.P. Efroimson and the Biosocial Mechanisms of Heightened Intellectual ActivityYVONNE HOWELL13 Madwomen without Attics: The Crazy Creatrix and the Procreative IurodivaiaHELENA GOSCILO14 A ‘New Russian’ Madness? Fedor Mikhailov’s Novel Idiot and Roman Kachanov’s Film Daun KhausANDREI ROGACHEVSKII15 Methods of Madness and Madness as a MethodMIKHAIL EPSTEINAfterwordJULIE V. BROWNBibliographyContributors