Midwifing Modernity: Popularizing Modern Health Care for Women in Late Imperial Russia

Abstract This article examines the discourse on Russian women’s health care in the late Imperial period within the context of modernization. One of the hallmarks of modernity, health care is also one of the most intimate areas of contact between the agents of modernity and the public at large. The discussion was starkly divided between those concerned with peasant women and those concerned with educated women, but both were firmly situated in the overarching project of healthification ( ozdorovlenie ). While the authors concerned with peasant women’s health sought to overcome traditional beliefs and practices and replace them with the findings of modern science, the literature directed at the educated public illustrates the anxiety that accompanied the modernity project. The authors writing to and about educated society were far more conflicted about the array of problems they observed developing as traditional beliefs and practices were challenged by changes in society. The article explores the development and role of women’s health care, the tensions between professional and popular health care practitioners, and their relationships with the population from cultural, political and gendered perspectives, and analyzes modernization as a site of contention over women’s agency as well as a social and cultural process.