The Passport of the Maimed Warrior: Medical Expertise and Bureaucratic Practices in Treating the Disabled Body in 1917-1918

This article focuses on the issues related to obtaining the status of a military invalid and the changes in the policies and rules of this process in Russia in the post-revolutionary period. Particular attention is paid to the process of medical examination, its bureaucratic practices and forms of documentation. The key role of the examination for the material well-being and stability of the status of a military invalid led to several demands, dissatisfactions and calls for changes in the system that had been in place since the beginning of World War I. This became possible with the emergence of new state aid institutions in 1917 (from the Ministry of State Patronage to the later People’s Commissariat of Social Welfare) and forms of self-organisation (the Union of Maimed Warriors). The problem of military invalids during the organisational changes of 1917-1918 is analysed from the perspective of the actors involved, their institutional positions and their motivations. These discussions are seen as a space to produce knowledge about the disabled body, as well as to control over it, and raise a number of questions about existing and proposed taxonomies of disease and injury, methods of diagnosis, and communities of experts involved in determining disability. Special attention is paid to the position and role of the military invalids themselves, who, in the conditions of the postrevolutionary period, expanded their sphere of action by referring to the “conquered” right to vote. On the basis of archival material from state relief institutions and departments of the Union of Maimed Warriors, legislative acts and periodicals, the article shows how the increasing concretization of the affected body was justified as a benefit to the state and to the disabled warrior, what community of experts was gathered around the disabled body, and what role the Act on the Results of Medical Examination played in the communication between a military invalid and state relief institutions.

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