Eugenics, Rejuvenation, and Bulgakov's Journey into the Heart of Dogness
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4207697 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Yvonne Howell (corresponding author) |
| Year | 2006 |
| Volume | 65 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 544-562 |
| Publication date | 2006-01-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Slavic Review (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0037-6779 • E-ISSN: 2325-7784 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.2307/4148663 |
| OpenAlex | W2007572961 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 5 |
| References cited | 2 |
This new reading of Mikhail Bulgakov's Heart of a Dog challenges the two lines of thought that dominate existing interpretations. Cold Warinspired critics saw in the banned novella an anti-Soviet political allegory and ignored its astute treatment of Soviet debates on biosocial issues. Most other critics have cast Preobrazhenskii as a mad scientist in the Frankenstein tradition, unleashing forces he himself cannot control. Putting aside false antitheses, Bulgakov's novella emerges as a fictional exploration of ideas in eugenics, hormone replacement therapy, and the nature-nurture debate that had real urgency for early Soviet geneticists struggling for ideological support, and for Bolshevik policymakers trying to create a "New Soviet Man." In this article, Yvonne Howell describes the competing scientific paradigms that provide a backdrop to Bulgakov's work and shows how attitudes from across the "nature-nurture" spectrum appear and interact in Heart of a Dog through the voices of its principal characters
Aesthetics · Art · Eugenics · Ideology · Literature · Nature versus nurture · Novella · Political science · Politics · Psychoanalysis · Sociology · Anthropology · Law · Medical History and Research · Philosophy · Psychology · Race, Genetics, and Society · Reproductive Health and Technologies
| Citations per year | 0.29 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2009 - 2019 (11) |
| Highly cited | No |