SUMMARY:

In 1925, Dr. Grigorii Abramovich Batkis, the young social hygienist who was the leading figure in the kabinet of sexology (seksologiia) of the newly created State Institute of Social Hygiene in Moscow, published in Germany a twenty-four-page pamphlet on the sexual revolution in Russia. The inclusion of Batkis’s pamphlet in the prestigious series, Beitrage zum Sexualproblem, edited by Felix Theilhaber, might suggest that Soviet social hygiene research on sexual issues had struck resonance in international sexological circles and that the intense efforts of Soviet scientists in the 1920s to “reclaim place” in international public health and medicine were bearing fruit. But appearances can be deceiving. While part of Batkis’s pamphlet was widely discussed in international circles, another part was studiously ignored. Moreover, Batkis’s pamphlet never appeared in Russia, nor did Batkis include the pamphlet in his list of publications. This article uses the puzzles surrounding Batkis’s pamphlet as a spring board to analyze Soviet seksologiia poised between the Russian and the international arenas for sexological research. What does the publication of this pamphlet in Germany tell us about Soviet social hygienists’ “capture” of place in international sexology? What was the relationship between social hygienists’ “capture” of place abroad and their “capture” of the sexological sciences at home?