Browsing by Author "Vaiseta, Tomas"

Now showing 1 - 2 of 2
  • No Thumbnail Available
    Item
    Power unto Sickness, Sickness unto Power in the Periphery of Soviet Psychiatry
    (RSU Medicīnas vēstures institūts. Paula Stradiņa Medicīnas vēstures muzejs., 2020) Vaiseta, Tomas
    The three most important processes in psychiatric hospitals of the Lithuanian SSR (1944–1990) have been analysed in terms of the centre-periphery relation. Two of them are named “power unto sickness”, that is, the Soviet state’s efforts to influence people with deviant behaviours who were considered to have “mental diseases”. The first process could be considered external: institutionalisation of psychiatric system in the Lithuanian SSR that was meant to create the conditions, forms and means to exercise the said influence. The main outcome of the process is said to be the so-called “institution addiction” where problems arising from institutionalisation are tackled with more institutionalisation. The second process in the “power unto sickness” category is internal. The Soviet psychiatric model used in the Lithuanian SSR has been analysed and the question whether there has ever been a homogenous and unique model of Soviet psychiatry has been raised. The third process is the symbolic inverse of the “power unto sickness” processes, but determined by them – “sickness unto power”. It shows the “power” itself to be deviant, transgressing formal limits, exposes the consequences and cracks of its exercise. The third process in psychiatric hospitals of the Lithuanian SSR, “parallelisation”, in which the modern hospital, alongside its formal therapeutic function, acquired parallel, non-formal functions, has been described.
  • No Thumbnail Available
    Item
    Sexual Revolution, Mobilization or Civil War: How to Understand the Soviet Transformation of Sexuality (The Case of Soviet Lithuania)
    (Rīgas Stradiņa universitātes Medicīnas vēstures institūts (Institute of History of Medicine, Rīga Stradiņš University), 2023) Klumbys, Valdemaras; Vaiseta, Tomas
    The article raises a question whether the concept of sexual revolution could be applied to the changes of sexuality in the Soviet Union. The case of one of the republics of the USSR, Soviet Lithuania is analysed. The dynamics of sexual policy, norms and behaviour that took place in 1944–1990 are examined to demonstrate what problems arise when applying the concept of the sexual revolution and a new solution is offered – the concept of sexual civil war. It is argued that this new concept points to implications that contradict the sexual revolution: the changes of sexuality are elongated and viscous, the conflicting traditional and modern norms and behaviour can overlap or entrench in separate social and cultural groups to create a kind of stalemate. Therefore the concept of sexual civil war does not stress on the changes themselves but a particular conflict in the process of a transformation of sexuality.