'[A]n der Front des Kampfes um den Menschen selbst'. Anthropogenetics and Anthropotechnics in Soviet Thought

摘要

The period between 1920 and 1930 reveals in Russia a practical manifestation of the technologies of the self, which see the body not only in a poetic-symbolical way, but practically as a material of shaping and rebuilding. In this bio-social discourse of a genetically perfected 'new man', Russian theorists of eugenics are looking back on traditional parallels of animal and plant breeding. The most influential group of eugenics were the Russian biologists, especially the key players and the founders of the Russian genetics research Nikolai Kol'tsov (1872-1940) and Aleksandr Serebrovskii (1892-1948). It will be demonstrated that 'human breeding' (Russ. 'Antropotekhnika') is based both on the semantics and on the methodology of traditional animal and plant breeding.