Bolshevik Disease and Stalinist Terror: On the Historical Casuistry of Artificial Pneumothorax

From its initial development by Carlo Forlanini at the end of the nineteenth century until the advent of antibiotics in the 1940s, artificial pneumothorax was one of the most widely used treatments for pulmonary tuberculosis. However, there were strongly held reservations about this therapy because of its risks and side effects. In the Soviet Union under Stalin, such uncertainties became instruments of political denunciation. The leading Soviet pulmonary physician Volf S. Kholtsman (1886–1941) was alleged to have used the so-called ‘aristocratic therapy’ of artificial pneumothorax to kill prominent Bolsheviks. Drawing on documents from Stalin’s personal Secretariat, this historical study of the pneumothorax scandal contributes to the cultural history of tuberculosis, showing how it was instrumentalised for political purposes.