“The best representative of Russian psychiatry”: Remembering Sergey Korsakov in Russian and Soviet psychiatry,1900–1954

The article examines how Russian and Soviet psychiatry perceived Sergey Korsakov (1854–1900) as a founding figure of the discipline, from his death in 1900 until his centennial in 1954. Initially, contemporaries defined his posthumous image through three key roles: a humane doctor, a scientist, and a public figure, each reflecting the core values of the medical profession at that time. Although his disciples succeeded in integrating their mentor into the Soviet pantheon after the Bolshevik Revolution, Korsakov’s public image underwent a radical transformation. As a result of the late Stalinist ideological campaigns the psychiatrist’s image was recast to emphasize his identity as a great scientist, a materialist and a precursor to Ivan Pavlov, while his earlier persona as a civic activist was erased.