Mobilizations during the wars of Russia in the first half of the 20th century and mental disorders

The study of the mobilization companies of the Russian-Japanese War 1904–1905, World War I (1914–1918) and World War II (1939–1945) World Wars allows to reconstruct the features of the relationship between the state and the individual, the government and society, military institutions and civil administrations through the prism of mental illnesses of the population in the Russian Empire and the USSR. The description of the factors and conditions that allowed conscripts who had various mental pathologies to enter the active army clarifies the development and traditions of not only domestic medicine, but also important reasons for heroic deeds or possible war crimes (desertion, refusal to carry out orders, etc.). The main diseases of conscripts have been identified, which indicates certain mental pathologies of the Russian socium. The methodological features of the study of the stated problems are based on the author’s concept of attracting the works of contemporaries, primarily specialists in the field of psychiatry, medical practitioners of the Tambov region, as well as medical histories and anamnesis of mental illness. In this context, the conducted research has a good prospect of multifactorial and interregional study of the stated scientific problem. The results of the study allow us to conclude that conscription companies in the Russian Empire and the USSR provided a sound formation of military posts and formations, however, there were serious shortcomings in the work of medical commissions to identify mental illnesses in the mobilized. The conclusion about the importance of studying the gender aspects of mobilization activities, as well as the analysis of the health status of volunteers, is quite obvious. The results of the study of military conscription in the first half of the twentieth century are quite representative and allow for a new assessment and improvement of modern private mobilizations in the Russian Federation. The consequences of conscription companies on the peaceful civilian population, who experienced the most powerful psychological shocks and had their own psychiatric anamnesis, were studied.

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