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Ken Kalling
7th May 2009; Goethe Institute Riga, Latvia.
In this lecture, Ken Kalling investigates the themes and agents that sought to biologize Estonian national thought between the turn of 19th century and the Second World War. Ken argues that Estonian eugenics’ popular appeal lay with its ability to constitute the lowest common denominator adjoining popular scientific knowledge, populism, and social reasoning. Analysing how a small nation’s self perception broached the questions of how to regulate the quality and quantity of it’s ‘stock’, and the influence exerted by its substantial pre-independence anti-alcohol movement, Ken traces the institutionalisation of Estonian eugenics from the 1924 creation of the ‘Estonian Eugenics Society’ unto the 1940 Soviet rescinding of the country’s eugenic legislation.
This lecture also details Estonian eugenics’ tangible applications, most importantly its sterilisation programme and abortions, as well as pro-natalist programmes and the six-year plan to increase public health that included the formation of the ‘Board of Population Increase and Welfare’
