The Soviet gulag was a place of brutality, exploitation and death. But it was also home to tens of thousands of medical personnel who had to overcome limited facilities, appalling conditions and political menace in a battle to save the inmates' lives. Professor Dan Healey, author of a new book on these Gulag doctors, talks to Rob Attar about their complex roles in the heart of Stalin's labour camps.

(Ad) Dan Healey is the author of The Gulag Doctors: Life, Death, and Medicine in Stalin's Labour Camps (Yale University Press, 2024). Buy it now from Amazon: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Gulag-Doctors-Medicine-Stalins-Labour/dp/0300187130#:~:text=Dan%20Healey%20explores%20the%20lives,a%20proportion%20of%20their%20patients./?tag=bbchistory045-21&ascsubtag=historyextra-social-histboty.

The HistoryExtra podcast is produced by the team behind BBC History Magazine.

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