This article analyzes the interactions of medical experts, minor patients, and parents in a child psychiatric institution that operated in the Soviet city of Perm΄ between 1926 and 1929. Through a micro-history of this institution, the author raises questions about the nature of violence within the realm of psychiatric care, demonstrating the multidimensional flow of power within a particular institutional setting and adding complexity to our understanding of the asylum writ large. At the same time, the article engages the question of violence in Soviet society at the end of the NEP, suggesting that the historical actors involved in the Perm΄ institution used violence as a means to explain the crisis of their time.
