Includes biblographical references.

Preliminary Material -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction: Eugenics, Sterilisation and the Racial State: The Baltic States, Russia, and the Global Eugenics Movement / Björn M. Felder -- Race, Eugenics and National Identity in the Eastern Baltic: From Racial Surveys to Racial States / Paul J. Weindling -- The Application of Eugenics in Estonia 1918-1940 / Ken Kalling -- Racial Identity and Physical Anthropology in Estonia 1800-1945 / Ken Kalling and Leiu Heapost -- “God forgives – but Nature never will” Racial Identity, Racial Anthropology, and Eugenics in Latvia 1918-1940 / Björn M. Felder -- Latvian Psychiatry and Medical Legislation of the 1930s and the German Sterilisation Law / Vladimirs Kuznecovs -- “Over-Latvianisation in Heaven” - Attitudes towards Contraception and Abortion in Latvia 1918-1940 / Ineta Lipša -- Eugenics against State and Church: Juozas Blažys (1890-1939), Eugenics, Abortion and Psychiatry in Interwar Lithuania 1918-1940 / Björn M. Felder and Arūnas Germanavičius -- World War One and National Characterology in East-Central Europe / Maciej Górny -- Soviet Eugenics and National Minorities: Eradication of Syphilis in Buriat-Mongolia as an Element of Social Modernisation of a Frontier Region 1923-1928 / Vsevolod Bashkuev -- Sterilisation in the Swedish Welfare State: A Gender Issue? / Maija Runcis -- Eugenic Concerns, Scientific Practices: International Relations and National Adaptations in the Establishment of Psychiatric Genetics in Germany, Britain, the US and Scandinavia 1910-1960 / Volker Roelcke -- List of Contributors.

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The history of eugenics in the Baltic States is largely unknown. The book compares for the first time the eugenic projects of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania and the related disciplines of racial anthropology and psychiatry, and situates them within the wider European context. Strong ethno-nationalism defined the nation as a biological group, which was fostered by authoritarian regimes established in Lithuania in 1926, and in Estonia and Latvia in 1934. The eugenics projects were designed to establish a nation in biological terms. Their aims were to render the nation ethnically, genetically and racially homogeneous. The main agenda was a non-democratic state that defined its population in biological terms. Eugenic policies were to regenerate the nation and to reconstruct it as a “pure” and “original” race, Such schemes for national regeneration contained strong elements of secular religion.