Lethal mobilities: Bodies and lice on Soviet railroads, 1918-1922

Journal of Transport History

Volumn 29, Issue 2, 2008, Pages 259-276

  Argenbright, Robert ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA WILMINGTON   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

CIVIL WAR; DISEASE PREVALENCE; EPIDEMIC; INDUSTRIALIZATION; LOUSE; MEDICAL GEOGRAPHY; MOBILITY; MODERNIZATION; RAILWAY CONSTRUCTION; RAILWAY TRANSPORT; TECHNOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT; TRANSPORTATION HISTORY;

EURASIA; RUSSIAN FEDERATION;

PHTHIRAPTERA;

EID: 66749189307     PISSN: 00225266     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.7227/TJTH.29.2.7     Document Type: Article

References (103)

1. Some 5 million people died in the famine of 1921-22. See Evan Mawdsley, The Russian Civil War (Boston MA, 1987), p. 287. An indeterminate but large number of people also died of hunger in 1918-20.
2. Evidently there is but one scholarly work in English concerning typhus in Russia: K. Patterson, 'Typhus and its control in Russia, 1870-1940', Medical History 37 (1993), 361-81;
3. S. Solomon and J. Hutchinson (eds), Health and Society in Revolutionary Russia(Bloomington IN, 1990).
4. For an example of an anthropological approach see S. Leclerc-Madlala, 'Virginity testing: managing sexuality in a maturing HIV/AIDS epidemic', Medical Anthropology Quarterly 15, 4 (2004), 533-52. For an example of a 'zoological' approach (perhaps better labelled 'ecological', although one co-author is a zoologist) see A. P. Galvani and R. M. May, 'Dimensions of superspreading', Nature 438 (17 November 2005), 293-295.
5. N. B. Weissman, 'Origins of Soviet health administration: Narkomzdrav, 1918-1928', in Solomon and Hutchinson, Health and Society, pp. 97-101.
6. E. A. Hansen and B. Cunha, 'Typhus fever: Rickettsia prowazekii', Ames IA: Center for Food Security and Public Health, Iowa State University College of Veterinary Medicine, www.rivma.org/Typhus%20Fever.doc (last accessed 10 March 2004).
7. M. Eremeeva and G. Dasch, 'Rickettsial infections', The Yellow Book: Health Information for International Travel, National Center for Infectious Diseases, 2005-06, www2.ncid. cdc.gov/travel/yb/utils/ybGet.asp?section= dis&obj=rickettsial.htm (last accessed 22 August 2005); E. A. Hansen and B. Cunha, 'Typhus', E-medicine, www.emedicine.com/ med/topic2332.htm (last accessed 10 March 2004).
8. H. Zinsser, Rats, Lice and History (Boston MA, 1963), p. 268.
9. J. A. Edlow, 'Tick-borne diseases: relapsing fever', eMedicine, www.emedicine.com/emerg/ topic590htm (last updated 26 January 2001, last accessed 22 February 2004).
10. Zinsser, Rats, Lice, p. 294.
11. Yu. A. Poliakov, Sovetskaia strana posle okonchaniia grazhdanskoi voiny: territoriia i naselenie [The land of the Soviets after the civil war: territory and population] (Moscow, 1986), p. 109.
12. J. F. Hutchinson, 'Tsarist Russia and the bacteriological revolution', Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 40 (1985), 420-39;
13. J. R. McNeill, Something New under the Sun: an Environmental History of the Twentieth Century World (New York, 2000), p. 200.
14. Zinsser, Rats, Lice, p. 184.
15. Selected works on Russian railroad history: R. Haywood, The Beginnings of Railway Development in Russia in the Reign of Nicholas I, 1835-1842 (Durham NC, 1969);
16. R. Haywood, Russia Enters the Railway Age, 1842-1855 (New York, 1998);
17. A. Heywood, Modernising Lenin's Russia: Economic Reconstruction, Foreign Trade and the Railways(Cambridge MA, 1999);
18. S. Marks, Road to Power: the Trans-Siberian Railroad and the Colonization of Asian Russia, 1850-1917 (Ithaca NY, 1991);
19. R. North, Transport in Western Siberia: Tsarist and Soviet Development (Vancouver, 1978);
20. L. Symons and C. White (eds), Russian Transport: an Historical and Geographical Survey (London, 1975);
21. J. Westwood, A History of Russian Railways (London, 1964).
22. W. Schivelbusch, The Railway Journey: the Industrialization of Time and Space in the Nineteenth Century (Berkeley CA, 1987), pp. 34-44.
23. Yi-Fu Tuan, Space and Place: the Perspective of Experience (Minneapolis MN, 1977), p. 6.
24. W. R. Augustine, 'Russia's railwaymen, July-October 1917', Slavic Review 24, 4 (1965), 666-79;
25. author's Ph.D. dissertation, 'The Russian Railroad System and the Founding of the Communist State, 1917-1922', University of California (Berkeley, 1990), pp. 60-5, 79-95.
26. Author's diss., pp. 79-95.
27. This insight is fundamental in M. Seidman, Republic of Egos: a Social History of the Spanish Civil War (Madison WI, 2002).
28. Food supply was especially important in this regard. See M. Borrero, Hungry Moscow: Scarcity and Urban Society in the Russian Civil War, 1917-1921 (New York, 2003), pp. 195-201;
29. R. Argenbright, 'Bolsheviks, baggers, and railroaders: political power and social space', Russian Review 52, 4 (1993), 506-27.
30. O. Figes, 'The Red Army and mass mobilisation during the Russian civil war, 1918-1920', Past and Present 129 (1990), 168-211.
31. I. Narskii, Zhizn' v katastrofe. Budni naseleniia Urala v 1917-1922 gg. [Life during a catastrophe: daily life of the population of the Urals, 1917-1922] (Moscow, 2001), p. 133.
32. D. Pletnev, Sypnoi tif [Spotted typhus] (Moscow, 1922), p. 115.
33. M. MacKenzie, 'Some practical considerations in the control of louse-borne typhus fever in Great Britain in the light of experience in Russia, Poland, Rumania and China', Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine 35 (1942), 144. For more on unreliable data see Poliakov, Sovetskaia strana, p. 109;
34. Ye. Smirnov, V. Lebedinskii, and N. Garin, Voiny i epidemii [Wars and epidemics] (Moscow, 1988), p. 68.
35. Smirnov et al., pp. 67-8.
36. Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Rossiiskoi Federatsii (GARF) [State Archive of the Russian Federation], f. [fond, record group] A-482, op. [opis, sub-group] 4, d. [delo, fi le unit] 134, ll. [listi, sheets] 48, 48v.
37. Smirnov et al., Voiny i epidemii, pp. 66-7.
38. O. Baroian, Itogi poluvekovoi bor'by s infektsiiami v SSSR [Findings from a half-century long struggle against infectious diseases in the USSR] (Moscow, 1968), pp. 20-54.
39. Poliakov, Sovetskaia strana, pp. 68-9, p. 113, note 111.
40. Pletnev, Sypnoi tif, p. 114.
41. Zinsser, Rats, Lice, p. 294.
42. S. Zagorsky, State Control of Industry in Russia during the War (New Haven CT, 1928), p. 51.
43. Smirnov et al., Voiny i epidemii, pp. 37-9.
44. Ibid.
45. Author's diss., pp. 89, 109-15.
46. P. Gatrell, A Whole Empire Walking: Refugees in Russia during World War I (Bloomington IN, 1999), p. 3.
47. Ibid., p. 188.
48. Ibid.
49. Smirnov et al., Voiny i epidemii, pp. 58-60.
50. The American Typhus Relief Expedition in Poland thought 'Red' PoWs were the source: A. E. Cornebise, Typhus and Doughboys: the American Polish Typhus Relief Expedition, 1919-1921 (Newark NJ, 1982), p. 58. German sailors were blamed for bringing infl uenza to America: G. Kolata, Flu: the Story of the Great Infl uenza Pandemic of 1918 and the Search for the Virus that Caused it (New York, 1999), pp. 5-6. Also, see Howard Markel and Alexandra Minna Stern, 'The foreignness of germs: the persistent association of immigrants with disease in American society', Milbank Quarterly 80, 4 (2002), pp. 757-88.
51. D. Koenker, 'Urbanization and deurbanization in the Russian revolution and civil war', in D. Koenker, W. Rosenberg, and R. Suny (eds), Party, State, and Society in the Russian Civil War: Explorations in Social History (Bloomington IN, 1989), pp. 90-9.
52. Argenbright, 'Bolsheviks, baggers, and railroaders'; Borrero, Hungry Moscow;
53. A. Iu. Davydov, Nelegal'noe snabzhenie rossiiskogo naseleniia i vlast' 1917-1921 gg.: meshochniki [Illegal provisioning of the Russian population and state power, 1917-1921: the baggers] (St Petersburg, 2002).
54. Transport i Zhizn' [Transport and Life], 25 (12 April 1919), p. 3.
55. G. Leggett, The Cheka: Lenin's Political Police (Oxford, 1986), pp. 246-7;
56. A. Ball, And Now my Soul is Hardened: Abandoned Children in Soviet Russia, 1918-1930 (Berkeley CA, 1994).
57. H. H. Fisher, The Famine in Soviet Russia, 1919-1923: the Operations of the American Relief Administration (New York, 1927), p. 71. Also see B. M. Patenaude, The Big Show in Bololand: the American Relief Expedition to Soviet Russia in the Famine of 1921(Stanford CA, 2002), pp. 236-44.
58. Smirnov et al., Voiny i epidemii, p. 72;
59. McNeill, Something New, p. 200; Weissman, 'Origins', 107.
60. V. I. Lenin, Collected Works XXX (September 1919-April 1920) (Moscow, 1977), p. 185.
61. Author's diss., pp. 292-4; 368-71.
62. The 'Whites' also suffered from typhus. For example, see C. Foust, 'Sanitary trains and epidemic control: the American Red Cross in Siberia during the Russian civil war', in J. Carrillo and G. de Ros (eds), Actas del XXXIII Congreso Internacional de Historia de la Medicina (Seville, 1994), 1009.
63. Weissman, 'Origins', 97-101.
64. Ibid., 103.
65. M. Conroy, 'Health care in prisons, labour and concentration camps in early Soviet Russia, 1918-1921', Europe-Asia Studies, 52, 7 (2000), 1257-74, at 1265;
66. C. Davis, 'Economic problems of the Soviet health service, 1917-1930', Soviet Studies 35, 3 (1983), 344, 344.
67. Leninskie dekrety po zdravokhraneniiu [Lenin's decrees concerning health care], second edition (Moscow, 1980), p. 191;
68. Davis, 'Economic problems', 346.
69. GARF, f. A-482, op. 4, d. 28, l. 194.
70. Author's diss., pp. 505-6.
71. GARF, f. A-482, op. 4, d. 132, ll. 1-9.
72. Narodnyi Komissariat Zdravookhraneniia, Sypnoi tif. Dekrety i rasporiazheniia soveta Narodnykh Komissarov i Narodnogo Komissariata Zdravookhraneniia o Meropriatiiakh po bor'be s sypnym tifom [Spotted typhus: decrees and directives of the Soviet of People's Commissars and the People's Commissariat of Health Care concerning measures in the struggle with spotted typhus] (Moscow, 1920).
73. Smirnov et al., Voiny i epidemii, p. 72.
74. P. Kenez, Civil War in South Russia, 1919-1920: the Defeat of the Whites (Berkeley CA, 1977), p. 29.
75. Smirnov et al., Voiny i epidemii, p. 66.
76. Materialy putei soobshcheniia [Materials of ways and communications] VI, pp. 121-3, 150-62.
77. Glavpolitput' 8 [the Chief Political Directorate of Ways and Communications] (30 March 1920), p. 2.
78. Rossiiskii Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Ekonomiki (RGAE) [Russian State Economic Archive], f. 1884, op. 70, d. 20, ll. 7-7v.
79. Sanitarnyi Biulleten' g. Moskvy [Sanitation Bulletin of the City of Moscow], a supplement to the journal Vrachebno-Sanitarnaia Khronika Moskvy [Moscow Medical and Sanitation Chronicle] found in GARF, f. A-482, op. 4, d. 31, l. 37v.
80. Ibid., l. 38-41.
81. Ibid., l. 65.
82. Ibid., l. 56.
83. In Saratov 120 soap factories closed: D. Raleigh, Experiencing Russia's Civil War: Politics, Society, and Revolutionary Culture in Saratov, 1917-1922 (Princeton NJ, 2002), p. 285.
84. GARF, f. A-482, op. 4, d. 31, l. 54v.
85. Ibid., l. 67v.
86. Vestnik Putei Soobshcheniia [Ways and Communications Bulletin] 3 (1919), 5.
87. GARF, f. A-482, op. 4, d. 31, l. 87v.
88. Ibid., l. 91v.
89. Transport i Zhizn' 11, 24 (8 February 1919), 4.
90. N. Bugai, Chrezvychainye organy sovetskoi vlasti: revkomy 1918-1921 [Extraordinary organs of Soviet power: the Revolutionary Committees, 1918-1921] (Moscow, 1990), pp. 215-23.
91. GARF, f. A-482, op. 4, d. 28, l. 35.
92. Ibid., l. 34.
93. Ibid., l. 96.
94. Ibid., l. 191.
95. Author's diss., pp. 360-5.
96. GARF, f. 5474, op. 2, d. 77, ll. 5-12v.
97. Glavpolitput' 8 (30 March 1920), p. 2.
98. RGAE, f. 1884, op. 3, d. 68, ll. 45-8.
99. Ibid., op. 42, d. 1203, ll. 87-90.
100. V. I. Lenin i VChK: sbornik dokumentov [V. I. Lenin and the Cheka: collected documents] (Moscow, 1987), pp. 435-6;
101. Leggett, The Cheka, p. 241.
102. RGAE, f. 1884, op. 3, d. 172, ll. 19-19v.
103. Smirnov et al., Voiny i epidemii, pp. 165-72.