Urban infant mortality and religion at the end of the nineteenth and in the early twentieth century: the case of Ekaterinburg, Russia

Abstract

Modern demographers analyse regional and other infant mortality differentials as important factors behind the current life expectancy of Russian citizens. Historically, however, the Russian Empire is simply displayed as one block with high infant mortality rates. Also with respect to cultural background factors, Russia is often perceived as religiously homogeneous with the Orthodox Church dominating the country. In reality, Russia has a long history of coexisting religious traditions. This includes both provinces with a majority of Catholics, Muslims, Buddhists or shamanistic populations as well as territories characterized by religious diversity and significant minority religions. Our project studies minority religious groups in the Urals, a province by the Ural Mountains stretching into Asia. While no territory can claim to be truly representative of this mega-country, we believe that this centrally located province is well suited to show some of the Russian variety, including differential infant mortality among the followers of minority religions, which is the topic of this article. We employ church record microdata to study Catholics, Jews and Old Believers in the main metal-producing city of Ekaterinburg.

Keywords:

• Infant mortality
• historical demography
• religion
• Russian Empire
• Urals
• minorities

Notes

1. The zemstvo – a self-government elected county-level institution, was introduced in 1865 to manage local affairs, such as road building and maintenance, to improve economic development, and to oversee medical services and sanitation, public education and other socially important activities.