Genesis of the Anti-Plague System: The Tsarist Period

Abstract

Although the anti-plague system of the former Soviet Union developed fully during the Soviet era, its foundations were laid long before the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. This article traces the evolution of the anti-plague measures from imposition of temporary quarantine in affected areas to the creation of the standard response system and the establishment of permanent anti-plague organizations. The purpose of this article is to demonstrate that by the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century, despite numerous setbacks, the Russian imperial authorities succeeded in creating a nascent system of disease surveillance dedicated to protecting the population from especially dangerous infectious diseases such as plague.

Keywords :

• Plague
• Anti-Plague
• Quarantine Measures
• Epidemiology
• Imperial Institute of Experimental Medicine
• IIEM
• KOMOCHUM
• Yersinia Pestis
• Vaccine
• Fort Alexander I
• Domaradskij
• Derbek
• Zabolotniy

Notes

¹The term “outbreak” is a general one; it could refer to an incidence of disease affecting a few persons, a community (epidemic), or large regions of the world (pandemic). We make clear when an outbreak develops into an epidemic or pandemic.

²Historians have identified three worldwide plague pandemics. The first or the Justinian pandemic is estimated to have occurred between AD 541 and 750. It appears to have begun in Ethiopia and then quickly spread to Pelusium (ancient fortress city in Egypt located east of the modern Port Said), through the Middle East to the Mediterranean basin and, to a limited extent, to Mediterranean Europe. As far as we are aware, there are no records of the first pandemic having affected any of the regions that today constitute Russia. The second pandemic started in approximately 1330 in the Gobi Desert region and by 1347 had spread to Europe. Its effects on Russia are discussed in this chapter. The third pandemic appears to have begun in 1855 in the Chinese province of Yunnan, where troop movements during a local war rapidly spread the disease to China's southern coast. It reached Hong Kong and Canton in 1894, Bombay in 1898, and during 1899–1900 Africa, Australia, Europe, Hawaii, India, Japan, the Middle East, the Philippines and North and South America. This pandemic, which some believe continues to this day, came to seriously affect Russia.

³For more details on this issue, see: Russian Internet project IT-Med Clinic On-line. 2002. The History of plague epidemics in Russia (in Russian). 23 May 2002. http://www.it-med.ru/library/lib_article.php?id = 196&l = ?&start = 0&order = click.

⁴Historical data do not report clinical signs that are characteristic of bubonic plague—such as swelling of the lymph glands or the appearance of red and black spots on the body—therefore it is not clear whether this epidemic was caused by pneumonic or bubonic plague.

⁵Over the centuries the territorial-administrative division of the Russian Empire had undergone many complex changes, as the territorial expansion eastward and southward continued at a relentless pace. Prior to the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, the main unit of territorial-administrative division of the Russian Empire was an oblast or guberniya (province), which was followed by a uezd (district) and a volost (county) (in a descending order).

^aCossacks were peasant soldiers in Ukraine and parts of the Russian Empire, who held certain privileges and enjoyed political autonomy in return for rendering military service to the Tsar. The first Cossack companies were formed in the fifteenth century in Ukraine, which at the time was a part of the unified Polish-Lithuanian state, in response to the frequent Tatar raids from the south. By the late eighteenth century Cossacks lost much of their political autonomy and became an elite part of the Russian imperial military forces. Cossack communes were based on the principles of self-governance and political and social equality. Each commune was ruled by an elected leader or ataman, while the large Cossack assembly elected the head of several communes or hetman. By the early twentieth century there were eleven Cossack communes in the Russian Empire, including the Cossack communes in Astrakhan and Tersk (now Krasnoyarsk krai). For more information on Cossacks, see: Ure, John. 2002. The Cossacks: An Illustrated History. Woodstock, NY: Overlook Press.

⁷Governing Senate was established by the decree of Tsar Peter I (Peter the Great) on February 22, 1711. The Senate replaced the Boyar Duma, which was a consultative body that advised the monarch on policy matters. Initially Senate was a temporary collegial body established for the purposes of ruling the country in the absence of the monarch, when it was authorized to make decisions and issue orders. Originally the Senate was comprised of nine members and secretary, who were appointed by Tsar. The Senate members were selected from the civilian and military officials who belonged to the upper three tiers of the Table of Ranks (Tabel o rangakh), which was a formal list of positions and ranks in military, government and judiciary that was introduced by Tsar Peter I in 1722 in an attempt to disrupt the traditional distribution of positions in accordance with hereditary titles of nobility. The influence and importance of the Senate fluctuated considerably in different periods. In 1763 in an attempt to increase the importance of the Senate, it was reformed and divided into six departments, including four that were located in St Petersburg and two in Moscow. The third department was in charge of the peripheries of the Russian Empire, communications, public healthcare, medicine and education. In 1775, however, the Senate's functions became limited to the judicial area. Subsequently with the creation of various state ministries, the Senate became the supreme judicial and oversight body.

⁸Zaporozhian Host was the Cossack name for the Ukrainian Cossack State, which existed from 1648 to 1782 and incorporated most of the central part of present day Ukraine as well as parts of Byelorussia.

⁹Each regiment (polk) in the Russian Imperial Army at the time consisted of 1,000soldiers.

¹⁰According to Derbek, the incorrect diagnosis of the initial cases of plague was one of the reasons for the subsequent epidemic.

¹¹Rinder was known as a “stats-physician.” The prefix “stats,” which was originally derived from German language, was widely used in the Tsarist Russia to designate high ranking civilian and military officials.

¹²It must be noted that the field hospital at the Simonov monastery had the capacity to house 2,000 patients.

¹³The State Council was a supreme consultative body, which discussed the draft legislations introduced by the ministers before they were approved by the monarch. The Council also possessed jurisdiction to review complaints directed against the Governing Senate and other executive bodies of power. The Chairman and other members of the State Council were appointed by the monarch. The State Council consisted of several departments and the State Chancellery, which was headed by the State Secretary.

¹⁴The Caucasus defense line was a system of defensive fortifications in the North Caucasus that was intended to protect the southern parts of Russian Empire from the attacks by the Caucasian highlanders and Turkey in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It stretched along the North Caucasus from Kizlyar on the Caspian Sea in the east to Anapa on the Black Sea coast in the west.

¹⁵The Russian acronym KOMOCHUM stood for Osobaya komissiya dliya preduprezhdeniya chumnoi zarazy i borby s neyu v sluchaye eyo poyavleniya v Rossii.

¹⁶The Fort Alexander I was built in 1838–1845 by colonel Fan der Veide on an artificial island in the Gulf of Finland close to the naval fortress of Kronstadt. Fort Alexander I was designed to protect the southern waterway to St. Petersburg by coordinating cross-fire with forts Peter I, Risbank, and Kronshlot. With the development of modern artillery ordinance in the 1860s, Fort Alexander I lost much of its military value. Thereafter, it was used largely for the storage of ammunition and sea mines. It was officially decommissioned and excised from the register of fortresses in 1896.

¹⁷In the aftermath of a small plague outbreak in the village of Kolobovka in 1899, which took the lives of 23 people, KOMOCHUM scientists clinically proved that the plague was of a pneumonic variety. This diagnosis was also confirmed by performing appropriate bacteriological analysis.

¹⁸The death of Dr. Deminsky is an illustrative example of the selfless dedication to science. Even on his deathbed Deminsky was more concerned with conveying valuable scientific information to his colleagues than his own wellbeing. In his final telegram Deminsky wrote: “I contracted the pneumonic form of plague from the susliks. When you arrive take the cultures that I had isolated. All the laboratory records are in order. The rest you will be able to find out from the laboratory. My body should be examined as an experimental case of a human contracting the plague from suslik. Goodbye.”

¹⁹Zemstvo in the Tsarist Russia was an elective district or provincial administrative assembly that was a local form of government.