Anna Afanasyeva (Moskau): Explaining Plague in Imperial Contexts
Russian Responses to the Epidemics in the Kazakh Steppe around 1900
24.10.2017 18:00 Uhr – 20:00 Uhr
wann: Dienstag, 24. Oktober 2017, 18-20 Uhr
wo: Historicum, Schellingstr. 12, Raum K026
Vortrag im Rahmen des Oberseminars "Perspektiven der Wissenschaftsgeschichte" und des Oberseminars zur Geschichte Russlands und Asiens (Kooperation mit dem Lehrstuhl für Russland-/Asienstudien, Prof. Dr. Andreas Renner)
A series of plague outbreaks in the Kazakh steppe that occurred between 1899 and 1910s and claimed thousands of lives made the region a focus of medical, state and public attention in the early-20th century Russia. The epidemics initiated a wide-scale research on the ways of life and conditions of living of the local population, resulting in the largest amount of texts ever written on the Kazakh steppe. The region turned into an arena of cutting-edge medical research performed by the leading bacteriologists of Russia, whose findings played an important role in the development of plague epidemiology worldwide.
This talk will look at the ways Russian medical administration dealt with the epidemics of plague in this region. It will focus on both the scope of measures undertaken to control the disease and the range of explanatory theories produced by the doctors in their attempts to identify the causes of plague and provide the means of its eradication.
