SANITATION, URBAN ENVIRONMENT AND THE POLITICS OF PUBLIC HEALTH IN LATE IMPERIAL MOSCOW Anna Mazanik A DISSERTATION IN HISTORY Presented to the Faculties of the Central European University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Budapest, Hungary 2015 Supervisor: Professor Alexei Miller CEU eTD Collection ii Copyright in the text of this dissertation rests with the author. Copies by any process, either in full or part, may be made only in accordance with the instructions given by the Author and lodged in the Central European Library. Details may be obtained by the librarian. This page must form a part of any such copies made. Further copies made in accordance with such instructions may not be made without the written permission of the Author. I hereby declare that this dissertation contains no materials accepted for any other degrees in any other institutions and no materials previously written and/or published by another person unless otherwise noted. CEU eTD Collection iii ABSTRACT The dissertation analyzes the activity of the late-imperial Moscow elites in the sphere of urban sanitation between the mid-1870s and 1905. The main research problems of the dissertation are: which motivations – political, scientific, social, or economic - were behind the sanitary reforms, who cared and why they cared and which shape their goals took in practice. Although in nineteenth-century Russia the emerging field of public health became a highly politicized subject, scholars have devoted little attention to the local politics of health and the use of medical sciences in the urban reforms.The goal of the dissertation thus is to bring the urban dimension to the history of late-imperial Russian medicine and public health, as well as the health dimension to the Russian urban history. The thesis focuses on three aspects of urban health policies: the prevention of venereal disease; the regulation of slaughtering and meat production; the removal and treatment of urban wastes. It argues that Moscow’s project of sanitation implied both “serving the people” and disciplining them. The service to the urban community was expressed in applying scientific knowledge and the municipal resources to fight disease and provide medical assistance to those in need. The disciplinary mechanisms were introduced through imposing new norms of “healthy” and “civilized” behavior. At the same time, the dissertation emphasizes that the realization of these entangled processes was hindered by the social and political realities of the autocratic Russian Empire. CEU eTD Collection iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am often suprized how fortunate I am to have so many people who tought, helped, inspired and supported me during the years of work on this project. First of all, I would like to thank my supervisor, Alexei Miller, who was always there whenever I needed his advice. I enjoyed his outstanding ability to find a solution to any question - intellectual or practical - that I had, his endless irony, his trust in my work and his care for me (which he probably would not admit). My deepest gratitude goes to Daniel Todes and Graham Mooney who devoted a lot of their time and energy to introducing me to the history of public health during my stay at the Johns Hopkins University in 2012 – and I still wonder how I have deserved so much attention and support. Without their guidance and knowledge this would have been a very different dissertation. CEU with its vibrant and diverse intellectual community has been a wonderful environment for my work. This idea of this project emerged out of conversations with my friend and colleague Goran Miljan. I benefited greatly from the expertise and advice of the CEU faculty: Karl Hall, Alfred Rieber, Ohad Parnes, Mikhail Dmitriyev, Gabor Gyani, Markian Prokopovych and Ostap Sereda. I would also like to thank Judit Gergely and Aniko Molnar – their work and friendliness made the unavoidable bureaucratic procedures of the doctoral program easier to endure. Many scholars in several countries discussed my project and gave me valuable assistance. I gained a lot from the suggestions of Natalie Zemon-Davis, Dorothee Brantz, Alexander Shevyrev, Martin Aust, Ruth Odenziel, Christof Mauch, Mikael Hård, Dieter Schott, Vladimir Bogdanov, Andrey Volodin, Konstantin Poleshchuk, Alexander Friedrich and Dejan Petkov. A special credit goes to Andrey Davydov from the Central State Archive of Moscow whose advice and publications guided me through the archival holdings. A number of people read certain parts of my dissertation and their critisicm CEU eTD Collection influenced its shape and content: Victoria Frede, Andriy Zayarnyuk, Jon Mathieu, Elin Kilsey, Maya Peterson and my other colleagues from the Rachel Carson Center, as well as two anonymous reviewers from Kritika. Ann Roeder, Robin Bellers, Nicole Seymour, Frank Ludlow, Imogen Bayley and Ludmila Sharaya kindly helped with editing parts of this text. v I have worked on this dissertation in five different countries and enjoyed the friendship of many outstanding people, most of whom also happened to be historians. They were my intellectual companions, they shared the ups and downs of my career, they hosted me in various places, transported my documents across borders, submitted my reports and grant applications, kept me company in Moscow’s libraries, helped me get access to the necessary books and articles and took care of me in many other ways. I am very grateful to Maria Falina, Irina Savinetskaya, Yulia Karpova, Maria Kudinova, Uku Lember, Anastasia Felcher, Gábor Szegedi, Vedran Duančić, Ernst Visser, Zsófia Lóránd, Gleb Kozyritsky, Ira Roldugina, Olga Chagadayeva, Alexander Varshavsky, Tamara Eidelman, Evgeny Natarov, the doctoral students of the Johns Hopkins University and particularly Todd Christopher, and my fellow students from CEU who shared with me the last months of my work. I also wish to thank the members of the network Gender in the European Town for all the productive discussions and my colleagues from the ReSET project in Ukraine for the inspiration, exciting scholarly debates and enjoyable professional friendship that has endured the challenge of war. The work on this dissertation has been financed by the stipend and grants from CEU as well as grants from the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) and the German Research Foundation (DFG). I would also like to acknowledge the support of my family that hosted and took care of me during my very long research trips to Moscow. Finally, I want to thank my most helpful and supportive boyfriend Brendan Roeder who discussed every argument and read every line of this dissertation. CEU eTD Collection vi CONTENTS INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER ONE Hygiene and public health in imperial Russia 20 Friedrich Erismann, hygiene and bacteriology 21 Health administration and community medicine 28 CHAPTER TWO Local politics in Moscow and the dynamics of sanitary reforms 42 Moscow: urban growth, social composition and city government 43 The emergence of municipal sanitary control 48 Sanitary reforms in Alekseyevan Moscow, 1885-1893: municipalization and “public good” 52 The Moscow municipality and the career of Erismann 63 Municipal initiatives, administrative resources: sanitary reform in the 1890s 67 CHAPTER THREE “Habeas corpus cum lue venerea”: Syphilis, prostitution and public health 79 Approaching syphilis and prostitution 83 Human body, individual freedom and abolitionism 89 Moscow chooses between abolitionism and regulationism 97 Outpatient clinics, Myasnitskaya hospital, and the treatment of venereal disease 109 CHAPTER FOUR Animal bodies for the human good? The public abattoir and the slaughtering reform 126 “Public good” versus profit: motivations behind the slaughtering reform 130 The operation of the abattoir: science, technology and the public image 142 Civilized slaughter: violence or torture? 159 The limits of “public good”: Abattoir as an employer 170 CHAPTER FIVE Between cesspools and police stations: Campaign against water pollution and the Moscow sewerage system 182 Rivers, wastes and the images of pollution 185 CEU eTD Collection Choosing the sewerage system and the scientific explanation 193 Constructing the sewerage system and the relations between the city and the country 206 Using the sewerage system and the problem of industrial discharge 213 CONCLUSION 233 BIBLIOGRAPHY 245 vii LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES Tables 1.1. Sanitary organizations in zemstvo provinces. 1.2. The biggest Russian cities and their sanitary organizations. 2.1. The mayors of late-imperial Moscow. 2.2. Municipal revenues and taxes in European cities per capita of population in 1879. 2.3. Mortality in Moscow and other European cities. 2.4. Selected causes of death in Moscow in 1882. 3.1. Number of examinations at the Women’s clinic by category. 3.2. Incidence of disease among inspected women in 1901. 4.1. Number of animals at the Moscow abattoir and Berlin livestock market, 1890. 4.2. The morbidity of cattle and the rejection of slaughter products at the Moscow abattoir 4.3. The morbidity of pigs and the rejection of slaughter products at the Moscow abattoir. 4.4. Income of the abattoir's personnel in 1890. 5.1. Number of housing estates connected to the Moscow sewerage system. 5.2. Financial year results of the Moscow sewerage system. 6.1. Death rates from infectious disease in Moscow per 100,000 population in 1882 and 1912. Figures 2.1. The Municipal outpatient clinic of Rogozhskaya district: facade and waiting room. 2.2. The building of