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REGIMENTED ACTIVITY, OR HOW MEDICINE WAS PREDICATED OF THE WAY OF LIFE: A HISTORY OF THE PLAGUE IN THE RUSSIAN FAR EAST, 1860-1911 A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE DIVISION OF THE UNIVERSITY OF HAWAI‘I AT MĀNOA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS IN HISTORY MAY 2018 By Michael J. Corsi Thesis Committee: Matthew Romaniello, Chairperson Matthew Lauzon Fabio Lopez-Lazaro Acknowledgements Like all young students taking their first steps into the unnerving hall of academia, I received much support during my short time at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, and I owe quite a few people a tremendous debt of gratitude. In terms of my Thesis itself, I simply would not have been able to conduct my research to the level of assiduousness and depth here if I had not been given an opportunity to visit Russia early in my studies. For this, I must first recognize Anastasia Kostetskaya, who helped me find enough money to fund my trip to Vladivostok. Without this money I would not have been able to afford the travel and tuition costs out of country. Our Russian bibliographer here at the university, Patricia Polansky, was more than generous in helping me acclimate to Vladivostok and in providing me information on where to find sources there. During my time abroad, she introduced me to Amir Khisimutinov, a scholar at the Far Eastern Federal University in Primorsky Krai. Amir very kindly brought me to the Library of the Obshchestvo Izucheniia Amurskogo Kraia, where he introduced me to the library staff and gave me access to several of the newspapers and journals I used to complete my Thesis. When I returned home, Pat assisted me in finding additional resources related to plague and medicine in the Far East from the Russian section of our university library. Together, Amir and Pat enabled me to build a personal archive of material that ultimately cumulated in the drafting of my final project. For this, I must humbly give my thanks. In this regard, I would also like to extend my thanks to the librarians working at both the Library of the Obshchestvo Izucheniia Amurskogo Kraia and the Gorki Public Library in ii Vladivostok. Without their patience and willingness to help me locate resources for my Thesis, I would not have found nearly as much interesting material as I was able to bring back. During my time in Russia, I was still taking language classes and, needless to say, my proficiency was not where I needed it to be to properly function in the archives. I would like to thank my friend Luba Baydak for helping me communicate my requests to the librarians and archivists while in Vladivostok. Luba accompanied me to all of the archives I visited and helped me communicate my needs clearly to the people working there. She did so without asking voluntarily, and without her help I would not have been nearly as productive during my time overseas. Much of my success also stems in large part from the financial and intellectual support I received from people back home. I would especially like to thank James Kraft, the Americanist here at the University of Hawaii, and Sue Carlson, our department secretary, for the faith they placed in me as a competent addition to our small department. Ordinarily, TA positions and scholarship monies are not made available to Master’s students at Hawaii’s history department. However, professor Kraft and Sue ensured that I was an exception, and generously awarded me a TAship every semester that I was fully enrolled as a graduate student in our program. The funding provided me with full coverage for the entirety of my graduate work here. Much of my peace of mind and ability to focus singularly on coursework and research, therefore, is a result of their hard work and thoughtfulness in this regard. I must also pay thanks to professor Trisha Starks of the University of Arkansas. I was introduced to professor Starks at a conference here in Hawaii by my advisor, and after I briefly introduced myself and my research, she very kindly offered me future support. Many of the revisions I have made in my thesis are derived from her commentary which, despite the distance iii separating us and our respectful, yet non-obligatory relationship, she provided to me without hesitation. Because professor Starks was willing to spend so much time working with me and my work, I have been able to incorporate ideas and include material that would never have occurred to me. I must of course pay my deepest respects to each of my committee members, who have provided me with time and invaluable feedback over the years I have been completing my research. Professor Matthew Lauzon was the first professor I had at the University of Hawaii, and I am strongly convinced that because of his recommendation to professor Kraft I was awarded with the several TAships. His insights into European intellectual history, both early modern, helped shape much of my argument concerning medical deviancy; it was because of professor Lauzon’s guidance that I learned of Cesare Lombroso, the European conversation about normativity, and of Daniel Pick’s work on the subject. The several discussions I had with him in his office (or elsewhere) about the historical discipline has helped me grow as a young scholar and as a professional academic, and I thank him for his knowledge and willingness to speak with me as a professional. Professor Fabio Lopez-Lazaro has similarly given me invaluable intellectual as well as professional support over the years. The arguments in this thesis concerning Russian Orientalism and the impacts medicine and plague had for the world medical community have been directly influenced by his expertise in such areas. Our conversations have enabled me to explore my research from perspectives I would never have thought possible, and I have taken what knowledge from him I can to better my understanding of the regimen, and how its application was essentially transethnic and transnational. Additionally, many of the conferences I have attended have been at professor Lopez-Lazaro’s encouragement, and it was at once such iv conference last year where I was offered the chance to publish my submission. It was through my experiences at these conferences, as well as my introduction to professor Lopez-Lazaro’s colleague Marc Jason Gilbert, that such a career boosting opportunity was made available to me. Most of all I am indebted to my advisor, professor Matthew Romaniello, who has from the beginning of my studies provided me with every resource I could possibly need. It was professor Romaniello who initially spoke on my behalf when the decision was being made to accept me into the graduate program at the University of Hawaii. I had earned my undergraduate degree in biology, and therefore did not have the requisite number of undergraduate classes to become a history graduate student. My advisor, however, insisted that I be accepted into the program, and because of his persistence a compromise was reached. During my time here, professor Romaniello has been nothing less than completely professional, and I have benefited from his knowledge, both concerning my immediate research material and of the academy generally, more than once. It was my advisor who had recommended that I pursue a thesis focusing on the history of medicine in Russia in the first place because he correctly identified that that is a growing field in our discipline. The commentary and suggestions he made to my research are too many to list, but I have met few people possessing both his broad historiographical compass, which includes material falling outside his specialty, as well as his attention to minute details, historical connections, and the influences that lie behind both historical actors and authors of monographs. He is as diligent in his own work as he is in working with his graduate students, and it is because of his scholarly connections as well as his keen perception on the state of the academic field today that I feel confident not only in the production of a professional-level Thesis, but also as a strong applicant for future study, both as regards my substantive knowledge as well as my ability to work professionally in academia. I v strongly believe that professor Romaniello’s influence will play a significant role in shaping my professional perspective and the way in which I think about my work in the years to come. Finally, I would like to pay special thanks to my loving wife, Hieu Phung. Hieu and I met at the university and began to support one another at around the same time we were finishing our graduate work – her Dissertation and my Thesis. We have worked together through some of the most rewarding, and difficult, periods of our graduate work, but we were always comforted to know that, when trouble did come along, we could work together to overcome the many unexpected difficulties of academic life. vi Abstract By the late-Imperial period, the response to epidemic diseases such as plague fell within the domain of the emergent professional class of Russian doctors. In the Russian Far East, where plague outbreak was a common occurrence, doctors could exert influence by instituting medicalizing principles in an area relatively free from imperial oversight. Medical authority here took the form of the regimen, a comprehensive medical rubric whose assumptive principles were not limited to the physical body. Instead, the regimen was concerned with regulating the activity of the individual to a degree of indiscriminate, specific detail so comprehensive as to be nearly indistinguishable from the processes that guided his or her everyday behavior.

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