John P. Davis is Assistant Professor of History at Hopkinsville Community College, Kentucky. He has previously taught at Ohio State University and the University of Kentucky, where he received his PhD.
John Davis's research on cholera in Russia is a groundbreaking synthesis of political and social history with environmental history and the history of science. By considering Russian responses to the disease in the context of nineteenth-century scientific debates, Davis challenges the received wisdom both about the nature of the scientific bacteriological revolution and about the backwardness of Russian science. Davis casts Russias environment as a powerful actor in the story of the diffusion of cholera and explores the particular difficulty of containing cholera in Russia because of its geographical and geo-epidemiological characteristics. Davis also explores the profound continuities in the battle with cholera across the revolutionary divide, showing how Soviet medicine built on Tsarist policies to conquer the disease.
Karen Petrone, Professor of History, University of Kentucky
John Daviss pioneering volume makes a distinct contribution to scholarship. It treats intelligently an important and long-lasting episode in Imperial Russian and Soviet history. It adds to medical and environmental history as essential components of cultural history by arguing that the study of the cholera in Russia paralleled the modernisation of the country. The book demonstrates that the history of epidemiology can tell us much about the intersection of sociopolitical unrest and economic dislocation.
Lucien Frary, Professor of History, Rider University
Russia in the Time of Cholera makes important contributions to both Russian history and the history of medicine. Arguing that Russian physicians were creative and pragmatic in fighting cholera epidemics, John Davis shows that they had reasons to eschew the contagionist measures favoured by their German counterparts in the late nineteenth century. Given the public health challenges they faced in the vast and underdeveloped Russian Empire, physicians there relied instead on environmental and social approaches to disease. Davis also demonstrates striking continuities with the Soviet period, when Russian specialists continued to develop social medicine and proved largely successful in eradicating cholera. Well researched and carefully argued, Daviss book provides a rich, multi-dimensional analysis of health and society in Imperial and Soviet Russia.
David L. Hoffmann, Distinguished Professor of History, Ohio State University
Library of Modern Russia
Advisory board
Michael David-Fox, Professor at Georgetown University
Sheila Fitzpatrick, Bernadotte E. Schmitt Distinguished Service Professor Emerita at the University of Chicago
Lucien Frary, Associate Professor at Rider University
James Harris, Senior Lecturer at the University of Leeds
Robert Hornsby, Lecturer at the University of Leeds
Ekaterina Pravilova, Professor of History at Princeton University
Donald J. Raleigh, Jay Richard Judson Distinguished Professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Geoffrey Swain, Emeritus Professor of Central and East European Studies at the University of Glasgow
Vera Tolz-Zilitinkevic, Sir William Mather Professor of Russian Studies at the University of Manchester
Vladislav Zubok, Professor of International History at the London School of Economics
Building on I.B.Tauris established record publishing Russian studies titles for both academic and general readers, the Library of Modern Russia will showcase the work of emerging and established writers who are setting new agendas in the field.
At a time when potentially dangerous misconceptions and misunderstandings about Russia abound, titles in the series will shed fresh light and nuance on Russian history. Volumes will take the idea of Russia in its broadest, cultural sense and cover the entirety of the multi-ethnic lands that made up imperial Russia and the Soviet Union. Ranging in chronological scope from the Romanovs to the present day, the books will foster a community of scholars and readers devoted to a sharper understanding of the Russian experience, past and present.
New and forthcoming
Building Stalinism: The Moscow Canal and the Creation of Soviet Space, Cynthia A. Ruder
Criminal Subculture in the Gulag: Prisoner Society in the Stalinist Labour Camps, Mark Vincent
Dissident Histories in the Soviet Union: From De-Stalinization to Perestroika, Barbara Martin
Fascism in Manchuria: The SovietChina Encounter in the 1930s, Susanne Hohler
Ideology and the Arts in the Soviet Union: The Establishment of Censorship and Control, Steven Richmond
Myth Making in the Soviet Union and Modern Russia: Remembering World War II in Brezhnevs Hero City, Vicky Davis
Nomads and Soviet Rule: Central Asia under Lenin and Stalin, Alun Thomas
Power and Conflict in Russias Borderlands: The Post-Soviet Geopolitics of Dispute Resolution, Helena Rytvuori-Apunen
Power and Politics in Modern Chechnya: Ramzan Kadyrov and the New Digital Authoritarianism, Karena Avedissian
Russia in the Time of Cholera: Disease under Romanovs and Soviets, John P. Davis
Russian Pilgrimage to the Holy Land: Piety and Travel from the Middle Ages to the Revolution, Nikolaos Chrissidis
Science City, Siberia: Akademgorodok and the Late Soviet Politics of Expertise, Ksenia Tartachenko
Soviet Americana: The Cultural History of Russian and Ukrainian Americanists, Sergei I. Zhuk
Stalins Economic Advisors: The Varga Institute and the Making of Soviet Foreign Policy, Kyung Deok Roh
The Communist Party in the Russian Civil War: A Political History, Gayle Lonergan
The Idea of Russia: The Life and Work of Dmitry Likhachev, Vladislav Zubok
The Politics of Football in Soviet Russia: Sport and Society after Stalin, Manfred Zeller
The Russian State and the People: Power, Corruption and the Individual in Putins Russia, Geir Hnnelandet al. (eds)
The Tsars Armenians: A Minority in Late Imperial Russia, Onur nol
Published in 2018 by
I.B.Tauris & Co. Ltd
London New York
www.ibtauris.com
Copyright 2018 John P. Davis
The right of John P. Davis to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or any part thereof, may not be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Every attempt has been made to gain permission for the use of the images in this book. Any omissions will be rectified in future editions.
References to websites were correct at the time of writing.
Library of Modern Russia 7
