Death, Drunkenness, and Degeneration in Imperial Russia

• In Event: Death by Misadventure: Reporting and Understanding Accidental Death in the Russian and Soviet Past

Abstract

In the 1840s, the Journal of the Ministry of Internal Affairs published yearly accounts of “Deaths due to lack of care [neostorozhnosti].” Chief among them were deaths due to drunkenness. These deaths were read as an indictment — but of what? Was it peasant ignorance, national inclination, or something else? This paper examines the concern over death by drunkenness as expressed in the Journal and other periodicals of the mid-19th century.

Author

• Alison K. Smith, U of Toronto (Canada)