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

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

Using reports from memoirs, newspapers, and health authorities, this group of papers interrogates the idea of who bears responsibility in cases of accidental death and what that implies regarding individual behavior, social expectations, and state responsibility. The span of the panel – from the seventeenth century to the 1970s – engages a period of evolving ideas for state responsibility to citizens’ health and citizens’ responsibilities to stay healthy and contribute to the nation. Debates of public health that are part of the evolution of modern states are embedded in reporting of accidental deaths, and these stories reveal evolving tensions between state enforcement and individual freedom.

Sub Unit

• History: 1800-1900

Chair

• Sarah Badcock, U of Nottingham (UK)

Papers

• The First Martyr to Electricity: The Death of Georg Wilhelm Richmann in St. Petersburg, 1753 - Matthew P. Romaniello, Weber State U

• Death, Drunkenness, and Degeneration in Imperial Russia - Alison K. Smith, U of Toronto (Canada)

• Accidental Death and Men’s Responsibility to the State in the Soviet 1970s - Tricia Starks, U of Arkansas

Discussant

• Greta Bucher, US Military Academy, West Point