Sanitizing Moscow

A vital contribution to urban and environmental history. It serves as a powerful reminder that even the most advanced engineering remains impotent against social crises if technology is treated as an end rather than a tool for the public good.

Well-written and organized, the volume provides a thorough overview of English, German, and Russian materials and situates Moscow’s efforts well within the context of international developments in public and environmental health for the period. It is a major contribution and a must read for anyone interested in medicine, public health, civic reform, and resistance in the late imperial period.

[Mazanik] successfully positions Moscow, and the Russian Empire at large, as a successful example of public health interventions on par with Anglo-American accomplishments.

Sanitizing Moscow is a fine accomplishment. It brings together political, intellectual, social, medical, labor, and environmental history, and it shows that sanitary policy was a result of both material realities and contingent political and cultural influences. It situates Russia in an international context but also shows what makes Moscow’s case distinctive, and it convincingly draws connections from the imperial to the Soviet period. This book deserves the attention of anyone who is interested in the history of urban modernization in Russia and around the world.

Merits the attention of environmental, urban and public health historians specialising on other cities in other parts of world.

Sanitizing Moscow is a creative and path-breaking book that should appeal to a variety of audiences, including, for example, those interested in the history of Russia and those engaged with public health and urban administration more broadly.

Sanitizing Moscow is a superb book that focuses on efforts in late imperial Russia to improve public health in complex and sometimes contradictory ways. It deftly shows how social, political, and cultural factors influenced the establishment of a sewage system, the regulation of a public abattoir, and the imposition of a health regime on children.

A deeply researched, creatively argued, and well-written book that will appeal to several different audiences, Sanitizing Moscow offers at the same time fascinating granular detail about everyday life in turn-of-the century Moscow and contributes to larger arguments around Europe’s influence on Russia as well as about the global impacts of the revolutions in scientific thinking on disease and sanitation.