Sanitizing Moscow

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 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.