Home – Home – Jornals – Humanitarian sciences in Siberia 2018 number

The article analyzes the demographic situation in the Ural cities after the Civil War, which was characterized by the population super death-rate exceeding the birth rate, and was defined as a demographic catastrophe. The author identifies main causes of increased mortality - infection diseases (typhoid, cholera, dysentery), which were complicated with malnutrition and hunger in the form of epidemics. The paper shows main reasons for the epidemiological situation’s sharp deterioration in the region: municipal economy’s and health care system’s destruction during the Civil War, movement of the large amount of population along the Ural transportation routes due to the famine in the early 1920s. The public health care authorities tried to control infections, but they experienced enormous difficulties, their financial resources were limited. Extraordinary bodies (Chekatif, Chekahol and others) with dictatorial powers were founded in the Ural cities. They centralized the epidemics control. Sanitary supervision was established in the cities. The main municipal authority activities to overcome the infections were medical personnel restoration, expanding hospital bed stocks to isolate infectious patients, organizing insulating-crossing points on transport, carrying out a campaign on the population vaccination, measures to clean up cities from dirt and debris, supervision of food products, spreading basic hygiene skills among the population through health education work. These measures allowed reducing the mortality in 1923 sharply and obtained the urban population natural growth. It was the evidence that the Ural cities overcame the demographic catastrophe.