Infant mortality in a late imperial Russian city

Modern demographers analyse regional and other infant mortality differentials as important factors behind the current life expectancy of Russian citizens. Historically, however, researchers have simply displayed the Russian Empire as one block with high infant mortality rates. Also with respect to cultural background factors, Russia is often perceived as ethnically and religiously homogeneous with the Orthodox Church dominating the country. In reality, it has a long history of coexisting ethnic and religious traditions. Our paper focuses on infant mortality in the late 19th to early 20th century Perm’ province, stretching along the Ural mountains and known for the highest infant mortality rates (IMR) among the Russian Empire’s provinces (440%o). Perm’ province, with a population over four million in 1897, was one of Russia’s mining and metallurgical industry centers with three different types of population: urban, rural and those who lived in a zavod. Zavods were settlements developed around metal producing factories with distinct administrative and economic systems and living conditions. There were both private and state owned zavods in Perm’ province and in terms of social status most of its population - even if officially employed as workers - were peasants. The paper focuses its IMR analyses on Ekaterinburg uezd, a county like administrative unit with a population of 412,000 in 1897: 43,000 in urban and 369,000 in rural settlements and zavod. It is based on local statistical analyses of aggregates and microdata. The latter we transcribed from the churchbooks’ burial records into the database “Ural Population Register”. We analyzed Ekaterinburg’s 1500 infant burials registered in the Ascension Church parish of Ekaterinburg between 1880 and 1917. Our research proved that IMR was different in different types of settlements. We found the highest infant mortality in rural areas where up to 600 out of 1 000 infants born died before their first birthday. Urban IMR, was much better - 350 %o, however still too high compared with the rest of Russia’s average IMR of 250 %o. The lowest IMR was in the zavods, at 250-300 %o. We also found that the decline of infant mortality started in the countryside, while stagnating in urban Ekaterinburg during the whole period under investigations. We suggest that the significant improvement of infant mortality in the countryside was mainly due to the rural doctors’ spreading of medical knowledge. To find out the effect of other background factors additional research is required.

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