Typhus and its control in Russia, 1870–1940

Typhus was a major health problem in late nineteenth-and early twentieth-century Russia. Closely linked with poverty and overcrowded housing, this louse-borne disease was endemic in both rural and urban areas, with scattered cases and small outbreaks occurring every year, mostly in the winter and early spring. Great epidemics flared up whenever war or famine produced hardship and massive population movements. The worst typhus epidemics took place late in World War I and in the years of civil war following the Bolshevik Revolution. Typhus claimed some 2 to 3 million lives from 1918 to 1922. Incidence rates fell dramatically in the later 1920s and the disease had ceased to be a significant cause of death by 1940. There was, however, a sharp flare-up in the early 1930s, undoubtedly associated with the dislocations caused by Stalin's industrialization and collectivization drives, and the ensuing famines.