Russian Medical Service During the Crimean War: New Perspectives

Although Russian historiography of the Crimean War yields slightly to its English counterpart in output, it still includes dozens of works from solid multi-volumed research to popular science reviews. The majority of works done before the revolution of 1917 were greatly influenced by the Paris peace of 1856 (dubbed ‘humiliating’) and tended to exaggerate the shortcomings of the Russian military and political system in the middle of the nineteenth century. During the Soviet period — with its overwhelming party control over the social sciences — most research followed the Leninist thesis that the Crimean War ‘demonstrated the rottenness and impotence of feudal Russia’. Nothing suited this axiom more than the catastrophic situation with regard to the treatment of Russian wounded and sick during the conflict. Quite apart from the overall level of casualties, the fact that the vast majority of deaths occurred in hospitals rather than on the battlefield caused a huge public outcry. Immediately after the conflict the Russian government commenced a series of reforms to modernize the army medical system and adapt it to the realities of modern warfare. Overcrowded hospitals, men dying on the ground with minimal medical care available, heartless bureaucrats plundering the government’s money — all became part of a new Crimean War mythology which obscured the real ‘reason why’. Just recently, Russian historians have produced new works on the subject which adopt a more critical approach to conventional doctrines. New research uncovered interesting archival materials, allowing us to look once again at the army medical service during the Crimean War and, using both published and unpublished sources, to try to discover the cause of the large number of deaths from different diseases and determine whether they were avoidable.