Plague, Politics, and the Biosphere: Uncovering Soviet Science and the Ecology of Disease

Initially, Jones, like many historians and scientists, believed that this connection was discovered in China, during a major plague outbreak in Manchuria in 1911-1912. Digging deeper into the subject, Jones realized that scientific research on rodent-human plague had been going on for decades in Russia. Until recently, Western historians had largely overlooked this scientific research due to language barriers and the political differences between the U.S., Europe, and the USSR. This led her to learn Russian and to read the original archival documents and Soviet-era scientific papers.

In preparation for her new book on the origin of zoonotic diseases, Jones embarked on a research sabbatical last summer which took her to the town of Aralsk in Kazakhstan. Her goal was to access Soviet-era papers at the small regional archive on the city’s edge. Held in the archive are Communist Party papers, as part of the Communist Party archives, and the Kazakh State Archives. Jones spent four days there, undercovering a wealth of information on scientists’ research and disease control efforts, particularly regarding malaria and bubonic/pneumonic plague, from the 1920s to the 1970s. 

“For me, I am trying to answer questions like: how did scientists operate on the ground in the Soviet hinterlands, such as Kazakhstan? How did they create theories about Kazakh environments and health, and deploy them within the opportunities and constraints of Soviet frontier science?”

Soviet scientific methods often diverged from those used elsewhere in the world. Their research combined environmental and medical approaches in a broad biological inquiry that had few parallels elsewhere. Soviet disease ecology was much more advanced, compared to the rest of Europe and North America, primarily due to their decades of experience trying to understand and control these diseases in Central Asia and the Far East.  Malaria, for example, has a complex ecology involving water and mosquitoes; plague is primarily an infection of wild steppe rodents that spills over into local human and domestic animal populations. 

Analysis of Soviet research and findings is particularly timely, given the challenges posed by emerging zoonotic diseases such as COVID-19 and avian influenza. 

“In the U.S. and Europe, scientists have neglected the ecological and larger biological research on these diseases, in favor of molecular biology and a narrow (human) medical focus. This approach has yielded very valuable knowledge, vaccines, and treatments, but it has neglected the source of these zoonotic diseases: the environment and how humans interact with it. The Soviets, on the other hand, studied the ecology and field biology of these diseases along with developing vaccines, etc. We need this knowledge today, as we confront diseases such as COVID-19 and H5N1 influenza (bird flu),” Jones reflected. 

Upon completion of the book later this year, Jones hopes that readers will understand that humans are citizens of a larger biosphere. 

“Many people around the world live on the land and are directly exposed to wild and domestic animal diseases. In turn, human activities can amplify the negative impact of these diseases on our rapidly vanishing wildlife. History reveals how science, politics, economics, and culture have impacted our priorities and our experiences with zoonotic diseases. The history of plague(s), and their homelands, is crucial to understanding how we can protect human health without destroying the environment today,” Jones said.