Factors affecting the health of the peasants from the “revolutionary turning point” generation in the 1920s (on the example of the Tambov Province)

Abstract

The author identifies factors that affected peasants' health in the 1920s based on the unpublished documents of the Health Department of the Executive Committee of the Tambov Regional Council of Workers', Peasants' and Red Army Deputies from the State Archives of the Tambov Region. The article focuses on the generational history of rural society, on the “revolutionary turning point” generation, whose representatives were born at the turn of the 19th-20th centuries, mainly in the 1890s. The author shows the influence of malnutrition and famine of 1924-1925 on the health of rural residents and the negative consequences of eating various food substitutes and concludes that the famine affected the most the poorest peasants from the “revolutionary turning point” generation. The article presents a comparison of positive and negative factors affecting peasants' health, focusing on the issues of medical care, morbidity, nutrition, water supply and other factors of the population health status. The author argues that the chronic underfunding of the healthcare system did not allow to provide the rural population with quality medical care, and malaria and syphilis were the most common diseases. The author makes a conclusion about the unsatisfactory health of the peasants from the “revolutionary turning point” generation in the 1920s, referring to the death and birth rates in the countryside and to the relationship between the demographic behavior and depeasantization.