Militarized environment in narratives and practices of Russian medical personnel of the First World War

Abstract

Based on the analysis of individual narratives and expert materials created by Russian doctors and nurses of mercy during the occupation of Galicia in the First World War, the article intends to reconstruct the models of perception of the hostile environment and the practice of its mastering by medical personnel. The appeal to ego-documents allows revealing little-studied aspects of the interaction between man and nature in the conditions of the first industrial war. On the one hand, natural conditions were the most important factor in the activities of doctors and nurses of mercy: the peculiarities of climate, soil and water determined the activities on medical support of the front, occupied regions and frontline territory. On the other hand, epidemiological practices based on the construction of negative images of alien nature had a direct impact on the state of the environment: disinfection of water, soil and air sources, and the spread of sanitary and hygienic infrastructure. In this regard, the perception of belligerent landscapes and their construction, the use of environmental images in the communication of medical professionals fit into a wide range of motifs and forms: nature as a victim of industrial warfare and an object of compassion, nature and the living beings inhabiting it as a space of epidemiological danger, nature as an object of potential control by means of disinfection.

Keywords

• ecological history
• world war i
• galicia
• ego documents
• individual narratives
• medicalization
• occupation discourse