Pneumonic plague in Russia: the secrecy surrounding a possible case revives Soviet-era practices

An elderly woman walks past a pharmacy in Shelekhov, on Thursday, October 8, 2026, on the outskirts of Irkutsk, Russia (AP)The Kremlin's opacity during emergencies came under scrutiny again following the death of a research laboratory worker in Irkutsk, Siberia. The case raised concerns about possible exposure to pneumonic plague, although Russian authorities ruled out plague cases in the region. Russia's Federal Service for Surveillance on Consumer Rights Protection and Human Wellbeing (Rospotrebnadzor) informed the World Health Organization (WHO) that the woman suffered from pneumonia of "unknown" origin and maintained that tests found no connection between her illness and the pathogens being studied at the Anti-Plague Research Institute for Siberia and the Far East. The WHO asked Russia to provide more data on the cause of the severe pneumonia, the agent that led to the adoption of health measures, and the accounts regarding another employee with a respiratory condition of undetermined origin. The lack of specifics reignited criticism of a state practice that, for decades, restricted information about epidemics, industrial accidents, and catastrophes. In late December 1959, Soviet graphic artist Alexei Kokorekin died shortly after returning from India. Doctors had difficulty identifying that he had contracted smallpox, a disease that had been considered eradicated in the Soviet Union for decades. The KGB tracked down his contacts and thousands of people were quarantined. An Aeroflot plane carrying one of them bound for Paris was ordered to return to Moscow before landing. The government suspended travel to and from the capital and deployed thousands of vaccination teams to immunize millions of residents of Moscow and its surroundings. The foreign press reported on the campaign, but Soviet state media remained silent. The Soviet artist Alexei Kokorekin, twice awarded the Stalin Prize for his war posters (REUTERS/Archive)The outbreak left 46 confirmed cases and three deaths before being contained in 44 days. The details only came to light during the final years of the Soviet Union, even though they later inspired a novel and a film. In August 1971, a scientific vessel sailed too close to a cloud of microbes released during a biological weapons test on Vozrozhdeniya Island in the Aral Sea. A marine biologist contracted smallpox and infected other people in Aralsk, a town located today in Kazakhstan. Authorities imposed a quarantine and vaccinated more than 40,000 people within days. The episode caused 10 infections and three deaths, but the public did not learn the origin of the outbreak until 2002, when American researchers released Soviet documents. On April 2, 1979, a clandestine biological weapons laboratory accidentally released anthrax spores in Sverdlovsk, a city in the Urals that is today called Yekaterinburg. A worker had failed to replace a defective ventilation filter, and the leak caused at least 68 deaths. Soviet authorities attributed the deaths to the consumption of contaminated meat from a street market, and the KGB confiscated medical records to prevent the real circumstances from becoming known. The truth spread after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, during the government of Boris Yeltsin, who had been the local Communist Party chief in Sverdlovsk. The cover-up also marked the explosion of reactor number four at Chernobyl, which occurred on April 26, 1986, in the then-Soviet republic of Ukraine. The radioactive cloud spread across Europe while Moscow delayed its warnings to the population. Aerial view from April 26, 1986, shows the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, Ukraine (AP/Volodymyr Repik/Archive)Sweden detected radiation before Soviet authorities admitted the accident. Pripyat was evacuated 36 hours later, and five days afterward, tens of thousands of people took part in the May Day parade in Kiev under radioactive rain. Thirty plant workers and firefighters died shortly after from acute radiation syndrome. Authorities kept medical data and casualty figures under censorship, while thousands of people later died from illnesses linked to radiation. During the pandemic, Russian independent media and international publications reported that the actual COVID-19 death toll could far exceed official figures. The argument was based on the increase in total mortality recorded in the country. The government rejected those reports and described them as part of a Western disinformation campaign. Authorities defended their results with early restrictions, checks on travelers from China, and an extensive testing policy. They also denied a widespread shortage of protective equipment and questioned hospital protocols. Some healthcare workers claimed they faced threats of dismissal or legal proceedings if they reported working conditions. View of the Shelekhov district hospital on Thursday, October 8, 2026, on the outskirts of Irkutsk, Russia (AP)Russia criminalized the dissemination of "false information" about threats to public safety in 2020. That same year, authorities in effect acknowledged that the number of deaths was several times higher than initially reported. By early 2022, the country had reported more than 13.5 million confirmed infections and 338,091 deaths. Rosstat, the state statistics agency that applies a broader criterion, recorded 681,100 deaths linked to the virus between April 2020 and December 2021. Political science professor Judy Twigg, of Virginia Commonwealth University, summarized the problem: "The system can silence, but it is not competent enough to coordinate." As she wrote, that limitation ends up generating contradictions instead of a uniform official version. (With information from Associated Press)