The Kremlin has historically maintained a culture of secrecy regarding public information, particularly concerning accidents, including industrial disasters and health emergencies. The recent death of a worker at a research lab in Siberia, which has raised global concerns about suspected pneumonic plague, exemplifies how Moscow manages the official narrative, often obscuring the truth for extended periods.
Russia's public health watchdog, Rospotrebnadzor, informed the World Health Organization (WHO) that no case of plague has been recorded in the Irkutsk region of southeastern Siberia. The agency stated that the lab worker contracted pneumonia of 'unknown' origin, with tests showing no evidence that her illness was linked to any pathogens she worked with at the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Research Institute of Siberia and the Far East. The WHO has urged Russia to provide more information to clarify the cause of the severe pneumonia and the pathogen that led to public health measures and media reports regarding a second employee with pneumonia of undetermined cause.
Limited official information about the worker's death, which unverified reports in Russia attributed to pneumonic plague, follows Soviet-era patterns of secrecy in managing outbreaks of infectious diseases and other emergencies.
Historical examples of Moscow censoring public health information include the case of Soviet graphic artist Alexei Kokorekin, who died in December 1959 after returning from India. Initially, doctors struggled to identify smallpox as the cause of death, leading to a massive containment effort that included isolating thousands of people. Despite international media coverage, Soviet state media remained silent. The outbreak resulted in 46 confirmed cases and three deaths in Moscow before it was contained.
Another incident involved a smallpox bioweapon test in August 1971, where a marine biologist contracted smallpox and spread it to others, resulting in 10 infections and three deaths. The public remained unaware of the incident until 2002 when U.S. researchers revealed Soviet archives.
On April 2, 1979, an anthrax outbreak occurred in Sverdlovsk due to a release of spores from a biological weapons lab, leading to at least 68 deaths. Soviet authorities attributed the deaths to contaminated meat and suppressed details of the incident. The truth only emerged after the Soviet Union's collapse in 1991.
The Chernobyl nuclear disaster on April 26, 1986, also saw delayed reporting and public warnings, with authorities waiting 36 hours to evacuate nearby towns. Despite the policy of 'glasnost' under Mikhail Gorbachev, medical data and casualty figures were heavily censored.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, independent Russian news outlets and international media suggested that the actual death toll was significantly higher than reported by government officials, citing spikes in total mortality rates. Russian authorities dismissed these claims as part of a Western disinformation campaign. In 2020, Russia criminalized 'false information' about public safety threats, leading to prosecutions for those making allegedly false claims. By the end of 2020, officials acknowledged that the death toll was several times higher than previously stated. In early 2022, Russia reported over 13.5 million confirmed COVID-19 cases and 338,091 deaths, the highest death toll in Europe at that time, with the state statistics agency Rosstat reporting 681,100 virus-linked deaths between April 2020 and December 2021.
Judy Twigg, a professor of political science at Virginia Commonwealth University, commented, 'The system can silence, but it's not competent enough to coordinate, so it produces contradiction instead of a unified false account.'
Dasha Litvinova in Tallinn, Estonia, contributed to this report.