Historical and demographic analysis of suicides in the Urals in the 1920s

The research explores one of the causes of human death - a suicide. The authors note that in the Soviet country the statistics on suicides was introduced in the beginning of 1921. In the Urals, the demographic divisions of the provincial statistical bureaus collected and consolidated the available information on suicides. When the Ural region was officially formed, the department of moral statistics of the regional statistical administration and its local structures performed the same function. In the 1920s, the information on suicides was published in central and regional statistical compendia. The analysis of statistical data showed the growth of suicides in the Urals during the NEP period. In the first half of the 1920s, the majority of suicides were committed in the countryside, and in the second half of the 1920s - in the cities. Most suicides were committed by men. However, the number of suicides among women tended to increase, which was a consequence of women’s involvement in the socio-political and economic life of the region. The greatest suicidal tendencies were observed among working-age persons. This distinguished the Urals, as well as the USSR as a whole, from the countries of Western Europe, where primarily elderly people voluntarily left the life. The data of forensic-medical experts of the Urals for 1926 illustrate the ways of suicide. Most often asphyxiation was used, less often - fatal traumatic injuries, poisoning by inorganic poisons and organic poisons, besides, there was registered one case of suicide by low temperatures. Statisticians in the 1920s tried to identify the motives that pushed people to suicide, namely: mental and nervous illnesses, love and jealousy, family troubles, life aversion, material deprivation. The authors emphasize that in the beginning of the 1930s, the research on suicides in the Urals region was stopped and the statistical data on suicides was no longer published. However, data on suicides continued to be collected, but not under a special program, as in the 1920s, but as a part of the statistics of mortality by cause of death.