The large-scale global context of the response to the COVID-19 pandemic presents the intellectual community with the urgent philosophical, cultural, and medical issue of the impact of forced isolation on the individual. It is worth noting that the topic of isolation was of scientific interest and was studied by domestic and foreign physicians and penologists in the 19th century, which with a certain degree of caution can be interpreted in today's socio-cultural context. It seems important to turn to the Russian experience of finding solutions to this issue and to consider it in relation and comparison with similar European experiences.
In 1885, the 3rd International Congress of Penologists was held in Rome to discuss the prospect of social isolation and solitary confinement of lawbreakers. The congress was scheduled for 1883 but was postponed due to the pandemic. In those days, cholera was rampant throughout the world, claiming over 50,000 lives in Italy. Since 1881, the infection spread rapidly across Europe, there were outbreaks in Russia as well. As soon as there was a decline in morbidity in Italy, two international conferences were held in Rome in 1885: the aforementioned penological one and the sixth International Sanitary Conference, at which "there was the first dawn of the bacteriological era" [1, p. 53]. Multiple issues are raised and intertwined in epidemiological and cultural contexts: isolation and freedom, preservation of life and health. Like today, the global challenges of the pandemic have stimulated the efforts of the world's leading powers and representatives of the international scientific community to peacefully and cooperatively address epidemiological security issues.
Mikhail Nikolaevich Galkin-Vraskoy (1834-1916), who was not only the head of the Main Penitentiary Administration but also an outstanding penologist, was sent as a representative of Russia to the 3rd International Penitentiary Congress. From about 1862, Galkin-Vraskoy carefully studied the European experience of isolation to apply it to Russia, where the state reform of the penitentiary system was underway. The penologist described the trip in detail in his report, "The International Penitentiary Congress in Rome", which was published in 1886 in St. Petersburg and is of interest today because it provides insight into isolation as a phenomenon in a cultural and epidemiological context.