Abstract The 1889 Russian (also called ‘Asiatic’) Flu epidemic can be described as one of the first modern pandemics . The development of extensive railroad and shipping networks during and prior to this period facilitated the previously unprecedented movement of goods and people around the world. It additionally propagated the process of shrinking the barriers between the countryside and major metropolises. While the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in lockdown measures nearly worldwide and prompted widespread social, economic, and cultural disruptions, the Russian Flu was not accompanied by such drastic changes. In this article, it is argued that the blunted historical consciousness of this epidemic were a result of a combination of factors , including the nascent state of scientific research and understanding of infectious diseases, the circumscribed reach of media, implicit comparisons to other contemporary epidemics, temporal closeness to the Spanish Flu and suppression of memory , and ...