Crimea, and ambassadors from the Crimea were forbidden to enter Moscow. At
times in the early seventeenth century the government forbade the import of grain
from infected areas, and burials of the infected dead were supposed to be confined
to specially designated repositories. The plague epidemic that hit Moscow in
August 1654 and endured in the vicinity until 1657 presented a particular chal-
lenge: the royal familyfled the city and guards were placed on all roads from
Moscow to prevent the contagion from spreading to the Russian army encamped at
Smolensk.
In the 1640s a complete line of guard stations against disease was built between
Moscow and Vladimir, guarding the Vladimir highway and nine smaller crossings to
the west and south. Local populations bore an onerous burden of building and
manning them, as well as quarantining suspected carriers and maintaining quarantine
if disease broke out in their border town. There were established routines for
disinfecting infected homes and for burning property directly associated with the
infected. These efforts, however, were only as good as local administrations, which
chronically suffered from lack of manpower and resources. Particularly interesting
were measures to protect that government’s rulers: in the seventeenth century
government documentation sent from infected areas was carefully watched so as
not to bring infection to Moscow. Documents were to be passed through the smoke
of a juniper or sagebrushfire, thought to be disinfecting, and anything destined for
the Kremlin chanceries or Tsar had to be copied multiple times on new sheets of
clean paper before thefinal copy would be sent on to the capital. These good efforts
depended upon available manpower and density of network to be effective.
All in all, through the seventeenth century the Muscovite state showed itself
capable of exerting force to accomplish its goals. It used coercive force to conquer
and suppress resistance; like its European counterparts it imbedded violence in
criminal procedure and punishments. It oversaw the realm with a skeletal but
highly professional bureaucracy; it surveyed its resources with cadasters and maps.
It forcibly mobilized human and material resources to build roads, provide coach
service,fill granaries, settle border areas. Much of this effort supported Russia’s
military aims. Another arena in which the state used its power was in organizing
and profiting from the international and domestic economies, to which we turn in
Chapter 8.
*****
Evsey Domar theory on serfdom:“The Causes of Slavery or Serfdom: A Hypothesis,”
Journal of Economic History30 (1970): 18–32. For further bibliography on Russian
peasants and enserfment, see Chapters 10 and 17. On epidemics in Russia, see bibliog-
raphy cited in Chapter 1. Theoretical perspectives on empire by Barkey, Burbank, and
Cooper, see bibliography in Introduction.
On the practice of the criminal law, see myCrime and Punishment in Early Modern Russia
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012),“Ritual and Social Drama at the
Muscovite Court,”Slavic Review45 (1986): 486–502, andBy Honor Bound: State and
Society in Early Modern Russia(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999). Valerie
A. Kivelson explores procedure, including torture, in suits on land and witchcraft in
Cartographies of Tsardom: The Land and its Meaning in Seventeenth-Century RussiaThe State Wields its Power 183