The Russian Empire 1450–1801

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centuries were characterized by climatic instability and extremes. In addition to
very cold winters, many summers were overly dry, autumns too rainy; crop failures
ensued, followed by famines. Fifteenth-century chronicles from towns in the center
record forty-eight years in which famine occurred at least regionally, and over 150
unusual climatic events, such as persistent rains,floods, late snows, extreme storms,
drought, even earthquakes. Thefirst quarter of the sixteenth century was relatively
warmer, but the subsequent years (to about 1570) were instable with cold and mild,
snowy and snowless winters alternating; hardly a year went by without some
extreme climatic events recorded somewhere in European Russia. The same ebb
andflow was witnessed with a relatively mild 1573–84, followed by harsh climate
to the end of the century. In such circumstances, crop failures resulted in rising
grain prices. The burden on the population was exacerbated in these same decades
by rising state taxation, the Livonian war (1558–81) and the Oprichnina
(1565–72). Conditions were particularly hard northwest of Moscow in areas
around Novgorod, Pskov, and Tver’: more people died in Novgorod in 1570
from famine than from Ivan’s merciless attack on the city. Epidemic also spread,
with plague noted in twenty-eight towns in the autumn of 1570.
The seventeenth century began in Russia with catastrophic climatic conditions—
in 1602 a year of rain and freezing into the summertime boosted the price of rye
sixfold; in 1603 prices had risen eighteen times above their level in 1601. In these
years of“Great Famine”(1601–3), exacerbated by political and social unrest on the
eve of the Time of Troubles, Muscovy suffered a huge population loss, alleged by
some to be over 100,000 people. Some years in thefirst half of the century
experienced milder conditions, but from the middle of the seventeenth century,
during the so-called“Maunder Minimum”(1675–1715, when coldness seems to
have intensified due to a decline in sunspots), coldness certainly set in. The overall
cold trend is exemplified by the encroachment of Arctic Sea ice. Until the middle of
the seventeenth century, it had been possible to traverse the Arctic Sea eastward
without ice beyond the Yenisei River as far as Kolyma and the Bering Strait. That
passage was frozen over by the 1650s–60s. In addition to cold, in the second half of
the century, 33 years suffered such drought that in 1663 the tsar himself specially
prayed for rain. Of the forty years of the Maunder Minimum, 25 (60 percent)
witnessed famine. All in all, in European Russia in the changeable climatic
conditions of the seventeenth century, 48 years suffered drought, 25 summers
were excessively rainy, 32 winters were extremely cold, and extensive famine
occurred somewhere in 64 of the years. Such volatility continued in the eighteenth
century, with 18 years of very harsh winters, 39 years suffering some drought, 19
overly rainy withfloods. Winters were severe in 40 of the years, mild in 22; there
were 33 unprecedented springfloods. Famines regionally, sometimes across much
of the realm, were noted in 68 years of the century, most severe in the early 1730s,
1760s, early 1770s, and late 1780s.
Such litanies boggle the mind; the historian is hard-pressed to draw causal
connections between such climatic conditions and specific historical events, such
as rebellions, crime waves, or enserfment. But the bitterness of the climate certainly
created great personal suffering for the population, provided a potent backdrop in


Land, People, and Global Context 27
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