times of social unrest and dysfunction, and underscores the benefits of Russia’s
persistent expansion into more fertile, resource-rich, and/or temperate lands. The
state and landlords might have moved south for trade reasons, but peasants also
eagerlyflooded there for a better life.
DISEASE
Parallel to deep climatic trends, Russia was also linked with the European and
Eurasian community by the spread of infectious diseases. Plague, smallpox, and
other infectious diseases tended not to be of local origin in Russia, as few viruses
could survive the harsh winters. They penetrated into Russia from the west (the
Germanies and Poland through Smolensk, Pskov, and Novgorod) and from Black
Sea ports. Armies and military conflict were often the carriers of infection, as was
trade. Quite often an outbreak in European Russia can be traced to epidemic raging
elsewhere in the preceding year or months. So, for example, plague spread in
western Europe in 1473 and hit Novgorod (which traded regularly with Baltic
merchants) hard in 1478; European plague epidemics in 1482 were echoed in
Pskov in 1486–7. The same can be said for plague in Pskov and Novgorod 1506–8,
reverberating outbreaks in German, Holland, and Italy 1500–8. Through the
sixteenth century when war on the western borderland was endemic, epidemics
(generally plague and smallpox) in European Russian were frequent: in
Pskov 1521–2, in Moscow 1521, in Novgorod 1527, in Pskov and Novgorod
1532 – 3, in Pskov, Novgorod, Smolensk, and in the Russian army encampments
around Kazan in 1552. Plague swept many towns (Polotsk, Velikie Luki,
Smolensk, Novgorod, Pskov) in 1566–8 and 1570 and returned to Novgorod
and Pskov 1592.
Eyewitnesses describe infectious disease traveling from Poland through Smolensk
to Moscow with invading armies in the Time of Troubles (1598–1613). No major
epidemics hit Moscow again until the 1650s; plague spreading in Crimea in 1636
was successfully kept out of Moscow through quarantines at border towns; similar
quarantines in the Viaz’ma area prevented a wider spread of the“Siberian pox”in
- But Moscow and central Russia were ravaged by plague in the 1650s. In
1654 plague penetrated Russia in the summer and endured until late 1657, at the
same time that it was ravaging parts of Germany, Holland, England, and Spain to
the west and Astrakhan down the Volga. Hearing of its approach, the tsar, his
family, and thousands of people left Moscow in July; epidemic hit the city in
August. Those whofled the city spread it in concentric circles in subsequent
months as far as Kyiv, Nizhnii Novgorod, and Novgorod, encompassing thirty-
five provinces and over 30,000 square kilometers. Moscow’s population was
decimated; K. G. Vasil’ev estimates about 300,000 to 350,000 casualties in the
city alone. He further estimates that some towns lost about half their population
(Zvenigorod, Kaluga, Pereiaslavl’-Zalesskii, Pereiaslavl’-Riazanskii, Suzdal, Tver’,
Tula); their provincial populations were also deeply affected. With aggressive
quarantines, epidemics never penetrated as deeply into Russia again in that century.
28 The Russian Empire 1450– 1801