Pestilence, severe famine and epizootics: how they fought epidemics in Russia

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

The centralization of the Russian lands around Moscow, which took place in the XIV-XV centuries, was accompanied not only by civil strife and the struggle against foreign expansion: regular epidemics killed from a third to a half of the urban population.

Alla Chelnokova, an associate professor at the Moscow City Pedagogical University, head of the History of Russia master's program, and how the epidemics proceeded and how our ancestors perceived them, dealt with how infections spread across Russia and how they were fought against them, how the epidemics proceeded and how they were perceived by our ancestors.

Dark centuries

Chronicles have kept information about the events of those centuries. As Alla Chelnokova said, the bulk of information about epidemics of that time is contained in the Novgorod, Pskov, Tver and Moscow annals.

Several local outbreaks of unknown diseases, according to the study "The Hungry Years in Ancient Rus" by the historian Vladimir Pashuto, were already in the 12th century, but epidemics were especially frequent in the period from the end of the 13th to the middle of the 15th century. After the outbreak of 1278, the Pskov chronicles record the pestilence on average once every 15 years, the Novgorod ones - once every 17.

“The chronicles do not contain reliable information about a specific type of disease. It is generally accepted that Russia suffered from the same plague that raged in Europe. “or even“pimple.”If the disease turned out to be already familiar, the chronicler indicated when it came before, and did not describe the symptoms.

Archeology could help in studying the exact nature of infections, but so far there is little reliable research in this area, the expert said.

According to her, Novgorod and Pskov were more likely than others to be infected, as they had constant trade relations in the West. There was another way: one of the most severe epidemics that raged in 1351-1353, came, according to the Pskov chronicle (PSRL. T. V. Pskov and Sophia chronicles. St. Petersburg, 1851 - ed.), "From the Indian land ", that is, along the Volga along with the Persian and Astrakhan merchants.

Through Nizhny Novgorod came the pestilence of 1364, devastating Moscow, Vladimir, Tver, Pereslavl-Zalessky and other cities. As the historian Mikhail Tikhomirov noted in the book "Medieval Moscow in the XIV-XV centuries", this pestilence "left the memory of the Russian people for a long time and served as a kind of memorable date."

The duration of the epidemics of that time cannot be accurately determined by modern science; only a few pieces of evidence have survived. So, in 1352, the Novgorod chronicler reports (PSRL. Vol. III. Part 4. Novgorod second and third chronicles. St. Petersburg, 1841 - ed.) That the epidemic lasted from "August to Easter", and the Pskov chronicler a year earlier he noted that the pestilence lasted "all summer".

The epidemic, as Chelnokova clarified, was never the only problem - its constant companions were severe hunger and epizootics (mass death of livestock - ed.). According to her, the immunity of people, undermined by hunger, could not resist infection, and because of the pestilence of the field, there was no one to cultivate. At the same time, the situation was aggravated by speculators who raised grain prices.

Chroniclers report cases of cannibalism in difficult years. “The same desperate step for the peasants was to eat a horse: among other forced food, like moss, foliage or tree bark, horse meat is mentioned by chroniclers in the last place. The reason for this is that with the loss of the horse - the worker and breadwinner - the peasants, who are personally free in the bulk, were only waiting for procurement or even servitude, that is, dependence on the local nobility and merchants, bordering on slavery, Alla Chelnokova noted.

Five in one coffin

During the periods of the most acute epidemics, the mortality rate was such that whole families had to be buried in one coffin at once, or they had to resort to burial in huge mass graves - beggars. According to Vladimir Pashuto from the article "The Hungry Years in Ancient Rus," the infection killed, on average, from one third to one half of the population of the contaminated territories.

According to Chelnokova, in the most difficult moments of the pestilence, when more than a hundred people died in the city every day, the only means were prayer services and the nationwide erection of new churches. Sometimes this only contributed to the intensification of the epidemic, but the chronicles preserved the memory of other cases. For example, according to the Pskov chronicler, in 1389 it was the visit of the Novgorodian Archbishop John and the prayer service he held that stopped another plague.

The medieval picture of the world did not allow considering nature as a kind of independent reality, and everything that happened in life was perceived as a result of divine will, the expert explained. The disease was, in the words of the Pskov chronicler, "a heavenly punishment for the sins of the people" - therefore, to fight it otherwise than by fasting, prayer and spiritual deed, it never occurred to anyone.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that epidemics may not have been assessed as a threat to public welfare at all. So, Metropolitan of Kiev and All Russia Photius - the main church hierarch - in his message to the Pskovites ("Historical Acts", Volume 1, St. I am sure that divine punishment can only lead to the "correction and improvement" of the city.

Many perceived the aggravation of hardships as a call for spiritual responsibility and renunciation of the earthly world, the expert noted. The chronicles tell that the transfer of property to the church's disposal became a mass phenomenon, and most often this was caused not by the death of the owner, but by the decision to become a monk. The few monasteries at that time became centers of assistance to all the disadvantaged.

"Large masses of people fled from infection, leaving the rich and populated opolye (valleys of large rivers) to settle somewhere in the wilderness, in the uninhabited lands of the northeast. The cities were so empty that there was no one to bury the dead," she said Alla Chelnokova.

But, she said, humility was not the only possible response to dire adversity. The Volokolamsk patericon testifies that the opposite position was not uncommon - close, as the expert noted, to the one described in the Decameron by a European contemporary of these events, a witness to the "black death" of Giovanni Boccaccio. Reporting about the atrocities in the depopulated settlements, the Volokolamsk chronicler notes that "some fell into such insensibility because of malicious drunkenness that when one of the drinkers suddenly fell and died, they, having shoved him under the bench with their feet, continued to drink" (BLDR. T.9, St. Petersburg, 2000 - editor's note).

Hard experience

The first reports of quarantine appear in the annals, according to Chelnokova, already in the middle of the 15th century. As she stressed, it has not yet been about a consistent policy at the state level: apart from individual cases of punishment for bypassing the outposts that controlled the exit from the contaminated territories, chroniclers at the same time celebrate crowded prayers and processions of the cross.

Of particular interest for the history of epidemics in Russia, according to the expert, is the correspondence that has come down to us between the Pskov clerk (rank of a civil servant - ed.) Mikhail Munehin and the elder of the Spaso-Elizarov Monastery Filofei, the author of the famous formula "Moscow is the third Rome" ("Plague under Alexei Mikhailovich", Kazan, 1879 - ed.).

The clerk, who then managed the affairs of the Pskov governor, was an educated man and familiar with European scholarship. Thanks to the correspondence, we know that during the epidemic of 1520, by order of Munehin, for the first time, a whole complex of tough measures was taken: individual streets were closed for quarantine, the homes of the sick were sealed, and the priests were forbidden to visit them. The dead were forbidden to be buried in church cemeteries within the city, which caused a negative reaction, and, according to the expert, in order to circumvent the ban, the relatives of the dead tried to hide the fact of the disease.

Another document describing the fight against infections in the 16th century is the letter of Ivan the Terrible ("Proceedings of the Department of Old Russian Literature" IRL RAS, vol. 14, 1958 - ed.), In which he scolds the Kostroma authorities for their inability to organize quarantine. The document says that the servicemen, in fear of illness, refused to serve at the outposts, so the tsar had to personally solve this problem.

Our ancestors emerged from the vicious circle of mass deaths and economic crises for more than 200 years, until the end of the 15th century, until, finally, epidemics began to occur less frequently, and the idea of the possibility of combating them did not begin to strengthen among the ruling strata, Chelnokova noted. Only in the XVI-XVII centuries, according to her, strict quarantine began to become a common measure.