Russia suffered from an economic and social crisis in the second half of the 16th century which led to famines, depopulation and the abandonment of agricultural lands. The economic crisis overlapped with the oprichnina and happened at the time when Russia waged the Livonian War. The crisis is considered to be one of the precursors of the Time of Troubles. [1] [2]
The crisis started in mid-1560s when the poor harvest of 1567 became the trigger of the crisis. The taxes had risen significantly in the previous decades as the state waged expensive wars against the Tatars in the east and against Poland and Sweden in the west. The population growth in the previous century led to overpopulation and peasants having insufficient food reserves.[ citation needed ] The famine ensued with the grain prices increasing 8-10 times and remaining high after another poor harvest next year. The famine continued in 1570 when a pestilence hit Russia too. [3] In spite of the efforts to contain outbreaks the epidemic spread in the Central and Northern Russia. [4] Many localities were depopulated and there were reports of cannibalism. [5] The more dense urban population especially suffered and some towns lost nearly all their inhabitants. Kolomna had only 12 tax-paying households in 1578 while in Murom most of the households and shops were deserted. [6]
The sack of Novgorod by Ivan IV's oprichniki contributed to the crisis in the north-west. As part of his attack Ivan burned the fields, laying waste roughly 90 percent of the arable land surrounding Novgorod. Coupled with the crop failures of the years before, this would create a massive food shortage (and cause supply problems for Russia in the Livonian war). [7] Both nobles and common people were put to death and the frequent changes of land ownership impacted the economy negatively. A contemporary chronicler from Pskov wrote "The Tsar instituted oprichnina and from thence the great desolation of the Russian land." [8]
The crisis weakened the state considerably. The Crimean Tatars attacked Russia in 1571 burning down Moscow, devastating large areas of the country and carrying 100,000 prisoners into slavery. [9] In the 1570s the earlier gains made by Russia in Livonia were lost and some additional territory was lost to Sweden. [10]
The contemporaries called the crisis porukha (поруха) which could be translated as damage, loss or calamity. [2] The peasants of the Joseph-Volokolamsk Monastery explained the drop in land under cultivation by a combination of the pestilence, Tatar raids, bad harvests and heavy taxation. [11]
The acute phase of the crisis was over when Fedor I assumed the throne in 1584. A significant share of arable land was deserted. The North-West was hit the hardest by the war, oprichnina, famine and epidemics. The population of the Novgorod region fell by more than 80%, with the records of Derevskaya district showing that one third of cultivated land was deserted due to mortality. In the central regions of Russia, the Moscow area suffered the Crimean Tatar raid and had 90% of cultivated land abandoned. Elsewhere in the centre, from 18 to 60 per cent of peasant holdings were abandoned due to mortality and migration. [5] This was one of the most severe demographic disasters experienced by Russia. [3]
As a consequence of population decline the wages increased significantly and the land rents decreased. The wages of labourers in Vologda and in Joseph-Volokolamsk Monastery grew by 2.5 times in grain terms. At the same time the quit-rent (obrok) and corvee obligations decreased by 2-3 times. [12] The landowners, mostly belonging to the service class, thus experienced a fall in their income and many estates were left with no peasants at all. [12] The Russian army which consisted mostly of mounted service class people lost half of its number as a result. [12] The enserfment intensified after the crisis during the reigns of Fedor I and Boris Godunov as the nobility tried to tie down the remaining peasants to the land. [13] The state taxes paid by peasant household declined significantly as well and correspondingly the state revenues shrank. [12] Some historians say that the crisis led to mass migration to the southern frontier and the newly conquered Volga region, [14] while others consider it unlikely as these regions experienced invasions and rebellions at the same time. [5]
The recovery was slow and some historians say that the crisis was not over by the end of the 16th century. [15] [1] According to Turchin and Nefedov the imbalance between the increasing elite numbers and declining commoner population was not resolved and became one of the reasons of the Time of Troubles. [12]
Ivan IV Vasilyevich, commonly known as Ivan the Terrible, was Grand Prince of Moscow and all Russia from 1533, and Tsar of all Russia from 1547 until his death in 1584. He was the first Russian monarch to be crowned as tsar.
Ivan III Vasilyevich, also known as Ivan the Great, was Grand Prince of Moscow and all Russia from 1462 until his death in 1505. Ivan served as the co-ruler and regent for his blind father Vasily II before he officially ascended the throne.
The Time of Troubles, or Smuta, was a period of political crisis in the Tsardom of Russia which began in 1598 with the death of Feodor I, the last of the Rurik dynasty, and ended in 1613 with the accession of Michael I of the House of Romanov.
The oprichnina was a state policy implemented by Tsar Ivan the Terrible in Russia between 1565 and 1572. The policy included mass repression of the boyars, including public executions and confiscation of their land and property. In this context it can also refer to:
The Novgorod Republic was a medieval state that existed from the 12th to 15th centuries in northern Russia, stretching from the Gulf of Finland in the west to the northern Ural Mountains in the east. Its capital was the city of Novgorod. The republic prospered as the easternmost trading post of the Hanseatic League, and its people were much influenced by the culture of the Byzantines, with the Novgorod school of icon painting producing many fine works.
The Livonian War (1558–1583) was fought for control of Old Livonia. The Tsardom of Russia faced a varying coalition of the Dano-Norwegian Realm, the Kingdom of Sweden, and the Union of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Kingdom of Poland.
The House of Shuysky was a Rurikid family of Boyars descending from Grand Duke Dimitri Konstantinovich of Vladimir-Suzdal and Prince Andrey Yaroslavich, brother to Alexander Nevsky. The surname is derived from the town of Shuya, of which the Shuiskys gained ownership in 1403. From 1606 to 1610, Vasili Shuisky ruled as tsar over Russia during the Time of Troubles.
Grigory Lukyanovich Skuratov-Belskiy, better known as Malyuta Skuratov was one of the most odious leaders of the Oprichnina during the reign of Ivan the Terrible.
The Russo-Swedish War of 1554–1557, considered a prelude to the Livonian War of 1558–1583, arose out of border skirmishes. It ended when the parties agreed on a truce in the Treaty of Novgorod (1557).
The Fire of Moscow occurred on 24 May 1571, when the Crimean and Ottoman Army led by the khan of Crimea Devlet I Giray, bypassed the Serpukhov defensive fortifications on the Oka River, crossed the Ugra River into the Moscow suburbs, and rounded the flank of the 35,000–40,000 men of the Russian army.
The Russo-Kazan Wars was a series of wars fought between the Grand Duchy of Moscow and the Khanate of Kazan from 1437, until Kazan was finally conquered by the Tsardom of Russia under Ivan the Terrible in 1552.
The massacre of Novgorod was an attack launched by Ivan the Terrible's oprichniki on the city of Novgorod, Russia, in 1570. Although initially an act of vengeance against the perceived treason of the local Orthodox church, the massacre quickly became possibly the most vicious in the brutal legacy of the oprichnina, with casualties estimated between two thousand to fifteen thousand and innumerable acts of extreme, violent cruelty. In the aftermath of the attack, Novgorod lost its status as one of Russia's leading cities, crippled by decimation of its citizenry combined with Ivan's assault on the surrounding farmlands.
The Tsardom of Russia, also known as the Tsardom of Muscovy, was the centralized Russian state from the assumption of the title of tsar by Ivan IV in 1547 until the foundation of the Russian Empire by Peter the Great in 1721.
The Russian famine of 1601–1603, Russia's worst famine in terms of proportional effect on the population, killed perhaps two million people: about 30% of the Russian people. The famine compounded the Time of Troubles (1598–1613), when the Tsardom of Russia was unsettled politically and later invaded (1605–1618) by the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. The many deaths contributed to social disruption. The famine resulted from a volcanic winter, a series of worldwide record cold winters and crop disruption, which geologists in 2008 linked to the 1600 volcanic eruption of Huaynaputina in Peru.
The steppe and forest-steppe of Ukraine and southern Russia is good agricultural land, but it was traditionally held by pastoral nomads. Any state that could drive off the nomads and fill the land with tax-paying peasants would expand its power enormously. During the period 1500–1800, this region was taken under Russian control.
The Battle of Ula or Battle of Chashniki was fought during the Livonian War on 26 January 1564 between the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Tsardom of Russia on the Ula River north of Chashniki in the Vitebsk Region. The Russian troops, unarmed and moving in a loose formation, were taken by complete surprise and defeated, losing their large wagon train.
Novgorodian Land was one of the largest historical territorial–state formations in Russia, covering its northwest and north. Novgorod Land, centered in Veliky Novgorod, was in the cradle of Kievan Rus' under the rule of the Rurikovich dynasty and one of the most important princely thrones of the era. During the collapse of Kievan Rus' and in subsequent centuries, Novgorod Land developed as the Novgorod Republic: an autonomous state with republican forms of government under the suzerainty of the great princes of Vladimir-Suzdal. During the period of greatest development, it reached north to the White Sea, and in the east it spread beyond the Ural Mountains. It had extensive trade relations within the framework of the Hanseatic League and with the rest of Rus'. Muscovy conquered the Novgorod Republic in 1478, and annexed it in 1578, although Novgorod Land continued to exist as an administrative unit until 1708.
This article presents the demographic history of Russia covering the period of Kievan Rus, its successor states, the Mongol domination and the unified Tsardom of Russia. See Demographics of Russia for a more detailed overview of the current and 20th century demographics.
Fyodor Alexeyevich Basmanov was a Russian oprichnik, warlord and a favorite of Ivan the Terrible.