Introduction

Although the Black Death started and ended in Russia, knowledge about these events is practically non-existent among scholars and accounts may, in some cases, be said to assume a spurious character. This is still the situation despite the fact that a useful source-based account was given in the first edition of this book. In this chapter, the history of the Black Death in Russia is written de novo on the basis of a complete gathering together of the sources and a heavy input of medievalist source-criticism, Russian linguistics, and analytical knowledge of plague disease and epidemiology.

Russia or Россия is a latinized form of Old Russian (Old East Slavic) Rusj or Русь, the people were called Russians or Rusi (Руси). From the tenth century the term related to the state or ‘Land of the Rusj’, later known as Kievan Rusj according to its political, religious and administrative centre in Kiev (today Kyjiv/Київ) in the Ukraine. From the twelfth century, Rusj and its people were usually known in Western Europe by the latinized names of Ruthenia or Ruthenians. In the Middle Ages, the nationalities now called Russians, Belorussians and Ukrainians and their respective languages had not yet evolved. Peoples of all branches of the present-day Eastern Slavs were then known as Russians or Rusi, and this historical usage will be followed here in order to avoid anachronisms.

There was no unified Russian state at the time of the Black Death. The terms Russian and Russia refer, therefore, to the territories that came to be dominated by the emerging Russian state, later Imperial Russia, and were settled by peoples speaking the contemporary versions of the eastern Slavic languages. The use of the terms Russia and Russian in this book refers to distant history, not to modern politics and recent state formation.

At the time of the Black Death, Russian territories were divided into several principalities and two city states inspired by the Hanseatic free cities: the city state of Novgorod, which possessed a large territory and was called Great [Velikiy] Novgorod, and the city state of Pskov. In the years 1237–40, the Mongol armies devastated the Principality of Kiev and established the Mongol Khanate of the Golden Horde in southern Russia (see above, Chapter 10).