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A German Merchant's Account of Famine in Russia


Source: Basil Dmytryshyn, Medieval Russia: A Source Book, 900-1700, 2nd ed. (New York, 1973).

INTRODUCTION
[From Dmytryshyn, Medieval Russia, p. 256]. The reign of Boris Godunov (1598-1605) is noted for its energetic policy of expansion across Siberia, for interest in west European contacts, and above all, for setting the stage for the chaos known as "Time of Troubles." Many factors contributed to Russia's troubles; however, some contemporary observers thought that famine and social unrest were "the beginning of the calamity." The following is an eyewitness account of the famine by a German merchant, Konrad Bussow, who lived in Moscow from 1584 to 1613.


In 1601 the high price of bread began, and continued until 1604. The price of a barrel of rye rose to ten to twelve florins; whereas earlier it cost no more than twelve to fifteen groschen. The famine in the country was more severe than the famine in beseiged Jerusalem which is described by Joseph. According to Joseph, the Jews ate dogs, cats, rats, mice, and even leather from old saddles, shields, and boots, as well as pigeon dung. One wellborn woman, tormented by the famine, killed her only child, cooked it, and ate it. This is just one of the most depressing situations that one finds in Joseph's account [of a famine in Jerusalem]. But I swear by God that in Moscow I saw, with my own eyes, people who rolled in the streets and, like animals, ate grass during the summer and hay during the winter. Some of those who died had hay as well as human excrement in their mouths. Parents killed, prepared, and cooked many of their children; children did the same with their parents; hosts with visitors; and visitors with hosts. Human flesh, finely ground, baked in pies (a kind of pastry), was sold and consumed like beef. A traveler, then, was forced to be careful in his selection of an inn. When Tsar Boris [Godunov] was informed of these horrible, inhuman killings, which the famine and high cost of living brought about, and of the great number of the famine's casualties, he proposed to alleviate this poverty and God's punishment with the help of his treasury. He ordered four large enclosures to be constructed within the outside walls [of the city of Moscow] (which were about four German miles long), where every morning the poor of the city of Moscow assembled and where they received one denga per person. When poor peasants near Moscow heard of this mercy, they left their homes and jobs and ran to Moscow with their wives and children in order to receive money. As a result, there assembled so many people in Moscow that they were forced to distribute as much as 500,000 dengas daily. This [distribution of aid] continued for a long time but did not decrease the cost of living at all. Daily, on the Tsar's orders, they collected hundreds of corpses and carried them outside the city in wagons--an undertaking which was awesome to observe. Specially appointed people washed the dead, wrapped them in a white cloth, put red shoes on them, and wheeled them to the church to be buried.

During those four years of the high cost of bread, as a result of the Tsar's mercy in feeding the poor, clothing them, and burying them, the state treasury was drained of many hundreds of thousands of rubles. How depleted the treasury became during this time can be easily ascertained. I have been told by trustworthy individuals--government clerks and merchants--that during the high cost of bread, in Moscow alone, more than 500,000 people whom the Tsar fed, died from hunger, and he ordered them to be buried in their shoes and wrapped in cloth. And this occurred in one city only. [No one knows] how many people in the countryside and other cities perished from starvation and diseases and were buried at the expense of the tsarist treasury.... Woe to a country or people subjected to God's anger. Boris, however, was embittered, blind, and did not humble before these horrible misfortunes, but hoped to ease the misery with the aid of a rich treasury. By the will of the merciful God, several ships from German seaports arrived in Narva with a cargo of wheat, which could have made possible the feeding of hundreds of thousands of people. Boris, however, did not wish this kind of humiliation, that is, buying and selling foreign food in a country rich in food. The ships were ordered to leave without selling the grain because the Russians were forbidden to buy it under threat of the death penalty.

Boris ordered the food reserves of the entire country to be surveyed. They discovered large grain stacks, one hundred or more sazhens [Note: one sazhen equals seven feet] long, which had stood there unthreshed, for about fifty years and which were covered with weeds and other growth. Boris ordered that these be threshed and that the grain be sent to Moscow and other cities. He also ordered that his warehouses be opened in all cities, and many thousands of barrels of grain were sold daily at half price. He decreed that poor widows, orphans, and especially foreigners, receive a number of barrels of flour in their homes without charge in order to prevent their suffering. He called upon princes, boyars, and monasteries to take notice of the country's plight and to offer their grain reserves and sell these at a low price. Princes, boyars, and monasteries fulfilled the Tsar's will. But the devil . . . suggested to rich grain merchants of Moscow to buy the princely, boyar, and monastery grain through the poor at a low price and sell it back to the poor at a high price. With the decline of the high cost of bread, which caused the death of hundreds of thousands and drained Boris' treasury, a new punishment appeared--war and bloodshed.