Nevertheless, the rigors of the Little Ice Age extended over so long a period of time that one cannot attribute to it a single historical impact. Over time communities responded to changing circumstances. Impoverished Norwegian fishing communities turned to the export of timber and shipbuilding. A brisk grain trade in the Baltic developed, aided by improved shipping technology, as did overland shipping of grain, beer, cattle and the like from eastern Europe to European cities. Countries served by international commerce, such as England, Portugal, Spain, and the Netherlands, could buffer themselves in times of distress with food imports from their outposts in Africa, Asia, and the New World. Domestically countries exploited all possible land: land reclamation technology improved in the Netherlands and England, while in China cultivation reached to the frontier borderlands. Colonial expansion by countries from Britain to Russia also brought new, productive lands or peoples into the home market. Across western Europe by the eighteenth century new agricultural techniques and new crops, prompted as much by increasing density of population as by climatic conditions, intensified and diversified production, and increased yields. Governments also engaged in provisioning to ensure granaries for major cities, armies, or key populations; throughout its history the Chinese state continually invested in grain reserves, while such efforts, evident in Europe from the late fifteenth century, only became well developed and effective by the eighteenth.
Russia's experience of the Little Ice Age is less well attested (chronicles from different regional centers are the best source), but the impact is clear. These centuries were characterized by climatic instability and extremes. In addition to very cold winters, many summers were overly dry, autumns too rainy; crop failures ensued, followed by famines. Fifteenth-century chronicles from towns in the center record forty-eight years in which famine occurred at least regionally, and over 150 unusual climatic events, such as persistent rains, floods, late snows, extreme storms, drought, even earthquakes. The first quarter of the sixteenth century was relatively warmer, but the subsequent years (to about 1570) were instable with cold and mild, snowy and snowless winters alternating; hardly a year went by without some extreme climatic events recorded somewhere in European Russia. The same ebb and flow was witnessed with a relatively mild 1573-84, followed by harsh climate to the end of the century. In such circumstances, crop failures resulted in rising grain prices. The burden on the population was exacerbated in these same decades by rising state taxation, the Livonian war (1558-81) and the Oprichnina (1565-72). Conditions were particularly hard northwest of Moscow in areas around Novgorod, Pskov, and Tver': more people died in Novgorod in 1570 from famine than from Ivan's merciless attack on the city. Epidemic also spread, with plague noted in twenty-eight towns in the autumn of 1570.
The seventeenth century began in Russia with catastrophic climatic conditions— in 1602 a year of rain and freezing into the summertime boosted the price of rye sixfold; in 1603 prices had risen eighteen times above their level in 1601. In these years of "Great Famine" (1601-3), exacerbated by political and social unrest on the eve of the Time of Troubles, Muscovy suffered a huge population loss, alleged by some to be over 100,000 people. Some years in the first half of the century experienced milder conditions, but from the middle of the seventeenth century, during the so-called "Maunder Minimum" (1675-1715, when coldness seems to have intensified due to a decline in sunspots), coldness certainly set in. The overall cold trend is exemplified by the encroachment ofArctic Sea ice. Until the middle of the seventeenth century, it had been possible to traverse the Arctic Sea eastward without ice beyond the Yenisei River as far as Kolyma and the Bering Strait. That passage was frozen over by the 1650s-60s. In addition to cold, in the second half of the century, 33 years suffered such drought that in 1663 the tsar himself specially prayed for rain. Of the forty years of the Maunder Minimum, 25 (60 percent) witnessed famine. All in all, in European Russia in the changeable climatic conditions of the seventeenth century, 48 years suffered drought, 25 summers were excessively rainy, 32 winters were extremely cold, and extensive famine occurred somewhere in 64 of the years. Such volatility continued in the eighteenth century, with 18 years of very harsh winters, 39 years suffering some drought, 19 overly rainy with floods. Winters were severe in 40 of the years, mild in 22; there were 33 unprecedented spring floods. Famines regionally, sometimes across much of the realm, were noted in 68 years of the century, most severe in the early 1730s, 1760s, early 1770s, and late 1780s.
Such litanies boggle the mind; the historian is hard-pressed to draw causal connections between such climatic conditions and specific historical events, such as rebellions, crime waves, or enserfment. But the bitterness of the climate certainly created great personal suffering for the population, provided a potent backdrop in 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 eagerly flooded 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 ofTroubles (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 1643. 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 who fled 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.