Between 1770 and 1772, Moscow saw a virulent outbreak of the Black Death, one of the most feared diseases in European history: Dr Afanasii Shafonskii was tasked with battling this epidemic. In this episode, we follow the plague's progress as it caused death, deprivation, and revolt in Russia's biggest city.
The principal source for this episode and all of the quotes is: J. T. Alexander, Bubonic Plague in Early Modern Russia: Public Health and Urban Disaster (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003)
In the early nineteenth century, Raffaele Scassi, Genoese gambler and ne'er-do-well, found himself in the newly founded Black Sea port of Odessa. This was...
Tales from Imperial Russia is a fortnightly podcast narrating ordinary and extraordinary lives from the Russian Empire. In short episodes, we will avoid the...
Between 1905 and 1912, the monk Iliodor (Trufanov) set Russia ablaze with his inflammatory right-wing rhetoric, causing scandal after scandal. In this episode, we...