Theoretical Aspects of Understanding the Second Pandemic of the “Black Death” Plague in the Territory of the Jochid Ulus

Abstract

Research objective: To present a new concept of the origin and spread of the “Black Death” in the territory of the Golden Horde, the dependent Russian principalities and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania on the basis of textual analysis of medieval sources in Arabic, Persian, Greek, Latin and Russian, as well as recent advances in the studies of the genome of plague bacteria and climate in the Middle Ages. Research materials: Published narrative sources in Arabic, Persian, Greek, Latin and Russian; modern research in the field of the “Black Death” by both domestic and foreign authors. Results and novelty of the research: To date, there is quite a strong misconception about the “Black Death”. Authors made an attempt to comprehend this situation in the territory of the Jochid ulus in an integrative historical retrospective. On the basis of the most up-to-date research, the authors succeeded in theoretically visualizing the process of nucleation and spread of the plague in the territory of the Golden Horde and vassal state formations. Modern researchers have often come to the conclusion that the “Black Death” was a kind of decisive “Rubicon” in the development of medieval communities. However, until now there has been no theoretical interpretation of this situation in the territory of the Jochid ulus. Often, most of the studies published so far continue to reproduce clichés of the 14th–16th centuries. The main such cliché is the complete denial of this historical phenomenon in the territory of the medieval Tatar state. At the same time, recent studies in the field of genome analysis of plague bacteria have proved that the steppe areas of the Jochid ulus were the region from which the “Black Death” began its rampant spread. Judging by the information of the Russian chronicles, the appearance of plague was not limited to one year. These sources speak of constant outbreaks of plague epidemics that occurred before the beginning of the “Black Death” in the vast Russian Plain. At the same time, the scenario of simultaneous parallel movements of several epidemic diseases that had an animal origin has not been taken into account so far. Therefore, the authors consider it appropriate to talk not so much about the epidemic of the “Black Death” as about the onset of a new historical era – this was a period when modern Russia and ethnic groups living on its territory emerged.