Nature's Evil

Trade hubs and sites of power, capital cities grew so rapidly that they far outpaced the limited ability of the surrounding lands to feed them. For most of them, trade in fibres, metals and finished goods was the push factor, and the shortage of grain and timber the pull factor, of development. From Venice to St Petersburg, full granaries symbolised the stability of power, just as they had done thousands of years before in the cities of Mesopotamia.

In the middle of the seventeenth century, Paris consumed 3 million bushels of grain per year, Amsterdam, 1.5 million, Rome 1 million. Transporting such quantities of grain by cart was impossible – all growing cities were situated near the sea or navigable rivers. The shortage of grain was a constant problem for Mediterranean cities. As early as the sixteenth century, Dutch ships had transported grain to them from the Baltic lands, sailing around Europe. Amsterdam was supplied from the Polish lands around Danzig, while Stockholm depended on the fields of Livonia and Estonia. The provisioning of London was helped when the East Anglian fens were drained and large farms were established on the reclaimed fenland. Paris was kept supplied via the Seine and the canals built by Colbert. Completed in 1734, this network deprived provincial France of supplies, and local riots accompanied the growth of the capital. 14

The delivery of grain to the new capital, St Petersburg, was to become a perennial problem for the Russian Empire. Having occupied the delta of the Neva in 1703, Peter I appreciated its similarities to the situation of Amsterdam, where he had spent the best time of his youth. The Baltic route to Europe was three times shorter than the White Sea route around Scandinavia. Impatient to join the Northern trade, the newly proclaimed empire turned this freshly captured Swedish colony into its capital city and resettled many thousands of people there. It had to supply them with grain and other essentials of life.

The fertile lands lay far away. The low (200 metres) but wide (500 kilometres) central Russian upland separates the basins of the Baltic and the White Sea from the basins of the Black Sea and the Caspian. Its hills formed the heart of the Muscovy state – they became the curse of the Petersburg Empire. In the south, the empire had black soils which produced excellent crops. The construction of a short linking canal, just 2.8 kilometres long, would create an uninterrupted waterway almost 1,000 kilometres long, connecting the trading capital with its resource base, the Baltic Sea with the Caspian, the markets of Europe with the treasures of Asia. Having rejected tenders from foreign adventurers, Peter gave a concession to build the Vishny Volochok canal to Mikhail Serdyukov (1678–1754). A Mongolian captive from the heart of Siberia who, like many successful Russian entrepreneurs, was suspected of the heresy of Old Belief, Serdyukov had taught himself about canals from studying French books. His Vishny Volochok canal was a success. * It served to bring grain to the capital for almost 200 years, right up until the arrival of the railways. But cargo could not go in the opposite direction, against the current, with the result that the prices of imported textiles in the Russian provinces were several times higher than in St Petersburg.

Once he got his canal, Peter imposed prohibitive duties on the export of hemp and pelts from Arkhangelsk. 15 St Petersburg’s population grew rapidly and in 1790 overtook that of Moscow. The mass influx of soldiers and peasants needed to keep building the city only exacerbated the shortage of bread. But the farms around the capital didn’t turn to growing rye. The Finnish peasants sold meat, milk, hay and firewood in the city and themselves bought bread. All the rye for the commoners, wheat for the rich, oats for horses and hemp for ships’ ropes were brought from the south. Transportation costs dictated consumer prices. During the time of Peter the Great, rye flour cost four times as much in St Petersburg as it did in Moscow. St Petersburg rapidly turned into a city of scandalous inequality, as described in the classics of Russian literature. But right up until the twentieth century St Petersburg never experienced the kind of bread riots that took place in Paris or London.