A ghost was plaguing the household of Father Ioann Solov'ev, the parish priest of the tiny hamlet of Lychentsy, in November 1900...floating objects, strange fires, disembodied voices, fleshy masses materialising in beds. Exorcisms, guards, the police...nothing seemed to work.

In this special Halloween episode, we look at other haunted house stories from the late Russian Empire, explaining their prominence and popularity with reference to both popular demonology and the new craze for spiritualism and the occult sweeping urban populations.

Source

J. Mannherz, Modern Occultism in Late Imperial Russia (DeKalb: NIU Press, 2012)

Voice credit

Ekaterina Boltaeva as the voice of Marfa Larionova

Everyone in the late Russian Empire was in agreement: the country had a vodka problem. But what were its causes and how should it be dealt with? For answers, many turned to Ivan Churikov, a peasant who became a St Petersburg faith healer after suffering personal tragedy. But his attempts to form a sobriety movement involved him in an endless struggle with the Orthodox Church, one that occasionally cost him his freedom. In this episode, we follow Churikov and his struggles, looking at the alcohol policies of the imperial Russian state and the civic activism that tried to save the empire from drowning in a sea of vodka.

Sources

P. Herrlinger, Holy Sobriety in Modern Russia: A Faith Healer and His Followers (Ithaca and London: Northern Illinois University Press, 2023)

P. Herlihy, The Alcoholic Empire: Vodka and Politics in Late Imperial Russia (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002).

P. Herlihy, ‘The Russian Vodka Prohibition of 1914 and Its Consequences’ in E. U. Savona, M. A. R. Kleiman, and F. Calderoni, eds., Dual Markets: Comparative Approaches to Regulation (Cham: Springer, 2017): 193-206.

P. Herlihy, ‘"Joy of the Rus’": Rites and Rituals of Russian Drinking’, The Russian Review, vol. 50, no. 2 (1991): 131-147.

R. J. Abbott, ‘Alcohol Control and Russian Politics, 1863-1876’, Russian History, vol. 43 (2016): 87-100.

I. H. Mäkinen and T. C. Reitan, ‘Continuity and Change in Russian Alcohol Consumption from the Tsars to Transition’, Social History, vol. 31, no. 2 (2006): 160-179.

D. Christian, ‘Vodka and Corruption in Russia on the Eve of Emancipation’, Slavic Review, vol. 46, no. 3/4 (1987): 471-488.

I. N. Fedotova, ‘K istorii monastyrskikh tiurem v Rossii: Suzdal’skaia Spaso-Evfimieva obitel’ kak mesto lisheniia svobody (konets XVIII – nachalo XX veka)’, Intelligentsiia i mir, no. 2 (2018): 75-86.

In 1704, Colonel Rudolph Felix Bauer found himself involved in the siege of Tartu, one of the many battles of the Great Northern War between Russia and Sweden. This tale tells of how Bauer came to be before the bloody walls of Tartu while also recounting the trevails of the siege itself.

Sources

M. Laidre, The Great Northern War and Estonia: The Trials of Dorpat 1700-1708, trans P. Ruustal (Tallinn: Argo, 2010)

R. Slavnitskii, ‘Deistviia Russikh voisk v khode osadnykh operatsii nachal’nogo perioda severnoi voiny 1700-1721’, Voennaia letopis’ otechestva, no. 6 (2018), 54-58

V. Berendsen, E. Küng, and M. Maiste, ‘Tartu rahvastik 17. sajandi lopul ja 18. sajandi algul’, Tuna, no. 1 (2010), 29-44