The Cholera Epidemic of 1830-1831
Asiatic cholera first appeared in India in 1817 and reached pandemic proportions across Europe in 1830 and 1831.3 In Russia the official death toll from cholera was 234,604 persons, and there were coundess additional unrecorded deaths.4 At first the state reacted with little urgency, imposing poorly enforced quarantines on regional outbreaks and leaving medical treatment to local officials.
But as the disease spread up the Volga, westward to Ukraine, and finally, in the autumn of 1830, to Moscow and St Petersburg, panic set in, and the state imposed draconian quarantine measures, cutting off infected regions and bringing interregional trade to a standstill throughout much of the empire. By the summer of 1831 riots and rebellions swept infected regions, leading to conditions that historian Roderick E. McGrew characterizes as ‘a state of civil war.’5 In 1832 the cholera epidemic finally receded and the state restored order.Cholera first appeared in the Molochna region in the Nogai village of Kakbas in September or early October 1830.6 Fearing a quarantine, at first the Nogai concealed the outbreak, but it was soon too severe to hide. By mid-December cholera raged throughout the Nogai district, and although no exact count is available, deaths were thought to be in the hundreds? Johann Cornies was dismayed at Nogai preventative measures, which consisted of sacrificing a black cow, then dragging the hide around the infected village. After a representative of the Central Cholera Committee visited Cornies on 16 and 17 December, the state imposed a strict quarantine on the Nogai district.8 This measure was apparently effective. By early January the outbreak, which had never spread beyond the Nogai villages, died out.9 A second outbreak appeared on 14 July 1832, this time in the Orthodox village of Bolshoi Tokmak.
Within two weeks deaths were reported in Orthodox and Nogai villages throughout the Molochna region, but this time there is no record of its severity or persistence. The German and Mennonite villages were again spared.10If the cholera epidemic directly affected life in Molochna, there is no obvious record of it. Certainly, there were no riots or rebellions, for Cornies would undoubtedly have recorded such events. However, the epidemic had a catalytic effect on social tensions throughout Russia and Europe, and it is fair to assume that Molochna settlers were not immune to the fears and passions that arose elsewhere. Among the outlets for such tensions, identified in McGrew’s standard history of the epidemic, are ‘religious fervour, [and] outbursts against popular scapegoats.’ This has particular resonance with the story of the Doukhobor exile from Molochna (related below). But before the exile, and hard on the heels of the cholera epidemic, came the Great Drought, and it is impossible to disentangle the effects of the first catastrophe from the second.