In the 2010s or even mid-aughts, a few of the websites or companies behind those sites, we now despise (or at least I do). Certainly we distrust them. Or seen them fall to disrepair. But one site seems to have withstood the test of time.
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Wikipedia.
Of course, this site also has its issues, especially when it comes to more political entries (or even the rivalries for obscure ones), but I think it's a damn useful place to go to these days. Not that it's the end all resource. But, for example, take this entry on the Time of Troubles for Russia [1]. Lost a third of their population due to famine, and all because of a volcano (most likely) erupting in Peru.
Also that there was a Polish occupation that made the chaos worse. A lot of it having to do with the Catholic-Eastern Orthodox friction.
Popular discontent had increased by early 1611, and many sought to end the Polish occupation. Polish and German mercenaries suppressed riots in Moscow from 17 to 19 March 1611, massacring 7,000 people and setting the city on fire
Huh, sounds occupier esque.
Minin and Pozharsky entered Moscow in August 1612 when they learned that a 9,000-strong Polish army under hetman Jan Karol Chodkiewicz was on the way to lift the siege. On 1 September, the Battle of Moscow began; Chodkiewicz's forces reached the city, using cavalry attacks in the open and new tactics such as a mobile tabor fort. After early successes, Chodkiewicz's forces were driven from Moscow by Russian-aligned Don Cossack reinforcements. On 3 September, he launched another attack which reached the walls of the Kremlin; Moscow's narrow streets halted the movement of his troops, however, and he ordered a retreat after a Russian counter-attack.[10][11] On 22 September 1612, the Poles and Lithuanians exterminated the population of Vologda; many other cities were also devastated or weakened.[10] Although the Russian victory in the Battle of Moscow secured the city, the Polish garrison in the Kremlin remained until it ran out of supplies and capitulated on 7 November; news of the capitulation reached Sigismund at Volokolamsk, less than 30 kilometres (19 mi) away, the following day. Sigismund, on his way to assist the garrison, stopped and returned to Poland.
Damn that sounds like quite the fight, tbf. This all sets up the Romanovs to rule Russia for a few centuries, until their end at the October revolution.
The Zemsky Sobor elected Michael Romanov, the 16-year-old son of Patriarch Filaret of Moscow, tsar of Russia on 21 February 1613; his election is generally considered to end the Time of Troubles. Romanov was connected by marriage with the Rurikids, and reportedly had been saved from his enemies by the heroic peasant Ivan Susanin. After he took power, Romanov ordered False Dmitry II's three-year-old son hanged and reportedly had Marina Mniszech strangled to death in prison.
Sounds like some brutal ways, but if that's the only way to secure power, that's what people will do.
What gets me, though, is how the mini ice age was caused and the famine it self. Note that the weak leader comes into power in 1584, and whatever labels are assigned him, it's the famine, something out of anyone's control, that really sets things off. It seems that this itself is what caused people to
Russia experienced a famine from 1601 to 1603 after extremely poor harvests, with nighttime temperatures in the summer months often below freezing.[3] The famine is believed to have been caused by the Little Ice Age, also a cause of the General Crisis; a probable cause of the Little Ice Age was the eruption of Huaynaputina in Peru in 1600.[4][5][6]Mass starvation led to the death of about two million Russians, one-third of the population. The government distributed money and food to poor people in Moscow, leading to refugees flooding into the capital and increasing economic disorganization. Rural districts were desolated by famine and plague.
That volcano eruption was one of the worse, and in the immediate area was devastating, never mind the little ice age it caused to parts of the world:
on 19 February 1600 – the largest eruption ever recorded in South America – which continued with a series of events into March. Witnessed by people in the city of Arequipa, it killed at least 1,000–1,500 people in the region, wiped out vegetation, buried the surrounding area with 2 metres (7 ft) of volcanic rock and damaged infrastructure and economic resources. The eruption had a significant impact on Earth's climate: temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere decreased; cold waves hit parts of Europe, Asia and the Americas; and the climate disruption may have played a role in the onset of the Little Ice Age. Floods, famines, and social upheavals resulted. This eruption has been computed to measure 6 on the Volcanic Explosivity Index (VEI)
Important stuff to chew on, especially in our climate age is gearing up moment of human history. What's interesting is that Godunov is not looked with much fondness, even if his rule was prudent [2] (nevermind the serfdom). Still his entire entry doesn't once mention the famine that killed 1/3 of Russians. How? he dies of a lengthy illness in 1605? Was it stress from seeing such turmoil or something else?
Anyhow, that seems to be something else I need to read into this issue, besides the Victorian Holocausts I have been reading on my kindle. A massive amount of death caused by colonial handling (and apathy) of bad weather patterns which did cause a shortage of food (didn't have to lead to that much death though).
Oh, and the Taliban are increasing their grip on Afghanistan. I suppose it was all inevitable.
But I digress. Just as the famine caused by weather changes from a volcano seems to be underplayed (overshadowed by human intentions or drive) in the above article (of Godunov) and also in many stories told these days, so too the financial aspect of life. This goes for my own novels which don't even dare mention what the fed or what the financial sector, or where the free money spigot is being pointed is doing with regards to any tale in America post 2008 (pre too, but post was in your face obvious). And that's a lot of my writing and novels.
To that end, read this piece on Tunisia and how the IMF is squeezing that country into nothing.
This summer, eliminating bread subsidies is on the table again as the Tunisian government negotiates for a $4 billion loan from the IMF, the fourth in ten years.
Gee, I wonder why the Arab Spring there didn't work out. Maybe the powers that be don't want it to work out... But that being said, how a country gets loans and from whom matters a lot. And it affects the daily bread, so to speak.
And with Covid hitting and exposing many medical sectors as weak or malnourished, people will have to ask those questions (more on the obvious incompetence in Tunisia over Covid... wonder if we'll see such a reaction, though we didn't against the worst incompetence last year).
Discussions about bread in Tunisia run seamlessly into discussions about other goods and public services like hospitals and schools. Tunisia’s current wave of Covid-19 – its worst yet, with a record 9823 new cases on 7 July, in a population of 12 million – exposes the neglect of the health sector, which only receives 6 per cent of the budget. Debt repayment is allocated 36 per cent.
Do you know what power is? That's what it is. Fuck you pay me. Again, there are still protests and riots all over the world against various corrupt and vile regimes.
But the anger went deeper, rooted in dissatisfaction with a stagnant economy, rising living costs, and parliamentarians who seem to be concerned only with squabbling among themselves and lining their pockets, rather than improving the lives of Tunisians.
That being said, such anger can easily be used by the Wiley for their own ends:
‘This is a coup,’ Saida Ounissi, an Ennahdha MP, told me. ‘There is a rotten political situation that has created popular anger and the president has surfed on this for his own objectives.
This finance is part of this story (and, unfortunately, I don't see good guys hardly anywhere) and probably many more. Like the weather, it affects people in ways that are not usually seen (a complete lack of it, like a famine, will be obvious, but other effects won't be). Again, I need to write more and better about this.
[1] Not that Brittanica is a slouch either
[2] His policy was generally pacific and always prudent. In 1595, he recovered from Sweden some towns lost during the former reign. Five years previously he had defeated a Tatar raid upon Moscow, for which he received the title of Konyushy, an obsolete dignity even higher than that of Boyar. He supported an anti-Turkish faction in the Crimea and gave the Khan subsidies in his war against the sultan.
Godunov encouraged English merchants to trade with Russia by exempting them from duties. He built towns and fortresses along the north-eastern and south-eastern borders of Russia to keep the Tatar and Finnic tribes in order. These included Samara, Saratov, Voronezh, and Tsaritsyn, as well as other lesser towns. He colonized Siberia with scores of new settlements, including Tobolsk.
During his rule, the Russian Orthodox Church received its patriarchate, placing it on an equal footing with the ancient Eastern churches and freeing it from the influence of the Patriarch of Constantinople. This pleased the Tsar, as Feodor took a great interest in church affairs.
In Godunov's most important domestic reform, a 1597 decree forbade peasants to transfer from one landowner to another (which they had been free to do each year around Saint George's Day in November), thus binding them to the soil. This ordinance aimed to secure revenue, but it led to the institution of serfdom in its most oppressive form.[4] (See also Serfdom in Russia.)
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