Agricultural History Review, Volume 65 Part 1 (2017), pp. 94–107

Recent scholarship has immensely increased our understanding of the spread of the potato blight in Western Europe in the 1840s, but its presence in Eastern Europe and in Russia has been neglected. The aim of this paper is first to look at the spread of the potato blight in the Baltic provinces from whence it started to spread throughout the Russian Empire. Second, this study shows the impact of the disease on the agricultural policies of the central government at St Petersburg as well as on the scope of potato cultivation. The main consequence of the potato blight was a delay in the adoption of mass potato cultivation and consumption in Russia of at least a decade. The potato was supposed to shield the peasants against famine but the arrival of blight caused economic crisis. 

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