Exporting the Undead : How Western Science Introduced Vampires to Russia

In 1739, a sensational article was published in the usually conservative St Petersburg Times – “On The Vampires.” But was this such a shocking topic for the 18th century European press? In fact vampires had been on the minds of European intellectuals for much of the 1730s. The Habsburgs, investigating potential epidemics in the Balkans, also encountered peasant belief in the contagious undead. Scientists and theologians alike quickly took up the issue of vampires, as the living dead threatened to upend their worldviews. A pan-European debate ensued, as scholars in Britain, France, the German Lands, and Sweden discussed the issue in salons and Academies of Science and argued their case in journal articles and books. Little has been written about Russia’s role in those debates. Yet the adoption of literacy, changing attitudes towards the dead, and the creation of the Imperial Academy of Sciences, all came together so that in the 1730s Russia was an ideal location to take on the most Enlightened of subjects, that of the vampires.