Russa

Russa lay on the Polist river in the lowland south of Lake Ilmen, above brine springs that made it the main salt-producing centre of the Novgorod lands. Its salt, pure and coarse-grained, went to Novgorod, Pskov, Smolensk and, through the Hansa, to the Baltic. In the Novgorod Republic only Novgorod itself counted for more. The Spaso-Preobrazhensky Monastery had been founded in 1192 by Varlaam of Khutyn, and the town walls were first recorded in 1199–1201. Lithuanian raiders came in 1224 and 1234, and in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries crafts and stone building flourished. The cadastre of 1497–98 counted 1,134 households and 3,763 people.

In 1478 Russa went to Moscow with the rest of Novgorod, and later took the name Staraya, "Old". In 1588 it paid half as much again in customs as Moscow and three times as much as Novgorod. Polish-Lithuanian raiders ravaged it in the Livonian War; False Dmitry II took it in 1608, and the Swedes held it from 1611 to 1617, until the Treaty of Stolbovo returned it. By 1624 only 68 taxable households remained. A fire in 1763 destroyed the centre, and it was rebuilt on a regular plan; the state saltworks was renewed in 1771 and put under the mineralogist Franz Ludwig von Cancrin in 1783.