Wars with revolutionary France changed the traditional routes of the ‘grand tour’ to which well-off Britons had been accustomed by that time. Instead of France, Switzerland, Italy they had to explore Scandinavia, Finland and Russia. It was precisely the itinerary taken by Thomas Malthus with a small group of other Britons in 1799–1800. But he had in mind another important task for the trip. Malthus intended to collect data for solidifying the empirical grounds of his Essay on Population, the first edition of which in 1798 had already brought him a considerable fame.

Malthus spent some time in Russia in the fall of 1799 and visited St. Petersburg, but little is known on the details of that stay. It is plausible that he established some personal contacts among the Russians then and that Anglophile representatives of the Russian elite had already been acquainted with his ideas. However, the first mention of Malthus in Russian known so far appeared only in 1818. It was the review of the 5th edition of the Essay. Relatively soon Malthus was distinguished in Russian academia: in 1826 he was elected a foreign fellow of the Imperial Academy of Sciences, and in addition, in 1830, he got an honorary professorship at the Imperial St. Petersburg University. The first task of the paper is to shed some light into these episodes using Russian archives and available published sources of that period.

Another task of the paper is to consider how the data and first-hand knowledge of Russian situation were used by Malthus in empirical substantiation of his demographic theory. In fact, as we will try to show, a comparison between contemporary studies and Malthus’ own representation of the demographic situation and trends in Russia reveals that his analysis in some aspects lagged behind the contemporary level. His understanding was preset by his vision: the Malthusian theory preceded the empirical analysis (at least as regards Russia). This, once again, indicates at important role of assumptions in economic and social studies.