Encyclopedia of Russian History
Page 11
Daniel H. Kaiser (Ph.D. University of Chicago) is professor of history at Grinnell College in Iowa. His academic specialty is history and family life in early modern Russia.
Louise McReynolds (Ph.D. University of Chicago) is professor of history at the University of Hawaii. She specializes in Russian intellectual history and cultural studies.
Donald J. Raleigh (Ph.D. Indiana University) is professor of history at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. His research specialization is twentieth-century Russian and Soviet history and the Russian civil war.
Nicholas V. Riasanovsky (D.Phil. Oxford University) is professor emeritus of history at the University of California at Berkeley. He is the author of A History of Russia (New York: Oxford University Press, 1963, sixth edition, 1999).
Ann E. Robertson (Ph.D. George Washington University) is managing editor of the journal Problems of Post-Communism, National Council for Eurasian and East European Research. She specializes in post-Soviet political science.
Ronald Grigor Suny (Ph.D. Columbia University, 1968) is professor of political science at the University of Chicago. His research specialty is comparative politics and Russian history with special attention to non-Russian peoples.
The editorial board assembled at George Washington University in January 2001 to plan the encyclopedia. The topics we identified eventually totaled 1,500 entries. We decided to create basic article categories in an attempt to capture the range and scope of over 1,000 years of Russian history and culture. As a result, articles in the Encyclopedia describe: Historical Events Documents, Declarations, or Treaties Military Campaigns or Battles The Arts, Literature, Philosophy, or Science Economic Developments or Strategies Ethnic Groups Geographical Regions Political or Territorial Units (Cities, Regions, Government Ministries) Countries Prominent in Russian History Government Policies or Programs Organizations, Movements, or Political Parties Influential Individuals Basic Terms or Phrases
Over the next few months members of the editorial board wrote scope statements and identified word lengths (ranging from 250 to 5,000 words) for the articles in their segment of the table of contents. Our goal was to produce four volumes and one million words, a quota we easily could have exceeded. After authors were commissioned and assignments completed, each article was read by the appropriate member of the Editorial Board and by the Editor in Chief for final approval. Macmillan Reference staff has edited the entries for clarity, consistency, and style.
A number of transliteration systems exist for presenting Russian proper names and terms in the English language. As the main audience for the encyclopedia is not expected to be familiar with the Russian language, strict adherence to any one system could appear artificial and intimidating. The editors decided to use standard American spelling of well-known proper names as they would appear in the New York Times (e.g., Boris Yeltsin, not Boris El’tsin). In all other cases transliterations conform to the conventions established by the U.S. Board on Geographic Names. Within this system we made a few exceptions: ligatures, soft signs, and hard signs are omitted; names ending in “-ii,” “-yi,” or “-yy” are shortened to “-y”; and names of tsars and saints have been Anglicized, as Peter the Great and Saint Basil, not Petr and Vasily. The editors believe that this modified system for transliteration will be more readable and understandable than the alternatives.
Dates in Russian history can be somewhat confusing because tsarist Russia continued to use “Old Style” (O.S.) dates, based on the Julian calendar, up to the 1917 Revolution. In 1917 the Julian calenx
dar was 13 days behind the Gregorian, which had been used in Europe since 1582. The Bolsheviks adopted New Style (N.S.) dates. Thus, the October 25th Revolution was celebrated on November 7th.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I want to thank James Goldgeier, director of the Institute for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies of The George Washington University for institutional support and personal encouragement. The staff of the Institute, especially Vedrana Hadzialic and Jennifer Sieck, have efficiently and cheerfully helped advance this project in many ways.
Leah Markowitz ably served as research assistant in the early phases of the project. Jill Lectka, Director of Publishing Operations and Joe Clements, Senior Editor for Macmillan Reference USA, and their staff, have simply been superb in providing the managerial, editorial, and promotional support for the creation of the Encyclopedia of Russian History. They have been tactful but persistent in encouraging the editors and contributors to meet deadlines and make any necessary editorial changes. Brian Kinsey initiated the project in 2001 and Shawn Corridor joined the editorial team in the spring of 2003 to supervise final author corrections and entry preparation. We have been fortunate to have such outstanding professionals working with us.
JAMES R. MILLAR EDITOR IN CHIEF
ABKHAZIANS
Abkhazians call themselves Apswa (plural Ap-swaa). Abkhazia (capital: Sukhum/Aqw’a) comprises 8,700 square kilometers (between lat. 43°35’-42°27’ N and long. 40°-42°08’ E) bordering the Black Sea, the Caucasus, Mingrelia, and Svanetia. The early Soviets’ drive to eradicate illiteracy saw Abkhaz attain literary status; like Circassian and Ubykh (extinct since 1992), Abkhaz is a northwest Caucasian language. Christianity arrived two centuries before its official introduction under Justinian sixth century. Sunni Islam spread with Ottoman Turkish influence from around 1500. Traditional paganism has never entirely disappeared, making adherence to either major religion relatively superficial, although within Abkhazia most Abkhazians are nominally Christian.
Life revolves around the extended family, morality (including respect for elders) being essentially determined by the dictates of custom (akjabz) and an ever-present sense of “Abkhazianness” (ap-swara). Local nobility fostered their offspring among the peasantry to cement societal relations- only captured foreigners served as slaves. English visitor James Bell noted in the 1830s that Abkhazians rendered this concept by their ethnonym for “Mingrelian” (ag?rwa). Milk-brotherhood was another social bond, symbolic establishment of which between two warring families could end vendettas.
A semi-tropical climate with abundant water resources, forests, and mountain-pasturage dictated an economy based on animal husbandry, timber, and agriculture, with fruit, viticulture, and millet (yielding to maize in the nineteenth century) playing dominant roles; tea and tobacco gained importance in the twentieth century. Greece, Rome, Persia, Lazica, Byzantium, Genoa, Turkey, Russia, and Georgia have all influenced Abkhazian history. In the 780s Prince Leon II took advantage of Byzantium’s weakness to incorporate within his Abkhazian Kingdom most of western Georgia, this whole territory being styled “Abkhazia” until 975 when Bagrat’ III, inheriting Abkhazia maternally and Iberia (eastern Georgia) paternally, became first monarch of a united Georgia. This medieval kingdom disintegrated during the Mongol depredations (thirteenth to fifteenth centuries), and part of Abkhazia’s population (the Abazinians, who speak the divergent Abaza dialect and today number around 35,000) settled in the north Caucasus. The Chachbas
1
ABORTION POLICY
An Abkhaz Army soldier stands in front of an armored personnel carrier in Kodori Gorge, October 2001. © REUTERS NEWMEDIA INC./CORBIS group in prewar Abkhazia. The conflict remained unresolved as of the early twenty-first century. Abkhazia declared independence in October 1999 but remains unrecognized. There are roughly 100,000 Abkhazians in Abkhazia (or ex-Soviet territories) and up to 500,000 across the Near East, predominantly in Turkey, where the language is neither taught nor written. See also: CAUCASUS; CHERKESS; GEORGIA AND GEORGIANS; NATIONALITIES POLICIES, SOVIET; NATIONALITIES POLICIES, TSARIST
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Benet, Sula. (1974). Abkhasians: The Long-Living People of the Caucasus. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Hewitt, George. (1993). “Abkhazia: A Problem of Identity and Ownership.” In Central Asian Survey 12(3): 267-323. Hewitt, George, ed. (1999). The Abkhazians: A Handbook. Richmond, UK: Curzon Press. Hewitt, George, and Khiba, Z
aira. (1997). An Abkhaz Newspaper Reader. Kensington, MD: Dunwoody Press.
B. GEORGE HEWITT
controlled Abkhazia, the Dadianis controlled Min-grelia, vying for dominance in the border regions; the current frontier along the River Ingur dates from the 1680s.
Abkhazia became a Russian protectorate in 1810 but governed its own affairs until 1864 when, in the wake of imperial Russia’s crushing of North Caucasian resistance (1864) and again after the 1877-1878 Russo-Turkish War, most Abkhazians (along with most Circassians and all the Ubykhs) migrated to Ottoman lands. Soviet power was established in 1921; this Abkhazian SSR was recognized by Georgia, the two then contracting a treaty-alliance that lasted until Abkhazia’s 1931 demotion to an “autonomous republic” within Georgia. The Stalin years were characterized by forced (largely Mingrelian) immigration and suppression of the language and culture in an attempted Georgianization.
Post-Soviet Georgian nationalism led to war in August 1992. Abkhazian victory in September 1993 resulted in the mass flight of most of the local Mingrelian population, numerically the largest
ABORTION POLICY
The Soviet Union was the first country in the world to legalize abortion, but its goal was to protect women’s health and promote motherhood, not to advance women’s rights.
Abortion was a criminal offense punishable by exile or long prison sentences before the Bolshevik Revolution. As part of its effort to reform Russian society, the Soviet government legalized abortion in a decree issued November 18, 1920. Supporters of the decree believed legal abortions were a necessary evil to prevent women from turning to dangerous and unsanitary back-alley abortions. Their goal was not to protect a woman’s individual reproductive rights, but to preserve the health of the mother for the common good. Furthermore, the legalization only applied to abortions performed by trained medical personnel, and in 1924 a system was established that prioritized access to legal abortions according to class position and social vulnerability (unemployed and unmarried working women topped the list).
2
ACADEMY OF ARTS
In 1936, the state recriminalized abortion in an attempt to increase the birth rate and to emphasize the value of motherhood. Although the policy shift temporarily reduced the number of abortions, in the long term repression failed to have the desired effect and abortion rates increased. Abortion was again legalized in 1955 on the premise that women had become sufficiently aware of the importance of their maternal roles. Despite the changes over time, Soviet abortion policy consistently focused on protecting women’s health and encouraging motherhood. A lack of alternative methods of contraception, however, ensured that Soviet women relied on abortion as their primary means to control reproduction throughout the Soviet period. See also: FAMILY CODE OF 1926; MARRIAGE AND FAMILY LIFE
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Buckley, Mary. (1989). Women and Ideology in the Soviet Union. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Goldman, Wendy Z. (1993). Women, the State, and Revolution: Soviet Family Policy and Social Life, 1917- 1936. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
SHARON A. KOWALSKY
ACADEMY OF ARTS
The idea of founding an Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg was first mooted by Peter the Great, but it was not until 1757, primarily on the initiative of Ivan Shuvalov, that the project was realized. Shuvalov, its first president, commissioned a large, neoclassical edifice on the banks of the Neva to house the institution, and in 1764 Catherine II gave it its first charter, based on that of the Acad?mie de Peinture et de Sculpture, which had been established in Paris in 1648. Following the French example, the Academy developed a system of instruction in painting, sculpture, architecture, and the decorative arts that emphasized the study of old masters and the antique, and which prioritized subjects of historical significance. However, the Academy was not created primarily to fulfill state commissions, as had been the case in France, but aimed instead to professionalize practice in the visual arts. Students followed a regimented system, and all graduates who fulfilled the program were entitled to fourteenth rank in the civil service Table of Ranks. Those who won the major gold medal competition were also granted the opportunity to study abroad for three to six years with a travel scholarship from the Academy. Students were required to complete regular assignments, which, along with the Academy’s growing collection of casts, copies, and original works by western European artists, formed an invaluable teaching resource.
In the nineteenth century, the role of the Academy changed as its activities became increasingly harnessed to state interests. Beginning in 1802, national monuments could only be erected with the approval of the Academy; this had the effect of casting it in the role of an official arbiter of taste. Nicholas I then took an active interest in the Academy’s affairs, appointing his favorites as professors and pronouncing on the direction that he felt the work of its students should follow. This growing association between the Academy and the court culminated with the appointment of Nicholas’s son-in-law Maximilian, Duke of Leuchtenberg, as president in 1843, after which the institution was continually headed by a member of the imperial family.
By this time, the Academy was being criticized for the rigidity of its training program, particularly since the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, though partially dependent on the Academy’s program, actively supported new trends in art. Opposition came to a head in 1863, when fourteen students led by the painter Ivan Kramskoy requested permission to choose their own subject for the annual gold medal competition. When this was refused, thirteen of them left, working initially in a commune known as the Artel. Subsequently they joined the Association of Traveling Art Exhibitions, a group of realist artists that dominated the artistic scene for the next twenty years. The Academy attempted to counter this threat by launching its own travelling exhibitions in 1886, and in 1893 effected a partial rapprochement with some of the realists, who joined its teaching staff. However, its position of authority had been irredeemably undermined. In the Soviet era, the Academy encompassed teaching institutes in various cities, including the Repin Institute in the original building in St. Petersburg. It became a bastion of Socialist Realism in the 1930s and 1940s, but it has since regained its status as a respected center for the study and practice of the fine arts. See also: EDUCATION; NATIONALISM IN THE ARTS; SOCIALIST REALISM
3
ACADEMY OF SCIENCES
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Pevsner, Nicholas. (1940). Academies of Art: Past and Present. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Valkenier, Elizabeth. K. (1989). Russian Realist Art: The State and Society: The Peredvizhniki and Their Tradition. New York: Columbia University Press.
ROSALIND P. BLAKESLEY
ACADEMY OF SCIENCES
Advised first by the philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibnitz and then by his student Cristian Wolff, Peter the Great founded the Imperial Russian Academy of Sciences in 1725 on the model of the Paris and Berlin institutions of the same kind. All initial members of the new Academy were foreigners. The most outstanding member of the fledgling institution was Leonhard Euler, who in a short time was widely acclaimed as Europe’s leading mathematician. He was credited as the founder of a strong mathematical tradition in Russia.
The new Academy was assigned two tasks: to initiate systematic work on the latest developments in science and to train the first Russian scientists. Small and fluid, the training component of the Academy became known as the first Russian secular institution of higher education. Mikhail Vasilievich Lomonosov was the first Russian scientist to become a member of the Academy and was living proof of Russia’s readiness to enter the challenging world of advanced science.
Catherine II relied on the Academie Francaise as a model for the Imperial Russian Academy founded in 1783 with the primary task of improving the Russian literary language and preparing a Russian grammar and dictionary. Close relations between the two institutions were facilitated by the fact that a large number of the country’s leading scholars belonged
to both academies. At this time, the Academy of Sciences increased appreciably the volume of its publications presented in the Russian language.
In the eighteenth century, all presidents of the Academy of Sciences were aristocrats with close ties to the royal family but no interest in scholarship. In 1803, Alexander I granted the Academy a new charter that limited the choice of candidates for presidency to individuals with proven affinity with scientific scholarship. It also granted the Academy extended autonomy in administering its work and choosing individual and group research topics. Despite the unceasing threats to academic autonomy during the reign of Nicholas I (1825-1855), the Academy recorded substantial progress in contributions to science. Among the most eminent academicians were Karl von Baer, the founder of modern embryology; Frederick G. W. Struve, who not only founded the Pulkovo Astronomical Observatory but made it one of the world’s leading institutions of its kind; and Mikhail Vasilievich Ostrogradsky, who was credited by James Clerk Maxwell with contributing to the mathematical apparatus of electromagnetic theory.
For a long time, the foreign members of the Academy formed a community isolated from Russia’s social and cultural dynamics. By the 1830s they manifested concrete and multiple signs of expanding and intensifying their Russian connections. Now they contributed articles on scientific themes to popular journals, gave lectures to organized groups, and took part in founding such naturalist societies as the Russian Geographical Society, fashioned on the model of similar organizations in the West. The publications of the Min-eralogical Society and the Russian Geographical Society added to the list of scientific journals appealing to the growing public interest in science.
In 1841 the Academy underwent a drastic organizational change: It absorbed the Imperial Russian Academy and made it one of its three departments. This move not only broadened the scholarly concerns of the Academy of Sciences but also strengthened the Russian share of membership. The Natural Science Departments continued to be dominated by foreign members.