Encyclopedia of Russian History

by James Millar

  The Kievan Rus druzhina-the warband surrounding a prince-provided an ad hoc administration to the ruler, a core around which a militia of commoners rallied and, in battle, the professional commanders for the commoners. When Rus splintered into local “appanages” in the late 1000s, the druzhina’s primitive administrative functions were absorbed by the puty (offices) of a princeling’s dvor, or “court,” while selected boyars, the descendants of the warband members, joined him in his duma (council) in peacetime and helped provide military leadership in wartime. Thus all command and military administrative functions remained concentrated in the ruler’s person, with no distinction between them or, indeed, between the civil and military spheres of state life. This system served Moscow’s grand dukes during the Mongol period. But as their realm expanded and became increasingly centralized, a reorganization was clearly necessary, especially after Ivan III (1462-1505) began creating an army based on a mounted dvoryane (gentry) militia, whose members served in return for pomestie land grants (or fiefs). The state’s more complex administrative needs were met by the creation of prikazy (chancheries), headed by civil servant dyaki (state secretaries). Of the prikazy, the Razryad most closely approximated a war ministry, but a host of others had specialized military (e.g., armaments, fortifications) or mixed civil-military (e.g., medical, communications) functions. The boyar aristocracy continued to advise their increasingly autocratic masters in the duma and to provide commanders for his armies or “hosts.” But the mestnichestvo (system of places), which aimed at preserving the social status of the boyar clans, also dictated assignment to military posts. Consequently, while Muscovite military administration initially gained in efficiency, wartime appointments to field armies often reflected social rather than military prowess. This problem finally was resolved by the destruction of the boyars’ genealogical records in 1682. Yet by that time the piecemeal reforms introduced by Romanov rulers after 1613 had brought the continuous creation of new, specialized prikazy that left the expanded but fragmented administrative system badly in need of modernization and another radical overhaul.

  This was provided by Peter I (r. 1689-1725), who founded both the modern Russian Empire and the Imperial Army. He created a European-style regular or standing army (and navy), based on conscription, to fight Sweden (1700-1721). “Leadership of defense” remained concentrated in the ruler and a series of military-court agencies, but in 1718 Peter assigned “leadership the armed forces” to a ramified central administration headed by the Military and Admiralty Colleges, each headed by a president and board, with provincial governors overseeing the local agencies. Despite bureaucratic inefficiency and constant modification, this system remained in place until Alexander I (r. 1801-1825) replaced it with more streamlined ministries, headed by ministers, in 1802. Those for the army and navy now led the armed forces The two ministers helped lead defense as members of a Council of Ministers, which worked with the State Council and other military-court bodies in peacetime, while an Imperial General Headquarters (Stavka) directed the armies in wartime. This system again

  9

  ADMIRALTY

  was streamlined by Alexander II (r. 1856-1881) and his war minister, Dmitry Milyutin. After 1864 his War Ministry comprised numerous specialized administrations or directorates, developed a professional General Staff, and headed a number of geographically and administratively defined, local military districts. But as before, overall leadership of defense was provided by the emperor and his court agencies. This situation remained in place even after the creation of a State Duma in 1905-1906, and seemingly ended only with the 1917 revolutions. Yet despite changes in terminology, a similar system reemerged during the civil war (1918-1921), after which the new Soviet Union recreated the network of territorial administrative-military districts, headed by People’s Commissariats (after 1945, Ministries) which, aided by a powerful General Staff, led the army and fleet. Instead of an emperor and his court, leadership in defense again was provided by some sort of peacetime Defense Council (or wartime Stavka), now dominated by the Communist Party’s leader through the Central Committee’s Secretariat and Politburo. See also: COUNCIL OF MINISTERS, SOVIET; MILITARY, IMPERIAL ERA; MILITARY, SOVIET AND POST-SOVIET; SOVNARKOM; STAVKA

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Derleth, James. (1991). “The Defense Council and the Evolution of the Soviet National Security Decision-making Apparatus.” In Russia and Eurasia Armed Forces Annual, Vol., 15:, ed. T. W. Karasik. Gulf Breeze, FL: Academic International. Fuller, William C., Jr. (1985). Civil-Military Conflict in Imperial Russia, 1881-1914. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Hellie, Richard. (1971). Enserfment and Military Change in Muscovy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Keep, John L. H. (1985). Soldiers of the Tsar: Army and Society in Russia, 1462-1874. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

  DAVID R. JONES

  ADMIRALTY

  From the beginning, St. Petersburg’s docks and associated administrative building, collectively known as the Admiralty, had been an essential part of the city’s existence. The shipyard was built by Peter the Great in 1704, and in the 1730s Ivan Ko-robov added the central gate and golden spire. By 1806 plans submitted by Andreian Zakharov for reconstruction of the large, and by then, decrepit complex had been approved. Zakharov had attended the Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg and studied extensively in France and Italy. Although he died in 1811, long before the completion of the building in 1823, no significant changes were made in his design.

  In reconstructing Korobov’s partially destroyed Admiralty, Zakharov expanded the length of the facade from 300 meters to 375. In addition there were two perpendicular wings almost half that long extending to the river. From the perspective of the Neva River, the complex consisted of two pi-shaped buildings, one within the other. The inner building served the Admiralty dockyard, which it enclosed on three sides, while the outer contained The gilded Admiralty Tower rises above St. Petersburg. © CUCHI WHITE/CORBIS

  10

  ADYGE

  administrative offices. The Admiralty end-blocks, facing the Neva River, are among the most successful neoclassical attempts to achieve a geometric purity of structure.

  The main facade, overlooking a large square (now a park), is marked in the center by a grand arch, flanked by statues of nymphs supporting a globe, sculpted by Feodosy Shchedrin. Above the arch, a sculpted frieze portrays Neptune handing Peter the Great the trident, symbol of power over the seas. The corners of the central tower support statues of Alexander the Great, Ajax, Achilles, and Pyrrhus. The tower culminates in a spire resting on an Ionic peristyle, the cornice of which supports twenty-eight allegorical and mythological statues representing the seasons, the elements, and the winds.

  The remarkable power of the Admiralty building derives from Zakharov’s ability to create visual accents for an immensely long facade. The simplicity of the surfaces provided the ideal background for large, rusticated arches and high-relief sculpture, thus converting a prosaic structure into a noble monument. See also: ARCHITECTURE; ST. PETERSBURG

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Brumfield, William Craft. (1993). A History of Russian Architecture. New York and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hamilton, George Heard. (1975). The Art and Architecture of Russia. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin Books.

  WILLIAM CRAFT BRUMFIELD

  The Adyge belong to the same ethnolinguistic family as the Cherkess and the Kabardians, who live in neighboring republics, and they speak various dialects of Western Circassian. Soviet nationalities policies established these three groups as separate peoples and languages, but historical memory and linguistic affinity, as well as post-Soviet ethnic politics, perpetuate notions of ethnic continuity. An important element in this has been the contacts, since the break-up of the Soviet Union, with Adyge living in Turkey, Syria, Israel, Jordan, West Europe, and the United States. These are the descendants of migrants who left for the Ottoman Empire in the late nineteenth century, after the Russian conquest of the Caucasus. In the 1990s, a number of Adyge fami
lies from the diaspora migrated back and settled in Maikop, but integration remains somewhat fraught with social and legal problems.

  The Adyge are Muslim, although other religious influences, including Greek Orthodox Christianity and indigenous beliefs and rituals, can be discerned in cultural practices. As elsewhere, the Soviet state discouraged Islamic practice and identity among the Adyge, but supported cultural nation-building. In the post-Soviet period, the wars in Abkhazia (1992-1993) and Chechnya (1994-1997; 1999-2000) greatly affected Adyge politics, causing the Russian state to intermittently infuse the republic with resources to prevent the spreading of conflict. In another development, the Shapsoug, who belong to the same ethno-linguistic group and live on the Black Sea shores near the town of Sochi, are lobbying Moscow for their own administrative unit, and for political linkages with the Adygeia Republic.

  ADYGE

  The Adyge are the titular nationality of the Republic of Adygeia in the Russian Federation, which lies along the foothills of the northwestern Caucasus Range. In Soviet times, this was an autonomous okrug (district) within Krasnodar Krai, with its capital city of Maikop. The Adyge number 22 percent of the republic, which has 541,000 inhabitants, the remainder being largely Russians. There are considerable Adyge communities living just outside the republic in the Krasnodar Krai. The Adyge are primarily engaged in agriculture and forestry. Health resorts are also an important source of employment and revenue, as is tourism. See also: ABKHAZIANS; CAUCASUS; CHECHNYA AND CHECHENS; NATIONALITIES POLICIES, SOVIET; NATIONALITIES POLICIES, TSARIST; SHAMIL

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Baddeley, John F. (1908). The Russian Conquest of the Caucasus. London: Longmans, Green amp; Co. Borxup, Marie Bennigsen, ed. (1992). The North Caucasus Barrier: The Russian Advance towards the Muslim World. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Gammer, Moshe. (1994). Muslim Resistance to the Tsar: Shamil and the Conquest of Chechnia and Daghestan. London: Frank Cass. Jaimoukha, Amjad. (2001). The Circassians: A Handbook. New York: Palgrave.

  11

  ADZHUBEI, ALEXEI IVANOVICH

  Jersild, Austin. (2002). Orientalism and Empire: North Caucasus Mountain Peoples and the Georgian Frontier, 1854-1917. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queens University Press. Matveeva, Anna. (1999). The North Caucasus: Russia’s Fragile Borderland. London: The Royal Institute of International Affairs.

  SETENEY SHAMI

  See also: IZVESTIYA; JOURNALISM; KHRUSHCHEV, NIKITA SERGEYEVICH; PRAVDA

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Buzek, Antony. (1964). How the Communist Press Works. New York: Praeger. Khrushchev, Sergei N. (2000). Nikita Khrushchev and the Creation of a Superpower. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press.

  WILLIAM TAUBMAN

  ADZHUBEI, ALEXEI IVANOVICH

  (1924-1992), Nikita Khrushchev’s son-in-law, and a leading Soviet journalist.

  Alexei Adzhubei met Rada Khrushcheva at Moscow State University in 1947 and married her in August 1949, when Khrushchev was party boss of Ukraine. Adzhubei became chief editor of Kom-somolskaya pravda in 1957 and then, in 1959, of the Soviet government newspaper, Izvestiya. In 1961 he was named a member of the party Central Committee. In addition, Adzhubei was a member of Khrushchev’s “Press Group,” which edited the leader’s speeches. He served as an informal adviser to his father-in-law on matters ranging from culture to foreign policy, and he accompanied Khrushchev on trips abroad including the United States (1959), Southeast Asia (1960), Paris (1960), and Austria (1961).

  Under Adzhubei, Komsomolskaya pravda sharply increased its circulation by adding feature articles and photographs, while Izvestiya reduced the amount of predictable political boiler plate, printed more letters from readers, and published boldly anti-Stalinist works such as Alexander Tvar-dovsky’s poem, “Tyorkin in the Other World.” In time, Adzhubei began acting as an unofficial emissary for Khrushchev, meeting with foreign leaders such as U.S. president John F. Kennedy and Pope John XXIII, sounding out their views, reporting back to his father-in-law, and writing up his interviews in Izvestiya.

  Thanks to his special position, Adzhubei was cultivated by other Soviet leaders, including some who eventually conspired to oust Khrushchev. When Khrushchev fell from power in October 1964, Adzhubei was denied the right to write under his own name and forced to live in obscurity until he was rehabilitated during the era of pere-stroika and glasnost in the late 1980s.

  AEROFLOT

  Aeroflot, literally “air fleet,” is the common name for the state airline of the Soviet Union. It was operated under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Civil Aviation. The airline was founded in 1928 as Do-broflot and was reorganized into Aeroflot in 1932. During Soviet times, Aeroflot was the world’s largest airline, with about 15 percent of all civil air traffic. The first ever nonstop transpolar flight (from Moscow to the United States in 1933) on the ANT-25 aircraft operated by Valery Chkalov, Georgy Baidukov, and Alexander Belyakov was a landmark in the history of the aviation. Aeroflot introduced commercial jet plane service on September 15, 1956, on a flight from Moscow to Irkutsk. Aeroflot developed the world’s first supersonic airliner, the TU-144. Its maiden flight took place on December 31, 1968, two months ahead of the Concorde. Regular supersonic cargo flights began in late 1975 and passenger flights in 1977. Supersonic service was suspended in 1978, after 102 flights.

  After the breakup of the Soviet Union, Aeroflot was reorganized by the June 1992 resolution of the government of Russian Federation, becoming Aeroflot-Russian International Airlines. Another government resolution appointed Valery Okulov as its first general director in May 1997. Aeroflot-Russ-ian International Airlines is a joint-stock company, with 51 percent of the stock owned by the government as of 2002 and the remaining 49 percent belonging to the employees. With over fourteen thousand employees, as of 2002 Aeroflot-Russian International Airlines was the world’s fourth largest commercial airline; with flights to 140 destinations in 94 countries, it provided 70 percent of all the international air transport performed by Russian airlines, and had 151 representatives abroad, as well as branches in the Russian Federation in Novosibirsk,

  12

  AFGHANISTAN, RELATIONS WITH

  Khabarovsk, and St. Petersburg. The company’s fleet consisted in 2002 of 111 airplanes, including two Boeing-767-300s, eight Airbuses A-310-300, six long-range Iluyshin-96-300s, eighteen Iluyshin-76TD cargo planes and one cargo DC-10/30F, and other jets, illustrating the diversification of aircraft in the post-Soviet period. See also: AVIATION

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Aeroflot: Russian International Airlines. (2003). Available at «http://www.aeroflot.org».

  PAUL R. GREGORY

  AFGHANISTAN, RELATIONS WITH

  Afghanistan has played a key role in the foreign policy history of both the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union. During the nineteenth century, Russian and British intelligence and government officials vied for influence in the region, with the final delineation of spheres of influence being the Amu Darya river-north of that was considered Russian and south of that was British. During the Bolshevik Revolution and civil war, opposition forces in Central Asia used Afghanistan as a base of operation against Red Army units. Indeed, Afghanistan was a haven, and then a transit route, for those wanting to escape the Soviet Union at this time.

  After a series of treaties, Afghanistan became a neutral neighbor for the Soviet Union and relations focused largely on trade and economic development. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, Soviet involvement in Afghanistan increased. Soviet assistance was almost equally divided between economic and military forms. Between 1956 and 1978, the Soviet Union gave $2.51 billion in aid to Afghanistan, compared to U.S. assistance of only $533 million. This was part of a larger Soviet strategy to increase their presence in South Asia, as the United States was seen as being more influential in Iran and Pakistan. Equally important, although commercial ties always remained modest, the Soviet Union used this relationship as a “positive example” for the rest of the developing world.

  The Sawr Re
volution in April 1978 radically changed the Soviet presence in the region, as the new leaders-first Nur Muhammed Taraki and then Hafizulla Amin-debated the extent to which they wanted outside powers involved in the country. The leadership in Moscow feared that the Afghan government under Amin was going to drift out of the Soviet Union’s orbit, and began to put pressure on it to remain a loyal ally. Finally, as a measure to ensure full subordination, the Soviet Army invaded Afghanistan in December 1979. Amin was killed in the ensuing conflict, to be replaced by Babrak Karmal in 1980.

  The Brezhnev administration claimed that it sent troops into Afghanistan to help the current leadership stabilize the country. Within months, Soviet bases were established in a number of cities in the country and Afghanistan was effectively under Soviet occupation. Many states in the international community condemned the invasion and a majority of Western states boycotted the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow as a sign of protest.

  Within two years, opposition groups-often based on tribal or clan affiliations-began to increase their resistance efforts against the Soviet occupiers. Known collectively as the Mujahedeen, the opposition fought both Soviet units and those of the People’s Democratic Republic of Afghanistan army. Although the Mujahedeen fared poorly in the opening campaigns, increased training and support from outside powers, especially the United States, helped turn things around. By the mid-1980s, it was apparent that the Soviet Union was bogged down in a guerrilla war that wore down both troop numbers and morale.

  By 1984, Soviet citizens were beginning to get frustrated with this “endless war.” The rise of Mikhail Gorbachev in the following year signaled a new phase in the conduct of the war, as he acknowledged that the Soviet Union ought to look at a way to end their participation in the conflict. Over the next two years, United Nations-mediated negotiations took place, which resulted in a peace settlement and the Soviet withdrawal from the country. The government was finally admitting casualty figures, which became difficult as fighting intensified in 1985 and 1986. By this time, there were between 90,000 and 104,000 Soviet troops in Afghanistan at any one time.