Encyclopedia of Russian History
Page 23
AMALRIK, ANDREI ALEXEYEVICH
Turks. From this union sprang the ethnonyms Kumanda, Teleut, and Telengit.
In the seventh century, the Telengit lived with another would-be Altai tribe, the Telesy, on the Tunlo River in Mongolia, whence they both migrated to Tyva. By the eighth century they had gravitated to the Altai Mountains and eastern Kazakhstan. The Russians arrived in the 1700s and proceeded to sedentarize many of the nomadic Altai. The Soviet government gave the Altai nominal recognition with the establishment of the Gorno-Altai (Oirot) Autonomous Oblast in 1922. In 1991 it became the Altai Republic.
In 1989 there were 70,800 Altai worldwide, 69,400 in Russia alone, and 59,100 in the Altai Republic. A few lived in Central Asia. The internal divisions among the Altai are distinguished ethno-graphically and dialectically. The northern group comprises the Tubulars who live on the left-bank of the Biya River and on the shores of Lake Telet-skoye, the Chelkans who live along the Lebed River, and the Kumandas who live along the middle course of the Biya. Each of these tribes speaks an Altai dialect that belongs to the Eastern division of the Ural-Altaic language family. The southern groups, including the Altai-Kizhi, Telengits, Telesy, and Teleuts, live in the Katun River Basin and speak an Altai dialect closely related to the Kyrgyz language.
Although the ethnogenesis of the southern Altai took place among the Oirot Mongols, consolidation of the northern groups and overall consolidation between the northern and southern Altai has been difficult. The Teleuts, for example, have long considered themselves distinctive and have sought separate recognition. In 1868 the Altai Church Mission tried, but failed, to establish an Altai written language based on Teleut, using the Cyrillic alphabet. In 1922, the Soviets succeeded in creating an Altai literary language, and, since 1930, the Altais have had their own publishing house.
In spite of internal differences, Altai societies share certain general traits. They are highly patriarchal, for example: Women do domestic work, whereas men herd horses and dairy cows. Since the 1750s, most Altai have been Russian Orthodox, but a minority practices Lamaism and some practice shamanism. See also: CENTRAL ASIA; ETHNOGRAPHY, RUSSIAN AND SOVIET; KAZAKHSTAN AND KAZAKHS; NATIONALITIES POLICIES, SOVIET; NATIONALITIES POLICIES, TSARIST
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Mote, Victor L. (1998). Siberia: Worlds Apart. Boulder, CO: Westview. Wixman, Ronald. (1984). The Peoples of the USSR: An Ethnographic Handbook. Arkmonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe.
VICTOR L. MOTE
ALTYN
Monetary unit used in Russia from the last quarter of the fourteenth century until the eighteenth century.
The altyn’s first use was directly connected with the appearance of the denga, another monetary unit and coin that came into existence at the same time. Six dengi (pl.) equaled one altyn. The word altyn was a lexicological borrowing into Russian from Mongol, meaning “six.” From its origins, the altyn was mainly used in the central and eastern lands of Russia (Moscow, Ryazan, Tver), but spread to the lands of Novgorod and Pskov by the early sixteenth century. In the early eighteenth century, the altyn became synonymous with a silver coin that equaled about three kopeks. See also: DENGA; GRIVNA; KOPECK; RUBLE
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Spassky, Ivan Georgievich. (1967). The Russian Monetary System: A Historico-Numismatic Survey, tr. Z. I. Gor-ishina and rev. L. S. Forrer. Amsterdam: Jacques Schulman.
ROMAN K. KOVALEV
AMALRIK, ANDREI ALEXEYEVICH
(1938-1980), Russian political activist, dissident, publicist, playwright, exiled to Siberia from 1965 to 1966 and imprisoned in labor camps from 1970 to 1976.
Born in Moscow, Amalrik studied history at Moscow University; he was expelled in 1963 for a paper featuring unorthodox views on Kievan Rus. Amalrik wrote several absurdist plays such as Moya tetya zhivet v Volokolamske (My Aunt Lives in Volokolamsk), Vostok-Zapad (East-West), and Nos! Nos? No-s! (The Nose! The Nose? The No-se!), the
AMERICAN RELIEF ADMINISTRATION
latter referring to Gogol’s famous short story. In 1965, Amalrik was arrested for lacking official employment (“parasitism”) and charges that his-yet unpublished-plays were “anti-Soviet and pornographic.”
Exiled to Siberia for two and a half years, he was released in 1966 and subsequently described his experiences in Nezhelannoye puteshestvie v Sibir (Involuntary Journey to Siberia, 1970). Amalrik’s essay Prosushchestvuyet li Sovetsky Soyuz do 1984 goda? (Will the Soviet Union Survive Until 1984?), an astute and prophetic analysis of Soviet society’s dim prospects for the future, brought him worldwide fame. It was completed in 1969, published the same year by the Herzen Foundation in Amsterdam, and translated into many languages. As a result, Amalrik was put on trial and sentenced to three years in Siberian camps, with another three years added in 1973. Protests in the West led to a commutation of the sentence from hard labor to exile and ultimately to permission to leave the Soviet Union in 1976. In the West, Amalrik was involved in numerous human rights initiatives.
In 1980, Amalrik died in a car crash in Guadalajara, Spain. He was legally rehabilitated in 1991. See also: DISSIDENT MOVEMENT
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Keep, John. (1971). “Andrei Amalrik and 1984.” Russian Review 30:335-345. Svirski, Grigori. (1981). A History of Post-War Soviet Writing: The Literature of Moral Opposition. Ann Arbor: Ardis.
PETER ROLLBERG
AMERICAN RELIEF ADMINISTRATION
As World War I ended, the United States helped many countries around the world recover from the effects of war through the American Relief Administration (ARA). Herbert Hoover headed the ARA and had opened numerous missions in Europe by 1919. The primary goal of the ARA was to provide food relief, but it also provided medical aid, relocation services, and much else. The ARA attempted to open a mission in Russia in 1919 and 1920, but they were unsuccessful because the Bolsheviks suspected that the Americans had intervened in the Russian Civil War. However, after the horrible famine of the winter of 1920 and 1921, and after writer Maxim Gorky petitioned Vladimir Lenin to provide relief, the new Soviet government recognized the need for the ARA in Russia. By the summer of 1921, the ARA director for Europe, Walter Lyman Brown, and Soviet assistant commissar of foreign affairs Maxim Litvinov reached an agreement for an ARA mission in Russia. One of the primary concerns for the Soviets was the potential for American political activity in Russia. Brown assured Litvinov that their mission was solely to save as many lives as possible, and he appointed Colonel William N. Haskell to head the ARA in Russia.
The ARA opened kitchens in Petrograd and Moscow by September 1921, serving tens of thousands of children. The ARA spread into smaller cities and rural areas over the next several months, but in several places faced opposition from local village leaders and Communist Party officials. Most rural local committees consisted of a teacher and two or three other members who would serve the food to the children from the local schools. This fed the children, paid and fed the teacher, and continued some measure of education. In addition to feeding programs, the ARA employed thousands of starving and unemployed Russians to unload, transport, and distribute food to the most famine-stricken areas. The ARA also established a medical division that furnished medical supplies for hospitals, provided treatments to tens of thousands of people, and conducted sanitation inspections. It was estimated that the ARA provided about eight million vaccinations between 1921 and 1923.
By the summer of 1922, disputes within the ARA administration in the United States and between the ARA and the Soviet government placed the mission’s future in doubt. Hoover and Haskell disagreed about the duration and tactics of the mission in Russia. In September 1922, the chairman of the All-Russian Famine Relief Committee, Lev Kamenev, announced that the ARA was no longer needed, despite the reports that showed many areas in worse condition than before. Over the next few months, the Soviet government urged the ARA to limit its operations, even though about two million children were added to those eligible for relief in 1922. Several leading Bolsheviks had taken a stronger anti-Amer
ican stance during the course of the ARA operations, and Lenin was less integrally involved because of illness. The ARA was gradually marginalized and officially disbanded in July 1923, after nearly two years of work. The Soviet govANARCHISM
Villagers in Vaselienka, Samara, kneel in thanks to American Relief Administration inspector George N. McClintock. © UNDERWOOD amp;UNDERWOOD/CORBIS ernment took over feeding its own starving and undernourished population, while also trying to dispel the positive impression the ARA had left among the Russian population. See also: CIVIL WAR OF 1917-1922; FAMINE OF 1921-1922; UNITED STATES, RELATIONS WITH
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Fisher, H. H. (1927). The Famine in Soviet Russia 1919-1923: The Operations of the American Relief Administration. New York: Macmillan. Patenaude, Bertrand M. (2002). The Big Show in Bololand: The American Relief Expedition to Soviet Russia in the Famine of 1921. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Weissman, Benjamin M. (1974). Herbert Hoover and Famine Relief to Soviet Russia: 1921-1923. Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press.
WILLIAM BENTON WHISENHUNT
ANARCHISM
Anarchism, derived from the Greek word meaning “without rule,” rose to prominence in the nineteenth century and reached well into the twentieth century as a significant political force in Europe and Russia. Anarchists sought the overthrow of all forms of political rule in the name of a new society of voluntary federations of cooperative associations or syndicates. Anarchism also fought Marxism for revolutionary leadership.
Russian anarchism, in particular, inspired anarchist movements in Russia and Europe. Three Russians were progenitors of modern anarchism: Mikhail Alexsandrovich Bakunin (1814-1876), Petr Alexeyevich Kropotkin (1842-1921), and Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy (1828-1910). The three, however, were contrasting personalities, each taking different slants on anarchist doctrine. Bakunin
ANDREI ALEXANDROVICH
was ever the firebrand of revolutionary violence in word and deed; Kropotkin the philosophical and scientific propounder of a society based on cooperation and mutual aid; and Tolstoy the proponent of a Christ-inspired anarchism of nonviolence and nonresistance to evil in the sense of not answering another’s evil with evil.
Despite the wide intellectual influence of Kropot-kin and Tolstoy, Bakunin epitomized the strategy of violence to end all political power. Bakunin put the brand on anarchism as a doctrine of violence.
Kropotkin’s followers objected to anarchist factions in Russia that turned to violence and terrorism as their characteristic mode of operation. Among the names they assumed were the Black Banner Bearers, Anarchist Underground, Syndicalists, Makhayevists (followers of Makhaysky), and the Makhnovists (followers of Makhno in the Ukraine).
In the wake of the 1917 revolution, Kropotkin returned to Russia from exile in Europe with high hopes for an anarchist future. Vladimir Lenin’s Bolsheviks soon dashed them. His funeral in 1921 was the last occasion in which the black flag of anarchism was raised in public in Sovietized Russia. The new regime executed anarchist leaders and destroyed their organizations. See also: BAKUNIN, MIKHAIL ALEXANDROVICH; KROPOTKIN, PETR ALEXEYEVICH; TOLSTOY, LEO NIKOLAYEVICH
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Avrich, Paul. (1967). The Russian Anarchists. Princeton, NJ.: Princeton University Press.
CARL A. LINDEN
Vladimir. Andrei deposed his brother, but in 1282, after learning that Dmitry had returned from abroad and was assembling an army in his town of Pereyaslavl Zalessky, he was forced to ask the khan in Saray for reinforcements. Dmitry, meanwhile, solicited auxiliaries from Nogay, a rival khan, and defeated Andrei. The latter remained hostile. In 1293 he visited the Golden Horde again, and the khan despatched an army, which invaded Suz-dalia and forced Dmitry to abdicate. After Dmitry died in 1294, Andrei became the grand prince of Vladimir. Soon afterward, a coalition of princes challenged his claim to Dmitry’s Pereyaslavl. In 1296 all the princes met in Vladimir and, after refusing to give Pereyaslavl to Andrei, concluded a fragile agreement. Thus, in 1299, when the Germans intensified their attacks against the Nov-gorodians, Andrei refused to send them help because he feared that if he did, the other princes would attack him. In 1300 they rejected his claim to Pereyaslavl at another meeting. Three years later, after appealing to the khan and failing yet again to get the town, he capitulated. Andrei died in Gorodets on July 27, 1304. See also: ALEXANDER YAROSLAVICH; GOLDEN HORDE; NOVGOROD THE GREAT
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Fennell, John. (1983). The Crisis of Medieval Russia 1200-1304. London: Longman. Martin, Janet. (1995). Medieval Russia 980-1584. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
MARTIN DIMNIK
ANDREI ALEXANDROVICH
(d. 1304), prince of Gorodets and grand prince of Vladimir (1294-1304).
Andrei Alexandrovich’s father, Alexander Yaroslavich “Nevsky,” gave him Gorodets; after his uncle, Grand Prince Vasily Yaroslavich, died, he also received Kostroma. In 1277, when Andrei’s elder brother, Grand Prince Dmitry, went to Novgorod, Andrei ingratiated himself to Khan Mangu Temir by campaigning with him in the Caucasus. In 1281 Andrei visited the Golden Horde, and Khan Tuda Mangu gave him troops to evict Dmitry from
ANDREI YAROSLAVICH
(d. 1264), grand prince of Vladimir (1249-1252) and progenitor of the princes of Suzdal.
The third son of Yaroslav Vsevolodovich and grandson of Vsevolod Yurevich “Big Nest,” Andrei Yaroslavich survived the Tatar invasion of Suzdalia in 1238. Three years later the Novgorodians rejected him as their prince, but on April 5, 1242, he assisted his elder brother Alexander Yar “Nevsky” in defeating the Teutonic Knights at the famous “battle on the ice” on Lake Chud (Lake Peypus). There is no clear information about Andrei’s activities after their father died and their uncle Svy-atoslav occupied Vladimir in 1247. Andrei may
ANDREI YUREVICH
have usurped Vladimir. In any case, he and Alexander went to Saray separately, evidently to settle the question of succession to Vladimir. But Khan Baty sent them to Mongolia, to the Great Khan in Karakorum. They returned in 1249, Alexander as the grand prince of Kiev and of all Rus, and Andrei as the grand prince of their patrimonial domain of Vladimir. In 1252 Andrei defiantly refused to visit Saray to renew his patent for Vladimir with the new great khan, Mongke, but Alexander went, evidently to obtain that patent for himself. The khan sent troops against Andrei, and they defeated him at Pereyaslavl Zalessky. After he fled to the Swedes, Alexander occupied Vladimir. Later, in 1255, Andrei returned to Suzdalia and was reconciled with Alexander, who gave him Suzdal and other towns. In 1258 he submissively accompanied Alexander to Saray, and in 1259 helped him enforce Tatar tax collecting in Novgorod. Andrei died in Suzdal in 1264. See also: ALEXANDER YAROSLAVICH; BATU; GOLDEN HORDE; VSEVOLOD III
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Fennell, John. (1973). “Andrej Yaroslavic and the Struggle for Power in 1252: An Investigation of the Sources.” Russia Mediaevalis 1:49-62. Fennell, John. (1983). The Crisis of Medieval Russia 1200-1304. London: Longman.
MARTIN DIMNIK
ANDREI YUREVICH
(c. 1112-1174), known as Andrei Yurevich “Bo-golyubsky,” prince of Suzdalia (Rostov, Suzdal, and Vladimir).
Although historians disagree on Andrei Yure-vich’s objectives, it is established that he defended the traditional order of succession to Kiev but chose to live in his patrimony of Vladimir, whose political, economic, cultural, and ecclesiastical importance he attempted to raise above that of Kiev.
In 1149 Andrei’s father, Yuri Vladimirovich “Dolgoruky,” gave him Vyshgorod, located north of Kiev, and then transferred him to Turov, Pinsk, and Peresopnitsa. Two years later Andrei returned to Suzdalia. In 1155 Yuri gave him Vyshgorod once again, but Andrei returned soon afterward to Vladimir on the Klyazma. After Yuri died in Kiev in 1157, the citizens of Rostov, Suzdal, and Vladimir chose Andrei as their prince. He had autocratic ambitions for Suzdalia and, according to some, for all of Rus. He weakened the power of the veche (popular assembly), treated boyars like vassals, and, in 1161, evicted his br
others and two nephews from Suzdalia. Moreover, he spurned the powerful bo-yars of Rostov and Suzdal by making the smaller town of Vladimir his capital. He lived at nearby Bo-golyubovo, after which he obtained his sobriquet “Bogolyubsky.” He beautified Vladimir by building its Assumption Cathedral, its Golden Gates modeled on those of Kiev, his palace at Bogolyubovo, and the Church of the Intercession of Our Lady on the river Nerl. He successfully expanded his domains into the lands of the Volga Bulgars and asserted his influence over Murom and Ryazan. However, Andrei failed to create an independent metropolitanate in Vladimir.
In 1167 Rostislav Mstislavich of Kiev died, and Andrei became the senior and most eligible of the Monomashichi (descendants of Vladimir Mono-makh, reign 1113-1125) to rule Kiev. Mstislav Izyaslavich of Volyn preempted Andrei’s bid for Kiev and appointed his son to Novgorod. Andrei saw Mstislav’s actions as a violation of the traditional order of succession to Kiev and as a challenge to his own interests in Novgorod. Thus in 1169 he sent a large coalition of princes to evict Mstislav. They fulfilled their mission and plundered Kiev in the process. Some historians argue that this event marked a turning point in the history of Rus; Kiev’s capture signaled its decline and Andrei’s attempt to subordinate it to Vladimir. Others argue that Andrei sought to recover the Kievan throne for the rightful Monomashich claimants because Kiev was the capital of the land, thereby affirming its importance even after it was plundered.
Andrei broke tradition by not occupying Kiev in person. He appointed his brother, Gleb, to rule it in his stead. Even though Andrei was able to summon troops from Suzdalia, Novgorod, Murom, Ryazan, Polotsk, and Smolensk, he failed to assert his control over Kiev. Its citizens evidently poisoned Gleb. In 1173 Andrei ordered the Rostislavichi (descendants of Rostislav Mstislavich of Smolensk) to vacate Kiev, but later they succeeded in evicting his lieutenants and taking them captive. Andrei organized a second campaign with Svyatoslav Vsevolodovich of Chernigov, to whom he agreed to cede control of Kiev, but the coalition failed to take the city. While Andrei was waiting to receive approval from Svyatoslav to hand over Kiev to the