Encyclopedia of Russian History

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Encyclopedia of Russian History Page 24

by James Millar


  ANDREYEV, LEONID NIKOLAYEVICH

  Rostislavichi, his boyars murdered him on June 29, 1174. See also: BOYAR; KIEVAN RUS; NOVGOROD THE GREAT

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Franklin, Simon, and Shepard, Jonathan. (1996). The Emergence of Rus 750-1200. London: Longman. Hurwitz, Ellen. (1980). Prince Andrej Bogoljubskij: The Man and the Myth. Florence: Licosa Editrice. Martin, Janet. (1995). Medieval Russia 980-1584. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Pelenski, Jaroslaw. (1998). The Contest for the Legacy of Kievan Rus’ (East European Monographs 377). New York: Columbia University Press.

  MARTIN DIMNIK

  aire Alfred Vanderbilt on the Lusitania in 1915, and seeks to convey the doom of bourgeois society.

  In addition to his writing, Andreyev was also an accomplished color photographer and painter. He displayed pro-Russian patriotism in World War I, but welcomed the February Revolution of 1917. Later that year, he radically opposed the Bolshevik coup and emigrated to Finland. In his last essay, “S.O.S.” (1919), he called upon the president of the United States to intervene in Russia militarily. Andreyev died on September 12th of that same year. See also: GORKY, MAXIM; SILVER AGE

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Newcombe, Josephine. (1972). Leonid Andreyev. Letch-worth, UK: Bradda Books. Woodward, James. (1969). Leonid Andreyev: A Study. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press.

  PETER ROLLBERG

  ANDREYEV, LEONID NIKOLAYEVICH

  (1871-1919), Russian prose writer, playwright, and publicist whose works, internationally acclaimed in his lifetime, are infused with humanistic protest against social oppression and humiliation.

  Born on August 21, 1871, in the town of Oryol (Orel), Leonid Nikolayevich Andreyev studied law at St. Petersburg University and briefly practiced as a lawyer. A volume of stories, published in 1901 by Maxim Gorky’s “Znanie” enterprise, made him famous. After the death of his first wife in 1906 and the violent oppression of the anti-autocratic mutinies that occurred between 1905 and 1907, Andreyev entered a period of deep resignation, abandoning radical leftist ideas but failing to develop viable alternatives. His political confusion resonated with the liberal intelligentsia, for whose he became the most fashionable of authors in the 1910s.

  In Andreyev’s narratives, crass images of irrationality and hysteria are often blended with crude melodrama, yet they also reveal persistent social sensitivities. Thus, the short story “Krasnyi smekh” (“Red Laughter,” 1904) depicts the horror of war, whereas “Rasskaz o semi poveshennykh” (“The Seven Who Were Hanged,” 1908) attacks capital punishment while idealizing political terrorism. Andreyev’s plays, closely associated with Symbolism, caused scandals and enjoyed huge popularity. His unfinished novel Dnevnik Satany (Satan’s Diary, 1918) was inspired by the death of U.S. millionANDREYEVA, NINA ALEXANDROVNA (b. 1938), teacher, author, political activist, and social critic.

  Born on October 12, 1938, in Leningrad, Nina Alexandrovna Andreyeva joined the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) in 1966, and became a teacher of chemistry at the Leningrad Technical Institute in 1973. A self styled Stalinist and devotee of political order, she wrote an essay that defended many aspects of the Stalinist system, assailed reformists’ efforts to provide a more accurate picture of the history of the USSR, and implied that General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev and his closest supporters were not real communists. Her essay “I Cannot Forsake My Principles” was published in the orthodox newspaper Sovetskaia Rossiya at a time when Gorbachev and Alexander Niko-layevich Yakovlev were abroad, and cited (without attribution) an orthodox report by the secretary of the Party’s Central Committee, Yegor Kuzmich Lig-achev, in February 1988. Officials in the ideological department of the Central Committee evidently edited her original letter, and Ligachev reportedly ordered its dissemination throughout the party. Ligachev repeatedly denied responsibility for its publication.

  Orthodox party officials applauded the essay, whereas members of the liberal intelligentsia feared

  ANDROPOV, YURI VLADIMIROVICH

  that it represented a major defeat for the intellectual freedom supported by the general secretary. Gorbachev subsequently revealed that many members of the Politburo seemed to share Andreyeva’s views, and that he had to browbeat them into approving the publication of an official rejoinder. The published response appeared in Pravda on April 5, 1988, and was not nearly as forceful as its authors have claimed. In the aftermath of this discussion, the General Secretary at least temporarily tightened his own control over the Secretariat of the Central Committee. The entire episode may have contributed to his decision to reform the Secretariat in the fall of 1988.

  Andreyeva subsequently played a leadership role in the formation of orthodox communist organizations. She headed the organizing committee of the Bolshevik Platform of the CPSU that “expelled” Gorbachev from the party in September 1991. In November 1991, she became the general secretary of the small but militant All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks. In October 1993, the party was temporarily suspended along with fifteen other organizations after President Yeltsin’s repression of the attempted coup against his regime. In May 1995 she was stripped of her post as the head of the St. Petersburg Central Committee of the party for “lack of revolutionary activity.” See also: CENTRAL COMMITTEE; COMMUNIST PARTY OF THE SOVIET UNION; GORBACHEV, MIKHAIL SERGEYE-VICH; LIGACHEV, YEGOR KUZMICH Official portrait of Yuri Andropov, CPSU general secretary, 1982-1984. © BETTMANN/CORBIS

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Brown, Archie. (1997). The Gorbachev Factor. New York: Cambridge University Press. McCauley, Martin. (1997). Who’s Who in Russia since 1990. New York: Routledge. Remnick, David. (1994). Lenin’s Tomb. New York: Random House.

  JONATHAN HARRIS

  ANDROPOV, YURI VLADIMIROVICH

  (1914-1984), general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (1982-1984).

  Yuri Andropov was born on June 15, 1914, in the southern Russian region of Stavropol. He rose rapidly through the ranks of the Young Communist League (Komsomol). During World War II he worked with the partisan movement in Karelia, and after the war he became second secretary of the regional Party organization. He was transferred to the Party apparatus in Moscow in 1951 and was the ambassador to Hungary at the time of the Soviet invasion in 1956. He played a key role in encouraging the invasion.

  In 1957 Andropov returned to Moscow to become head of the Central Committee’s Bloc Relations Department. There he inherited a group of some of the most progressive thinkers of the Brezhnev era, many of the leading advocates for change who were working within the system. This contributed later to Andropov’s reputation as a progressive thinker. He continued to oversee relations with other communist countries after he was promoted to Central Committee secretary in 1962. In 1967 he was appointed the head of the Committee on State Security (KGB) and a candidate member of

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  ANDRUSOVO, PEACE OF

  the ruling Politburo. He was promoted to the rank of full Politburo member in 1971. As the head of the KGB, Andropov led active efforts against dissidents at home and enhanced the KGB collection efforts abroad. To be in a better position to succeed Leonid Brezhnev, Andropov gave up the chairmanship of the KGB in May 1982 and returned to the Central Committee as a senior member of the Secretariat. His chief rival in the succession struggle was Konstantin Chernenko, who was being actively promoted by Brezhnev. However, Chernenko lacked Andropov’s broad experience, and when Brezhnev died in November 1982, Andropov was elected general secretary by a plenum of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). In June 1983 he was elected chairman of the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet-the head of state.

  When Andropov was elevated to the head of the Party, there were great hopes that he would end the stagnation that had characterized the Brezhnev years and that he would reinvigorate the Party and its policies. From his years as head of the KGB, Andropov had an excellent perspective on the depth of the problems facing the Soviet Union. There was also an active effort to promote his image as a progr
essive thinker. During his very brief tenure as Party leader, Andropov was able to begin diverging from the norms of the Brezhnev era. This was a time of rapid personnel turnover. In addition to making key changes in the top Party leadership, he replaced a large number of ministers and regional party leaders with younger leaders. Most important, Andropov actively advanced the career of the youngest member of the Politburo, Agriculture Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev, giving him broad authority and experience in the Party that helped pave the way for his ascent to Party leadership. All signs indicate that Andropov was hoping to make Gorbachev his successor.

  Andropov’s brief tenure was not sufficient to make a similar impact on policy. While he was much more open than Brezhnev in recognizing the country’s problems, particularly in the economic sphere, Andropov was cautious by nature and did not come to office with any plan for tackling them. He did, however, begin a serious discussion of the need for economic reform, spoke positively about economic innovation in Eastern Europe, and began to take some cautious steps to improve the situation. His regime is best remembered for the discipline campaign: an effort to enforce worker discipline, punishing workers who did not report for duty on time or were drinking on the job. He also introduced other minor reforms aimed at improving productivity. Andropov began to tackle the problem of corruption at higher levels and expelled two members of the Central Committee who had been close associates of Brezhnev. He also introduced somewhat greater openness in Party affairs, publishing accounts of the weekly Politburo meetings and deliberations of the CPSU plenum. These measures, together with his personnel moves, created a positive sense of cautious change, as well as a hope that the Soviet leadership would start to address the problems facing the country, now that it was aware of them. Probably the most notable event of Andropov’s tenure was the accidental shooting down by the Soviet military of a Korean Airlines plane that strayed into Soviet airspace in the Far East in September 1983.

  The contest to succeed Andropov appears to have been the main preoccupation of the party leadership following his election. Only three months into his tenure, Andropov’s health began to deteriorate sharply as a result of serious kidney problems, and he was regularly on dialysis for the rest of his life. He dropped out of sight in August 1983 and did not appear again in public. He died in February 1984. Andropov was not in office long enough for his prot?g?, Gorbachev, to gain the upper hand in the succession struggle, and he was succeeded by seventy-two-year-old Konstantin Chernenko, who was closely associated with the status quo of the Brezhnev era. See also: CHERNENKO, KONSTANTIN USTINOVICH; GENERAL SECRETARY; GORBACHEV, MIKHAIL SERGEYEVICH; STATE SECURITY, ORGANS OF

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Brown, Archie. (1983). “Andropov: Discipline and Reform.” Problems of Communism 33(1):18-31. Medvedev, Zhores A. (1983). Andropov. New York: Norton.

  MARC D. ZLOTNIK

  ANDRUSOVO, PEACE OF

  The Peace of Andrusovo (1667) concluded a thirteen-year period of conflict between Muscovy, Poland-Lithuania, and Sweden, known as the Thirteen Year’s War (1654-1667). It marked the end of Poland-Lithuania’s attempts at eastward expansion, and divided the Ukraine into Polish (right

  ANNA IVANOVNA

  bank) and Russian (left bank) spheres of influence on either side of the Dnieper River. The treaty allowed Muscovy to maintain temporary hold over the two key cities of Smolensk (thirteen and a half years) and Kiev (two years); but Muscovy defied those provisions and retained these cities permanently, paying only a token indemnity to the Poles. The agreement at Andrusovo, though originally intended to be provisional, was confirmed by the so-called “Eternal Peace” of 1686. Thus, the treaty marked Muscovy’s ascendance over Poland-Lithuania in the region.

  The Peace of Andrusovo is significant in that it defined relations between Muscovy and Poland-Lithuania for much of the remainder of the century. Subsequent treaties extended, clarified, or confirmed the 1667 Peace of Andrusovo. Largely because of this treaty, Muscovy and Poland-Lithuania developed a mutual defensive stance against the Crimean Tatars and the Ottoman Empire in the south. It also affected how the two nations defined other aspects of their relationship, such as the status of Kiev, the Zaporozhian Cossacks, and of Orthodox populations in Polish-held territories.

  The creation of Polish and Russian spheres of influence had a far-reaching impact on their subject populations. The Poles pursued a policy of Pol-onization of Belarus, forbidding the use of the Belarussian language, and restricting the political involvement of the Orthodox believers. The Russians limited the power of the hetmans and returned the practice of serfdom to the Left Bank region. The divided Ukrainians sought to gain advantage by playing Muscovy, Poland, and the Ottomans against one another, with the result that continuous warfare reduced their population and destroyed their lands. Still, the division remained in effect and contributed to Muscovy’s predominance. See also: MUSCOVY; POLAND; THIRTEEN YEAR’S WAR

  W. M. REGER IV

  ANNA IVANOVNA

  (1693-1740), empress of Russia (1730-1740).

  Anna Ivanovna was a daughter of Peter the Great’s half-brother and co-ruler Ivan V. When Peter’s young grandson, Peter II, died unexpectedly the Romanov male line came to an end. The Supreme Privy Council faced the problem of deciding to which of the five female pretenders the Russian crown was to be passed.

  Two powerful aristocratic families, the Golit-syns and Dolgorukys, dominated the Council. They hoped to limit the powers of the autocratic monarch, a plan that required a docile and passive figure on the throne. Anna seemed to fit their needs perfectly. She was a widow in near impoverishment, wishing to escape her difficult circumstances in Cour-land (Latvia). The Council believed that given her essentially weak character and probable gratitude toward the Council for the offer of the crown, she would prove malleable enough to accept restrictions on her power. In a signed document Anna agreed not to make any decisions on war or peace, taxes, promotions, deprivation of titles and property, remarrying, appointment of an heir, or spending of state revenues without approval of the Supreme Privy Council. The Council had in effect executed a coup d’etat. Real power had moved from the autocrat to the oligarchy in the Council.

  As word began to spread about these conditions, lesser nobles began to form opposition against the Golitsyn and Dolgoruky conditions. These lesser nobles, dependent on the monarch for their positions, privileges, and material well-being, preferred the absolute power of a monarch, believed to be above petty personal interests, to what they considered to be the despotism of a small clique of aristocratic families.

  Anna entered Moscow on February 15, 1730. Taking advantage of the opposition among the nobles and Imperial Guards to the limiting of her power, at an audience she tore up the document she had signed after accepting petitions asking her to reclaim her autocratic power. Some historians regard this as a lost opportunity for Russia to break from its autocratic past. They believe that the granting of legal rights to the nobility as a whole would have led to dramatic changes in the sociopolitical structure, thereby removing many obstacles created by the autocratic system to Russia’s further economic and political development.

  In return for their support against the Council, these nobles pressed Anna for concessions and privileges that she eventually granted. She repealed the 1714 Law on Primogeniture, shortened military service, allowed entrance for nobles into the military at officer rank and gave them more control over their serfs. These moves represented the beginning of an upgrading of the Russian nobility’s status.

  ANTHONY KHRAPOVITSKY, METROPOLITAN

  Anna had little inclination for ruling, preferring gossip, trivia, and matchmaking. Her lover from Courland, Count Ernst-Johann Biron, exercised a decisive influence on her. The great resentment Russians felt towards him and the other foreigners Anna placed in key posts and to whom she granted much patronage became a leitmotiv of her reign. This resentment, which continued after her reign, had other roots as well. As Russian identity among the upper classes began to
solidify, the influx of foreigners, whose expertise was regarded as important for modernization, came to be seen as an affront to Russian dignity. The damaged belief in Russian superiority, combined with the frequently bad behaviour of foreigners, added to the complexity of this problem.

  Anna took several steps to consolidate her rule. She founded the powerful Izmailovsky Guards, whose head was a former lover. The intelligence service was reestablished, providing an effective mechanism for surveillance and control over society. Finally, in order to bypass the Supreme Privy Council, in 1731 Anna established a Cabinet of Ministers, which in reality governed the Empire. This was not a limitation on the autocratic power, since Anna willingly granted these powers to the Cabinet of Ministers and was able to take them back at will.

  Anna’s foreign policy reinforced the general line set by Peter and thereby set the tone for Russian foreign policy for the rest of the century. With Austria she fought the War of Polish Succession (1733-1735) to prevent the resurgence of French influence in Poland and to promote the election of a pro-Russian king, thereby adding to the security of the Empire’s western borders. Continuing Russia’s push southward to the Black Sea, Anna with Austrian support declared war on the Ottoman Empire. The war ended in 1739 with the defeat of the Crimean khanate, Russia’s regaining of Azov, and the understanding that St. Petersburg would deal decisively with rivals on Russia’s Black Sea coast. Anna failed, however, to gain the right to maintain a Russian fleet in the Black Sea, a recurring issue in Imperial Russian history. The policy of working with Austria in regard to Poland and the Ottoman Empire was adopted by Catherine II. Anna died on October 7, 1740. See also: AUTOCRACY; CABINET OF MINISTERS, IMPERIAL; NATIONALISM IN TSARIST EMPIRE; PETER I; RUSSO-TURKISH WARS

 

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