Encyclopedia of Russian History

by James Millar

  Summary records of the first Assembly of the Land still exist and have been published. Its members advised the government that the country was able to continue the war, that there was no need to pursue peace with the Rzeczpospolita. They also gratuitously criticized Ivan the Terrible’s paranoid Oprichnina (1565-1572), Ivan’s mad debauch that divided Muscovy into two parts, the Oprichnina (run by Ivan himself) and the Zemshchina (run by the seven leading boyars). Ivan’s servitors in the Oprichnina, called oprichniki, looted and otherwise destroyed nearly all the possessions they were given. The criticism aroused Ivan to fury and led him to launch a second, ferocious hunt for “enemies.” Thus the first Assembly of the Land conveyed the two basic messages to the government that were to be constants throughout the institution’s history: First, the Assembly was a quick and relatively inexpensive way to determine the country’s condition; second, the assembled Russians might well do things that the government would have preferred not be done. When the consequences of the latter outweighed the value of the former, the institution was doomed.

  The next real Assembly of the Land occurred in 1598 (February and March, July and August) for the purpose of electing Boris Godunov as tsar on the expiration of the seven-century-old Rurikid dynasty. This election was probably rigged by Boris, who had been ruling during the reign of Fy-odor Ivanovich (1584-1598); nevertheless, the members of the Assembly, all government agents in one way or another, properly advised the government (Boris) that he (Boris, again) should be the new tsar.

  During the Time of Troubles sundry meetings were held in 1605-1606 and in 1610, 1611, and 1612; these, by loose definitions, have been called Assemblies of the Land, but they really were not. In 1613, however, a real Assembly of the Land was convoked to choose Mikhail Fyodorovich as the new tsar, the first tsar of the Romanov dynasty,

  ASSORTMENT PLANS

  which lasted until the February Revolution of 1917. The cossacks constituted a new element in the lower chamber.

  Some scholars, holding to a loose definition, allege that, after the election of Mikhail, Assemblies of the Land met annually from 1614 to 1617 to deal with taxes (especially so-called fifth taxes, 20% levies of all wealth) needed to pay military forces to drive out the Poles and Swedes. The tsar’s father, Patriarch Filaret, returned to Moscow from Polish captivity in 1619 and began to take command of the Muscovite government and to restore the Muscovite state. Delegates were elected in September 1619 to attend to the restoration of the Muscovite state, especially the revitalization of the tax system and the issue of getting tax-exempt individuals back on the tax rolls. A Petitions Chancellery was established to receive complaints from the populace.

  The Smolensk War (1632-1634) provoked the assembling of people to discuss both the beginning of the war and its ending, as well as taxes to pay for it. On neither occasion were delegates elected; the 1634 session was called on January 28 and met the next day. Cossacks seized Azov (Azak) at the mouth of the Don River from the Crimean Tatars in 1637, and there may have been meetings about that in 1637 and again in 1639 (on July 19). Unquestionably unelected men, in Moscow for court sessions, were convoked for several days in January 1642 to discuss Azov, whence the cossacks were ordered to withdraw out of fear of provoking Turkey, with whom the Russians were unable and unwilling to go to war. Some historians allege that there was an Assembly in 1645 after the death of Mikhail, but others point out that contemporaries alleged that his successor Alexei was illegitimate because he had not been elected. The latter perspective seems correct because there was no Assembly of the Land in 1645.

  The most significant Assembly of the Land was the one taking place from October 1, 1648, to January 29, 1649, convoked to discuss the Odoyevsky Commission’s draft of the new Law Code of 1649, the Sobornoe ulozhenie. This Assembly, organized following riots in Moscow and a dozen other towns in June 1648 demanding governmental reforms, was a true two-chambered assembly with delegates in the lower chamber from 120 towns or more. Evidence survives about contested elections in several places. Although the records of the meetings were probably deliberately destroyed because the government did not like what eventuated, the identity of most of the delegates is known. Most of them signed the Ulozhenie, and most of them submitted petitions for compensation afterward. The demands of the delegates were met in the new law code: the enserfment of the peasantry; the granting of monopolies on trade, manufacturing, and the ownership of urban property to the legally stratified townsmen; and a reigning in and further secularization of the church. This marked the beginning of the end of a proto-parliamentary institution in Russia. The government saw firsthand what could happen when the delegates got their way, which occasionally ran contrary to what the ruling elite desired. In 1653 the government convoked another assembly, about which very little is known, on the issue of going to war to annex Ukraine. That was the last such meeting.

  For about ninety years, Assemblies of the Land dealt with issues of war and peace, taxation, succession to the throne, and law. When the 1648-1649 session got out of hand, the government resolved to do without the Assemblies, having realized that its new system of central chancelleries could provide all the information it needed to make rational decisions. See also: GODUNOV, BORIS FYODOROVICH; LAW CODE OF 1649; LIVONIAN WAR; OPRICHNINA; SMOLENSK WAR; TIME OF TROUBLES

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Brown, Peter Bowman. (1983). “The Zemskii Sobor in Recent Soviet Historiography.” Russian History 10(1): 77-90. Hulbert, Ellerd. (1970). “Sixteenth Century Russian Assemblies of the Land: Their Composition, Organization, and Competence.” Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago.

  RICHARD HELLIE

  ASSORTMENT PLANS

  Assortment plans were state-generated documents that specified the composition of output to be produced by Soviet enterprises. Each year a comprehensive plan document, the techpromfinplan (the technical, industrial, and financial plan) was issued, containing approximately one hundred targets that

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  ASTRAKHAN, KHANATE OF

  Soviet businesses were legally required to achieve. This annual enterprise plan was part of a five-year plan that established the long-term objectives of central planners.

  The most important component of the annual plan sent to enterprises involved the production plan, which disaggregated annual production targets into their component parts, breaking them out in terms of both volume and value goals. The assortment plans also incorporated demand conditions set by consumers or firms, as identified by planners. For example, a shoe factory would be given an aggregate output target-the total number of units of footwear to produce in a given year. The assortment plan then specified the type of footwear to be produced: the number of children’s and adults’ shoes, the number of men’s and women’s shoes, the number of shoes with buckles and ties, the number of brown and black leather shoes, and so forth. Planners constructed the assortment plan to capture demographic characteristics as well as to reflect the tastes and preferences of Soviet consumers. Similarly, the assortment plan component of the techpromfinplan sent to a steel-pipe manufacturing plant would identify the quantities of pipes of different dimensions and types, based on the needs of firms which would ultimately use the pipe.

  Typically, Soviet managers gave less priority to fulfilling the assortment plan than to the overall quantity of production, because fulfilling the aggregate output plan targets formed the basis for the bonus payment. Adjustments made within the assortment plan enabled managers to fulfill quantity targets even when materials did not arrive in a timely fashion or in sufficient quantity. For example, managers could “overproduce” children’s shoes relative to adults’ shoes, if leather was in short supply, thereby generating a shortage in adult footwear relative to the needs of the population. This practice of adjusting quantities within the assortment plan imposed higher costs when steel pipes and other producer goods were involved, because producing three-inch pipe instead of the requisite six-inch pipe obliged recipient firms to reconfigure or adapt their equipment
to fit the wrong-sized pipe. See also: ECONOMIC GROWTH, SOVIET; FIVE-YEAR PLANS

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Ellman, Michael. (1979). Socialist Planning. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Krueger, Gary. (1991). “Aggregation in Planning.” Journal of Comparative Economics 15(4): 627-645.

  SUSAN J. LINZ

  ASTRAKHAN, KHANATE OF

  The Khanate of Astrakhan was a tribal union of Sunni Muslim pastoral nomadic Turkic-speaking peoples, located in the lower Volga region, with the capital of Astrakhan (Citracan) situated at the confluence of the river into the Caspian Sea. Traditionally, it is believed that the khanate of Astrakhan was formed sometime in the mid-1400s (certainly by 1466), when the tribe seceded from the Golden (or Great) Horde, probably under Mahmud Khan (died c. 1466). Many scholars attribute the foundation of the khanate to Qasim I (1466-1490), perhaps Mahmud Khan’s son. However, a recent study argues that the khanate was formed only after 1502. Specifically, from the 1450s to the 1470s, Astrakhan was one of the centers of the Great Horde and after the destruction of Saray (the old capital), not earlier than the 1480s, became its new capital. Astrakhan continued to be the capital of the Great Horde until its collapse in 1502 at the hands of the Crimean Khanate and, thereafter, remained its political heir in the form of the Astrakhan Khanate. There was no change of dynasty, nor was there any internal structural transformation to the state. The only major difference with its predecessor is that its borders were probably smaller.

  The peoples of the Astrakhan Khanate mostly retained their nomadic lifestyles as they seasonally migrated in north-south directions in search of grasslands for their livestock, reaching as far north as the southern borders of Muscovy. Due to the small territory it occupied, the khanate did not have sufficient lands for grazing large numbers of animals and sustaining large human resources. For these reasons, the khanate was relatively weak militarily and prone to political interference in its affairs from its more powerful neighbors, including the successor Mongol khanates and Muscovy. The khanate also offered little by way of natural resources, aside from salt, fish, and hides.

  Astrakhan, while a busy, wealthy, and large port city in the early Mongol era, fell into relative neglect after its destruction by Tamerlane in around 1391, as noted by Barbaro (d. 1494). Other Western visitors to Astrakhan, such as Contarini (1473) and Jenkinson (1558), noted the paucity of trade

  ATOMIC ENERGY

  coming through the city, despite the presence of Russian, Tatar, Persian, Transcaucasian, and Central Asian merchants. Both Contarini and Afanasy Nikitin, the latter a Russian merchant from Tver who traveled to India via Astrakhan sometime between 1468 and 1471, noted instability in the steppe near Astrakhan, general danger, and excessive tariffs (more properly, extortion payments) imposed on merchants. However, their travel through the khanate shows that while the trans-Volga-Caspian-Central Asian trade may have declined, because of the ideal location of the city of Astrakhan at key crossroads, international commerce continued to function. Although the volume and frequency of this trade is difficult to determine, Contarini relates that “a great many Tartar merchants” traveled in a caravan to Muscovy along with an annual embassy sent by the Astrakhan khans and brought along with them Iranian silks and fustian that they exchanged for furs, saddles, swords, bridles, and other items. With Ivan IV’s (r. 1533-1584) conquest and incorporation of the Astrakhan Khanate into Muscovy in 1556, coupled with his annexation of the Kazan Khanate in 1552, the entire course of the Volga with its Astrakhan link into the Caspian Sea came under Moscow’s direct control. Thereafter, trade via Astrakhan as well as Muscovite commerce with Persia, Central Asia, China, and India flourished. See also: CRIMEAN KHANATE; GOLDEN HORDE; NOGAI

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Barbaro, Josafa, and Contarini, Ambrogio. (1873). Travels to Tana and Persia, ed. Henry E. J. Stanley; tr. William Thomas and S. A. Roy. Hakluyt Society Series no. 49. London: Hakluyt Society. Golden, Peter B. (1992). An Introduction to the History of the Turkic Peoples. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag.

  ROMAN K. KOVALEV

  ATOMIC ENERGY

  The Soviet Union had an extensive atomic energy program. The program included the use of isotopes as tracers for agricultural research and as ionizing sources for food irradiation, extensive applications in medicine, so-called peaceful nuclear explosions, and an ambitious effort to build scores of reactors to produce electrical energy. Under the regime of Josef Stalin, the military side of atomic energy was significantly more developed than its civilian application. Scientists and workers were gathered into closed cities to build the first Soviet atomic bomb, detonated in 1949, and to design and assemble tens of thousands of nuclear warheads. It is not certain what percentage of the nuclear program was civil ian and what percentage was military, but it is clear that the military needs pre dominated during the Cold War. It is also difficult to draw a line between military and civilian pro grams. Nikita Khrushchev and Leonid Brezhnev made the peaceful atom a centerpiece of their eco nomic development programs. The peaceful atom found expression in art and music, on stamps and lapel pins, and even in literary works. For instance, the Exhibition of the Achievements of the Socialist Economy (VDNKh) had a large hall devoted to atomic energy. However, even when the technol ogy was ostensibly dedicated to peaceful goals, there were often military interests at stake as well. For example, Soviet scientists conducted 120 peace ful nuclear explosions (PNEs) for excavation, dam construction, and other purposes that were con nected with the 1963 ban against atmospheric test ing of nuclear devices.

  COLD WAR DEVELOPMENTS

  Atomic energy was a prominent fixture of the Cold War, as part of competition with the United States for military superiority and for economic and ideological influence. In a propaganda coup in 1954, Soviet officials announced the opening of the Obninsk five-thousand kilowatt reactor, the first station to provide electrical energy for peaceful purposes (it remained open and operational until 2002). Over the next three decades, each subsequent Soviet achievement received extensive media coverage. Soviet scientists actively participated in the Geneva Conferences on the Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy. The first, in 1956, enabled Soviet physicists to appear as equals of their American and European counterparts.

  The conferences were crucial in allowing Soviet physicists to participate in the broader scientific community, an opportunity that had been denied them during the Stalin era because of its extreme commitment to secrecy. At conferences, scientists from the USSR could enter into serious discussions with their international colleagues, and these interactions often eased Cold War tensions. For instance, Igor Kurchatov, the head of the atomic bomb project, spent the last years of his life promoting peaceful nuclear programs and sought a test ban treaty of some sort.

  ATOMIC ENERGY

  Workers monitor an experiment at the Akademgorodok nuclear physics laboratory in 1966. © DEAN CONGER/CORBIS

  DEVELOPMENT OF NUCLEAR REACTORS

  Soviet engineers developed five major kinds of nuclear reactors. One design focused on compactness, and was intended to be used for propulsion, especially for submarines. The USSR also employed compact reactors on aircraft carriers, container ships, freighters, and icebreakers, such as the icebreaker Lenin, which was launched in 1959. Scientists also worked on reactor propulsion for rockets and jets, and nuclear power packs for satellites. There were several prototype land-based models, including the TES-3, built in Obninsk, that could be moved on railroad flatbed cars or on tank treads. In the 1990s, Russian nuclear engineers designed a barge-based, floating nuclear unit for use in the Far North and Far East.

  There was also an extensive breeder reactor program. The most common type was the liquid metal fast breeder reactor (LMFBR). Breeder reactors are so called because they use “fast” neutrons from fissile uranium (U235) to transmute non-fissile U238 into plutonium (Pu239). The plutonium can then be used to power other breeder reactors, or as fuel for nuclear weapons. Breeder reactors are highly complex. They have a liquid metal, usually so
dium, coolant, which must be kept separate from the water used for power generation, because the sodium will burst into flame when mixed with water.

  The physicists A. I. Leipunsky and O. D. Kazachkovsky established the LMFBR program in 1949, over the years building a series of increasingly powerful experimental reactors. In the late 1960s, they built the BOR-60 with the hope that it would double (or breed) plutonium every eight years. Like its predecessors and subsequent models, the BR-60 had an extended operational lifespan, but also required long periods of repair time because of pump breakdowns, ruptured fuel assemblies, sodium leaks, and fires.

  Leipunsky and Kazachko were determined to build industrial prototype reactors as well. In 1979 they built the BN-350 on the Mangyshlak Peninsula on the shore of the Caspian Sea. The reactor

  ATOMIC ENERGY

  provided both electrical energy and desalinated 120,000 cubic meters of water daily for the burgeoning petrochemical industry. At Beloiarsk they built a 600 megawatt model (the BN-600), followed by an 800 megawatt model (the BN-800), and aimed to create a network of 1,600 megawatt LMFBRs that would be capable of producing plutonium sufficient for all military and civilian ends. Cost overruns and accidents left the program weakened, however.