Encyclopedia of Russian History
Page 38
MARTIN C. SPECHLER
BANYA
A Russian steam sauna or bathhouse, which served as the primary form of hygiene and was consid122
BARONE, ENRICO
ered a source of great pleasure and a cure of maladies.
According to the seventeenth-century account of Adam Olearius, “in all towns and villages, they have many public and private baths, in which they [the Russians] may often be found.” Because it was warm and had an abundant water supply, the banya also served as a place for childbearing. While the word banya is a Latin borrowing (from banea), the traditional Russian banya had Finno-Ugrian origins. The earliest written source to mention banya dates to the eleventh century and is made in connection to Novgorod. Archaeologists have also unearthed wooden bani (pl.) dating to the same period in the city. Masonry bani, built according to Byzantine traditions, were known in the southern Rus lands (in Pereyaslavl and Kiev) dating to the late eleventh century.
Medieval and modern accounts all agree about the practice of washing in the banya. After exposing the body to high-heat vapors, and consequently heavily perspired, people lashed their bodies with bundles of young tree branches (usually of birch) that had been soaked in boiling water, thus providing a massaging effect and anointing the skin with oils from the leaves. Following this, people often immersed themselves in cold water or snow and, thereafter, proceeded to wash with soap and water. Traditionally, bani in Russia were either private or public. Both types can still be found in Russia. Despite attempts by the Russian government (e.g., Stoglav of 1551, Elizabeth in 1743, and Catherine II in 1783) to separate women from men in the public bani, some city bani remained unisex as late as the early nineteenth century. The only separation of the sexes that occurred in these bani was in the dressing rooms.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Cross A. G. (1991). “The Russian Banya in the Description of Foreign Travellers and in the Depictions of Foreign and Russian Artists.” Oxford Slavonic Papers 25:34-59. Olearius, Adam. (1967). The Travels of Olearius in the 17th-Century Russia, tr. and ed. Samuel H. Baron. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. The Russian Primary Chronicle. (1973). Tr. and ed. Samuel Hazzard Cross and Olgerd P. Sherbowitz-Wetzor. Cambridge, MA: Mediaeval Academy of America.
ROMAN K. KOVALEV
BARANNIKOV, VIKTOR PAVLOVICH
(1940-1995), minister of internal affairs of the USSR; minister of internal affairs, minister of security.
Born in Primorskoy Kray of the Soviet Far East, Barannikov joined the militia organs of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in 1961. A graduate of the Higher School of the Militia, he rose to prominence under President Boris Yeltsin and was appointed minister of Internal Affairs of the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic in September 1990, a post he held until August 1991. In the aftermath of the unsuccessful August coup in 1991, he was appointed minister of Internal Affairs of the Soviet Union. After the end of the Soviet Union, Baran-nikov was appointed director-general of the Federal Security Agency of the Russian Republic in December 1991 and held that post briefly until he was appointed minister of security and head of the Federal Counter-Intelligence Service of the Russian Republic in January 1992. He held that post until July 1993, when he broke with Yeltsin over the emerging struggle between the president and the Russian parliament. In October 1993 he was arrested as one of the conspirators of the White House revolt against Yeltsin. Barannikov was freed from prison in 1994 by an act of the State Duma and died of a heart attack in 1995. Barannikov held the rank of General of the Army in the Ministry of Internal Affairs. See also: OCTOBER 1993 EVENTS; YELTSIN, BORIS NIKO-LAYEVICH
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Gevorkian, Natalia. (1993). “The KGB: ‘They Still Need Us’.” Bulletin of Atomic Scientists (January/February 1993):36-38. Knight, Amy. (1996). Spies without Cloaks: The KGB’s Successors. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Waller, J. Michael, and Yasmann, Victor J. (1995). “Russia’s Great Criminal Revolution: The Role of the Security Services.” Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice 11(4).
JACOB W. KIPP
BARONE, ENRICO
(1859-1924), Italian soldier, politician, and economist with strong mathematical training.
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BARSHCHINA
Enrico Barone was a contemporary and interlocutor of both Leon Walras and Vilfredo Pareto, best known for his careful formulation of the equilibrium system that would have to be solved by central planners in a socialist economy. Published in 1908 as “Il Ministro della Produzione nello Stato Col-lettivista” in the journal Giornale delgi Economisti, and reprinted in English in F. A. Hayek’s edited volume, Collectivist Economic Planning, his formulation provided an analytic foundation for arguments supporting the feasibility of socialist calculation, socialist central planning, and ultimately “market socialism.” In it he provided a Walrasian (general equilibrium) system of equations whose solutions would resolve the valuation and coordination quandary for socialist central planners-a system of economic rationality without markets for production inputs and capital. Socialist economists such as Oscar Lange, Fred Taylor, and Maurice Dobb, have taken this as a refutation of Ludwig von Mises’s critique of the possibility of economic rationality under socialist planning. In particular, it is argued that his formulation shows how modern high-speed multiprocessor computing can be used to find optimal scarcity valuations and prices for all products and assets in an economy, thereby allowing rational formulation of an economic plan by social planners.
Barone also contributed to general equilibrium theory by showing Walras how to incorporate variable production techniques into his equilibrium system of equations (the Walrasian system). This contributed to the development of marginal productivity theory, a central part of neoclassical economic analysis. Finally, he made notable contribution to the economics of taxation in his three studies of public finance in 1912. See also: COMMAND ADMINISTRATIVE ECONOMY; MARKET SOCIALISM; SOCIALISM
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Samuelson, P. A. (1947). Foundations of Economic Analysis. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Schumpeter, J. A. (1954). History of Economic Analysis. New York: Oxford University Press.
RICHARD E. ERICSON
BARSHCHINA
Labor dues; corv?e.
Barshchina referred to unpaid labor dues (corv?e) owed by a peasant to his lord, most commonly labor on the land. It may have emerged in Russia in the Kievan period, but most Western scholars maintain it developed in the late fifteenth century, as similar labor forms emerged in most east European countries. Associated with direct production for markets by large, especially lay, estates, it first became important in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It survived in somewhat modified form at least into the 1880s.
Barshchina varied according to location and time period. By the last third of the eighteenth century, it was increasingly associated with the rich black soils of the seven Central Agricultural provinces south of Moscow. Only 45 percent of the serfs were subject to labor service in the thirteen nonblack soil provinces, where soils were poor and the climate harsh, but the rate was 74 percent in the Central Agricultural Region. By the middle of the nineteenth century, labor dues were at their highest in Ukraine and New Russia, where 97 to 99.9 percent of the male serfs owed barshchina to produce grain for the European market.
In the nineteenth century, the typical obligation apparently slowly rose to three or four days per week in regions where the dues were heaviest, although during the harvest six-day weeks could be required. Viewed as an inefficient form of labor, landlords began to attempt to require specific labor tasks instead of days worked. Peasants considered it far more onerous than obrok (rents in kind or in money), because it put them directly under the control of the steward or landlord. See also: OBROK; PEASANTRY; SERFDOM
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Blum, Jerome. (1961). Lord and Peasant in Russia from the Ninth to the Nineteenth Century. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Bulygin, I. A. (1973). “Corv?e: Russia.” Great Soviet Encyclo
pedia, 3rd ed. New York: Macmillan.
ELVIRA M. WILBUR
BARSOV, ALEXANDER ALEXANDROVICH
(1921-1991), Soviet economist.
Alexander Alexandrovich Barsov (b. Shparlinsky) served in World War II in frontline intelligence as a military interpreter and translator and was awarded a number of decorations. From 1965 to 1989 he was a senior researcher at the Institute of
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BARYATINSKY, ALEXANDER IVANOVICH
Economics of the USSR Academy of Sciences. Author of a number of publications, he was best known for his 1969 book Balans stoimostnykh ob-menov mezhdu gorodom i derevnei (The Balance of Payments between the Town and the Countryside), in which he argues against the assumption, widespread in the West, that the huge increase in investment in the USSR in the First Five-Year Plan had been financed by an increase in unequal exchange between town and countryside. The underlying statistical basis for his argument was the Soviet national accounts for the period from 1928 to 1930-a landmark in the history of national income accounting. These were then unpublished archival documents.
According to Barsov, there was unequal exchange between agriculture and industry during the First Five-Year Plan, but this unequal exchange did not increase. Hence the resources for the huge increase in investment in the First Five-Year Plan were not provided by an increase in the agricultural surplus. Barsov’s work directed attention to the fall in urban real wages as a source of investment resources. In addition, it led to increased recognition of the interdependence of the agricultural and industrial sectors. It also led to a lively debate in the West about the economics of collectivization. See also: AGRICULTURE; FIVE-YEAR PLANS; INDUSTRIALIZATION, SOVIET
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Ellman, Michael. (1975). “Did the Agricultural Surplus Provide the Resources for the Increase in Investment in the USSR during the First Five Year Plan?” Economic Journal 85:844-863. Reprinted in Ellman, Michael. (1984). Collectivisation, Convergence, and Capitalism. London: Academic Press. Hunter, Holland, and Szyrmer, Janusz M. (1992). Faulty Foundations: Soviet Economic Policies, 1928-1940. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Karshenas, Massoud. (1995). Industrialization and Agricultural Surplus: A Comparative Study of Economic Development in Asia. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Millar, James, R. (1974). “Mass Collectivization and the Contribution of Soviet Agriculture to the First Five Year Plan.” Slavic Review 33:750-766. Wheatcroft, Stephen G., and Davies, Robert W., eds. (1985). Materials for a Balance of the Soviet National Economy, 1928-1930. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
MICHAEL ELLMAN
BARYATINSKY, ALEXANDER IVANOVICH
(1815-1879), Viceroy of the Caucasus.
Prince Alexander Ivanovich Baryatinsky, a close friend of Tsar Alexander II (1855-1881) from childhood, was appointed Viceroy (namestnik) of the Caucasus in August 1856. This exalted office gave him military and political command of both the mountainous North Caucasus and the lands to the south bordering on Iran and the Ottoman Empire. A courageous veteran of Caucasian wars and former chief of staff to a previous viceroy, Prince Mikhail Vorontsov, Baryatinsky had grandiose ambitions for the Caucasus. He wrote to the tsar, “Russia had become for Asia what Western Europe had represented for so long in Russia-the source and bearer of the world’s most advanced civilization. A model administration in the Caucasus would serve as a showcase of Russian colonial policy.”
Baryatinsky saw himself as a pacifier (the war with the rebel Shamil still raged in the north) and a modernizer, continuing the civilizing mission of Vorontsov. He was a supporter of the tsar’s program for peasant emancipation and negotiated skillfully with the Georgian nobility to convince them to arrange for the liberation of their serfs. But the program of reforms met resistance, not only from Georgian nobles, but from peasants as well, who wanted greater freedom, and Baryatinsky resorted to military repression.
During his years in office the Caucasian wars were brought to an end, and the relations between Georgian nobles and peasants were brought into line with Russian norms. He corresponded with the tsar on military and civilian matters and enjoyed close relations with his sovereign. His health suffered in the next few years, and he asked to be relieved of his post. In 1863 the Grand Duke Mikhail Nikolaye-vich became Viceroy. The legacy of the first three viceroys was peace and security in the Caucasus and the effective binding of the Georgian nobility to the Russian autocracy as loyal, privileged servants. See also: CAUCAUS; COLONIALISM; NATIONALITIES POLICIES, TSARIST
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Rieber, Alfred J., ed. (1966). The Politics of Autocracy. Letters of Alexander II to Prince A. I. Bariatinsky 1857-1864. Paris: Mouton. Suny, Ronald Grigor, (1988, 1994). The Making of the Georgian Nation. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
RONALD GRIGOR SUNY
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BASHKORTOSTAN AND BASHKIRS
BASHKORTOSTAN AND BASHKIRS
Bashkortostan is a constituent republic of the Russian Federation, located between the Middle Volga and the Ural mountains, with its capital at Ufa. The Bashkirs are the official indigenous nationality of the republic, although they made up only 21.9 percent of its population in 1989 (compared to 39.3 percent Russians and 28.4 percent Tatars). There were 1,449,157 Bashkirs in the former Soviet Union in 1989, with close to 60 percent (863,808) living in Bashkortostan proper and most of the remainder in neighboring provinces. The Bashkir language belongs to the Kipchak group of the Turkic language family. Despite some modest efforts around the turn of the twentieth century, Bashkir was developed as a literary language only after 1917. The Arabic script was used until Latinization in 1929, followed by adoption of the Cyrillic alphabet in 1939. Most Bashkirs are Sunni Muslims of the Hanafi legal school.
Throughout history the hills and plains of Bashkortostan have been closely linked to the great Eurasian steppe to the south. Successive settlement by Finns, Ugrians, Sarmatians, Alans, Magyars, and Turkic Bulgars had already created a complex situation before the arrival of the Turkic badzhgard and burdzhan nomadic unions of Pechenegs in the ninth century C.E. At this point these groups began to coalesce into a nomadic tribal confederation headed by the Turkic Bashkirs (bashkort). Later arrivals of Oguz and Kipchak Turks further Turki-fied the early Bashkir people.
By the sixteenth century, Bashkirs were dependent variously on the Kazan Khanate to the west, the Khanate of Siberia to the east, and the Nogai khans to the south. Constriction of migration routes had forced many Bashkirs to limit their nomadizing to summer months and to turn toward hunting, beekeeping, and in some places agriculture. In 1557 several Bashkir groups acknowledged Russian suzerainty, seeking protection from the Nogai khans. Subsequent years saw gradual expansion of Russian control over other Bashkir tribes, imposition of a tax (yasak) in fur, construction of Russian defensive lines to repel nomadic incursions, and infiltration of Bashkir lands by Russian peasants and other peoples fleeing serfdom and taxation. The years from the mid-seventeenth to mid-eighteenth centuries saw five major Bashkir revolts against Russian rule, usually directed against both peasant settlement and high Russian taxes. In addition, Bashkirs participated with other discontented peoples of the region in Emelian Pugachev’s great rebellion (1773-1775).
Like many native peoples in the Russian Empire, nomadic Bashkirs belonged to a specific estate category with particular privileges and responsibilities. Bashkirs were relatively privileged compared to other natives in the region, with lower tax rates and (theoretically) a guarantee to the land they had held when they joined the empire. In 1798 Russian authorities gave new content to Bashkir identity by establishing the Bashkir-Meshcheriak Host (later simply Bashkir Host), an irregular military force modeled on the Cossacks. Male Bashkirs were required to serve in units apportioned among twelve self-governing cantons. The Bashkir Host was abolished during the Great Reforms (1863), but it later served as a symbol of Bashkir independence. In the late nineteenth century, a vast increase in Russian settlement and occupation of Bashkir lands and expansion of mining and metall
urgy concerns in the Urals rapidly and traumatically accelerated processes of Bashkir sedentarization. In the closing decades of the century the local Russian press debated whether the Bashkirs were dying out.
During the Russian Revolution, Bashkirs unexpectedly emerged as one of the most activist peoples in the empire. The expectation of many Tatars that Bashkirs would assimilate into the emerging Tatar nation, the Tatar and later Soviet plans for a large territorial republic that would integrate Bashkortostan with Tatarstan, and the increasingly violent confrontations between Bashkirs and Russian settlers encouraged Bashkir activism and separatism in 1917 and 1918. Ahmed Zeki Validov (known as Togan in his later Turkish exile) led a nationalist movement that sought to establish a Bashkir republic even while Red and White armies battled back and forth across the region and Bashkirs fought Russian settlers. The Bashkir republic was established by treaty between the Soviet government and Validov’s group in 1919. In 1922 the republic was expanded to include most of the former Ufa province, bringing in the large numbers of Russians and Tatars that now outnumber the Bashkirs in their own republic.
Soviet rule brought many contradictions to Bashkortostan and the Bashkirs. Famine in 1921 and 1922, accompanied by banditry and rebellion, was barely overcome before the trauma of collectivization, crash industrialization, and the emergence of Josef Stalin’s police state. Outright statements of nationalist sentiment were long taboo. Yet the Soviet government oversaw the de126
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velopment of Bashkir written language, literature, historiography, and other cultural forms that solidified Bashkir identity and may have prevented its submergence in a larger Tatar or Turkic identity. Suspicion of some Tatars that the Bashkir nation is a recent and relatively artificial creation of the Soviet state rather than an old and authentic nation challenged the legitimacy of the Republic of Bashkortostan itself and often underlay post-Soviet debates between Bashkirs and Tatars over the treatment of Tatars in Bashkortostan. See also: ISLAM; NATIONALITIES POLICIES, SOVIET; NATIONALITIES POLICIES, TSARIST; TOGAN, AHMED ZEKI VALIDOV