Encyclopedia of Russian History

by James Millar

  Medlicott, W. N. (1963). The Congress of Berlin and After: A Diplomatic History of the Near East Settlement, 1878-1880, 2nd ed. London: Frank Cass. Sumner, Benedict Humphrey. (1962). Russia and the Balkans, 1870-1880, reprint ed. Hamden, CT: Ar-chon.

  DAVID M. GOLDFRANK

  Russia. Each power pledged to remain neutral if one of the signatories were to become involved in a war with another Great Power. The closing of the Straits to all warships was reconfirmed. A separate protocol recognized Austria’s right to annex Bosnia-Herzegovina (an option exercised in 1908) and reiterated the Bulgarian territorial settlement imposed by the 1878 Congress of Berlin.

  The treaty reflected Otto von Bismarck’s strategy of keeping France isolated following the Franco-Prussian war, in part by binding Russia to Germany. The Russian government viewed the convention as a necessary evil to give Russia a period of peace on its western frontiers, to counter the Austro-German alliance, and to avoid a repetition of 1878, when a coalition of other Great Powers had prevented Russia from fully exploiting its victory over Turkey. A December 1879 Foreign Ministry conference chaired by Minister Nikolai Karlovich Giers concluded that a nonaggression pact with Vienna and Berlin was absolutely essential to obtain “the repose of which [Russia] has the most imperious need.” Faced with growing internal social unrest and the need to slash military spending, Russia could not afford renewed military competition.

  Alexander III renewed the alliance in 1884, but it expired in 1887. The convention failed to provide any mechanism for regulating Austro-Russian rivalries in the Balkans, especially because Germany was unable to function as an honest broker between Vienna and St. Petersburg. Nor was Russia inclined to permanently accept a status quo predicated on its post-1878 weakness. Bismarck concluded a nonaggression pact (the Reinsurance Treaty) when the convention lapsed, but Germany abrogated this agreement in 1890 when Bismarck was retired. This paved the way for the 1894 Franco-Russian alliance. See also: GERMANY, RELATIONS WITH; THREE EMPERORS’ LEAGUE

  BERLIN, CONVENTION OF

  Concluded June 18, 1881, this Convention of Berlin recreated the Three Emperors’ League between the Great Powers: Austria-Hungary, Germany, and

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Dmytryshyn, Basil. (1974). Imperial Russia: A Sourcebook, 1700-1917. Hinsdale, IL: Dryden Press. Fuller, William C., Jr. (1992). Strategy and Power in Russia, 1600-1914. New York: Free Press. Riasanovsky, Nicholas V. (1984). A History of Russia. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

  NIKOLAS GVOSDEV

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  BESSARABIA

  BESCHESTIE

  The practice of compensation for a humiliating insult or dishonor.

  Beschestie meant “dishonor” in early modern Russia and referred both to humiliating insult and to the amount of compensation awarded to victims of insult. There is ample evidence in law codes in other East Slavic societies (Kievan Rus, Novgorod, Pskov) before the fifteenth century for the principle of compensation for humiliating insult, but this term and legal norms for defense of honor were first systematized in the Grand Principality of Muscovy. The major Muscovite law codes of 1550, 1589, and 1649 cite beschestie specifically and provide schedules of compensation for dishonor.

  Beschestie was socially inclusive (applying to all social ranks) but also socially hierarchical (the amount of compensation was determined by social status). In the most detailed account in the Law Code of 1649, compensation for insult between individuals in the lowest social ranks was a simple, paltry fine. As the social rank of litigants rose, fines rose; and for the very highly placed, physical punishment was levied on the offender in addition to a high fine. At the same time, dishonor litigation provided protection for all social ranks, from the highest secular and clerical ranks to slaves, serfs, and (in the 1589 sudebnik) witches and minstrels.

  Muscovite laws do not define honor; its content has to be reconstructed from complaints in litigations. Insult to honor in practice was primarily verbal; most physical assault was litigated separately. But those forms of physical assault considered humiliating (such as pulling a man’s beard, or uncovering a woman’s hair by knocking off her headdress) were deemed dishonor. Dishonoring verbal insults included accusations of criminal behavior or of disloyalty to the tsar, aspersions on sexual probity or religious faith, insults to an individual’s station in life, no matter how lowly, and insults to their heritage and kinsmen. Women played a pivotal role in this code of social values: Their behavior reflected on family honor, and thus their dishonor compensation was reckoned higher than men’s. A wife, for example, received twice her husband’s dishonor compensation, while an unmarried daughter received four times.

  Litigations show that men and women in all social ranks litigated for dishonor, even non-Russians and non-Orthodox. Judges took dishonor suits seriously, and were concerned primarily not with the truth of an allegation, but whether an insulting phrase was uttered or a humiliating assault carried out. People could use dishonor litigation to pursue quarrels and vendettas, but overall the practice of defense of honor probably worked to enhance social stability by protecting individual and family dignity. Most broadly, the consciousness of honor constituted a form of social integration across the empire, although limited by the ethnic, religious, and cultural diversity of Muscovy.

  Case law on dishonor litigations survives only sparsely from the late sixteenth century, but the number of recorded suits rose steadily in the seventeenth century, even accounting for accidents of document survival. In the eighteenth century, terminology changed (obida and oskorblenie came to replace beschestie for “insult”), but the consciousness of personal honor and the right to litigate to defend it endured into the Imperial period. See also: BOYAR; LAW CODE OF 1649; MESTNICHESTVO; OKOLNICHY

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Dewey, Horace W. (1968). “Old Muscovite Concepts of Injured Honor (Beschestie).” Slavic Review 27(4): 594-603. Kollmann, Nancy Shields. (1999). By Honor Bound. State and Society in Early Modern Russia. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

  NANCY SHIELDS KOLLMANN

  BESPRIZORNYE See HOMELESS CHILDREN.

  BESSARABIA

  The region of Bessarabia lies between the Prut and Dniester Rivers and constitutes the rump of what is today the Republic of Moldavia. Although the historical region of Bessarabia stretched to the coast of the Black Sea, southeastern Bessarabia is presently incorporated in Ukraine.

  The region formed part of the broader Principality of Moldavia, which first emerged as a distinct area of rule in the fourteenth century. This territory was brought into the Ottoman sphere of influence in 1538, following conquests led by S?-leyman the Magnificent. The region was allowed a measure of self-government until 1711, when

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  BESTUZHEV-RYUMIN, ALEXEI PETROVICH

  Constantinople appointed Greek-speaking phanari-ots to govern the region more directly.

  The first clear, political separation between Bessarabia and western Moldavia (now incorporated into Romania) came with the Russian occupation of Bessarabia in 1806. This move precipitated a six-year war, after which the victorious Russian Tsar Alexander I was able to formally annex the land between the Prut and Dniester Rivers from the Ottoman Empire.

  After a short period of relative autonomy from Moscow, Bessarabia underwent a process of Rus-sification, and the use of the Romanian language was barred from official use. The 1871 shift in Bessarabia’s status from that of imperial oblast to Russian rayon saw further restrictions on cultural and political autonomy in the region.

  Due to significant immigration following the annexation of 1812, Bessarabia had become culturally cosmopolitan by the end of the nineteenth century. However, the region was an economic backwater; literacy remained very low and, despite the presence of some small-scale industry in the region’s capital-Chi?sinau-the area remained largely agricultural.

  The collapse of tsarist rule during World War I enabled elites drawn from the Bessarabian military to act on growing nationalist sentiments by declaring full aut
onomy for the region in November 1917. Romanian forces capitalized further on the confused state of rule in Bessarabia and moved in to occupy the territories lost to Russia in 1812. A vote by the newly formed Bessarabian National Council saw the region formally unite with Romania on March 27, 1918.

  During the interwar period, Bessarabia formed the eastern flank of Greater Romania. This period was characterized by an acceleration of public works, which combined with agricultural reform to stabilize the region’s economy. However, the significant minority populations (Russians, Ukrainians, Bulgarians, Turks) suffered under Romanian rule and were denied basic cultural rights, such as education in their native tongues.

  The clandestine carve-up of Europe planned under the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact of 1939 implied that Germany had no interest in Bessarabia. This afforded the Soviet Union an opportunity to retake the region. In June 1940 the Soviet government issued an ultimatum to Romanian King Carol II, demanding that Bessarabia and northern Bukovina be brought under Soviet control. Although Carol II acquiesced in this demand, Romania’s alliance with Germany during World War II saw the land return to Romanian hands. Control was again returned to the Soviet Union following the collapse of the Axis. The six counties of Bessarabia were then merged with the Transnistrian region, east of the Dniester, to form the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic.

  Although Bessarabia dominated Soviet Moldavia geographically and demographically, communist elites from the Transnistrian region enjoyed the majority of political weight in the republic, due to their membership in the Soviet community since 1917 and the presence of a significant pro-Russian, Slavic minority. With Soviet industrial development concentrated in Transnistria, a growing so-cioeconomic divide emerged between this region and Bessarabia.

  The collapse of Soviet rule and declaration of Moldavian independence in 1991 was followed shortly thereafter by a declaration of Transnistrian independence from the Republic of Moldavia. Although unrecognized, Transnistria remains tacitly independent in the early twenty-first century, leaving Bessarabia as the sole region under the control of the government of the Republic of Moldavia. See also: MOLDOVA AND MOLDOVANS; UKRAINE AND UKRAINIANS

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  King, Charles. (2000). The Moldovans: Romania, Russia, and the Politics of Culture. Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press.

  JOHN GLEDHILL

  BESTUZHEV-RYUMIN, ALEXEI PETROVICH

  (1693-1766), count, chancellor, diplomat, statesman.

  Second son of a Muscovite noble family, Alexei Bestuzhev-Ryumin went abroad in 1708 with his older brother, Mikhail Petrovich (1688-1760), to study at the Danish noble academy and transferred to Berlin in 1710. Before diplomatic service in 1712 at the Congress of Utrecht, he concentrated on foreign languages, traveled in Europe, and presumably had a Muscovite education befitting offspring

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  BESTUZHEV-RYUMIN, ALEXEI PETROVICH

  of an eminent father, Count Pyotr Mikhailovich Bestuzhev-Ryumin (1664-1743). With Tsar Peter’s permission he joined Hanover’s foreign service in 1713, visited England in connection with George I’s selection as king, and returned to Russia to announce the new British sovereign. Bestuzhev-Ryumin then spent four years in England. From 1717 he served the court of dowager Duchess Anna Ivanovna of Courland without pay for two years under his father. In 1721 he became minister-resident to the Danish court, where he followed Peter I’s rivalry with George I of England, Denmark’s competition with Holstein, and celebration of the peace ending Russo-Swedish hostilities, and received a miniature of Peter with diamonds that he proudly wore thereafter. He also helped develop a nerve-tonic known as “Bestucheff’s drops”; the formula sold several times until published by Catherine II in 1780.

  In the years after Peter I’s death, Bestuzhev-Ryumin occupied diplomatic posts in northern Europe. At Kiel he discovered a copy of Catherine I’s testament supporting the Duke of Holstein’s rights to the Russian throne; for this he received the Order of Saint Alexander Nevsky. He cultivated favor with Anna Ivanovna’s new regime, the empress serving as godmother to his three sons. He had married Anna Yekaterina B?ttiger (d. 1762), daughter of the Russian envoy to Hamburg. As Countess Bestuzheva-Ryumina she became court mistress in 1748, accompanied her husband into exile in 1758, and was buried at the old Lutheran church in Moscow.

  Bestuzhev-Ryumin returned to Petersburg in 1740 and was promoted to actual privy councilor, named a cabinet minister, and awarded the Polish Order of the White Eagle. He apparently supported Ernst Johann Biron’s brief regency and, although sentenced to be quartered after the regent’s overthrow, he survived with the loss of all privileges and property before exile. Reinstated five months later, Bestuzhev-Ryumin assisted Elizabeth’s coup of December 1741 by composing the manifesto that proclaimed her reign. He was made senator and vice chancellor of foreign affairs and received his predecessor Andrei Osterman’s house in Moscow, back salary, and 6,000 rubles per year. At Elizabeth’s coronation in the spring of 1742 he joined father and brother as counts of the Russian Empire. Bestuzhev-Ryumin reached the pinnacle of power with promotion to chancellor in 1744 and count of the Holy Roman Empire, with an annual salary of 7,000 rubles and estates with 4,225 male serfs. He likewise received pensions and loans from foreign powers, Britain in particular.

  Bestuzhev-Ryumin pursued a policy against Prussia and France while cultivating the maritime powers of Britain, Holland, and Denmark. He intervened in dynastic politics, too, initially opposing Sophia of Anhalt-Zerbst as consort for crown prince Peter Fyodorovich. When the Seven Years’ War scrambled European international politics, Bestuzhev-Ryumin pressed a militantly anti-Prussian policy while countering French intrigues and secretly conspiring with Grand Princess Catherine to seize power in the event of Elizabeth’s sudden death. These involvements resulted in his arrest for treason in February 1758. He managed to warn Catherine and escaped death although banished to his estate of Goretovo, where his wife died on January 5, 1762, the same day Elizabeth expired. Peter III did not pardon him, but Catherine did, although she did not name any chancellor.

  Bestuzhev-Ryumin returned to court in July 1762 and regained honors and property, the Hol-stein Order of Saint Anna, and an annual pension of 20,000 rubles. He twice proposed to proclaim Catherine “the Great,” but she declined the honor and soon cooled to his anti-Prussian views and quarreled with his sole surviving son, Andrei, whose death in 1768 ended the male line. Bestuzhev-Ryumin’s long and tumultuous career in high politics resulted in ambivalent assessments. The German soldier Manstein praised his industry while predicting his final downfall and denouncing despotic power, arrogance, avarice, dissolute lifestyle, treacherous character, and vindictiveness. In final exile and late in life Bestuzhev-Ryumin turned to religion. See also: CATHERINE I; CATHERINE II; ELIZABETH

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Anisimov, Evgeny V. (1995). Empress Elizabeth: Her Reign and Her Russia, 1741-1761, tr. John T. Alexander. Gulf Breeze, FL: Academic International. Curtiss, Mina. (1974). A Forgotten Empress: Anna Ivanovna and Her Era, 1730-1740. New York: Frederick Un-gar. Manstein, C. H. (1968). Contemporary Memoirs of Russia From the Year 1727 to 1744. London: Frank Cass. Meehan-Waters, Brenda. (1982). Autocracy and Aristocracy: The Russian Service Elite of 1730. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

  JOHN T. ALEXANDER

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  BIRCHBARK CHARTERS

  BIRCHBARK CHARTERS

  Birchbark documents constitute the most significant set of early Rus written sources to have been discovered since 1950, when the first such document was discovered by archaeologists in Novgorod. As of the early twenty-first century, the total number of Novgorodian documents was close to one thousand. Smaller quantities of birchbark documents have also been unearthed in Staraya Russa, Smolensk, Pskov, Vitebsk, Mstislavl, Torzhok, Tver, Zvenigorod in Galicia, and Moscow. Besides being of fundamental importance to the study of early Rus writing itself, and to the study of early Rus language, the birchbark documents shed new light on a wide range of his
torical issues, including social and family relations, commerce and trade, taxation, law, and administration. They provide direct insight into the lives and concerns of groups of people who are underrepresented in traditional written sources: the non-princely, non-ecclesiastical urban elites (though churchmen and princes do figure in the birchbark documents as well); women; and to some extent even sections of the peasantry.

  Birchbark was the available, cheap, disposable writing material in the forests of Rus. Paper was virtually unknown before the fourteenth century, and manuscript books were written on parchment (treated animal skins), which was relatively expensive to procure and cumbersome to prepare. The typical birchbark document consists of a single piece of the material (just one birchbark book- made from three folded leaves-has been discovered). The letters were not written in ink but incised in the soft surface with a pointed stylus of metal, wood, or bone. Hundreds of such styluses turn up in excavations, suggesting that this type of writing was even more widespread than the extant documents might suggest. It has become conventional to refer to them as Novgorod birchbark documents, but there is no reason to suppose that their production and use was in fact a specifically or predominantly Novgorodian speciality. The preponderance of Novgorodian discoveries is due in part to the intensity of Novgorodian archaeological investigation, but in part also to the favorable conditions for birchbark survival, because organic materials are preserved almost indefinitely in the saturated, anaerobic (oxygen-free) Novgorodian mud.

  Few, if any, of the birchbark documents can be dated with absolute precision. However, approximate datings to within two or three decades can often be supplied by means of dendrochronology by fixing the location of their discovery in relation to the chronological scale produced by the study of the tree rings on the logs that formed Novgorod’s roads. In addition, birchbark paleography (the study of the shapes of letters) has now developed to the extent that it, too, can be used to indicate relative chronology. A small number of the birch-bark documents probably date from the first half of the eleventh century and are thus among the oldest known specimens of East Slav writing, but the vast majority of the documents date from the twelfth to fifteenth centuries.