Encyclopedia of Russian History

by James Millar

  The Soviet power supply continued to expand steadily, even as economic growth slowed. Output increased from 741 billion kilowatt hours in 1970 to 1,728 billion in 1990, with the USSR accounting for 17 percent of global electricity output. Still, capacity failed to keep pace with the gargantuan appetites of Soviet industry, and regional coverage was uneven, since most of the fossil fuels were located in the north and east, whereas the major population centers and industry were in the west. Twenty percent of the energy was consumed in transporting the coal, gas, and fuel-oil to thermal power stations located near industrial zones. In the early 1970s, when nuclear plants accounted for just two percent of total electricity output, the government launched an ambitious program to expand nuclear power. This plan was halted for more than a decade by the 1986 Chernobyl accident. In 1990 the Russia Federation generated 1,082 billion kilowatt hours, a figure that had fallen to 835 billion by 2000. Of that total, 15 percent was from nuclear plants and 18 percent from hydro stations, the rest was from thermal plants using half coal and half natural gas for fuel.

  In 1992 the electricity system was turned into a joint stock company, the Unified Energy Systems of Russia (RAO EES). Blocks of shares in RAO EES were sold to its workers and the public for vouchers in 1994, and subsequently were sold to domestic and foreign investors, but the government held onto a controlling 53 percent stake in EES. Some regional producers were separated from EES, but the latter still accounted for 73 percent of Russian generating capacity and 85 percent of electricity distribution in 2000.

  Electricity prices were held down by the government in order to subsidize industrial and domestic consumers. This meant most of the regional energy companies that made up EES ran at a loss, and could not invest in new capacity or energy conservation. By 1999, the situation was critical: EES was losing $1 billion on annual revenues of $7 billion. Former privatization chief Anatoly Chubais was appointed head of EES, and he proposed privatizing some of EES’s more lucrative regional producers to the highest bidder. The remaining operations would be restructured into five to seven generation companies, which would be spun off as independent companies. A wholesale market in electricity would be introduced, and retail prices would be allowed to rise by 100 percent by 2005. The grid and dispatcher service would be returned to state ownership. Amid objections from consumers, who objected to higher prices, and from foreign investors in EES, who feared their shares would be diluted, the plan was adopted in 2002. See also: CHERNOBYL; CHUBAIS, ANATOLY BORISOVICH

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Ebel, Robert. (1994). Energy Choices in Russia. Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and International Studies. EES web site: «http://www.rao-ees.ru/en».

  PETER RUTLAND

  ELIZABETH

  (1709-1762), empress of Russia, 1741-1762, one of the “Russian matriarchate” or “Amazon auto-cratrixes,” that is, women rulers from Catherine I through Catherine II, 1725-1796.

  Daughter of Peter I and Catherine I, grand princess and crown princess from 1709 to 1741, Elizabeth (Elizaveta Petrovna) was the second of ten offspring to reach maturity. She was born in the Moscow suburb of Kolomenskoye on December 29, 1709, the same day a Moscow parade celebrated the Poltava victory. Elizabeth grew up carefree with her sister Anna (1708-1728). Doted on by both parents, the girls received training in European languages, social skills, and Russian traditions of singing, religious instruction, and dancing. Anna married Duke Karl Friedrich of Holstein-Gottorp in 1727 and died in Holstein giving birth to Karl Peter Ulrich (the future Peter III). Elizabeth never married officially or traveled abroad, her illegitimate birth obstructing royal matches. Because she wrote little and left no diary, her inner thoughts are not well-known.

  Hints of a political role came after her mother’s short reign when Elizabeth was named to the joint regency for young Peter II, whose favor she briefly enjoyed. But when he died childless in 1730 she

  ELIZABETH

  Portrait of Empress Elizabeth Petrovna by Pierre Duflos. © STAPLETON COLLECTION/CORBIS was overlooked in the surprise selection of Anna Ivanovna. Under Anna she was kept under surveillance, her yearly allowance cut to 30,000 rubles, and only Biron’s influence prevented commitment to a convent. At Aleksandrovka near Moscow she indulged in amorous relationships with Alexander Buturlin, Alexei Shubin, and the Ukrainian chorister Alexei Razumovsky. During Elizabeth’s reign male favoritism flourished; some of her preferred men assumed broad cultural and artistic functions-for instance, Ivan Shuvalov (1717-1797), a well-read Francophile who co-founded Moscow University and the Imperial Russian Academy of Fine Arts in the 1750s.

  Anna Ivanovna was succeeded in October 1740 by infant Ivan VI of the Brunswick branch of Romanovs who reigned under several fragile regencies, the last headed by his mother, Anna Leopoldovna (1718-1746). This Anna represented the Miloslavsky/Brunswick branch, whereas Elizabeth personified the Naryshkin/Petrine branch. Elizabeth naturally worried the inept regency regime, which she led her partisans in the guards to overthrow on December 5-6, 1741, with aid from the French and Swedish ambassadors (Sweden had declared war on Russia in July 1741 ostensibly in support of Elizabeth). The bloodless coup was deftly accomplished, the regent and her family arrested and banished, and Elizabeth’s claims explicated on the basis of legitimacy and blood kinship. Though Elizabeth’s accession unleashed public condemnation of both Annas as agents of foreign domination, it also reaffirmed the primacy of Petrine traditions and conquests, promising to restore Petrine glory and to counter Swedish invasion, which brought Russian gains in Finland by the Peace of ?bo in August 1743.

  Elizabeth was crowned in Moscow in spring 1742 amid huge celebrations spanning several months; she demonstratively crowned herself. With Petrine, classical feminine, and “restora-tionist” rhetoric, Elizabeth’s regime resembled Anna Ivanovna’s in that it pursued an active foreign policy, witnessed complicated court rivalries and further attempts to resolve the succession issue, and made the imperial court a center of European cultural activities. In 1742 the empress, lacking offspring, brought her nephew from Holstein to be converted to Orthodoxy, renamed, and designated crown prince Peter Fyodorovich. In 1744 she found him a German bride, Sophia of Anhalt-Zerbst, the future Catherine II. The teenage consorts married in August 1745, and hopes for a male heir came true only in 1754. Elizabeth took charge of Grand Prince Pavel Petrovich. Nevertheless, the “Young Court” rivaled Elizabeth’s in competition over dynastic and succession concerns.

  While retaining ultimate authority, Elizabeth restored the primacy of the Senate in policymak-ing, exercised a consultative style of administration, and assembled a government comprising veteran statesmen, such as cosmopolitan Chancellor Alexei Bestuzhev-Ryumin and newly elevated aristocrats like the brothers Petr and Alexander Shuvalov (and their younger cousin Ivan Shu-valov), Mikhail and Roman Vorontsov, Alexei and Kirill Razumovsky, and court surgeon Armand Lestocq. Her reign generally avoided political repression, but she took revenge on the Lopukhin family, descendents of Peter I’s first wife, by havEMANCIPATION ACT ing them tortured and exiled in 1743 for loose talk about the Brunswick family and its superior rights. Later she abolished the death penalty in practice. Lestocq and Bestuzhev-Ryumin, who was succeeded as chancellor by Mikhail Vorontsov, fell into disgrace for alleged intrigues, although Catherine II later pardoned both.

  In cultural policy Elizabeth patronized many, including Mikhail Lomonosov, Alexander Sumaro-kov, Vasily Tredyakovsky, and the Volkov brothers, all active in literature and the arts. Foreign architects, composers, and literary figures such as Bartolomeo Rastrelli, Francesco Araja, and Jakob von St?hlin also enjoyed Elizabeth’s support. Her love of pageantry resulted in Petersburg’s first professional public theater in 1756. Indeed, the empress set a personal example by frequently attending the theater, and her court became famous for elaborate festivities amid luxurious settings, such as Rastrelli’s new Winter Palace and the Catherine Palace at Tsarskoye Selo. Elizabeth loved fancy dress and followed European fashion, although she was critic
ized by Grand Princess Catherine for quixotic transvestite balls and crudely dictating other ladies’style and attire. Other covert critics such as Prince Mikhail Shcherbatov accused Elizabeth of accelerating the “corruption of manners” by pandering to a culture of corrupt excess, an inevitable accusation from disgruntled aristocrats amid the costly ongoing Europeanization of a cosmopolitan high society. The Shuvalov brothers introduced significant innovations in financial policy that fueled economic and fiscal growth and reinstituted recodification of law.

  Elizabeth followed Petrine precedent in foreign policy, a field she took special interest in, although critics alleged her geographical ignorance and laziness. Without firing a shot, Russia helped conclude the war of the Austrian succession (1740-1748), but during this conflict Elizabeth and Chancellor Bestuzhev-Ryumin became convinced that Prussian aggression threatened Russia’s security. Hence alliance with Austria became the fulcrum of Elizabethan foreign policy, inevitably entangling Russia in the reversal of alliances in 1756 that exploded in the worldwide Seven Years’ War (1756-1763). This complex conflict pitted Russia, Austria, and France against Prussia and Britain, but Russia did not fight longtime trading partner Britain. Russia held its own against Prussia, conquered East Prussia, and even briefly occupied Berlin in 1760. The war was directed by a new institution, the Conference at the Imperial Court, for Elizabeth’s declining health limited her personal attention to state affairs. The war dragged on too long, and the belligerents began looking for a way out when Elizabeth’s sudden death on Christmas Day (December 25, 1761) brought her nephew Peter III to power. He was determined to break ranks and to ally with Prussia, despite Elizabeth’s antagonism to King Frederick II. So just as Elizabeth’s reign started with a perversely declared war, so it ended abruptly with Russia’s early withdrawal from a European-wide conflict and Peter III’s declaration of war on longtime ally Denmark. Elizabeth personified Russia’s post-Petrine eminence and further emergence as a European power with aspirations for cultural achievement. See also: ANNA IVANOVNA; BESTUZHEV-RYUMIN, ALEXEI PETROVICH; PETER I; SEVEN YEARS’ WAR

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Alexander, John T. (1989). Catherine the Great: Life and Legend. New York: Oxford University Press. Anisimov, Evgeny. (1995). Empress Elizabeth: Her Reign and Her Russia, ed. and tr. John T. Alexander. Gulf Breeze, FL: Academic International. Hughes, Lindsey. (2002). Peter the Great: A Biography. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Naumov, Viktor Petrovich. (1996). “Empress Elizabeth I, 1741-1762.” In The Emperors and Empresses of Russia: Rediscovering the Romanovs, ed. and comp. Donald J. Raleigh and A. A. Iskenderov. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe. Shcherbatov, M. M. (1969). On the Corruption of Morals in Russia, ed. and tr. Anthony Lentin. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Wortman, Richard. (1995). Scenarios of Power: Myth and Ceremony in Russian Monarchy, vol. 1. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

  JOHN T. ALEXANDER

  EMANCIPATION ACT

  The Emancipation Act was issued by the Russian Emperor Alexander II on March 3, 1861. By this act all peasants, or serfs, were set free from personal dependence on their landlords, acquired civil rights, and were granted participation in social and economic activities as free citizens.

  EMANCIPATION ACT

  The importance of emancipation cannot be overestimated. However, emancipation can be understood only by taking into consideration the history of serfdom in Russia. If in early modern Europe different institutions successfully emerged to represent the interests of different classes (e.g., universities, guilds, and corporations) against the state’s absolutist tendencies, in Russia the state won over its competitors and took the form of autocracy. Despite the absolutist state’s takeover in early modern Europe, it never encroached on the individual rights of its subjects to the extent that the Russian autocracy did. Indeed, autocracy presupposed that no right existed until it was granted and thus all subjects were slaves until the tsar decided otherwise.

  As the process of state centralization proceeded in Russia, external sources of income (for instance, wars and territorial growth) were more or less exhausted by the seventeenth century, and the state switched its attention to its internal resources. Hence the continuous attempts to immobilize peasants and make them easily accessible as taxpayers. The Law Code of 1649 completed the process of immobilization declaring “eternal and hereditary attachment” of peasants to the land. Thus the Russian term for “serf” goes back to this attachment to the land more than to personal dependence on the master. Later in the eighteenth century it became possible to sell serfs without the land. Afterwards the only difference between the serf and the slave was that the serf had a household on the land of his master.

  At the time of emancipation, serfdom constituted the core of Russian economic and social life. Its abolition undermined the basis of the autocratic state in the eyes of the vast majority of nobles as well as peasants. Those few in favor of the reform were not numerous: landlords running modernized enterprises and hindered by the absence of a free labor force and competition, together with liberal and radical thinkers (often landless). For peasants, the interpretation of emancipation ranged from a call for total anarchy, arbitrary redistribution of land, and revenge on their masters, to disbelief and disregard of the emancipation as impossible.

  Thus Alexander II had to strike a balance between contradictory interests of different groups of nobility and the threat of peasant riots. The text of the act makes this balancing visible. The emperor openly acknowledged the inequality among his subjects and said that traditional relations between the nobility and the peasantry based on the “benevolence of the noblemen” and “affectionate submission on the part of the peasants” had become degraded. Under these circumstances, acting as a promoter of the good of all his subjects, Alexander II made an effort to introduce a “new organization of peasant life.”

  To pay homage to the class of his main supporters, in the document Alexander stresses the devotion and goodwill of his nobility, their readiness “to make sacrifices for the welfare of the country,” and his hope for their future cooperation. In return he promises to help them in the form of loans and transfer of debts. On the other hand, serfs should be warned and reminded of their obligations toward those in power. “Some were concerned about the freedom and unconcerned about obligations” reads the document. The Emperor cites the Bible that “every individual is subject to a higher authority” and concludes that “what legally belongs to nobles cannot be taken from them without adequate compensation,” or punishment will surely follow.

  The state initiative for emancipation indicates that the state planned to be the first to benefit from it. Though several of Alexander’s predecessors touched upon the question of peasant reform, none of them was in such a desperate situation domestically or internationally as to pursue unprecedented measures and push the reform ahead. The Crimean War (1853-1856) became the point of revelation because Russia faced the threat not only of financial collapse but of losing its position as a great power among European countries. The reform should have become a source of economic and military mobilization and thus kept the state equal among equals in Europe as well as eliminate the remnants of postwar chaos in its social life. However, the emancipation changed the structure of society in a way that demanded its total reconstruction. A series of liberal reforms followed, and the question of whether the Emperor ever planned to go that far remains open for historians.

  The emancipation meant that all peasants became “free rural inhabitants” with full rights. The nobles retained their property rights on land while granting the peasants “perpetual use of their domicile in return of specified obligations,” that is, peasants should work for their landlords as they used to work before. These temporal arrangements would last for two years, during which redemption fees for land would be paid and the peasant

  EMPIRE, USSR AS

  would become an owner of his plot. In general the Emancipation Act was followed by Regulations on Peasants Set Free in seventeen
articles that explained the procedure of land redistribution and new organization of peasant life in detail.

  Because peasants became free citizens, emancipation had far-reaching economic consequences. The organization of rural life changed when the peasant community-not the landlord-was responsible for taxation and administrative and police order. The community became a self-governing entity when rural property-holders were able to elect their representatives for participation in administrative bodies at the higher level as well as for the local court. To resolve conflicts arising between the nobles and the peasants, community justices were introduced locally, and special officials mediated these conflicts.

  Emancipation destroyed class boundaries and opened the way for further development of capitalist relations and a market economy. Those who were not able to pay the redemption fee and buy their land entered the market as a free labor force promoting further industrialization. Moreover, it had a great psychological impact on the general public, because, in principle at least, there remained no underprivileged classes, and formal civil equality was established. A new generation was to follow-not slaves but citizens. See also: ALEXANDER II; LAW CODE OF 1649; PEASANTRY; SERFDOM; SLAVERY

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  “The Emancipation Manifesto, March 3 1861.” (2003). «http://www.dur.ac.uk/~dml0www/emancipn .html» Emmons, Terrence. (1968). The Russian Landed Gentry and the Peasant Emancipation of 1861. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.. Emmons Terrence, ed. (1970). Emancipation of the Russian Serfs. New York: International Thomson Publishing. Field, Daniel. (1976). The End of Serfdom: Nobility and Bureaucracy in Russia, 1855-1861. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Hellie, Richard. (1982). Slavery in Russia, 1450-1725. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Seton-Watson, Hugh. (1967). The Russian Empire, 1801-1917. Oxford: Oxford University Press.