by James Millar
In 1847, urged by Ogarev from abroad to escape the dictatorial regime of Nicholas I, Herzen managed to overcome political obstacles to his emigration and leave Russia, as it later turned out, forever. He traveled across continental Europe, witnessed the failure of the French Revolution of 1848, and invested in a radical newspaper edited by Proudhon that was soon to be shut down. He developed a bitter critique of European capitalism, which he denounced for its Philistine depravity and wickedness. In his view, even the promise of socialism was hardly a cure for corruption of what one would call today the consumer society. This new outlook reinforced the Russo-centric element of his populism (although never reconciling him with Russian domestic oppression), and was reflected in his major writings of the period, including Letters from France and Italy, published over the period from 1847 to 1854; On the Development of Revolutionary Ideas in Russia, published in 1851; and Russian People and Socialism, published in 1851.
In 1852 Herzen moved from Nice to London, which became his home until the end of his life. He set up the first publishing house devoted to Russian political dissent, printing revolutionary leaflets, his journal Polyarnaya zvezda (Polar Star), and, finally, his pivotal periodical, Kolokol (The Bell), which he published between 1857 and 1867. This brought Herzen great fame in Russia, where the liberal atmosphere of Alexander II’s Great Reforms allowed Herzen’s works to be distributed, albeit illicitly, across the country. Kolokol’s initial agenda advocated the emancipation of the serfs and played a major role in shaping social attitudes such that emancipation became inevitable.
Although living in London, Herzen often spoke out publicly on key issues of the day, addressing his remarks directly to Tsar Alexander II, at times positioning himself as a mediator between the authorities and the liberal and radical elements of Russian society, but identifying firmly with the latter. After 1861, however, his ?migr? politics were rapidly overtaken by growing radicalism within Russia, and he was increasingly treated with condescension by the younger activists as being out of touch with the new realities. The crackdown on the Polish rebellion by tsarist troops in 1863 and the ensuing conservative tilt in Russia marked the twilight of Herzen’s public career. He died in Paris in 1870, and was buried in Nice. Over time he became a symbolic founding figure of Russia’s democratic movement, broadly conceived to include its different and often widely divergent ideological and political traditions. In this, his reputation is similar to Pushkin’s standing within Russian literature. He is best remembered for his ability to synthesize a variety of anti-authoritarian currents, from liberal and libertarian to revolutionary-socialist and Rus-sophile populist, whose mutual contradictions were not as clearly evident in his time as they became in later years.
Among his many literary works, which range from fiction to philosophy and politics, the central place is occupied by My Past and Thoughts, which was written between 1852 and 1866. This is a personal, political, and intellectual autobiography, into which he injected a wide-ranging discussion and analysis of the major developments of his time in Russia and Europe. See also: DISSIDENT MOVEMENT; POPULISM; SOCIALIST REVOLUTIONARIES; WESTERNIZERS
HIGHER PARTY SCHOOL
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Herzen, Alexander. (1979). The Russian People and Socialism, tr. Richard Wollheim. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Herzen, Alexander. (1989). From the Other Shore, tr. Moura Budberg. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Herzen, Alexander. (1999). My Past and Thoughts, tr. Constance Garnett. Berkeley: University of California Press. Herzen, Alexander, and Zimmerman, Judith E. (1996). Letters from France and Italy, 1847-1851. Pitt Series in Russian and East European Studies, No 25. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press. Malia, Martin. (1961). Alexander Herzen and the Birth of Russian Socialism, 1812-1855. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Venturi Franco. (2001). Roots of Revolution, revised ed., tr. Francis Haskell. London: Phoenix Press. Walicki, Andrzej. (1969). The Controversy over Capitalism: Studies in the Social Philosophy of the Russian Populists. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
DMITRI GLINSKI
HIGHER PARTY SCHOOL
The Higher Party School was created in 1939 under the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. It was tasked with training future leaders (known in Soviet parlance as “cadres”) for Party and state positions. The purpose was to prepare them for propaganda work with the masses and for supervising managers and state officials, while ensuring their political loyalty or partynost (Party-mindedness). In 1978 it was merged with the Academy of Social Sciences, which provided more advanced training. A similar Higher School was created for the Young Communist League (Komsomol) in 1969. Party officials under the age of forty were selected by the Communist Party and came to the main school in Moscow from across the Soviet Union for a two-year training program that was long on Marx, Lenin, and the latest Party edicts and short on practical skills. For leaders from the non-Russian republics, attendance provided important exposure to life in the Soviet capital. With the general erosion of ideology in the Brezhnev era, the Party became increasingly concerned about the efficacy of its ideological training, so funding for Party education was increased.
Selection for the school was an important step in the career ladder for would-be members of the higher Party nomenklatura. Living conditions at the school were comfortable, and it provided an opportunity to meet senior Party officials and to network with one’s peers, connections that could be useful in one’s future career. The Moscow school had about 120 faculty and 300 students per year; it also had 22 regional branches that ran shorter seminars and correspondence courses for Communist leaders at every level in the Party hierarchy, including the heads of regional and city councils (soviets). Some of these schools provided remedial education for Party cadres who had missed out on higher education. In the 1980s one in three of the regional (obkom) party secretaries had passed through the Higher Party School; its graduates included General Secretary Yuri Andropov. Ironically Vyacheslav Shostakovsky, the school’s rector, was one of the leaders of the Democratic Platform movement that in 1990 called for the Communist Party to relinquish its monopoly of power. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the network of Party schools turned themselves into colleges of management and public administration. The premises of the Higher Party School itself are now occupied by the Russian State Humanities University. See also: CADRES POLICY; COMMUNIST PARTY OF THE SOVIET UNION
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Rutland, Peter. (1992). The Politics of Economic Stagnation in the Soviet Union. New York: Cambridge University Press.
PETER RUTLAND
HILARION, METROPOLITAN
(Eleventh century; exact dates unknown), first native of Rus to be metropolitan of Kiev, author of the Sermon on Law and Grace.
Very little biographical information is known about Hilarion. In the Russian Primary Chronicle under 1051 it is reported that Prince Yaroslav of Kiev assembled the bishops in St. Sophia Cathedral and appointed Hilarion, a Carpatho-Rusyn (native of Rus), as metropolitan bishop. He is described as a devout man, learned in the Scriptures, and an ascetic, who served as one of Yaroslav’s priests in the church of the Holy Apostles at Berestovo, a favorite princely residence located just south of Kiev.
HIS MAJESTY’S OWN CHANCERY
While a priest, Hilarion selected a spot on a hill above the Dnieper not far from Berestovo where he dug a small cave in which to chant the hours and pray to God in solitude. This cave was later occupied by Anthony of the Caves and served as the foundation for the Caves Monastery of Kiev. Hi-larion was the first native of Rus to be metropolitan. The only other Carpatho-Rusyn to serve as metropolitan in Kievan Rus was Klim Smolyatich in the twelfth century. Scholars have long debated Yaroslav’s motives for appointing Hilarion, and many maintain that the decision reflects an anti-Byzantine bias. There is no condemnation of the appointment in Byzantine sources, however, and Yaroslav’s purpose remains unclear. There is much speculation but no concrete information for Hilar-ion’s biography after his appointment. All
that is known is that the First Novgorod Chronicle mentions a new metropolitan by 1055. Whether Hilarion’s tenure survived his patron Yaroslav (d. 1054) is not known.
Hilarion’s most significant contribution to Kievan culture is his Sermon on Law and Grace. A master of rhetoric and the oratorical tradition, Hi-larion expressed the pride of his newly converted nation as it joined the Christian community, and celebrated its past achievements. Utilizing the familiar Biblical contrast between law and grace, Hi-larion began by emphasizing the gift of grace through Christ, which ended humankind’s subservience to the law and through which Rus was converted. In the second part of the sermon, Hi-larion turned his attention to the apostle of Rus, Vladimir I, as well as to the works of his son, Yaroslav.
Scholars have often seen an anti-Jewish bias or evidence of a struggle with Byzantium in the sermon. There is little evidence of either, however, and it is best read as a sophisticated and effective attempt to establish the place of Rus in sacred history by moving from theological doctrine to the specific pious actions of the Kievan princes.
Although a number of works have been attributed to Hilarion, only the sermon and a confession of faith followed by a postscript can with any certainty be ascribed to his pen. See also: CAVES MONASTERY; YAROSLAV VLADIMIROVICH
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Franklin, Simon. (1991). Sermons and Rhetoric of Kievan Rus’. Cambridge, MA: Ukrainian Research Institute of Harvard University. The Russian Primary Chronicle: Laurentian Text. (1953). Edited and translated by Samuel Hazzard Cross and Olgerd. P. Sherbowitz-Wetzor. Cambridge, MA: The Mediaeval Academy of America.
DAVID K. PRESTEL
HIS MAJESTY’S OWN CHANCERY
His Majesty’s Own Chancery was formally founded by Paul I (r. 1796-1801) in 1796. Centralizing power further, Nicholas I (r. 1825-1855) greatly expanded the Chancery’s power and role in government, placing it above the regular bureaucracy and under his direct control. As the Russian bureaucracy grew during the nineteenth century, the emperors struggled to maintain personal control over it and to have it carry out the imperial will. The Chancery was one solution to this problem. It provided a mechanism for greater monarchical control over government and society, and it gave the emperor the opportunity to bypass bureaucratic inertia.
In 1826 two departments were added to the Chancery. The First Section prepared documents and papers for the emperor’s review and supervised the bureaucracy’s personnel. The Second Section worked on the codification of the empire’s laws, resulting in the publication in 1832 of The Fundamental Laws of the Russian Empire. After the death of Empress Maria Fedorovna in 1828, a Fourth Section was established to handle her sizeable charitable endowments. In 1836, a Fifth Section studied the conditions under which the state peasants lived, and implemented reforms designed to improve them. In contrast to serfs, who were owned by the nobility, state peasants belonged to the emperor, which gave the government greater flexibility in regard to reform. More importantly, its research became the basis for the emancipation of the serfs legislation that was passed by Alexander II in 1861. In 1842, a Sixth Section was charged with the establishment of Russian administrative control in the Caucasus. These last two sections had a relatively short existence, and were closed when the tasks assigned to them were completed.
The Third Section, founded in 1826, became the most famous-or infamous-part of the Chancery, because of its police and supervisory functions that were equivalent to an internal intelligence service. It was a relatively effective state organ for the collection and analysis of information and for the implementation of the emperor’s will. Five subsections
HISTORICAL SONGS
handled wide ranging duties. The first of these was the most secret, and probably the most important from the government’s point of view. It conducted investigations into political crimes, and maintained surveillance of society, and it kept watch on groups and individuals that were deemed politically unreliable. After the revolutions of 1848 in several European countries, its activities intensified, reflecting the government’s, and Nicholas’s, growing fear of penetration of radical revolutionary ideas into Russia. A second subsection handled corruption and crime within the state apparatus. The third kept an eye on foreigners living in Russia. The fourth managed and controlled relations between peasants and landowners. Censorship and control over printed matter was assigned to the fifth subsection.
The Third Section also had an executive body known as the Gendarme Corps, who were personal representatives of the emperor. Members of the corps were assigned to individual governorships and large cities, where they played the role of arbiter between society and local governments while supervising both. The corps provided the emperor with reliable information on the condition of his empire. Nicholas could not completely control the bureaucratic machine that was his Chancery, however. For example, the Third Section maintained surveillance on the heir to the throne, Grand Duke Konstantin Nikolaevich, illegally and without his or the emperor’s knowledge.
In the 1880s, the Chancery underwent serious reorganization. Many of its functions were transferred to the ministries and the central bureaucracy. The Ministry of the Interior took over many of the responsibilities of the Third Section. The Gendarme Corps remained in existence until 1917 as an elite police force, but its central position did not survive after the death of Nicholas I. By the reign of Nicholas II, His Majesty’s Own Chancery handled only questions related to promotions and pensions of bureaucrats. See also: NICHOLAS I
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Lincoln, W. Bruce. (1978). Nicholas I: Emperor and Autocrat of all the Russias. London: Indiana University Press. Saunders, David. (1992). Russia in the Age of Reaction and Reform. London: Routledge. Seton-Watson, Hugh. (1991). The Russian Empire 1801- 1917. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Yaney, George. (1973). The Systemization of Russian Government. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
ZHAND P. SHAKIBI
HISTORICAL SONGS
Folklorists apply this term to certain Russian oral epic songs tracing to a later period than the type of the bylina and dealing with known historical persons and events. Although Soviet specialists attempted to find earlier examples, the historical song as people know it most probably arose in Muscovy in the sixteenth century; the first clear examples have to do with the reign of Tsar Ivan IV but appear to have been composed somewhat after it. Historical songs are typically shorter than the bylina but continue many features of oral epic composition, including prosody. In place of the larger-than-life bogatyr, the hero of a historical song is often a common soldier or cossack. In this folklore genre from a relatively late period observers have one of their best opportunities to see how historical events became adapted and transformed in the minds of simple Russian people. What they produced were imaginative, poetic treatments of problems, persons, and happenings.
Two outstanding songs concerning Ivan the Terrible and known in many collected variants are those called “The Conquest of Kazan” and “The Wrath of Ivan the Terrible against His Son.” Both stress the dangerous anger of the tsar, which may explode suddenly like the gunpowder that breached the wall of Kazan during the Russian siege of 1552. In the second instance it is turned against his own son, a tsarevich whom he suspects of treason. The offending parties have to be saved by a third person who risks his own life by speaking up to the tsar and is the real hero of the song. Historians have tried to associate “The Wrath of Ivan the Terrible against His Son” with the sack of Novgorod in 1570, but the imperfect fit with history brings out the fact that songs often embodied only a popular conception of the spirit of events. Ivan IV emerges as both a fearful and a respected ruler.
Seventeenth-century historical songs include themes associated with the Time of Troubles: the supposed murder of Tsarevich Dmitry, a lament of Ksenia Godunova, the rise of pretender Grishka Otrepiev, the assassination of Mikhailo Skopin-Shuisky. Stenka Razin’s reputation naturally inspired a number of songs later in the century. From
HISTORIOGRAP
HY
the eighteenth century, there is a cycle about Peter the Great that depicts him as a people’s tsar who mingled with the common folk. A development from the historical songs were the so-called cossack songs and soldier songs, usually still shorter and sung rather than chanted. Although examples of historical songs are claimed even from the mid-nineteenth century, the genre was clearly dying out. See also: BYLINA; FOLKLORE; FOLK MUSIC; MUSIC
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Chadwick, N. Kershaw. (1964). Russian Heroic Poetry, reprint ed. New York: Russell amp; Russell. Stief, Carl. (1953). Studies in the Russian Historical Song. Copenhagen: Rosenkilde amp; Bagger.
NORMAN W. INGHAM
HISTORIOGRAPHY
Historiography is the writing of history, the aggregation of historical compositions. The establishment of history as a modern scholarly discipline in Russia dates back to the end of the seventeenth and the first half of the eighteenth centuries. At the order of Peter the Great, the accumulation of historical sources began with the translation of works of Western European historians such as Samuel Pufendorf. Compositions that justified the tsar’s activity and, in particular, the reasons behind the Northern War were recounted by Peter’s companions, including Feofan Prokopovich and Petr Shafirov. The eminent Russian statesman and Historian of the first half of the eighteenth century, Vassily Tatischev, was influenced by rationalism. He understood history as a political history of the country. In Istoriia Rossiiskaia (Russian History, published after his death), he provided, for the first time, the classification of the periods of Russian history.
German historians were invited to work at the Academy of Sciences in the 1730s and 1740s, and they had a great impact on Russian historiography. Three of these Germans were particularly important: Gerhard Friedrich M?ller and Gottlieb Siegfried Bayer, who formulated what is known as Norman theory, and August Ludwig Schl?zer, who tried to reconstruct the original text of the earliest Russian chronicle, Povest Vremennykh Let (The Primary Russian Chronicle), in his work titled Nestor. Also important were the works of Major General Ivan Boltin, written in the 1780s and 1790s. Boltin proposed the idea of a comparative method of studying history, an approach that would take into account the cause-and-effect connection between historical events. A great impact on social conscience was made by Nikolai Karamzin’s Istoriia Gosudarstva Rossiiskogo (The history of the Russian state), published in twelve volumes between 1816 and 1829. This work was sold in enormous quantities, according to the time’s standards. While working on the History, Karamzin developed the modern Russian language. According to Alexander Pushkin, Russia was discovered by Karamzin, like America was discovered by Columbus. Methodologically, however, the belles-lettres style of Karamzin’s work did not suit the standards of historical science of the time. Karamzin proved that autocracy was vital for Russia, having proposed the thesis that the history of the people belongs to the tsar.