Encyclopedia of Russian History

by James Millar

  An influential proponent of forced collectivization, Kaganovich advocated harsh repression of the rich peasants, or kulaks, in the late 1920s. During the grain procurement campaign of 1932, Kagano-vich headed a commission that was sent to the North Caucasus to speed up grain collection. On November 2 his commission adopted a resolution that called for the violent breakup of kulak sabotage networks and the use of terror to break the resistance of rural communists. The result was the arrest of thousands and the deportation of tens of thousands of rural inhabitants.

  His belief in the efficacy of coercion led him to develop a strategy that called for indiscriminate mass repression of workers as a way to increase productivity and punish what he considered anti-Soviet actions in industry. As commissar of transport, Kaganovich was particularly hard on railway men, calling for the death sentence for various offenses that might lead to the breakdown of Soviet transport plans. He devised the so-called theory of counterrevolutionary limit setting on output that he used to destroy hundreds of engineering and technical cadres.

  In the Great Purges (1936-1938) Kaganovich took the extreme position that the Party’s interests justified everything. In the summer of 1937 Kaganovich was sent to carry out purges of local Party organizations in Chelyabinsk, Yaroslavl, Ivanovo, and Smolensk. Throughout 1936 and 1937 he also had all his deputies, nearly all road chiefs and political section chiefs, and many other officials in transport arrested without any grounds whatsoever. In August 1937 he demanded that the NKVD (secret police) arrest ten officials in the People’s Commissariat of Transport because he thought their behavior suspicious. All were arrested as spies and shot. He ultimately had thirty-eight transport executives and thousands of Party members arrested.

  Following Stalin’s death in 1953, Kaganovich opposed Nikita Khrushchev’s proposal to admit errors committed by the Party under Stalin’s leadership. He remained an oppositionist, eventually allying with Georgy Malenkov, Vyacheslav Molo-tov, and Dmitry Shepilov, in the so-called Anti-Party Group that attempted to remove Khrushchev from power in 1957. Following the failed coup, Kaganovich was removed from his position as deputy prime minister and assigned to managing a potash works in Perm oblast. He died there of natural causes in 1991. See also: COLLECTIVIZATION OF AGRICULTURE; KULAKS; PURGES, THE GREAT; STALIN, JOSEF VISSARIONOVICH

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  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Conquest, Robert. (1990). The Great Terror: A Reassessment. New York: Oxford University Press. Courtois, Stephane, et al. (1999). The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Crankshaw, Edward. (1970). Khrushchev Remembers. Boston: Little, Brown. Kahn, Stuart. (1987). The Wolf of the Kremlin. New York: Morrow.

  KATE TRANSCHEL

  KAL 007

  On September 1, 1983, a Soviet SU-15 shot a Korean civilian 747 airliner from the sky. All 269 passengers on board perished. Korean authorities publicly stated the plane had mistakenly strayed off its intended course by some 365 miles. This was caused by a technical error programmed into the inertial navigation system by the plane’s pilot, according to Korean authorities. Unfortunately, the plane entered Soviet territory over the Kamchatka peninsula where submarines were located and, on the night of the flight, a secret test of an SS-25 Soviet missile reportedly was planned. A U.S. RC-135 spy plane was in the area, and it is assumed the Soviets believed they were destroying the RC-135 or a civilian version of a spy plane. Soviet Colonel Gennadi Osipovich was the pilot given the responsibility of challenging and eventually shooting and destroying Korean Airlines flight 007. Osipovich recalled in a 1996 interview in the New York Times how he pulled alongside the airliner and recognized in the dark the configuration of windows indicating a civilian airliner. He believed this civilian airliner could have a military use and believes to this day, according to the interview, that the plane was on a spy mission. He regrets not shooting the plane down over land so that such proof could be recovered. If Osipovich had waited another twenty to twenty-five seconds to destroy the plane, KAL 007 would have been over neutral territory, which most likely would have averted the incident. A serious U.S.-Soviet diplomatic fallout ensued. See also: KOREA, RELATIONS WITH

  TIMOTHY THOMAS

  KALININGRAD

  At the 1945 Potsdam Conference, the Western allies acceded to Josef Stalin’s demand that the northern third of East Prussia be awarded to the Soviet Union. He provided two justifications for the transfer of the territory that would be renamed Kaliningrad: The USSR needed an ice-free port on the Baltic Sea, and, through the annexation, the Germans would compensate the Soviet people for the millions of lives they lost at the hands of the Nazi invaders. The American president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and the British prime minister, Winston Churchill, said in the Potsdam Protocol that the transfer of territory was contingent upon a final peace treaty; this treaty was never signed by the Allied and Axis powers.

  The Prussians, who originally occupied the area, lost their lands after the Teutonic Knights invaded the southern shores of the Baltic littoral in the thirteenth century. By the seventeenth century, the Prussians-cousins to the Latvians and Lithuanians, all of whom spoke a closely related language-disappeared as a nation, and the German invaders henceforth adopted the name “Prussians.”

  Russians never lived in East Prussia, although in 1758, during the Seven Years War, Russian troops briefly occupied the capital K?nigsberg and some surrounding territory. After World War I, the German province of East Prussia was created on this territory but was separated from the rest of Germany by the Polish Corridor. Poland was awarded the southern two-thirds of old East Prussia after World War II, and the Soviet Union took control of its northern third, about the size of Northern Ireland. Henceforth most of the German residents fled, or were forced from the area, and their farms and cities were occupied by migrants from other areas of the Soviet Union. Most were Russians and by the mid-1990s this westernmost Russian region had about 930,000 residents. About 80 percent lived in urban areas, the rest in the countryside.

  During the Cold War, Kaliningrad was a closed territory with a heavy military presence: The USSR’s Baltic Sea fleet was located there along with contingents of ground and air defense units. It was the first line of defense against an attack from the west and could be used simultaneously for offensive operations in a westward coup de main.

  With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Kaliningrad became an “exclave” of the Russian Fed717

  KALININ, MIKHAIL IVANOVICH

  eration (i.e., a geographical anomaly, since it was a political entity of Russia but surrounded by Lithuania, Poland, and the Baltic Sea). All land and rail routes to and from Kaliningrad to Russia henceforth had to traverse foreign borders.

  In the 1990s Kaliningrad was perceived simultaneously as a flash point of conflict with its neighbors and a gateway to Europe. The first perspective was based on the presence of large numbers of Russian troops, and on Russian fears that foreign interests (in Germany and Lithuania) claimed the oblast. By the late 1990s none of these latent points of conflict became manifest. According to U.S. government estimates, there were 25,000 Russian military personnel in the oblast, and no foreign government had claims on it.

  But Kaliningrad did not become a gateway to Europe either. On the contrary: Afflicted by daunting economic, political, and social problems, Kaliningrad was described by Western observers as a “black hole” in the center of Europe. Today the oblast no longer receives the heavy subsidies it enjoyed during the Soviet era, and it has experienced greater dips in its agricultural and manufacturing sectors than other Russian regions. To make matters worse, the region’s residents and political leadership complained that the authorities in Moscow have ignored them, or have adopted conflicting policies that have exacerbated the oblast’s economic problems.

  To attract domestic and foreign investment, first a “free” and then a “special” economic zone was created. But Moscow’s failure to enact enabling legislation, or
to change existing laws, have undercut the zones. After Russia’s August 1998 fiscal crisis, Kaliningrad’s economic situation deteriorated further. By 2000 the European Union indicated that it was prepared to address the “Kaliningrad Question” through its Northern Dimension-a development plan for Russia’s northwestern regions-but they received mixed signals from Moscow.

  Russian authorities expressed concern that Kalin-ingraders would suffer once Poland and Lithuania entered the EU and adopted stricter border controls. Also, while President Vladimir Putin indicated that he desired closer ties with Europe, his representatives in Moscow and Kaliningrad were slow to adopt a common approach toward the oblast’s problems. By the fall of 2002, however, the EU and Russia reached an agreement on providing transit documents (and a sealed train) to facilitate travel to and from Kaliningrad to Russia through Lithuania.

  Many European and American analysts believe that Kaliningrad can serve as a test case and demonstrate how the West might help Russia in its drive to build a democratic and capitalist society. See also: ECONOMY, POST-SOVIET; PRUSSIA, RELATIONS WITH

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Fairlie, Lyndell D., and Sergounin, Alexander. (2001). Are Borders Barriers? Helsinki: The Finnish Institute of International Affairs. Joenniemi, Perti, and Prawitz, Ian, eds. (1998). Kaliningrad: The European Amber Region. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate. Krickus, Richard J. (2002). The Kaliningrad Question. Lan-ham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.

  RICHARD J. KRICKUS

  KALININ, MIKHAIL IVANOVICH

  (1875-1946), Bolshevik, president of the USSR in 1922.

  Active in the Russian Social Democratic Party from 1898, Mikhail Kalinin was an Old Bolshevik who held numerous important positions, including chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee (1919) and president of the USSR (1922).

  Born of peasant parents in Tver Province, Kalinin moved to St. Petersburg in 1889 and found employment at the Putilov factory. Kalinin’s peasant origins and experience as a skilled industrial worker made him an attractive representative of the Communist Party. After the October Revolution in 1917, he became the chief administrator in Petrograd. He quickly rose to prominence as a member of the party’s Central Committee from 1919, a full member of the Politburo from 1925, and chair of commissions to prepare Soviet constitutions in 1923 and 1936.

  In defense of the New Economic Policy (NEP), Kalinin allied with Josef Stalin against Leon Trotsky and the Left Opposition in struggles for power following Vladimir Lenin’s death. When Stalin switched sides, adopting the Left’s program of forced collectivization of agriculture, Kalinin sided

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  KALMYKS

  with Nikolai Bukharin in advocating moderation. Urging a conciliatory approach toward the peasantry, Kalinin opposed harsh treatment of the kulaks. While never publicly criticizing Stalin, Kalinin expressed reservations about the terror of the 1930s. He continued to serve the party as a propagandist until the end of World War II, and was one of the few Old Bolsheviks to survive the Stalinist purges. On June 3, 1946, Kalinin died of cancer. See also: BOLSHEVISM; CONSTITUTION OF 1936

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Kalinin, M. I. (1950). On Communist Education: Selected Speeches and Articles. Moscow: Foreign Languages Pub. House.

  KATE TRANSCHEL

  KALMYKS

  The Kalmyks, who call themselves the Khalmg, are descendants of the Oyrats people originating from western Mongolia (Jungaria). These were nomadic tribes, kindred to the Mongols in material culture, language, and religion. Today, most Kalmyks live in Kalmykia (the Republic of Kalmykia), which is one of the twenty-one nationality based republics of the Russian Federation recognized in the 1993 Russian Constitution. Kalmykia (about 29,400 square miles) is located in southeastern Russia on the northwestern shore of the Caspian Sea. Its capital, Elista, has more than 90,000 residents. Salt lakes abound in the region, but Kalmykia lacks permanent waterways. Lying in the vast depression of the north Caspian lowland, the territory consists largely of steppe and desert areas.

  In 2000 roughly 314,300 people lived in Kalmykia. Its population was 45 percent Kalmyk, 38 percent Russian, 6 percent Dagestani, 3 percent Chechen, 2 percent Kazak, and 2 percent German. Representatives of the Torgut, Dorbet, and Buzawa tribes also inhabit the republic. In contrast to some of the other non-Russian languages spoken in the Russian Federation, the Kalmyk language (Kalmukian) has been classified as an “endangered language” by UNESCO due to the declining number of active speakers. Very few children learn the language, and those who do are not likely to become active users. Another characteristic that distinguishes the Kalmyks from many non-Russian nationalities is their long and tortuous past. Due to the deficit of pasture lands and to feudal internecine dissension, the Oyrat tribes migrated westward from Chinese Turkistan to the steppes west of the mouth of the Volga River in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Between 1608 and 1609, the Oyrats pledged their allegiance to the Russian tsar. As allies, they guarded the Russian Empire’s eastern frontier during the reign of Peter I (the Great), from 1682 to 1725. Under Catherine II, however, the Kalmyks’ fortune changed, and they became vassals. Unhappy with this situation, about 300,000 Kalmyks living east of the Volga began to return to China, but were attacked en route by Russian, Kazakh, and Kyrgyz warriors. Another group residing west of the Volga had remained in Russia, adopting a seminomadic lifestyle and practicing Lamaist Buddhism. They became known as the Kalmyk, which in Turkish means “remnant,” referring to those who stayed behind.

  In 1920 the Kalmyk autonomous oblast (province) was established, which became the Kalmyk Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (ASSR) in 1934. However, the Kalmyks’ status shifted radically again when, in 1943, Josef Stalin dissolved the republic and deported some 170,000 Kalmyks to Siberia. He sought to punish the Kalmyk units who had fought the Russians in collaboration with the Germans. Stalin forcibly resettled a total of more than 1.5 million people, including the Volga Germans and six other nationalities of the Crimea and northern Caucasus: the Crimean Tatars, Chechens, Ingush, Balkars, Karachai, and Meskhetians. Other minorities evicted from the Black Sea coastal region included Bulgarians, Greeks, and Armenians.

  Things improved for the Kalmyks when in 1956 Stalin’s successor, Nikita Khrushchev, denounced the earlier deportation as criminal and permitted about 6,000 Kalmyks to return the following year. The Kalmyk ASSR was officially reestablished in 1958. Thirty-five years later, the Russian Constitution of 1993 officially recognized the Republic of Kalmykia (Khalmg Tangch). That year, Kirsan Ilyumzhinov won the first presidential elections in the new republic. His program focused on socioeconomic improvements and the revival of Kalmyk language. See also: CONSTITUTION OF 1993; NATIONALITIES POLICIES, SOVIET; NATIONALITIES POLICIES, TSARIST

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  KAMENEV, LEV BORISOVICH

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Amitai-Preiss, Reuven, and David Morgan. (2000). The Mongol Empire and Its Legacy. Leiden: E. J. Brill. Bormanshinov, Arash. (1991). The Lamas of the Kalmyk People: The Don Kalmyk Lamas. Bloomington: Indiana University, Research Institute for Inner Asian Studies. Hammer, Darrell P. (1997). Russia Irredenta: Soviet National Policy Reappraised. Washington, DC: National Council for Soviet and East European Research. Kappeler, Andreas. (2001). The Russian Empire: A Multiethnic History. New York: Longman. Nekrich, A. M. (1978). The Punished Peoples: The Deportation and Fate of Soviet Minorities at the End of the Second World War. New York: Norton. Warhola, James W. (1996). Politicized Ethnicity in the Russian Federation: Dilemmas of State Formation. Lewiston, ME: Edwin Mellen Press.

  JOHANNA GRANVILLE

  KAMENEV, LEV BORISOVICH

  (1883-1836), Bolshevik leader, Soviet state official, purged and executed under Stalin.

  Born July 18, 1883, in Moscow and raised in Tbilisi, Lev Borisovich Rosenfeld entered the revolutionary movement while studying law at Moscow University. In 1901 he joined the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (RSDLP) and adopted the pseudonym Kamenev (“man of stone”). In 1903 the RSDLP split in
to two factions, and Kamenev aligned himself with the Bolsheviks and Vladimir Ulyanov (Lenin). Kamenev’s revolutionary activities brought several arrests and brief periods of exile. During the 1905 Revolution, Kamenev proved an outstanding orator and organizer. In 1908 he joined Lenin’s inner circle in exile, then led the Bolshevik faction in Russia’s State Duma. In November 1914, tsarist police arrested Kamenev for endorsing Lenin’s “defeatist” position on the war and exiled him to Siberia.

  The February 1917 Revolution brought Kamenev back to Petrograd. He initially rejected Lenin’s “April Thesis” and on the Bolshevik Central Committee (CC) opposed the idea of seizing power. Instead he endorsed an all-socialist coalition government. On October 23, 1917, the CC endorsed Lenin’s call for insurrection; Kamenev balked. He resigned from the CC on October 29, but rejoined it during the October Revolution and became chair of the Central Executive Committee of Soviets (CEC). Still he pursued an all-socialist coalition. Because the CC rejected these efforts, Kamenev again quit on November 17, 1917. He also resigned from the CEC, on November 21, 1917, after the Council of People’s Commissars (Sovnarkom) issued decrees without CEC approval. Kamenev recanted on December 12, 1917, and rejoined the CC in March 1918.

  Afterward, Kamenev held high-level government and Party positions, including chair of the Moscow Soviet (1919-January 1926), and memberships on the Sovnarkom (1922-1926), the Council of Labor and Defense (1922-1926), the CC (1918-1926), and the Politburo (1919-1926). A “triumvirate” of Kamenev, Grigory Zinoviev, and Josef Stalin assumed tacit control of the Party and state in 1923, as Lenin lay dying, and engaged in a fierce campaign of mutual incrimination against Leon Trotsky over economic policy and bureau-cratization. By January 1925 the triumvirate had defeated Trotsky’s Left Opposition, but a rift emerged pitting Kamenev and Zinoviev against Stalin and the Politburo’s right wing. In December 1925, Kamenev criticized Stalin’s dictatorial tendencies at the Fourteenth Party Congress; this led to his condemnation as a member of the New Opposition. Demoted to candidate Politburo status, Kamenev was stripped of important state posts. In the spring of 1926, he and Zinoviev joined Trotsky in a United Opposition, criticizing the CC majority’s “pro-peasant” version of the New Economic Policy. The majority stripped him of Politburo membership in October 1926. The United Opposition continued in vain through 1927; the majority removed Kamenev from the CC on November 14, and the Party’s Fifteenth Congress expelled him on December 2, 1927. In ritual self-abnegation, he recanted and was readmitted to the Party in June 1928. He subsequently held minor posts, and faced the threat of arrest.