Encyclopedia of Russian History

by James Millar

  Born in Vologda region, Yerofei Khabarov began his career managing a saltworks for the famed Stroganov clan. He traveled throughout western Siberia in the 1620s. He moved on to the Yenisei River, then the Lena, in the 1630s. He invested in farmlands and local saltworks. He also developed useful ties to Vasily Poyarkov, the administrator of Yakutsk and an early explorer of the Amur River basin.

  In 1649 Khabarov turned to exploration. His goal was to follow up on Poyarkov’s earlier forays into the Amur region, seeking an easier and more reliable route than Poyarkov had been able to find. In March, Khabarov left Yakutsk with 150 men, following the Olekma River.

  Over the winter of 1650, Khabarov crossed the Yablonovy Range, reaching the Amur River soon after. He ruthlessly pacified the local tribe, the Daurs. He also established a garrison on the Amur. In his reports to Yakutsk and Moscow, Khabarov advocated conquest of the Amur, both for the river’s strategic importance and the region’s economic assets: grain, fish, and fur.

  In 1650 and 1651, Khabarov launched further assaults against the Daurs, expanding Russian control over the area, but with great violence. Khabarov founded Achansk, captured Albazin, and made his way down the Amur until the summer of 1651. By this point, he was encroaching on territory that China’s recently founded Manchu (Qing) Dynasty considered to be its sphere of influence. When the Daurs appealed to China for assistance, the Manchus attacked Achansk in the spring of 1652. Khabarov’s garrison was forced to withdraw, but for the moment, the Manchus did not press their advantage. Nonetheless, Russia and China would engage in many frontier struggles until the signing of the Treaty of Nerchinsk (1689).

  Meanwhile, word of Khabarov’s cruel treatment of the Daurs reached Russian authorities, and he was arrested in the fall of 1653. Khabarov was put on trial, but his services were considered valuable enough to have outweighed the abuses he had committed. He was exonerated and placed in command of the Siberian fortress of Ilimsk. In 1858 Russia’s new city at the juncture of the Amur and Ussuri rivers, Khabarovsk, was given his name. See also: CHINA, RELATIONS WITH; SIBERIA

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Bassin, Mark. (1999). Imperial Visions: Nationalist Imagination and Geographical Expansion in the Russian Far East, 1840-1865. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Bobrick, Benson. (1992). East of the Sun: The Epic Conquest and Tragic History of Siberia. New York: Poseidon. Lincoln, W. Bruce. (1993). Conquest of a Continent: Siberia and the Russians. New York: Random House.

  JOHN MCCANNON

  KHAKASS

  The Khakass Republic or Khakassia (23,855 square miles, 61,784 square kilometers) is an autonomous republic within the Russian Federation. Located in Krasnoyarsk Krai at the far northwestern end of the Altay Range in south-central Siberia, it differs from other Siberian republics in at least two ways. First, the Khakass, while Turkic speaking, are actually Orthodox Christians, not Muslims, Buddhists, or shamanists. Second, ethnic Russians outnumber the Khakass. In 1959, 48,000 Khakass were living in Khakassia, forming 12 percent of the total population. By 1979 there were 57,300 Khakass, forming 11.4 percent of the population. Ethnic Russians now constitute the remaining 80 to 90 percent of the population of Khakassia.

  The Khakass Republic extends along the left bank of the Yenisey River, upon the wooded slopes of Kuznetsk Ala-Tau and the Sayans, in the western portion of the Minusinsk depression. Lake Baikal lies 1,000 kilometers to the east. The Abakan (a tributary of the Yenisey) and Chulym rivers drain the area. The capital is Abakan and the next largest city is Chernogorsk (a coal-mining center). While the terrain in the southern and western regions is hilly, the northern and eastern parts of the region are flat, black-earth steppelands (the Abakan-Minusinsk Basin). The climate is continental, with the average temperatures between -15 and 21 degrees Celsius in January, and between 17 and 19 degrees Celsius in July.

  The origin of the name Khakass is in the word hagias (hjagas), which was used by the Chinese for an ancient tribe in the Sayan Mountains. Historically, the Khakass have gone by several different names: the Tatars of Minusinsk, the Tatars of Abakan, the Turks of Abakan, the Turks of the

  KHANTY

  Yenisey. The Khakass themselves call themselves by their own tribal names, including sagai, khas, pel-tyr, shor, koybal, and hyzyl-kizhi.

  The Khakass language belongs to the Uighur-Oguz group in the Eastern Hun branch of the Turkic languages. While the structure and the basic vocabulary of the Khakass language are of Turkic-Tatar origin, the language contains many loan words from the Chinese, Mongolian, and Russian languages.

  The first Russians arrived in Khakassia in the seventeenth century. The Khakass Autonomous Region was established in 1930. In 1992 the region became an official autonomous republic in the Russian Federation. Formerly nomadic herders, the Khakass now farm, hunt, or breed livestock. The republic produces timber, copper, iron ore, barite, gold, molybdenum, and tungsten. See also: NATIONALITIES POLICIES, SOVIET; SIBERIA

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Berdahl, Daphne, and Matti Bunzl. (2000). Altering States: Ethnographies of Transition in Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Gorenburg, Dmitry P. (2003). Minority Ethnic Mobilization in the Russian Federation. New York: Cambridge University Press. Petroff, Serge. (2000). Remembering a Forgotten War: Civil War in Eastern European Russia and Siberia, 1918-1920. New York: Columbia University Press. Raleigh, Donald J. (2001). Provincial Landscapes: Local Dimensions of Soviet Power, 1917-1953. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.

  JOHANNA GRANVILLE

  KHALKIN-GOL, BATTLE OF

  In the late 1930s, as events pushed the world inexorably toward war, the Soviet Union and Japan clashed several times over the precise location of their borders. The most serious of these incidents, occurring from May to September of 1939, took place in Mongolia, by a river named Khalkhin-Gol. Soviet forces crossed the river to assert their sovereignty over a disputed tract of land and ran into serious resistance from the Japanese Sixth Army. The Japanese believed that the river marked the border and had just been ordered to treat any incursions with the utmost severity. They launched a series of attacks against the Mongolian and Soviet troops and eventually managed to push back the initial advance. Stalin and his advisors, already convinced that the Japanese army wanted to seize Siberia for its natural resources, decided that this was the great attack they feared. In response, they gave the commander on the scene, Georgy Kon-stantinovich Zhukov, all the tanks, aircraft, and manpower he would need to deal with the threat.

  Zhukov put together a major offensive that would not only drive the Japanese from Mongolia, but also take the disputed land irrevocably for the Soviet satellite. By the time he was ready for his attack, at the end of August, his forces outnumbered the Japanese two to one, and he had far more tanks and artillery than the Japanese could muster. His strategy, which called for the envelopment and destruction of the enemy, worked as planned, and the Japanese army suffered heavy casualties. The Japanese commander, Michitaro Ko-matsubara, refused to accept the outcome of the battle, however, and had prepared a counteroffen-sive. This was canceled when a cease-fire was signed in Moscow. War had broken out in Europe, and neither country could afford to be distracted by minor clashes on their borders. The battle at Khalkhin-Gol convinced the Japanese army that a fight with the Soviets would be a long, drawn-out affair, and helped the Japanese empire make the decision to turn southward in 1941, rather than attack Siberia. See also: JAPAN, RELATIONS WITH; ZHUKOV, GEORGY KONSTANTINOVICH

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Coox, Alvin. (1985). Nomonhan. Japan against Russia, 1939. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Zhukov, Georgy. (1971). The Memoirs of Marshal Zhukov. New York: Delacorte Press.

  MARY R. HABECK

  KHANTY

  The Khanty people live in western Siberia from the Arctic Circle in the north to the conflux of the Irtysh and Tavda rivers in the south. The Khanty are mainly concentrated in the Khanty-Mansiysk autonomous okrug, with the administrative center Khanty-Mansiy
sk (population 34,300 in 1995).

  KHASBULATOV, RUSLAN IMRANOVICH

  The Khanty also live in the Yamal-Nenets autonomous okrug and in Tomsk oblast. According to the Soviet 1989 census, the total population of the Khanty numbered 22,521.

  In the beginning of the eighteenth century, Khanty were baptized by Russian Orthodox missionaries. However, Khanty have followed their native religion until the present time. According to Khanty cosmology, there exist several layers of Heaven and Underworld and seven main gods, the most powerful of whom is Numi Torum. Shamans are mediators between gods and humans.

  The Khanty language belongs to the Ob-Ugrian branch of the Finno-Ugric language family of Uralic language stock. Standardized written language based on the Latin alphabet was introduced in the 1930s. In 1940 it was transferred into the Cyrillic system. According to the All-Union census data as of 1989, the knowledge of native language among the Khanty was 60.5 percent.

  Traditionally, the Khanty were divided between two phratries and several clans. Political leaders of the Khanty were clan elders and princes who collected taxes for Tsarist authorities and were responsible for native administration and court. During the Soviet period this native political structure was abolished.

  The Khanty are seminomadic hunters, fishers, and reindeer breeders. During the Soviet period, animal husbandry, fur farming, and agriculture were introduced as small-scale enterprises.

  From the eleventh century, the Khanty traded and had armed conflicts with Russians from Novgorod. Between the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries, the Khanty payed tribute to the Siberian Khanate. At the end of the sixteenth century the Khanty were conquered by Russia. The most serious change in Khanty recent history was the collectivization campaign in the 1930s. Between 1933 and 1934, the Khanty rebelled against the Soviets in what is known as the Kazym War. After the 1980s the native political movement expanded, mainly concentrating around the Association for the Salvation of the Ugra (founded in 1989). See also: NATIONALITIES POLICIES, SOVIET; NATIONALITIES POLICIES, TSARIST; NORTHERN PEOPLES; SIBERIA

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Balzer, Marjorie Mandelstam. (1999). The Tenacity of Ethnicity: A Siberian Saga in Global Perspective. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Prokof’yeva, E. D.; Chernetsov, V. N.; and Prytkova, N. E. (1964). “The Khants and Mansi.” In The Peoples of Siberia, ed. M. G. Levin, L. P. Potapov. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Taagepera, Rein. (1999). The Finno-Ugric Republics and the Russian State. London: Hurst.

  ART LEETE

  KHASBULATOV, RUSLAN IMRANOVICH

  (b. 1942), economist, Russian legislator.

  Ruslan Khasbulatov studied at Kazakh State University and Moscow State University (MGU), where he was active in the Komsomol and joined the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) in 1966. He earned a doctorate in economics from MGU in 1970. Khasbulatov spent the 1970s and 1980s working at the Academy of Sciences’s Institute of Scientific Information and the Scientific Research Institute for Questions of Secondary Schools. He transferred to the Plekhanov Institute for Economic Management in 1979, eventually becoming chair of the division of Economy of Foreign Countries.

  In 1990 Khasbulatov was elected to the first RSFSR (Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic) Congress of People’s Deputies. When the Congress elected Yeltsin as chair, he picked Khasbulatov as his first deputy (May 1990). Following Yeltsin’s election to the newly created Russian presidency, Khasbulatov became speaker of parliament (October 1991).

  Khasbulatov opposed the amount of power that devolved to Yeltsin after the collapse of the Soviet Union. He also opposed Yeltsin’s economic policy of shock therapy and the privatization campaigns. As Yeltsin’s team drafted a new Russian constitution, Khasbulatov spearheaded a parliamentary effort to reduce Yeltsin’s authority and more equitably redistribute powers between the Russian executive and legislative branches.

  The power struggle culminated in Yeltsin’s dissolution of parliament in September 1993. Led by Khasbulatov and Russian Vice President Alexander Rutskoi, legislators barricaded themselves in the parliamentary building. Yeltsin responded by firing on the building the night of October 3-4, 1993. Khasbulatov was led from the building in handKHAZARS cuffs and sent to prison. In February 1994, the Russian State Duma amnestied Khasbulatov along with all the participants in the parliamentary rebellion.

  An ethnic Chechen, Khasbulatov became involved in the domestic politics of the rebellious republic. He unsuccessfully ran for president in 1996 and has been involved in negotiations to end the second Chechen war. As of 2003, Khasbulatov teaches at the Plekhanov Institute in Moscow. See also: CHECHNYA AND CHECHENS; OCTOBER 1993 EVENTS; PRIVATIZATION; YELTSIN, BORIS NIKO-LAYEVICH

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Dunlop, John B. (1993). The Rise of Russia and the Fall of the Soviet Empire. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

  ANN E. ROBERTSON

  KHAZARS

  A nomadic Turkic-speaking tribal confederation and an offshoot of the Turk kaghanate, the Khaz-ars established one of the earliest and most successful states in medieval eastern Europe. Khazar history is divided into two periods: the Crimean- North Caucasus (c. 650-750) and the Lower Volga (c. 750-965) phases. Politically focused on the northern Black Sea region, during the first phase the Khazars were locked in endless wars against the Arabs over the control of the Caucasus. After a major defeat in 737, the Khazars relocated their political focus to the north and established their capital of Atil/Itil in the Volga delta around 800. The next one hundred years of Khazar history (known as Pax Chazarica) brought security to the Russian steppe and the surrounding regions, permitting cross-continental trade to flourish via Khazaria and providing it with the necessary stability for the formation of a unique material culture, known to archaeologists as Saltovo.

  Khazaria was an empire or kaghanate, the highest form of Turkic political organization. The kaghan or its leader was apparently of Turkic origin and had supreme secular and sacred functions. During the ninth century, his political-religious role was split: He retained his religious-sacred function, while the governor or beg ruled the state. At its height in the first half of the ninth century, Khazar territories stretched from the middle Dnieper in the west to the Volga-Ural steppe in the east, and from the middle Volga in the north to the Crimea in the south. It was populated by Turkic and Iranian nomads, Finno-Ugrian foragers, Slavic agriculturalists, and urban Crimean Greeks, making the kaghanate a multiethnic, multilingual, and multireligious state. Khazar economy was diverse and included animal husbandry, agriculture, hunting and gathering, fishing, craft production, agriculture, viniculture, and domestic and international trade. Khazars traded locally manufactured goods as well as the furs, slaves, honey, and wax they obtained as tribute from the Slavic and Finno-Ugrian tribes of the north. Khazaria also acted as an intermediary for Rus-Arab trade and received a tithe from the bypassing merchants. Millions of Islamic silver coins (dirhams) were exported via the “Khazar Way” (lower Volga-Don-Donets-Oka-upper Volga) trade route to northwestern Russia in exchange for Rus commodities.

  Most Khazars practiced shamanist-T?ri religion. In the late eighth to early ninth century (but perhaps as late as 861), the Khazar ruling elite converted to Judaism. While many questions remain concerning this conversion and its pervasiveness, it is clear that by accepting Judaism, the ruling class made Khazaria a religious neutral zone for its warring Christian and Islamic neighbors. Religious tolerance and Khazaria’s international commercial interests brought Christians, Muslims, Jews, pagans, and others to trade and live within the kaghanate.

  Pax Chazarica came to an end by the early tenth century. Already in the 890s, Pechenegs and Magyars infiltrated Khazaria from the east, while the Rus annexed Khazarian territories in the northwest. Concurrently, the Khazar Way declined and the Rus-Islamic trade shifted to the lands of the Volga Bulghars, thereby bypassing Khazar toll collectors. Greatly weakened, Khazaria was destroyed in 965 by the Rus and their Torky allies. See also: ISLAM; JEWS; RELIGION; TORKY


  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Dunlop, D. M. (1967). The History of the Jewish Khazars. New York: Schocken Books. Golden, Peter B. (1980). Khazar Studies: An Historico-Philological Inquiry into the Origins of the Khazars, Vol. 1. Budapest: Akad?miai Kiad?.

  KHIVA

  Golden, Peter B. (1990). “The Peoples of the South Russian Steppe.” In The Cambridge History of Early Inner Asia, ed. Denis Sinor. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Golden, Peter B. (1992). An Introduction to the History of the Turkic Peoples. Wiesbaden, Germany: Harras-sowitz Verlag. Noonan, Thomas S. (1997). “The Khazar Economy.” Archivum Eurasiae Medii Aevi 9:253-318. Zuckerman, C. (1995). “On the Date of the Khazars’ Conversion to Judaism and the Chronology of the Kings of the Rus Oleg and Igor: A Study of the Anonymous Khazar Letter from the Genizah of Cairo.” Revue des ?tudes Byzantines 53:237-270.

  ROMAN K. KOVALEV

  KHIVA

  Khiva, a city in northwestern Uzbekistan and the name of a khanate in existence prior to and during the rule of the Russian Empire, is located in the midst of the deserts of Central Asia. Early in human history, farming peoples settled in the region, relying on irrigation to bring water to their fields from the nearby Amu River (Amu-Darya), known in antiquity as the Oxus. Its sources in the great glacial fields of the Pamir and Hindu Kush mountains to the southeast assured a steady supply of water sufficient to sustain agriculture and human settlement. Long-distance commerce began with the opening of the great trade routes (collectively known as the Silk Route) between Asia, the Middle East, and Europe. Nomadic tribes frequently invaded the territory, conquering the lands of Khorezm (as Khiva was then called) and destroying the cities. Settlers founded the city of Khiva in the tenth century, during a period of prosperity. That time of peace came to an end with the Mongol invasion of the thirteenth century. Two centuries later, Turkic tribes in turn conquered the region.