Encyclopedia of Russian History

by James Millar

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Auerbach, Inge. (1997). “Identity in Exile: Andrei Mikhailo-vich Kurbskii and National Consciousness in the Sixteenth Century.” In Culture and Identity in Muscovy, 1359-1584 / Moskovskaya Rus (1359-1584): Kultura i istoricheskoe soznanie (UCLA Slavic Studies. New Series, vol. 3), ed. Ann M. Kleimola and Gail L. Lenhoff. Moscow: ITZ-Garant. Filyushkin, A. I. (1999). “Andrey Mikhaylovich Kurb-sky.” Voprosy istorii 1:82-96. Halperin, Charles J. (1998). “Edward Keenan and the Kurbskii-Groznyi Correspondence in Hindsight.” Jahrb?cher f?r Geschichte Osteuropas 46:376-403. Keenan, Edward L. (1971). The Kurbskii-Groznyi Apocrypha: The Seventeenth-Century Genesis of the “Correspondence” Attributed to Prince A. M. Kurbskii and Tsar Ivan IV, with an appendix by Daniel C. Waugh. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

  SERGEI BOGATYREV

  KURDS

  The Kurds (or kurmandzh, as they call themselves) are a people of Indo-European origin who claim as their homeland (Kurdistan) the region encompassing the intersection of the borders of Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Syria. The name “Kurd” has been officially used only in the Soviet Union; the Turks call them Turkish Highlanders, while Iranians call them Persian Highlanders. Although the Kurdish diaspora throughout the world numbers 30 to 40 million, most Kurds live in the mountains and uplands of the above mentioned countries and number between 10 and 12 million.

  The Kurds have never had their own sovereign country, but for a short period in the early 1920s a Kurdish autonomous region existed in Azerbaijan. Although most Kurds live in Turkey, Iran, Iraq,

  KURDS

  Lithograph depicting Kurds fighting Tatars, c. 1849. © HISTORICAL PICTURE ARCHIVE/CORBIS and Syria, two types of Kurdish peoples lived in the Soviet Union before its collapse: the Balkano-Cau-casian Caspian type of the European race akin to the Azerbaijanis, Tats, and Talysh (living in Transcaucasia), and the Central-Asian Kurds such as the Baluchis (living in Tajikistan). Most Muslims of the former Soviet Union resided in Central Asia, but some also lived on the USSR’s western borders, as well as in Siberia and near the Chinese border. Ethnically Soviet Muslims included Turkic, Caucasian, and Iranian people. The Kurds, along with the Tats, Talysh, and Baluchis, are Iranian people. In Transcaucasia the Kurds live in enclaves among the main population: in Azerbaijan (in Lyaki, Kelbadjar, Ku-batly, and Zangelan); in Armenia (in Aparan, Talin, and Echmiadzin); and in Georgia (scattered in the eastern parts). In Central Asia they lived in Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan (along the Iranian border, as well as in Ashkhabad).

  The Kurds of Caucasia and Central Asia were isolated for so long from their brethren in the Middle East that their development in the Soviet Union has diverged enough that some consider the Soviet Kurds to be a separate ethnic group. Kurdish is an Indo-European language belonging to the Northwestern Iranian branch and is divided into several dialects. The Kurds of Caucasia and Central Asia speak the kurmandzh dialect. Younger generations of Soviet Kurds in larger cities grew up bilingual, speaking Russian as well. In the main, the Kurds are followers of Islam. The Armenian Kurds are Sunnites, while the Central Asian and Azerbaijani Kurds are Shiite.

  In the Russian Federation in the twenty-first century, Kurds are frequently the targets of ethnic violence. Skinheads, incited by Eduard Limonov (a right-wing author and journalist) and Alexander Barkashov (former head of the Russian National Unity Party who openly espouses Nazi beliefs) have assaulted Kurds, Yezids, Meskheti Turks, and other non-Russians, particularly those from the Caucasus. Racism has prevailed even among Russian officials, who have stated that non-Russian ethnic groups such as the Kurds can only be guests in the Krasnodar territory (in the Russian southwest), but not for long.

  KURIL ISLANDS

  See also: CAUCASUS; CENTRAL ASIA; ISLAM

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Bulloch, John, and Harvey Morris. (1992). No Friends but the Mountains: The Tragic History of the Kurds. New York: Oxford University Press. Chaliand, Gerard. (1993). A People without a Country: The Kurds and Kurdistan. New York: Olive Branch Press. Izady, Mehrdad R. (1992). The Kurds: A Concise Handbook. Washington DC: Crane Russak. Kreyenbroek, Philip G. (1992). The Kurds: A Contemporary Overview. London: Routledge. Randal, Jonathan C. (1997). After Such Knowledge, What Forgiveness? My Encounters with Kurdistan. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

  JOHANNA GRANVILLE

  ing the Soviet period the islands were considered a vital garrison outpost. The military valued the island chain’s role in protecting the Sea of Okhotsk, where Soviet strategic submarines were located. The major industries are fish processing, fishing, and crabbing, much of which is illegal. Once pampered and highly paid by the Soviet government, the Kuril islanders were neglected by Moscow after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Of necessity, the inhabitants are developing closer ties with northern Japan. See also: JAPAN, RELATIONS WITH; RUSSO-JAPANESE WAR

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Cobb, Charles E., Jr. (1996). “Storm Watch Over the Kurils.” National Geographic 190(4):48-67. Stephan, John J. (1974). The Kuril Islands: Russo-Japanese Frontier in the Pacific. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

  CHARLES E. ZIEGLER

  KURIL ISLANDS

  The Kurils form an archipelago of more than thirty mountainous islands situated in a curving line running north from Japanese Hokkaido to Russia’s Kamchatka peninsula, enclosing the Sea of Okhotsk and occupying an area of 15,600 square kilometers. The Kurils have numerous lakes and rivers, with a harsh monsoon climate, and are highly seismic, with some thirty-five active volcanoes. Russians in search of furs first moved into the islands from Kamchatka early in the eighteenth century, thus coming into contact with the native Ainu and eventually with the Japanese, who were expanding northward. The 1855 Treaty of Shimoda divided the islands; those north of Iturup were ceded to Russia, while Japan controlled the four southern islands. In the 1875 Treaty of St. Petersburg, Japan ceded Sakhalin to Russia in exchange for the eighteen central and northern islands; the 1905 Treaty of Portsmouth granted Japan sovereignty over southern Sakhalin and all neighboring islands. The USSR reoccupied the Kurils after World War II, and in 1948 expelled 17,000 Japanese inhabitants. Since then the southern four islands (Kunashiri, Shikotan, Iturup, and the Habomais group) have been disputed territory.

  The Kuril islands are administered by Russian Sakhalin. Never large, the population declined to about 16,000 following a major earthquake in 1994. Some 3,500 border troops, far fewer than in Soviet times, remain to guard the territory. DurKURITSYN, FYODOR VASILEVICH (died c. 1502), state secretary (diak) and accused heretic under Ivan III.

  From an unknown family, but recognized for his linguistic, literary, and administrative talents, Fyodor Vasilevich Kuritsyn was one of Ivan III’s chief diplomats in the 1480s and 1490s. Kuritsyn’s most important mission was to Matthias Corvinas of Hungary and Stefan the Great of Moldavia from 1482 to 1484 to arrange an alliance against Poland-Lithuania. Kuritsyn then became one of the sovereign’s top privy advisors and handled several affairs with Crimea and European states, including secret matters. Fixer of the first official Russian document with the two-headed eagle, Kuritsyn was also involved in Muscovy’s initial land cadastres. The disappearance of his name from the written sources after 1500 may have been connected with the fall of Ivan III’s half-Moldavian grandson and crowned co-ruler Dmitry.

  The traces of Kuritsyn’s intellectual life are intriguing. According to testimony obtained from a Novgorod priest’s son under torture, Kuritsyn returned from Hungary and formed a circle of clerics and scribes that “studied anti-Orthodox material.” Other “heretics” found refuge at his home, so Archbishop Gennady concluded that KuKUROPATKIN, ALEXEI NIKOLAYEVICH ritsyn was the “protector . . . and . . . leader of all those scoundrels.” According to Joseph of Volotsk’s exaggerated Account, the Novgorodian heresiarch-archpriest Alexei and Kuritsyn “studied astronomy, lots of literature, astrology, sorcery, and secret knowledge, and therefore many people inclined toward them and were mired in the depths of apostasy.” Kuritsyn’s milieu prob
ably did have access to some philosophical and astronomical treatises.

  The only work with Kuritsyn’s name as conveyor or translator-copyist is a brief poem with an attached table of letters and coded alphabet, sharing the deceptive, New Testament-Apocryphal title, “Laodician Epistle.” The poem is of the chain type, on the theme of the sovereign soul enclosed in faith, linking wisdom, knowledge, the prophets, fear of God, and virtue. The table gives phonetic and, where appropriate, grammatical characteristics of the letter symbols in their dual function as letters and numbers. It uses both Greek and Slavic terms-the latter having the metaphorical symmetry of vowel-soul and consonant-body-and may contain some hidden meanings or utility for divination. An anonymous explanatory introduction is close to the likewise anonymous “Outline of Grammar,” both possibly by Kuritsyn. They promote the sovereignty of the literate mind and treat letters as God’s redemptive gift to humanity and the source of wisdom, science, memory, and predictive powers. Not strictly heretical, but akin to Jewish wisdom literature, these works sat on the humanist fringe of the acceptable in Muscovy.

  Kuritsyn also may have composed, redacted, or simply conveyed from Moldavia the underlying text of the Slavic “Tale of Dracula.” This string of semi-folklorish anecdotes about the “evil genius” Wallachian voevoda Vlad the Impaler recounts the just and unjust beastly reprisals of this self-styled “great sovereign” without moral commentary- except in the description of his purported apostasy to Catholicism. Implicitly “Dracula” teaches that despots must be humored and envoys trained and smart.

  Kuritsyn probably died around 1501. In 1502 or 1503 Ivan III reportedly knew “which heresy Fyodor Kuritsyn held,” and in 1504 allowed Fyo-dor’s brother, the diplomat-jurist state secretary Ivan Volk, to be burned as a heretic or apostate. Fyodor’s son Afanasy was also a state secretary. See also: IVAN III; RUSSIAN ORTHODOX CHURCH

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Taube, Moshe. (1995). “The ‘Poem on the Soul’ in the Laodicean Epistle and the Literature of the Judaizers.” Harvard Ukrainian Studies 19:671-685.

  DAVID M. GOLDFRANK

  KUROPATKIN, ALEXEI NIKOLAYEVICH

  (1848-1925), adjutant general, minister of war, commander during the Russo-Japanese War, colonial administrator, and author.

  Born in Sheshurino, Pskov Province, in 1848 to a retired officer with liberal inclinations, Alexei Kuropatkin received a superb military education, graduating from the Paul Junker Academy in 1866 and the Nicholas Academy of the General Staff in 1874. Much of Kuropatkin’s career was linked to the empire’s eastern frontier. Beginning as an infantry subaltern in Central Asia, he saw active duty during the conquest of Turkestan (1866-1871, 1875-1877, 1879-1883) and the Russo-Turkish War (1877-1878). Kuropatkin’s close association with the flamboyant White General Mikhail Dim-itriyevich Skobelev, earned him a misleading reputation as a decisive commander in combat (a deception Kuropatkin actively promoted by writing popular campaign histories). Kuropatkin was best suited for administration and intelligence, and he enjoyed a rapid rise in the military bureaucracy, including posts in the army’s Main Staff (1878-1879, 1883-1890), head of the Trans-Caspian Oblast (1890-1898), and minister of war (1898-1904).

  Kuropatkin assumed command of the ministry in a climate of strategic vulnerability, as growing German military power combined with a weakening economy. Accordingly, his top priority was to strengthen the empire’s western defenses against the Central Powers. However, Nicholas II’s adventures on the Pacific drew him back to the East, albeit reluctantly. Well aware of the threat posed by Japan’s modern armed forces, Kuropatkin opposed the Russian emperor’s increasingly aggressive course in Manchuria. Nevertheless, he loyally resigned his post as minister to command Russia’s land forces in East Asia when Japan attacked in 1904. Insecurity and indecision hobbled his performance in the field. Reluctant to risk his troops in a decisive contest, Kuropatkin chose instead to order retreats whenever the outcome of a clash seemed in doubt. As a result, while he never lost a

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  KURSK, BATTLE OF

  major battle, his repeated pullbacks fatally corroded Russian morale, and constituted one of the leading reasons for tsarist defeat in 1905.

  After the war, Kuropatkin published prolifi-cally in an effort to restore his tarnished reputation. During World War I, he returned to the colors on the northwestern front in 1915, but his leadership proved to be equally undistinguished. In July 1916 Nicholas II reassigned him as Turkestan’s governor-general, where he suppressed a major nationalist rebellion later that year. Although he was relieved of his post and even briefly arrested by the Provisional Government in early 1917, Kuropatkin avoided the postrevolutionary fate of many other prominent servants of the autocracy. He spent his remaining years as a schoolteacher in his native Sheshurino until his death of natural causes on January 26, 1925. Kuropatkin does not figure prominently in the pantheon of great Russian generals, but his many published and unpublished writings reveal one of the more perceptive minds of the tsarist military. See also: CENTRAL ASIA; RUSSO-JAPANESE WAR; RUSSO-TURKISH WARS; SKOBELEV, MIKHAIL DIMITRIYEVICH; TURKESTAN

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Kuropatkin, Aleksei N. (1909). The Russian Army and the Japanese War, tr. A. B. Lindsay. 2 vols. New York: E. P. Dutton. Romanov, Boris A. (1952). Russia in Manchuria, tr. Susan Wilbur Jones. Ann Arbor, MI: Edwards Press. Schimmelpenninck van der Oye, David H. (2001). Toward the Rising Sun: Russian Ideologies of Empire and the Path to War with Japan. DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press.

  DAVID SCHIMMELPENNINCK VAN DER OYE

  KURSK, BATTLE OF

  The Battle of Kursk (July 5-August 23, 1943) resulted in the Soviet defeat of the German Army’s last major offensive in the East and initiated an unbroken series of Red Army victories culminating in the destruction of Hitler’s Third Reich. The battle consisted of Operation Zitadelle, (Citadel), the German Army’s summer offensive to destroy Red Army forces defending the Kursk salient, and the Red Army’s Operations Kutuzov and Rumyantsev against German forces defending along the flanks of the Kursk salient. More than seven thousand Soviet and three thousand German tanks and self-propelled guns took part in this titanic battle, making it the largest armored engagement in the war.

  The defensive phase of the battle began on July 5, 1943, when the 9th Army of Field Marshal Guenther von Kluge’s Army Group Center and the 4th Panzer Army and Army Detachment Kempf of Field Marshal Erich von Manstein’s Army Group South launched concentric assaults against the northern and southern flanks of the Kursk salient. In seven days of heavy fighting, the 13th and 70th Armies and 2nd Tank Army of General K. K. Rokossovsky’s Central Front fought three German panzer corps to a virtual standstill in the Ponyri and Samodurovka regions, seven miles deep into the Soviet defenses. To the south, during the same period, three panzer corps penetrated ten to twenty miles through the defenses of the Voronezh Front’s 6th and 7th Guards and 69th Armies, as well as the dug in 1st Tank Army, before engaging the Steppe Front’s counterattacking 5th Guards Army and 5th Guard Tank Armies in the Prokhorovka region. Worn down by constant Soviet assaults against their flanks, the German assault faltered on the plains west of Prokhorovka. Concerned about the deteriorating situation in Italy and a new Red Army offensive to the north, Hitler ended the offensive on July 13.

  The day before, the Red Army commenced its summer offensive by launching Operation Kutu-zov, massive assaults by five Western and Bryansk Front armies against German Second Panzer Army defending the Orel salient. Red Army forces, soon joined by the 3rd Guards and 4th Tank Armies and most of the Central Front, penetrated German defenses around Orel within days and began a steady advance, which compelled German forces to abandon the Orel salient by August 23. On August 5, three weeks after halting German forces at Prokhorovka, the Voronezh and Steppe Fronts commenced Operation Rumyantsev, a massive offensive by ten armies toward Belgorod and Kharkov. Spearheaded by the 1st and 5th Guards Tank Armies and soon reinforced by three additional armies, for the first time in the
war the advancing forces defeated counterattacks by German operational reserves, and captured Kharkov on August 23.

  The defeat of Hitler’s last summer offensive at Kursk marked the beginning of the Red Army sumKURSK SUBMARINE DISASTER mer-fall campaign, which by late September collapsed the entire German front from Velikie Luki to the Black Sea and propelled Red Army forces forward to the Dnieper River. After Kursk the only unresolved questions regarded the duration and final cost of Red Army victory. See also: WORLD WAR II

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Erickson, John. (1983). The Road to Berlin. Boulder, CO: Westview Press . Glantz, David M., and House, Jonathan M. (1999). The Battle of Kursk. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas. Glantz, David M., and Orenstein, Harold S, eds. (1999). The Battle for Kursk 1943: The Soviet General Staff Study. London: Frank Cass. Manstein, Erich von. (1958). Lost Victories. Chicago: Henry Regnery. Zetterling Niklas, and Frankson, Anders. (2000). Kursk 1943: A Statistical Analysis. London: Frank Cass.