Encyclopedia of Russian History

by James Millar

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Ascher, Abraham, ed. (1976). The Mensheviks in the Russian Revolution. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Brovkin, Vladimir. (1987). The Mensheviks After October: Socialist Opposition and the Rise of the Bolshevik Dictatorship. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Galili, Ziva. (1989). Menshevik Leaders in the Russian Revolution: Social Realities and Political Strategies. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Haimson, Leopold. ed. (1974). Mensheviks: From the Revolution of 1917 to the Second World War. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

  ALICE K. PATE

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  MERCANTILISM

  MENSHIKOV, ALEXANDER DANILOVICH

  (c. 1672-1729), soldier and statesman; favorite of Peter I.

  Menshikov rose from humble origins to become the most powerful man in Russia after the tsar. Anecdotes suggest that his father was a pastry cook, although in fact he served as a noncommissioned officer in the Semenovsky guards. Alexander served in Peter’s own Preobrazhensky guards, and by the time of the Azov campaigns (1695-1696) he and Peter were inseparable. Men-shikov accompanied Peter on the Grand Embassy (1697-1698) and served with him in the Great Northern War (1700-1721), rising through the ranks to become general field marshal and vice admiral. His military exploits included the battles of Kalisz (1706) and Poltava (1709), the sacking of Baturin (1708), and campaigns in north Germany in the 1710s. At home he was governor-general of St. Petersburg and president of the College of War.

  The upstart Menshikov had to create his own networks, making many enemies among the traditional elite. He acquired a genealogy which traced his ancestry back to the princes of Kievan Rus and a dazzling portfolio of Russian and foreign titles and orders, including Prince of the Holy Roman Empire, Prince of Russia and Izhora, and Knight of the Orders of St. Andrew and St. Alexander Nevsky. Menshikov had no formal education and was only semi-literate, but this did not prevent him from becoming a role model in Peter’s cultural reforms. His St. Petersburg palace had a large library and its own resident orchestra and singers, and he also built a grand palace at Oranienbaum on the Gulf of Finland. In 1706 he married Daria Arsenieva (1682-1727), who was also thoroughly Westernized.

  Menshikov was versatile and energetic, loyal but capable of acting on his own initiative. He was a devout Orthodox Christian who often visited shrines and monasteries. He was also ambitious and corrupt, amassing a vast personal fortune in lands, serfs, factories, and possessions. On several occasions, only his close ties with Peter saved him from being convicted of embezzlement. In 1725 he promoted Peter’s wife Catherine as Peter’s successor, heading her government in the newly created Supreme Privy Council and betrothing his own daughter to Tsarevich Peter, her nominated heir. After Peter’s accession in 1727, Menshikov’s rivals in the Council, among them members of the aristocratic Dolgoruky clan, alienated the emperor from Menshikov. In September 1727 they had Menshikov arrested and banished to Berezov in Siberia, where he died in wretched circumstances in November 1729. See also: CATHERINE I; GREAT NORTHERN WAR; PETER I; PETER II; PREOBRAZHENSKY GUARDS

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Bushkovitch, Paul. (2001). Peter the Great: The Struggle for Power, 1671-1725. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Hughes, Lindsey. (1998). Russia in the Age of Peter the Great. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

  LINDSEY HUGHES

  MERCANTILISM

  Mercantilism is the doctrine that economic activity, especially foreign trade, should be directed to unifying and strengthening state power. Though some mercantilist writers emphasized the accumulation of gold and silver by artificial trade surpluses, this “bullionist” version was not dominant in Russia.

  The greatest of the Russian enlightened despots, Peter the Great, was eager to borrow the best of Western practice in order to modernize his vast country and to expand its power north and south. Toward this end, the tsar emulated successful Swedish reforms by establishing a regular bureaucracy and unifying measures. Peter brought in Western artisans to help design his new capital at St. Petersburg. He granted monopolies for fiscal purposes on salt, vodka, and metals, while developing workshops for luxury products. Skeptical of private entrepreneurs, he set up state-owned shipyards, arsenals, foundries, mines, and factories. Serfs were assigned to some of these. Like the state-sponsored enterprises of Prussia, however, most of these failed within a few decades.

  Tsar Peter instituted many new taxes, raising revenues some five times, not counting the servile labor impressed to build the northern capital, canals, and roads. Like Henry VIII of England, he confiscated church lands and treasure for secular purposes. He also tried to unify internal tolls, something accomplished only in 1753.

  Foreign trade was a small, and rather late, concern of Peter’s. That function remained mostly in

  915

  MERCHANTS

  the hands of foreigners. To protect the industries in his domains, he forbade the import of woolen textiles and needles. In addition, he forbade the export of gold and insisted that increased import duties be paid in specie (coin). See also: ECONOMY, TSARIST; FOREIGN TRADE; PETER I

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Gerschenkron, Alexander. (1970). Europe in the Russian Mirror. London: Cambridge University Press. Spechler, Martin C. (2001). “Nationalism and Economic History.” In Encyclopedia of Nationalism, vol. 1, ed. Alexander Motyl. New York: Academic Press, pp. 219-235. Spechler, Martin C. (1990). Perspectives in Economic Thought. New York: McGraw-Hill.

  MARTIN C. SPECHLER

  MERCHANTS

  Kievan Russia supplied raw materials of the forest-furs, honey, wax, and slaves-to the Byzantine Empire. This trade had a primarily military character, as the grand prince and his retinue extorted forest products from Russian and Finnish tribes and transported them through hostile territory via the Dnieper River and the Black Sea. In the self-governing republic of Novgorod, wealthy merchants shared power with the landowning elite. Novgorod exported impressive amounts of furs, fish, and other raw materials with the aid of the German Hansa, which maintained a permanent settlement in Novgorod-the Peterhof-as it did on Wisby Island and in London and Bergen.

  Grand Prince Ivan III of Muscovy extinguished Novgorod’s autonomy and expelled the Germans. Under the Muscovite autocracy, prominent merchants acted as the tsar’s agents in exploiting his monopoly rights over commerce in high-value goods such as vodka and salt. The merchant estate (soslovie) emerged as a separate social stratum in the Law Code (Ulozhenie) of 1649, with the exclusive right to engage in handicrafts and commerce in cities.

  Peter I’s campaign to build an industrial complex to supply his army and navy opened up new opportunities for Russian merchants, but his government maintained the merchants’ traditional obligations to provide fiscal and administrative services to the state without remuneration. From the early eighteenth century to the end of the imperial period, the merchant estate included not only wholesale and retail traders but also persons whose membership in a merchant guild entitled them to perform other economic functions as well, such as mining, manufacturing, shipping, and banking.

  Various liabilities imposed by the state, including a ban on serf ownership by merchants and the abolition of their previous monopoly over trade and industry, kept the merchant estate small and weak during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Elements of a genuine bourgeoisie did not emerge until the early twentieth century.

  Ethnic diversity contributed to the lack of unity within the merchant estate. Each major city saw the emergence of a distinctive merchant culture, whether mostly European (German and English) in St. Petersburg; German in the Baltic seaports of Riga and Reval; Polish and Jewish in Warsaw and Kiev; Italian, Greek, and Jewish in Odessa; or Armenian in the Caucasus region, to name a few examples. Moreover, importers in port cities generally favored free trade, while manufacturers in the Central Industrial Region, around Moscow, demanded high import tariffs to protect their factories from European competition. These economic conflicts reinforced hostilities based on ethnic di
fferences. The Moscow merchant elite remained xenophobic and antiliberal until the Revolution of 1905.

  The many negative stereotypes of merchants in Russian literature reflected the contemptuous attitudes of the gentry, bureaucracy, intelligentsia, and peasantry toward commercial and industrial activity. The weakness of the Russian middle class constituted an important element in the collapse of the liberal movement and the victory of the Bolshevik party in the Russian Revolution of 1917. See also: CAPITALISM; ECONOMY, TSARIST; FOREIGN TRADE; GUILDS

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Freeze, Gregory L. (1986). “The Soslovie (Estate) Paradigm and Russian Social History.” American Historical Review 91:11-36. Owen, Thomas C. (1981). Capitalism and Politics in Russia: A Social History of the Moscow Merchants, 1855-1905. New York: Cambridge University Press. Owen, Thomas C. (1991). “Impediments to a Bourgeois Consciousness in Russia, 1880-1905: The Estate Structure, Ethnic Diversity, and Economic Regional916

  MESKHETIAN TURKS

  ism.” In Between Tsar and People: Educated Society and the Quest for Public Identity in Late Imperial Russia, ed. Edith W. Clowes, Samuel D. Kassow, and James L. West. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Rieber, Alfred J. (1982). Merchants and Entrepreneurs in Imperial Russia. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

  THOMAS C. OWEN

  MESKHETIAN TURKS

  The Meskhetian Turks are a Muslim people who originally inhabited what is today southwestern Georgia. They speak a Turkic language very similar to Turkish. Deported from their homeland by Josef V. Stalin in 1944, the Meskhetian Turks are scattered in many parts of the former Soviet Union. Estimates of their number range as high as 250,000. Their attempts to return to their homeland in Georgia have been mostly unsuccessful.

  While other groups deported from the Caucasus region at roughly the same time were accused of collaborating with the Nazis, Meskhetian Turk survivors report that different reasons were given for their deportation. Some say they were accused of collaborating, others say they were told that the deportation was for their own safety, and still others were given no reason whatsoever. The deportation itself was brutal, with numerous fatalities resulting from both the long journey on crammed railroad cars and the primitive conditions in Central Asia where they were forced to live. Estimates of the number of deaths range from thirty to fifty thousand.

  In the late 1950s Premier Nikita Khrushchev allowed the Meskhetian Turks and other deported peoples to leave their camps in Central Asia. Unlike most of the other deported peoples, however, the Meskhetian Turks were not allowed to return to their ancestral homeland. The Georgian SSR was considered a sensitive border region and as such was off limits. The Meskhetian Turks began to disperse throughout the Soviet Union, with many ending up in the Kazakh, Uzbek, and Kyrgyz SSRs and others in Soviet Azerbaijan and southern European Russia. They were further dispersed in 1989 when several thousand Meskhetian Turks fled deadly ethnic riots directed at them in Uzbekistan. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Meskhetian Turks have tried to return to their ancestral homeland in newly independent Georgia, but they face strong opposition. Georgia already has a severe refugee crisis, with hundreds of thousands of people displaced by conflicts in Abkhazia and South Ossetia. In addition, the substantial Armenian population of the Meskhetian Turks’ traditional homeland does not want them back. The Georgians view the Meskhetian Turks as ethnic Georgians who adopted a Turkic language and the Muslim religion. They insist that any Meskhetian Turks who wish to return must officially declare themselves Georgian, adding Georgian suffixes to their names and educating their children in the Georgian language.

  The Meskhetian Turks are scattered across the former Soviet Union, with the largest populations in Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Russia. In southern European Russia’s Krasnodar Krai, the local population of Meskhetian Turks, most of whom fled the riots in Uzbekistan, have received particularly rough treatment. The Meskhetian Turks of this region are denied citizenship and, according to Russian and international human rights organizations, frequently suffer bureaucratic hassles and physical assaults from local officials intent on driving them away. In 1999, as a condition of membership in the Council of Europe, the Georgian government announced that it would allow for the return of the Meskhetian Turks within twelve years, but despite international pressure it has taken little concrete action in this direction. See also: DEPORTATIONS; GEORGIA AND GEORGIANS; ISLAM; NATIONALITIES POLICIES, SOVIET; NATIONALITIES POLICIES, TSARIST

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Blandy, Charles. (1998). The Meskhetians: Turks or Georgians? A People Without a Homeland. Camberley, Surrey, UK: Conflict Studies Research Centre, Royal Military Academy. Open Society Institute. (1998). “Meskhetian Turks: Solutions and Human Security.” «http://www.soros .org/fmp2/html/meskpreface.html/». Sheehy, Ann, and Nahaylo, Bohdan. (1980). The Crimean Tatars, Volga Germans and Meskhetians: Soviet Treatment of Some National Minorities. London: Minority Rights Group.

  JUSTIN ODUM

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  MESTNICHESTVO

  MESTNICHESTVO

  The practice of appointing men from eminent families to high positions in the military or government according to social status and service record.

  Mestnichestvo or “precedence” refers to a legal practice in Muscovy whereby a military officer sued to avoid serving in a rank, or “place” (mesto), below a man whose family he regarded as inferior. The practice was open only to men in the most eminent families and arose in the second quarter of the sixteenth century as a result of rapid social change in the elite. Eminent princely families joining the grand prince’s service from the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the Khanate of Kazan, and Rus principalities challenged the status of the established Muscovite boyar clans. Thus mestnichestvo arose in the process of the definition of a more complex elite and was inextricably connected with the compilation of genealogical and military service records (rodoslovnye and razryadnye knigi).

  Relative place was reckoned on the basis of family heritage and the eminence of one’s own and one’s ancestors’ military service. A complicated formula also assigned ranks to members of large clans so that individuals could be compared across clans. Litigants presented their own clan genealogies and service precedents in comparison with those of their rival and their rival’s kinsmen, often using records that differed from official ones. Judges were then called upon to adjudicate cases of immense complexity.

  In practice few precedence disputes came to such detailed exposition in court because the state acted in two ways to waylay them. From the late sixteenth century the tsar regularly declared service assignments in a particular campaign “without place,” that is, not counting against a person’s or his clan’s dignity. Secondly, the tsar, or judges acting in his name, peremptorily resolved suits on the spot. Some were dismissed on the basis of evident disparity of clans (“your family has always served below that family”), while other plaintiffs were reassigned or their assignments declared without place. Tsars themselves took an active role in these disputes. Sources cite tsars Ivan IV, Mikhail Fyodorovich, and Alexei Mikhailovich, among others, castigating their men for frivolous suits. Significantly, only a tiny number of mestnichestvo suits were won by plaintiffs. Most resolved cases affirmed the hierarchy established in the initial assignment. Some scholars have argued that precedence allowed the Muscovite elite to protect its status against the tsars, while others suggest that it benefited the state by keeping the elite preoccupied with petty squabbling. Source evidence, however, suggests that precedence rarely impinged on military preparedness or tsarist authority. If anything, the regularity with which status hierarchy among clans was reaffirmed suggests that precedence exerted a stabilizing affirmation of the status quo.

  In the seventeenth century the bases on which precedence functioned were eroded. The elite had expanded immensely to include new families of lesser heritage, lowly families were litigating for place, and many service opportunities were available outside of the system of place. Mestnichestvo as
a system of litigation was abolished in 1682, while at the same time the principle of hereditary elite status was affirmed by the creation of new genealogical books for the new elite. See also: LEGAL SYSTEMS; MILITARY, IMPERIAL ERA

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Kollmann, Nancy Shields. (1999). By Honor Bound: State and Society in Early Modern Russia. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

  NANCY SHIELDS KOLLMANN

  METROPOLITAN

  A metropolitan is the chief prelate in an ecclesiastical territory that usually coincided with a civil province.

  The metropolitan ranks just below a patriarch and just above an archbishop, except in the contemporary Greek Orthodox Church, where since the 1850s the archbishop ranks above the metropolitan. The term derives from the Greek word for the capital of a province where the head of the episcopate resides. The first evidence of its use to designate a Churchman’s rank was in the Council of Nicaea (325 C.E.) decision, which declared (canon 4; cf. canon 6) the right of the metropolitan to confirm episcopal appointments within his jurisdiction.

  A metropolitan was first appointed to head the Rus Church in 992. Subsequent metropolitans of Kiev and All Rus resided in Kiev until 1299 when

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  MIGHTY HANDFUL

  Metropolitan Maxim (1283-1305) moved his residence to Vladimir-on-the-Klyazma. His successor, Peter (1308-1326), began residing unofficially in Moscow. The next metropolitan, Feognost (1328-1353), made the move to Moscow official. A rival metropolitan was proposed by the grand duke of Lithuania, Olgerd, in 1354, and from then until the 1680s there was a metropolitan residing in western Rus with a rival claim to heading the metropoly of Kiev and all Rus.