Encyclopedia of Russian History

by James Millar

  Until 1441, the metropolitans of Rus were appointed in Constantinople. From 1448 until 1589, the grand prince or tsar appointed the metropolitan of Moscow and all Rus following nomination by the council of bishops. When the metropolitan of Moscow and all Rus was raised to the status of patriarch in 1589, the existing archbishops-those of Novgorod, Rostov, Kazan, and Sarai-were elevated to metropolitans. The Council of 1667 elevated four other archbishops-those of Astrakhan, Ryazan, Tobolsk, and Belgorod-to metropolitan status. After the abolition of the patriarchate in 1721 by Peter I, no metropolitans were appointed until the reign of Elizabeth, when metropolitans were appointed for Kiev (1747) and Moscow (1757). Under Catherine II, a third metropolitan- for St. Petersburg-was appointed (1783). In 1917, the patriarchate of Moscow was reestablished and various new metropolitanates created so that by the 1980s there were twelve metropolitans in the area encompassed by the Soviet Union. See also: PATRIARCHATE; RUSSIAN ORTHODOX CHURCH

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Ellis, Jane. (1986). The Russian Orthodox Church: A Contemporary History. London: Croom Helm. Fennell, John. (1995). History of the Russian Church to 1448. London: Longman. Preobrazhensky, Alexander, ed. (1998). The Russian Orthodox Church: Tenth to Twentieth Centuries. Moscow: Progress.

  DONALD OSTROWSKI

  MEYERHOLD, VSEVOLOD YEMILIEVICH

  (1874-1940), born Karl-Theodor Kazimir Meyer-hold, stage director.

  Among the most influential twentieth-century stage directors, Vsevolod Meyerhold utilized abstract design and rhythmic performances. His actor training system, “biomechanics,” merges acrobatics with industrial studies of motion. Never hesitating to adapt texts to suit directorial concepts, Meyerhold saw theatrical production as an art independent from drama. Born in Penza, Meyerhold studied acting at the Moscow Philharmonic Society (1896-1897) with theatrical reformer Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko. When Nemirovich co-founded the Moscow Art Theater with Konstantin Stanislavsky (1897), Meyerhold joined. He excelled as Treplev in Anton Chekhov’s Seagull (1898). Like Treplev, Meyerhold sought new artistic forms and left the company in 1902. He directed symbolist plays at Stanislavsky’s Theater-Studio (1905) and for actress Vera Kommissarzhevskaya (1906-1907).

  From 1908 to 1918, Meyerhold led a double life. As director for the imperial theaters, he created sumptuous operas and classic plays. As experimental director, under the pseudonym Dr. Daper-tutto, he explored avant-garde directions. Meyerhold greeted 1917 by vowing “to put the October revolution into the theatre.” He headed the Narkom-pros Theater Department from 1920 to 1921 and staged agitprop (pro-communist propaganda). His Soviet work developed along two trajectories: He reinterpreted classics to reflect political issues and premiered contemporary satires. His most famous production, Fernand Crommelynck’s Magnificent Cuckold (1922), used a constructivist set and bio-mechanics. When Soviet control hardened, Meyer-hold was labeled “formalist” and his theater liquidated (1938). The internationally acclaimed Stanislavsky sprang to Meyerhold’s defense, but shortly after Stanislavsky’s death, Meyerhold was arrested (1939). Following seven months of torture, he confessed to “counterrevolutionary slander” and was executed on February 2, 1940. See also: AGITPROP; MOSCOW ART THEATER

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Braun, Edward. (1995). Meyerhold: A Revolution in the Theatre. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press. Rudnitsky, Konstantin. (1981). Meyerhold the Director, tr. George Petrov. Ann Arbor, MI: Ardis.

  SHARON MARIE CARNICKE

  MIGHTY HANDFUL

  Group of nationally oriented Russian composers during the nineteenth century; the name was

  919

  MIGHTY HANDFUL

  coined unintentionally by the music and art critic Vladimir Stasov.

  The “Mighty Handful” (moguchaya kuchka), also known as the New Russian School, Balakirev Circle, or the Five, is a group of nationalist, nineteenth century composers. At the end of the 1850s the brilliant amateur musician Mily Balakirev (1837-1920) gathered a circle of like-minded followers in St. Petersburg with the intention of continuing the work of Mikhail Glinka. His closest comrades became the engineer Cesar Cui (1835-1918; member of the group beginning in 1856), the officers Modest Mussorgsky (1839-1881, member beginning in 1857), and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov (1844-1908, member beginning in 1861), and the chemist Alexander Borodin (1833-1887, member beginning in 1862). The spiritual mentor of the young composers, who shared their lack of professional musical training, was the music and art critic Vladimir Stasov, who publicly and vehemently promoted the cause of a Russian national music separate from Western traditions, in a somewhat polarizing and polemic manner. When Stasov, in an article for the Sankt-Peterburgskie vedomosti (St. Petersburg News) about a “Slavic concert of Mr. Balakirev” on the occasion of the Slavic Congress in 1867, praised the “small, but already mighty handful of Russians musicians,” he had Glinka and Alexander Dargomyzhsky in mind as well as the group, but the label stuck to Balakirev and his followers. They can be considered a unit not only because of their constant exchange of ideas, but also because of their common aesthetic convictions. Strictly speaking, this unity of composition lasted only until the beginning of the 1870s, when it began to dissolve with the growing individuation of its members.

  The enthusiastic music amateurs sought to create an independent national Russian music by taking up Russian themes, literature, and folklore and integrating Middle-Asian and Caucasian influences, thereby distancing it from West European musical language and ending the supremacy of the latter in the musical life of Russian cities. Balakirev, who had known Glinka personally, was the most advanced musically; his authority was undisputed among the five musicians. He rejected classical training in music as being only rigid routine and recommended his own method to his followers instead: composing should not be learned through academic courses, but through the direct analysis of masterpieces (especially those created by Glinka, Hector Berlioz, Robert Schumann, Franz Liszt, or Ludwig van Beethoven, the composers most venerated by the Five). The St. Petersburg conservatory, founded in 1862 by Anton Rubinstein as a new central music training center with predominantly German staff was heavily criticized, especially by Balakirev and Stasov. Instead, a Free School of Music (Bezplatnaya muzykalnaya shkola) was founded in the same year, and differed from the conservatory in its low tuition fees and its decidedly national Russian orientation. Balakirev advised his own disciples of the Mighty Handful to go about composing great works of music without false fear.

  In spite of comparatively low productivity and long production periods, due in part to the lack of professional qualifications and the consequent creative crises, in part to Balakirev’s willful and meticulous criticisms, and in part to the members’ preoccupation with their regular occupations, the composers of the Mighty Handful became after Glinka and beside Peter Tchaikovsky the founders of Russian national art music during the nineteenth century. An exception was Cui, whose compositions, oriented towards Western models and themes, formed a sharp contrast to what he publicly postulated for Russian music. The other members of the Balakirev circle successfully developed specific Russian musical modes of expression. The music dramas Boris Godunov (1868-1872) and Khovan-shchina (1872-1881) by Mussorgsky and Prince Igor (1869-1887) by Borodin, in spite of their unfinished quality, are considered among the greatest historical operas of Russian music, whereas Rim-sky-Korsakov achieved renown by his masterly accomplishment of the Russian fairy-tale and magic opera. The symphonies, symphonic poems, and overtures of Borodin, Rimsky-Korsakov, and Bal-akirev stand for the beginnings and first highlights of a Russian orchestral school. Understandably, many of the composers’ most important works were created when the Mighty Handful as a community had already dissolved. The personal crises of Balakirev and Mussorgsky contributed to the circle’s dissolution, as did the increasing emancipation of the disciples from their master, which was clearly exemplified by Rimsky-Korsakov. He advanced to the status of professional musician, became professor at the St. Petersburg conservatory (1871), and diver
ged from the others increasingly over time in his creative approaches. In sum, the Mighty Handful played a crucial role in the formation of Russian musical culture at the crossroads of West European influences and strivings for national independence. Through the intentional use of

  MIGRATION

  historical and mythical Russian themes, the works of the Mighty Handful have made a lasting contribution to the national culture of recollection in Russia far beyond the nineteenth century. See also: MUSIC; NATIONALISM IN THE ARTS; RIMSKY-KORSAKOV, NIKOLAI ANDREYEVICH; STASOV, VLADIMIR VASILIEVICH

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Brown, David; Abraham, Gerald; Lloyd-Jones, David; Garden, Edward. (1986). Russian Masters, Vol. I: Glinka, Borodin, Balakirev, Musorgsky, Tchaikovsky. New York, London: W.W. Norton amp; Company. Garden, Edward. (1967). Balakirev: A Critical Study of His Life and Music. London: Faber amp; Faber.

  MATTHIAS STADELMANN

  MIGRATION

  Across time and cultures individuals migrate to improve their lives, seek better opportunities, or flee unbearable conditions. In Russian history, migration highlights social stratification, underscores the importance of social management, and provides insight into post-Soviet population change. Migration motivations in Russia were historically influenced by direct governmental control, providing a unique case for assessing barriers to migration and a window into state and society relations.

  The earliest inhabitants of the region now known as Russia were overrun by the in-migration of several conquering populations, with Cimmerians, Scythians (700 B.C.E.), Samartians (300 B.C.E.), Goths (200 C.E.), Huns (370 C.E.), Avars, and Khaz-ars moving into the territory to rule the region. Mongol control (1222) focused on manipulating elites and extracting taxes, but not in-migration. When Moscow later emerged as an urban settlement, eastern Slavs spread across the European plain. Ivan III (1462-1505) pushed expansion south and west, while Ivan IV (1530-1584) pushed east towards Siberia. Restrictions on peasant mobility made migration difficult, yet some risked everything to illegally flee to the southern borderlands and Siberia.

  The legal code of 1649 eradicated legal migration. Solidifying serfdom, peasants were now owned by the gentry. Restrictions on mobility could be circumvented. Ambitious peasants could become illegal or seasonal migrants, marginalized socially and economically. By 1787 between 100,000 and 150,000 peasants resided seasonally in Moscow, unable to acquire legal residency, forming an underclass unable to assimilate into city life. Restricted mobility hindered the development of urban labor forces for industrialization in this period, also marked by the use of forced migration and exile by the state.

  The emancipation of serfs (1861) increased mobility, but state ability to control migration remained. Urbanization increased rapidly-according to the 1898 census, nearly half of all urbanites were migrants. The Stolypin reforms (1906) further spurred migration to cities and frontiers by enabling withdrawal from rural communes. Over 500,000 peasants moved into Siberia yearly in the early 1900s. Over seven million refugees moved into Russia by 1916, challenging ideas of national identity, highlighting the limitations of state, and crystallizing Russian nationalism. During the Revolution and civil war enforcement of migration restrictions were thwarted, adding to displacement, settlement shifts, and urban growth in the 1920s.

  The Soviet passport system reintroduced state control over migration in 1932. Passports contained residency permits, or propiskas, required for legal residence. The passport system set the stage for increased social control and ideological emphasis on the scientific management of population. Limiting rural mobility (collective farmers did not receive passports until 1974), restricting urban growth, the exile of specific ethnic groups (Germans, Crimean Tatars, and others), and directing migration through incentives for movements into new territories (the Far East, Far North, and northern Kazakhstan) in the Soviet period echoed previous patterns of state control. As demographers debated scientific population management, by the late Soviet period factors such as housing, wages, and access to goods exerted strong influences on migration decision making. Attempts to control migration in the Soviet period met some success in stemming urbanization, successfully attracting migrants to inhospitable locations, increasing regional mixing of ethnic and linguistic groups across the Soviet Union, and blocking many wishing to immigrate.

  With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, migration restrictions were initially minimized, but migration trends and security concerns increased interest in restrictions by the end of the twentieth century. Decreased emigration control led to over

  921

  MIGRATION

  Nineteenth-century engraving shows a caravan of Russian peasants migrating. © BETTMANN/CORBIS 100,000 people leaving Russia yearly between 1991 and 1996, dampened only by restrictions on immigration from Western countries. Russia’s population loss has been offset by immigration from the near abroad, where 25 million ethnic Russians resided in 1991. Legal, illegal, and seasonal migrants were attracted from the near abroad by the relative political and economic stability in Russia, in addition to ethnic and linguistic ties. Yet, the flow of immigrants declined in the late 1990s. Refugees registered in Russia numbered nearly one million in 1998. Internally, migration patterns follow wages and employment levels, and people left the far eastern and northern regions. Internal displacement emerged in the south during the 1990s, from Chechnya. By the late 1990s, the challenges of migrant assimilation and integration were key public issues, and interest in restricting migration rose. While market forces had begun to replace direct administrative control over migration in Russia by the end of the 1990s, concerns over migration and increasing calls for administrative interventions drew upon a long history of state management of population migration. See also: DEMOGRAPHY; IMMIGRATION AND EMIGRATION; LAW CODE OF 1649; PASSPORT SYSTEM

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Bradley, J. (1985). Muzhik and Muscovite: Urbanization in Late Imperial Russia. Los Angeles: University of California Press. Brubaker, Rodgers. (1995). “Aftermaths of Empire and the Unmixing of Peoples: Historical and Comparative Perspectives” Ethnic and Racial Studies 18 (2):189-218. Buckley, Cynthia J. (1995). “The Myth of Managed Migration.” Slavic Review 54 (4):896-916. Gatrell, Peter. (1999). A Whole Empire Walking: Refugees in Russia During World War I. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Lewis, Robert and Rowlands, Richard. (1979). Population Redistribution in the USSR: Its Impact on Society 1897-1977. New York: Praeger Press. Zaionchkovskaya, Zhanna A. (1996). “Migration Patterns in the Former Soviet Union” In Cooperation and Conflict in the Former Soviet Union: Implications for Migration, eds. Jeremy R. Azrael, Emil A. Payin, Kevin

  MIKHAILOVSKY, NIKOLAI KONSTANTINOVICH

  F. McCarthy, and Georges Vernez. Santa Monica, CA: Rand.

  CYNTHIA J. BUCKLEY

  MIKHAILOVSKY, NIKOLAI KONSTANTINOVICH

  (1842-1904), journalist, sociologist, and a revolutionary democrat; leading theorist of agrarian Populism.

  Born in the Kaluga region to an impoverished gentry family, and an early orphan, Nikolai Mikhailovsky studied at the St. Petersburg Mining Institute, which he was forced to quit in 1863 after taking part in activities in support of Polish rebels. From 1860 he published in radical periodicals, held a string of editorial jobs, and experimented at cooperative profit-sharing entrepreneurship. His early thought was influenced by Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, whose work he translated into Russian. In 1868 he joined the team of Otechestvennye za-piski (Fatherland Notes), a leading literary journal headed by Nikolai Nekrasov, where he established himself with his essay, “What Is Progress?” attacking Social Darwinism, with his work against the utilitarians, “What Is Happiness?” and other publications, including “Advocacy of the Emancipation of Women.” After Nekrasov’s death (1877) Mikhailovsky became one of three coeditors, and the de facto head of the journal.

  Mikhailovsky was the foremost thinker and author of the mature, or critical stage of populism (narodnichestvo). While early populists envisioned Russia bypassing the capit
alist stage of development and building a just and equitable economic and societal order on the basis of the peasant commune, Mikhailovsky viewed this scenario as a desirable but increasingly problematic alternative to capitalist or state-led industrialization. The ethical thrust of Russian populism found its utmost expression in his doctrine of binding relationship between factual truth and normative (moral) truth, viewed as justice (in Russian, both ideas are expressed by the word pravda), thus essentially tying knowledge to ethics.

  Together with Pyotr Lavrov, Mikhailovsky laid the groundwork for Russia’s distinct sociological tradition by developing the subjective sociology that was also emphatically normative and ethical in its basis. His most famous statement read that “every sociological theory has to start with some kind of a utopian ideal.” In this vein, he developed a systematic critique of the positivist philosophy of knowledge, including the natural science approach to social studies, while working to familiarize the Russian audience with Western social and political thinkers of his age, including John Stuart Mill, Au-guste Comte, Herbert Spencer, Emile Durkheim, and Karl Marx. In “What Is Progress?” he argued for the “struggle for individuality” as a central element to social action and the indicator of genuine progress of humanity, as opposed to the Darwinian struggle for survival. According to Mikhailovsky, in society, unlike in biological nature, it is the environment that should be adapted to individuals, not vice versa. On this basis, he attacked the division of labor in capitalist societies as a dehumanizing social pathology leading to unidimensional and regressive rather than harmonious development of humans and, eventually, to the suppression of individuality (in contrast to the animal world, where functional differentiation is a progressive phenomenon). Thus he introduced a strong individualist (and, arguably, a libertarian) element to Russian populist thought, which had traditionally emphasized collectivism. He sought an alternative to the division of labor in the patterns of simple cooperation among peasants. He also worked toward a distinct theory of social change, questioning Eurocentric linear views of progress, and elaborated a dual gradation of types and levels of development (that is, Russia for him represented a higher type but a lower level of development than industrialized capitalist countries, and he thought it necessary to preserve this higher, or communal, type while striving to move to a higher level). In “Heroes and the Crowd” (1882), he provided important insights into mass psychology and the nature of leadership.