Encyclopedia of Russian History

by James Millar

  Economic stagnation, high taxation, and the need for major reforms motivated Muraviev and the other Decembrists to take action. They advocated the establishment of representative democracy but disagreed on the form it should take: Muraviev favored a constitutional monarchy; Pestel, a democratic republic. To get rid of tsarist agents and members who were either too dictatorial or too conservative, the organizers dissolved the Union of Welfare in 1821 and set up two new groups: The Northern Society, centered in St. Petersburg, was headed by Muraviev and Nicholas Turgenev, an official in the Ministry of Finance. The more radical Southern Society was dominated by Pestel. During the interregnum between Alexander I and Nicholas I, the two societies plotted the coup.

  Muraviev was the ideologist for the Northern Society, drafting propaganda and a constitution that was found among his papers following his arrest. The uncompleted constitutional project reveals the strong impact of the American constitution. Like Pestel, he envisioned a republic: “The Russian nation is free and independent. It cannot be the property of a person or a family. The people are the source of supreme power. And to them belongs the sole right to formulate the fundamental law.” Muraviev advocated a constitutional monarchy along the lines of the thirteen original states of North America, separation of powers, civil liberties, and the emancipation of the serfs. Although his constitution guaranteed the equality of all citizens before the law, the landed classes were recognized as having special rights and interests. Thus Mu-raviev rejected Pestel’s idea of universal suffrage; only property-holders would be allowed to vote and to seek elective office.

  What distinguishes Muraviev’s draft constitution is its advocacy of federalism, an idea not echoed by any major political movement in Russia until the twentieth century. Muraviev argued that “vast territories and a huge standing army are in themselves obstacles to freedom.” Too much of a nationalist to call for the breakup of the empire, however, Muraviev urged that Russia adopt a federalist system as a way to reconcile “national greatness with civic freedom.”

  The Decembrist uprising failed because of the plotters’ incompetence and lack of mass support. Some defected, and others, at the last minute, failed to carry out their assignments. Five of their leaders, including the poet Kondraty Ryleyev, were executed. Despite the stricter censorship Nicholas I imposed after the crushed rebellion, the memory of the Decembrists inspired many writers and revolutionaries, especially the political refugee Alexander Herzen, who established the journal The Bell (Kolokol) in London in 1857 to “propagate free ideas within Russia.” See also: DECEMBRIST MOVEMENT AND REBELLION; EMPIRE, USSR AS; NICHOLAS I

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Mazour, Anatole G. (1937). The First Russian Revolution, 1825: The Decembrist Movement, Its Origins, Development, and Significance. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

  JOHANNA GRANVILLE

  MUSAVAT

  Founded in secrecy in October 1911, Musavat (Equality) ultimately grew into the largest, longest-lived Azerbaijan political party. The founders of the party were former members of Himmat (Endeavor) party, Azerbaijan’s first political association, led by Karbali Mikhailzada, Abbas Kazimzada, and Qulan Rza Sharifzada. Formation of Musavat was a response to their disillusionment with the 1905 Russian Revolution. They were also inspired by a common vision of Turkic identity and Azeri nationalism.

  Musavat attracted many of its followers from among Azerbaijan’s bourgeoisie-intelligentsia, students, entrepreneurs, and other professionals; the party also included workers and peasants among its ranks. In 1917 a new party evolved from the initial merger of these former Himmatists and the Ganja Turkic Party of Federalists, as reflected in the organization’s name, the Turkic Party of Federal-ists-Musavat. At this stage Musavat came under the leadership of Mammad Rasulzade and consisted of two distinct factions, the Left or Baku faction and the Right or Ganja faction. These factions differed on economic and social ideology such as land reform, but closed ranks on two crucial issues, one being secular Turkic nationalism. The other was the vision of Azerbaijan as an autonomous republic and part of a Russian federation of free and equal states. In April 1920, when Azerbaijan came under Soviet domination, the native intelligentsia were afforded some amount of accommodation in accordance with the Soviet nationalist program supervised by Josef Stalin. However, the accommodation only extended to the left wing of the Musavat party.

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  MUSCOVY

  Members of the right wing were subsequently imprisoned or killed. By 1923 the Musavat came under pressure from communist apparatchiks to dissolve the organization. Musavat members fortunate enough to flee formed exile communities in northern Iran or Turkey and remained abroad for the duration of the Soviet era. The self-proclaimed successor of the Musavat party, Yeni Musavat Par-tiyasi (New Musavat Party) was reestablished in 1992. Its leadership was drawn from the Azerbaijan Popular Front, an umbrella group representing a broad spectrum of individuals and groups opposed to the communist regime in the waning years of the Soviet Union and active in the post-Soviet transition. In the early twenty-first century Musavat is currently in the forefront of the opposition movement in competition with the Popular Front. Yeni Musavat is characterized as the party of the Azeri intelligensia and is led by Isa Gambar. The key planks of the party platform are the liberation of land captured by Armenian forces in the Karabakh conflict and forcing the resignation of Heidar Aliev’s regime, which it views as corrupt and illegitimate. See also: AZERBAIJAN AND AZERIS; CAUCASUS

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  European Forum. (1999). “Major Political Parties in Azerbaijan.” «http://www.europeanforum.bot-consult .se/cup/azerbaijan/parties.htm». Suny, Ronald Grigor. (1972). The Baku Commune, 1917-1918: Class and Nationality in the Russian Revolution. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Swietockhowski, Tadeusz. (1995). Russia and Azerbaijan: A Borderland in Transition. New York: Columbia University Press.

  GREGORY TWYMAN

  MUSCOVY

  The Russian realm that centered around Moscow until approximately 1713 to 1721 is known as Muscovy. Historians differ about when to set its beginning. Moscow is first mentioned in a chronicle under the year 1147 as part of Yuri Dolgo-ruky’s domain. Its first important prince was Alexander Nevsky’s son Daniel (d. 1303). Between 1301 and 1304, he and his son Yuri (d. 1325) seized three towns from neighboring Ryazan and Smolensk, thereby making Moscow an important center of power within the grand principality of Vladimir. Yuri’s brother Ivan I (d. 1341), who obtained the right to collect tribute for the Mongols from other Rus principalities and persuaded the head of the church to reside in Moscow, established Moscow’s preeminent position in northern Rus. Moscow’s territory continued to expand under his grandson Dmitry Donskoy (r. 1359-1389) and Dmitry’s progeny down to the end of Daniel’s sub-dynasty in 1598, with only a few minor setbacks. Highlights of this growth included the incorporation of Nizhny Novgorod and Suzdal under Basil I (r. 1389-1425), Tver, Severia, and Novgorod under Ivan III (r. 1462-1505), Pskov, Smolensk, and Ryazan under Basil III (r. 1505-1533), the Volga khanates Kazan and Astrakhan under Ivan IV (r. 1533-1584), and western Siberia under Fyodor Ivanovich I (1584-1598). Under Alexei (r. 1645-1676), Russia extended its power across Siberia to the Pacific Ocean, recovered territory lost to Poland-Lithuania between 1611 and 1619, added eastern Ukraine, and became in area the world’s largest contiguous state. By the time Peter I (r. 1682-1715) moved the capital to St. Petersburg in 1713, he had reacquired eastern Baltic territory lost to Sweden in 1611 to 1617 and added some more. He renamed his realm the Russian Empire in 1721.

  Internationally, Moscow developed from a subordinate tributary of the Qipchak khanate (Golden Horde) to a free successor state in the 1480s, and then to ruler of the lands of other khanates, starting in the 1550s. Aiming for semantic equality with other fully sovereign states with imperial pretensions, such as the Ottoman, Persian, and Holy Roman empires, Moscow had to accept parity with Poland-Lithuania and Sweden until the Battle of Poltava in 1709. Refusing a humiliating rank w
ithin the overall European state system and its diplomatic hierarchy, Muscovy remained ceremonially if not operationally aloof, but with the Treaty of Nerchinsk in 1689, it became the first European state to make a formal agreement with China.

  CHURCH AND CULTURE

  Muscovy’s church moved from being the center of an often all-Rus metropolitanate of the patriarchate of Constantinople, to an autocephalous eastern Rus or Russian entity after 1441-the only regional Orthodox church ruled essentially by sovereign Orthodox rulers-to a patriarchate of its own in 1589 with a sense of pan-Orthodox responsibilities, and after 1654 to one actually dominating the Kievan

  MUSCOVY

  metropolitanate, which had been separate since 1441. Starting in the 1470s, the renovation and enlargement of Moscow’s Kremlin and its major churches and palaces gave Muscovy a capital worthy of its pretensions, and in 1547 Ivan IV was crowned officially as tsar as well as grand prince. While remaining under the guise of being devo-tionally and ritually distinct, Muscovy borrowed elements of material and intellectual culture from western Europe and around 1648 initiated some Western-influenced education. boyar, and servitor estates into serfs by 1649. By about 1580, boyars and military servitors had their own special courts and constituted, for Europe, a unique, obligatory-service nobility. The gosti, a privileged elite of merchants, undertook commerce on behalf of the state as well as themselves, and sometimes made forced contributions to the central treasury. Cossacks both served the state well and sometimes rebelled, as under Stenka Razin in 1670 to 1671.

  ECONOMY

  Muscovy’s economy was based primarily on agriculture, including flax and cloth made from it; forest products, especially furs, but also wax and honey; fishing; and the production of salt and simple metal goods. The opening of direct English and then Dutch trade with the Russian far north, starting in the 1550s, led to the production of hemp and cordage. Arkhangelsk (founded in 1583) and Astrakhan served as major ports of entry and export, but much of Muscovy’s foreign trade went overland. The rise of gun powder technology stimulated both the manufacture of cannon in the 1500s and a native potash industry, especially in the 1600s. In the 1630s Dutch concessionaires opened up Russia’s first European-style mining operations. In 1649 Russia ended nearly a century of special trading privileges for the English. Unifying the monetary system in the 1530s, but lacking good sources of specie, Muscovy resorted to re-stamping or melting down and reminting foreign silver coins and therefore required a trade surplus.

  SOCIETY

  From the start, Moscow’s princes, boyars, and higher military servitors were at the top of the social hierarchy. As Muscovy expanded, the reliable incorporated princely elites joined the Moscow bo-yars, while incorporated provincial boyars and elite warriors became regionally based military servitors with some opportunity to advance on the social ladder. Among the major changes over time were the rise of economically active, estate- and enterprise-owning rural monasteries, starting in the late 1300s and continuing through the 1600s; the centralizing of the general obligation to serve via the pomestie system, starting in the late 1400s; the rise of cossacks on the southern frontiers of the realm in the 1500s; the binding down of urban and rural plebeians to their communities by the late 1500s; and the conversion of peasants on church, court,

  STATE

  Muscovy’s state polity developed under professional state secretaries (diak) from the sovereign’s household administration, starting especially in the latter 1400s. Ivan III issued the first national law code (Sudebnik) in 1497. By the 1530s Moscow began to assign local fiscal and policing tasks to local elites. By the 1550s there were separate departments (izba, later prikaz) for foreign affairs, military assignments, military estates, banditry, and taxation, and such offices continued to expand. Ivan IV summoned Muscovy’s first ad hoc national assembly (Zemsky Sobor) in 1566. During the period of political instability and crises from 1565 to 1619, the governing elites learned the value of managing the central state offices, and in the seventeenth century directly controlled most of them. Provincial bodies, for their part, proved their worth in the national revival of 1611 to 1613 (during the Time of Troubles) in spearheading the expulsion of the Poles and the establishment of a new dynasty. The vastly expanded law code (Ulozhenie) of 1649 became the foundation of Russian law down to 1833. How the sovereigns, the boyar council, the major boyar clans and generals, the state secretaries, and the leading prelates and merchants actually made policy remains a mystery, due to want of reliable documentation, but most foreign observers considered Muscovy to be a tyranny or despotism, not a legally limited European-style monarchy. See also: ALEXEI MIKHAILOVICH; ASSEMBLY OF LAND; BASIL I; BASIL III; BOYAR; DANIEL METROPOLITAN; DONSKOY, DMITRY IVANOVICH; FYODOR IVANOVICH; GOSTI; GRAND PRINCE; IVAN I; IVAN IV; LAW CODE OF 1649; PETER I; SUDEBNIK OF 1497; TIME OF TROUBLES; YURI DANILOVICH

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Crummey, Robert O. (1987). The Formation of Muscovy, 1304-1613. London: Longman.

  MUSEUM, HERMITAGE

  Vernadsky, George. (1969).A History of Russia. Vol. 5: The Tsardom of Moscow, 1547-1682. New Haven: Yale University Press.

  DAVID M. GOLDFRANK

  MUSEUM, HERMITAGE

  Sitting on the bank of the Neva River in St. Petersburg, the Hermitage Museum houses one of the world’s preeminent collections of artwork. Among its three million treasures are works by Leonardo da Vinci, Rembrandt, C?zanne, and Picasso. The holdings range from Scythian gold to Impressionist paintings. The word Hermitage is often used interchangeably with Winter Palace, but historically they are distinct facilities. Built during the reign of Empress Elizabeth, between 1754 and 1762, the Winter Palace was the official residence of the tsars. The Palace contains the imperial throne room and grand staterooms such as the Hall of St. George. During the late eighteenth century Empress Catherine II oversaw the construction of four additional buildings. Between 1765 and 1766 Yuri Velten began the Small Hermitage, a pavilion near Palace Square, as Catherine’s intimate retreat from court life. Vallin de la Mothe expanded the Small Hermitage from 1767 until 1769 with a second pavilion connected by Hanging Gardens. Beyond the Small Hermitage to the east lies the New Hermitage (1839-1851) on Palace Square. Along the Neva riverbank is the neoclassical Large Hermitage, designed by Yuri Velten and built between 1771 and 1787 to house Catherine’s paintings, library, and copies of the Vatican’s Raphael Loggias. The Winter Canal runs along the east side of the Large Hermitage and a gallery spans the canal and connects the Neoclassical Theater (built 1785-1787 and designed by Giacomo Quarenghi) to the rest of the complex.

  Nicholas I ordered the New and Large Hermitages to be opened to the public and a new entrance was constructed away from the Palace in

  The Hermitage Museum complex includes the magnificent former Winter Palace and its art collection. © YOGI, INC./CORBIS

  MUSIC

  1852. Following the demise of the Romanov dynasty in 1917, the Bolshevik government combined the Hermitage and Winter Palace into one large complex that was designated as a public museum. The Bolsheviks nationalized the private collections of many wealthy Russians, further enhancing the collection.

  During the nine-hundred-day Nazi siege of Leningrad (the city’s Soviet-era name), the museum was bombed nineteen times. Many holdings were evacuated to the Urals for safety, while curators moved into the facility to protect the remaining treasures. Twelve air-raid shelters were constructed in the basement, and at one point twelve thousand people were living in the museum complex. They planted vegetables in the Hanging Gardens in order to feed themselves.

  The eventual Soviet victory over Germany allowed many priceless works of art to fall into Soviet hands, because Hitler had ordered the seizure of artwork from museums and private collections in occupied lands. Some paintings were immediately placed on display in the USSR, while others were hidden away and only revealed after the fall of the Soviet Union. Restitution of these trophies of war became a contentious issue in Russian politics. While some political leaders th
ought restitution would be morally and legally correct as well as positive for Russian-European relations, other politicians insisted that they are legitimate reparation for the immense damage and suffering the Soviet people experienced during World War II. See also: CATHERINE II; LENINGRAD, SIEGE OF; NATIONALISM IN THE TSARIST EMPIRE; RASTRELLI, BARTOLOMEO; WINTER PALACE

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Eisler, Colin T. (1990). Paintings in the Hermitage. New York: Stewart, Tabori, and Chang. Forbes, Isabella, and Underhill, William. (1990). Catherine the Great: Treasures of Imperial Russia from the State Hermitage Museum, Leningrad. London: Booth-Clibborn Editions. Gosudarstvennyi Ermitazh. (1994). Treasures of the Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg. New York: Harry N. Abrams. Norman, Geraldine. (1997). The Hermitage: The Biography of a Great Museum. London: J. Cape. Varshavsky, Sergei and Rest, Boris. (1986). Hermitage: The Siege of Leningrad, 1941-1944. New York: Harry N. Abrams.

  ANN E. ROBERTSON

  MUSIC

  The history of music in Russia is closely connected with political and social developments and is characterized by a fruitful tension between reception of and dissociation from the West. As elsewhere, the historical development of music in Russia is densely interwoven with the general history of the country. Political, social, and cultural structures and processes in the imperial and Soviet eras wielded a strong influence on musical forms. Even though aesthetic and creative forces always developed a dynamic of their own, they remained inextricable from the power lines of the political and social system.

  The beginning of Russian art music is inseparably linked to a politically induced cultural event in Kievan Rus: the Christianization of the East Slavs under Grand Duke Vladimir I in 988. With religion came sacred music from Byzantium. It was to set the framework for art music in Russia up to the seventeenth century. Condemned by the church as the work of Satan, secular music could hold its own in Old Russia only in certain areas. Whereas the general population mainly cultivated traditional forms of folk music, the tsars, dukes, and nobility were entertained by professional singers and musicians.