Encyclopedia of Russian History

by James Millar

  The forceful orientation toward Western ways of life under Peter I introduced a new era of Russian history of music following European patterns. After Peter had opened the “window to the West,” the sounds of the music of Western Europe, together with its producers, irresistibly found their way into the tsarist court and Russian aristocracy. In the eighteenth century the Italian opera held a key position in Europe. The ambitious court in St. Petersburg brought in the big names of Italian musical culture, including numerous composers and musicians. Since the time of Catherine II the repertory of the newly founded theaters included the first music theater works of Russian composers as well as Italian and French operas. In spite of their native-language librettos, the Russian works were, of course, modelled on the general European style of the Italians. As in many other European countries, the forming of an independent, original, Russian music culture took place in the nineteenth century, which was characterized by “national awakening.” Through an intensive integration of European musical forms and contents on the one hand and the adaptation of Russian and partly Oriental folk music on the other, Russian composers created an impressive, specifically Russian art music.

  MUSIC

  The rich ambivalence of dependence on and distance from Middle and Western Europe can already be found in the operas of Mikhail Glinka, who, regardless of some predecessors, is considered the founder of Russian national music. Among his followers a dispute arose concerning how far a genuine Russian composer should distance himself from Western culture. The circle of the Mighty Handful of Mily Balakirev and his followers-still consisting of highly talented amateurs-decidedly adhered to the creation of Russian national music. Other composers like the cosmopolitan virtuoso Anton Rubinstein or Peter Tchaikovsky, who received his professional training in Russia at the Petersburg conservatory founded in 1862, had fewer reservations about being inspired by the West, though Tchaikovsky, too, wrote genuine Russian music. The work of these pioneers was continued well into the early twentieth century by such composers as Alexander Glazunov, Sergei Rachmani-nov, and Alexander Skryabin. The latter, however, in his later compositions made a radical turn from the nineteenth-century mode of musical expression and became a leading figure of multifaceted Russian modernism.

  In 1917 a political event again marked a turning point in Russian music life: the Bolshevik October Revolution. Although in the 1920s the Soviet state made considerable room for the most varied aesthetic conceptions, by the mid-1930s the doctrine of “Socialist Realism” silenced the musical avant-garde. Optimistic works easy to understand were the overriding demand of the officials; alleged stylistic departures from the norm could entail sanctions. Nevertheless, composers like Dmitry Shostakovich, Sergei Prokofiev, and others achieved artistic greatness through a synthesis of conformity and self-determination. Although the opportunities for development remained limited until the end of the Soviet Union, Russian musical life always met a high standard, which markedly manifested itself not only in the compositions, but in the outstanding performing artists of the twentieth century (e.g., David Oystrakh, Svyatoslav Richter).

  Soviet popular music also succeeded, against ideological constraints, in finding its own, highly appreciated forms of expression. While the 1920s were still dominated by traditional Russian and gypsy romances as well as Western operetta songs, in the 1930s a genuine Soviet style of light music developed. Isaak Dunayevsky created the so-called mass song, which combined cheerful, optimistic music with politically useful texts. His style set the tone of popular music in Stalin’s time, even if the sufferings of war furthered the reemergence of more dark and somber romances. Jazz could not establish itself in Soviet musical life until the late 1950s. Russians had welcomed early trends of jazz with great enthusiasm, but the official classification of American-influenced music as capitalist and hostile hindered its development in the Soviet Union until Stalin’s death. Later, rock music faced similar problems. Only the years of perestroika allowed Russian rock to emancipate itself from the underground. Until then, the officially promoted hits, widely received by Soviet society, were a blend of mass song, folk music elements, and contemporary pop. In contrast to the unsuspected shallowness of these songs, the so-called bards (e.g., Bulat Okudzhava or Vladimir Vysotsky) did not hesitate to address human problems and difficulties of everyday life in their guitar songs. Probably these poet-singers left behind the most original legacy in Soviet popular music, whereas the other currents of musical entertainment distinguished themselves through their interesting synthesis of Western impulses and Russian characteristics, a central thread in Russian music culture of the modern age. See also: BALALAIKA; DUNAYEVSKY, ISAAKOSIPOVICH; FOLK MUSIC; GLINKA, MIKHAIL IVANOVICH; MIGHTY HANDFUL; NATIONALISM IN ARTS; PROKOFIEV, SERGE SERGEYEVICH; RACHMANINOV, SERGE VASILIEVICH; SHOSTAKOVICH, DMITRI DIMTRIEVICH; STRAVINSKY, IGOR FYODOROVICH; TCHAIKOVSKY, PETER ILYICH

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Hakobian, Levon. (1998). Music of the Soviet Age, 1917-1987. Stockholm: Melos Music Literature. Maes, Francis. (2002). A History of Russian Music: From Kamarinskaya to Babi Yar. Berkeley: University of California Press. Schwarz, Boris. (1983). Music and Musical Life in the Soviet Union, 1917-1981. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Starr, S. Frederick. (1994). Red and Hot: The Fate of Jazz in the Soviet Union, 1917-1991. New York: Limelight Ed. Stites, Richard. (1992). Russian Popular Culture. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Taruskin, Richard. (1997). Defining Russia Musically: Historical and Hermeneutical Essays. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

  MATTHIAS STADELMANN

  MYASOEDOV AFFAIR

  MUSKETEERS See STRELTSY.

  MYASOEDOV AFFAIR

  On March 20, 1915, the Russian Army Headquarters announced the execution of Sergei A. Myasoe-dov, a gendarme officer, for espionage only days after his arrest and hasty conviction by military court. The event was a major scandal in the press and is significant for a number of reasons. First, it occurred in the midst of a series of Russian losses on the German section of the front, losses that marked the beginning of what would become known as the Russian Great Retreat that led Russia out of all the Polish provinces and parts of what are now Lithuania, Latvia, Belarus, and Ukraine. Myasoedov, who had plenty of enemies in the army command, security services, and elsewhere, was likely set up as a convenient scapegoat for the extensive Russian losses at the front. After his execution, a wave of arrests targeted anyone who had been associated with him.

  If the execution was meant to calm public opinion, it probably had the opposite effect. A series of raids, arrests, and deportations led by the unofficial head of the domestic military counterintelligence service, Mikhail Dmitriyevich Bonch Bruyevich, and especially the hysterical accusations of spying that the Army Chief of Staff Nikolai Yanushkevich leveled against Jews, Germans, and foreigners in the front zones added to what became a wave of popular spy mania that became a constant and important feature of domestic politics for the rest of the war.

  Only two months after the arrest of Myasoe-dov, Moscow erupted into one of the largest riots in Russian history-directed against Germans and foreigners. The scandal also undermined the position of the minister of war, Vladimir A. Sukhom-linov, who had been a close associate of Myasoedov. In fact, the entire episode may also have been part of political intrigues to try to undermine Sukhom-linov, who was forced to resign in June 1915 under a cloud of rumors of his own treasonous acts. Perhaps most importantly, the scandal lent credence to rumors of treason among members of the Russian elite. Such rumors continued to grow through the rest of the war, and came to center on the empress Alexandra, Rasputin, and various individuals with German names in the Russian court, government, and army command. These rumors did a great deal to undermine respect for the monarchy and contributed to the idea that the monarchy stood in the way of an effective war effort-in short, that it would be a patriotic act to overthrow the monarchy. See also: FEBRUARY REVOLUTION; OCTOBER REVOLUTION

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Katkov, George. (1967
). Russia, 1917: The February Revolution. London: Longman.

  ERIC LOHR

  This page intentionally left blank

  NAGORNO-KARABAKH

  A mountainous region at the eastern end of the Armenian plateau in the south Caucasus and originally part of the Artsakh province of historic Armenia, the Nagorno-Karabakh (“Mountainous Karabakh”) region kept its autonomy following the loss of Armenian statehood in the eleventh century. Its right to self-government was formally recognized from 1603 onward by the Persian shahs, giving it a special place in Armenian history.

  Nagorno-Karabakh was incorporated into the Russian Empire in 1806, following the first Russo-Persian war. While this meant the dissolution of the region’s autonomy, Russia was able to portray itself as the savior of Christians in the region, facilitating Russia’s full occupation of the eastern Transcaucasus by 1828.

  During the tsarist era, Nagorno-Karabakh was made part of the Elisavetbol province, which included the plains of Karabakh to the east, linking the region to the economy as well as history of the Azeri population and giving it a special place in the development of modern Azerbaijani culture. Following the withdrawal of Russian troops from the southern Caucasus during World War I and the proclamation of independence by Azerbaijan and Armenia in 1918, the two republics fought over the region, which was then considered a disputed territory by the League of Nations. Great Britain, briefly in charge of the region following the defeat of Turkey, facilitated its incorporation in Azerbaijan. Following the Sovietization of the two republics, Nagorno-Karabakh was made part of Azerbaijan as the Autonomous Region of Nagorno-Karabakh (NKAO, 4,800 square kilometers), despite the wishes of its majority Armenian population.

  While the NKAO enjoyed relative stability until 1988-the Soviets placed an army base in Stepanakert, the capital of the region-there were intermittent protests by Armenians against Azerbaijani policies of cultural, economic, and ethnic discrimination. Armenians continued to consider the inclusion of the region in Azerbaijan as an unjust concession to Azerbaijan, and Azerbaijanis considered the special status an unfair concession to Armenians.

  According to the last Soviet census taken in 1989, NKAO had a population of 182,000, of which 140,000 were Armenian and 40,000 Azeris.

  In 1988, following glasnost and perestroika, Soviet Armenians joined NKAO Armenians in de989

  NAGRODSKAYA, EVDOKIA APOLLONOVNA

  manding the unification of the region with Armenia, leading to pogroms against Armenians in Azerbaijan and the expulsion of about 170,000 Azeris from Armenia and of 300,000 Armenians from Azerbaijan in 1989 and 1990. Following the declaration of independence of Azerbaijan from the USSR in 1991, NKAO declared its own independence from Azerbaijan, while Azerbaijan dissolved the autonomous status of the region. The Azerbaijani decision in 1991 to use military means and blockades to force the region into submission led to a war from 1992 to 1994 that ultimately involved Armenia. Azerbaijan lost the NKAO as well as seven Azeri-populated provinces around the region. The conflict created close to 400,000 Armenian and 700,000 Azeri refugees and internally displaced persons, including those evicted from their homes in both republics.

  A cease-fire mediated in 1994 has been maintained since. But negotiations, including those conducted by the Minsk Group of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, have failed to resolve the problem of the future status of the region. Russia, suspected by Azerbaijanis as the party responsible for the conflict and the lack of progress in its resolution, has been involved in the negotiations both as a major regional actor and as a member and subsequently co-chair of the Minsk Group. See also: ARMENIA AND ARMENIANS; AZERBAIJAN AND AZERIS; NATIONALITIES POLICIES, SOVIET

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Coppetiers, Bruno, ed. (1996). Contested Borders in the Caucasus. Brussels: VUB Press. Cornell, Svante. (2001). Small Nations and Great Powers. Surrey, UK: Curzon. Croissant, Michael P. (1998). The Armenia-Azerbaijan Conflict. Westport, CT: Praeger. Hunter, Shireen. (1994). The Transcaucasus in Transition: Nation-Building and Conflict. Washington DC: Center for Strategic and International Studies.

  GERARD J. LIBARIDIAN

  NAGRODSKAYA, EVDOKIA APOLLONOVNA

  (1866-1930), fiction writer.

  Evdokia Apollonovna Nagrodskaya was a remarkably candid and avant-garde fiction writer in turn-of-the-century Russia. She was the daughter of Avdotia Yakovlevna Panayeva (1819-1893), a journalist, prominent salon hostess, and mistress of the poet Nikolai Alexeyevich Nekrasov (1821-1877), a coworker of Evdokia’s father, Apol-lon Golovachev, who worked for the “thick journal” Sovremennik. Thus raised in an intellectual environment, Nagrodskaya wrote poetry and several novels, including The White Colonnade (Belaya Kolonnada) in 1900, The Bronze Door (Bronzovaya dver) in 1911, Evil Spirits (Zlye dukhi) in 1916, and The River of Times (Reka vremen) in 1924.

  Nagrodskaya is best known, however, for her novel The Wrath of Dionysus (Gnev Dionisa), which became a bestseller in 1910, although it shocked readers unaccustomed to taboo topics like illicit love, female sexuality, and homosexuality. The novel was published in ten editions and was translated into French, Italian, German, and English. Ultimately the novel became a silent movie in theaters across two continents. The heroine of the story is Tatiana Kuznetsova, a painter who cheats on her supportive but boring fianc? when she meets a dashing, brilliant Englishman named Edgar Stark during a train ride. She begins an affair, but when Stark becomes too possessive, jealous even of her art, she pulls away. Accidentally impregnated by Stark, however, she later decides to stay with him and the baby. Another key character is her homosexual friend Latchinov. The highlight of the story is a dialog between Tatiana and Latchinov, in which the latter confronts Tatiana with her own homosexuality, explaining that she (a masculine woman) and Stark (an effeminate man) are inverted members of their respective genders, and thus complement each other as “normal” men and women do. Suffering from a terminal disease, Latchinov reveals to her his own sexual (but unconsummated) love for Stark, and bids her farewell. See also: NEKRASOV, NIKOLAI ALEXEYEVICH

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Barker, Adele Marie. (2002). A History of Women’s Writing in Russia. New York: Cambridge University Press. Nagrodskaia, Evdokia, and McReynolds, Louise. (1997). The Wrath of Dionysus: A Novel. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Von Geldern, James, and McReynolds, Louise. (1998). Entertaining Tsarist Russia: Tales, Songs, Plays, Movies, Jokes, Ads, and Images from Russian Urban Life, 1779-1917. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

  JOHANNA GRANVILLE

  NAKHIMOV, PAVEL STEPANOVICH

  NAKHICHEVAN

  As part of the Republic of Azerbaijan, the Nakhichevan Republic is located in South Asia, west of Azerbaijan proper and separated from this main territory by the narrow strip of Armenia. The land-mass of Nakhichevan is 5,500 square kilometers, occupying the southern slopes of the Darlagez range and the southwestern slopes of the Zangezur Mountains. The Araz river valley extends between these two ranges. Almost 75 percent of the territory is located at an elevation of 1,000 meters. Gapydjik, located in the Zangezur range, is the highest peak in the region at 3,904 meters. The region is also known for its volcanic domes and its frequent, severe earthquakes.

  The republic is rich in mineral deposits including marble, gypsum, lime, and sulfur. There are abundant mineral springs including Badamli, Sirab, Nagajir, and Kiziljir.

  Nakhichevan’s climate is continental, its temperature ranging from 26 degrees Celsius in summer months to -6 degrees Celsius in winter. The pre-Arazian plains region can be described as semi-arid. The higher elevations of the mountainous areas are characterized as tundra, typically cold and dry. Precipitation is considerably light throughout the region, with 200 to 300 millimeters annually recorded in the plains region. Periodic flash flooding occurs due to topography and sparse vegetation. Aside from the Araz, there are about forty smaller rivers in the country fed by rain and the mountain runoff of melting snows.

  According to legend, Noah’s ark is said to have
first touched land along the submerged peaks of the Zangezur Mountains before reaching Mount Ararat. The Republic’s name is derived from this legend, as “Nakhichevan” is a corruption of Nukkhtchikhan, the colony of Noah. Like the surrounding region, Nakhichevan sits at a strategic crossroads and has been subject to military intervention throughout much of its history. In the mid-eighteenth century, after successive battles for supremacy between Iran and Russia, Nakhichevan came under Russian control, in accordance with the treaty of Turkmanchai in 1828. In 1924 Josef Stalin designated Nakhichevan an autonomous republic, a status it maintains today within Azerbaijan.

  The economy, based on agriculture, food processing, and mining, has suffered substantially since 1988 with loss of markets and imports due to the Karabakh conflict. While trade corridors are being restored to neighboring Iran and Turkey, economic recovery is slow. Since 2000 almost three-quarters of the state budget has been provided by the central government in Baku. See also: AZERBAIJAN AND AZERIS; CAUCASUS

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  “Azerbaijan and Iran deal in LNG.” Alexander’s Gas amp; Oil Connections. July 5, 2002. «http://www .gasandoil.com/goc/news/ntc22239.htm». Swietochowski,Tadeusz, and Brian Collins. (1999). Historical Dictionary of Azerbaijan. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press. Twyman, Gregory. (2001). “Geography and Climate.” In USACC Investment Guide to Azerbaijan, 2001. Washington, D.C.: USACC.

  GREGORY TWYMAN

  NAKHIMOV, PAVEL STEPANOVICH

  (1802-1855), commander of Black Sea Fleet in Crimean war.

  Pavel Stepanovich Nakhimov was born into a naval family in Gorodok, Smolensk province. In 1818 he completed his studies in the Naval Cadet Corps and served aboard ships in the Baltic fleet. From 1822 to 1825 Nakhimov participated in a round-the-world cruise abroad the frigate Kreiser-36. Nakhimov served aboard Vice-Admiral Geiden’s flagship Azov-74 at the battle of Navarino on October 21, 1827. During the subsequent 1828-1829 Russo-Turkish War, Nakhimov served in the Russian Mediterranean squadron blockading the Dardanelles, commanding a corvette. Following the end of the war Nakhimov returned to the Baltic fleet base at Kronshtadt. In 1834 Nakhimov was transferred to the Black Sea Fleet, where he was given command of a ship of the line. During the 1840s Nakhimov participated in numerous amphibious landings on the eastern Black Sea Caucasian coast, where the Russian military constructed a chain of coastal forts to interdict arms smuggling to Muslim rebels. Nakhimov was promoted to rear admiral in 1845. Seven years later Nakhimov was promoted to vice admiral and given command of a fleet division. As relations between the Russian and Ottoman empires worsened in the early 1850s, Nakhimov argued for an aggressive naval policy toward the Ottoman Empire. On November 30, 1853,