Encyclopedia of Russian History

by James Millar

  991

  NAPOLEON I

  Nakhimov led a squadron into Sinope harbor on the southern Black Sea coast. Using shell-firing artillery instead of smoothbore cannons, his ships annihilated the Ottoman squadron moored there, producing outrage in Europe. Following the outbreak of the Crimean War in 1854, Nahkimov was appointed commander of the Black Sea Feet and military governor of Sevastopol port in February 1855. Nakhimov supervised the offloading of artillery from the fleet’s warships to be integrated in a series of land fortifications under the direction of engineer E. I. Totleben. Nakhimov was mortally wounded by enemy fire on the Malakhov redoubt on July 10, 1855, and interred in the Vladimir church. A monument was raised to Nakhimov in 1898 in Sevastopol on the forty-fifth anniversary of the Sinope battle. The Imperial Navy honored his memory by naming ships in his honor; an Admiral Nakhimov cruiser was sunk by her crew after the Tsushima battle on May 27, 1905. Despite the USSR’s disavowal of much of its imperial history, the Soviet government on March 3, 1944, established a first- and second-class Nakhimov military order for valor for officers; a Nakhimov medal for lower ranks was also established, and naval cadets attended Nakhimov naval academies. The post-Soviet navy also has a Kirov-class Admiral Nakhi-mov cruiser (formerly Kalinin, renamed in 1992). See also: BLACK SEA FLEET; CRIMEAN WAR; MILITARY, IMPERIAL ERA; SINOPE, BATTLE OF

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Daly, Robert Welter. (1958). “Russia’s Maritime Past.” In The Soviet Navy, ed. Colonel M. G. Saunders. New York: Praeger.

  JOHN C. K. DALY

  NAPOLEON I

  The Russian people first discovered Napoleon as the young and bright general who stood out during the military campaigns of Italy in 1796-1797 and of Egypt in 1798-1799. By that time, he was deeply admired in Russia for his military genius by both civilians and soldiers such as Alexander Su-vorov, who saw in him a “new Hannibal.” Later on, Napoleon’s victories over European armies reinforced the myth of his military invincibility, until the retreat of Berezina in October-November 1812. Politically, the coup d’?tat by which Napoleon came to power in October 1799 (Eighteenth Bru-maire) at first reassured the tsar Paul and the conservative and liberal elites, who saw in this new authoritarian regime the end of disorders and excesses brought by the French Revolution. But this feeling did not last: Napoleon’s proclamation of his First Consulate for life on August 4,1802, followed by the establishment of the Empire on May 18, 1804, triggered strong negative reactions. For liberals, including the young tsar Alexander I, who acceded to the throne in March 1801, Napoleon became a tyrant who betrayed the Enlightenment ideas through personal interest. For the conservatives, the self-crowned man lacked legitimacy, and his huge political ambitions were dangerous for the European balance.

  Alexander first chose to ignore the Napoleonic threat. In 1801 the young tsar decided to maintain Russia outside the European conflict and adopted a pacifist diplomacy: On October 8, 1801, a peace treaty was officially signed with France. But this position became increasingly difficult to maintain when France started to pose a serious threat to Russian interests in the Mediterranean and in the Balkans. So in 1805, Alexander decided to join Austria and Britain in the Third Coalition. The tsar wanted to play a major role in the international theater, lead the fight against Napoleon, and, after the victory, promote a new European order, liberated from the tyrant. However, the military operations were a disaster for Russia, and on December 2, 1805, the battle of Austerlitz was a personal humiliation for Alexander, who, as commander of the Russian forces, ignored General Mikhail Kutuzov’s advice not to enter battle before the arrival of more troops.

  After the defeat of Friedland on June 14, 1806, judging that his forces were unable to continue fighting, the tsar decided to pursue peace with Napoleon. Napoleon was in favor of an agreement with Russia, as his focus had shifted to political control of Central Europe and the war against Britain. On July 7-9, 1807, several treaties were signed at Tilsit between the two emperors. The terms were difficult for Prussia, which was partitioned. The Polish provinces forming the Duchy of Warsaw under Saxony and the provinces west of the Elbe were combined to make the Kingdom of Westphalia, which had to pay an indemnity. Russia suffered no territorial losses but had to recognise Napoleon’s dominant position in Europe and take part in the continental blockade of British trade. In compensation Russia obtained peace, freedom of action in EastNAPOLEON I

  Napoleon I and Alexander I at Tilsit studying a map of Europe. © BETTMANN/CORBIS ern Europe, and the opportunity to gain Finland from Sweden militarily (1808-1809), Bessarabia from the Ottoman Empire (with the Bucharest treaty in 1812), and Georgia from Persia (by the Gulistan treaty in 1813).

  Despite these large successes, Russia remained hostile toward Napoleon. In 1805 the Orthodox Church declared Napoleon the Antichrist. And for most of the Russian elite who had been raised with French language and culture, Napoleon was the archetypal expression of Barbary, not a Frenchman but a “damned Corsican.”

  Despite its renewal on September 27, 1808, at Erfurt, the Russian-French alliance was indeed fragile. The two countries had opposite views on the Polish question and were rivals in the Balkans and in the Mediterranean. The Continental blockade became more and more expensive for that Russian economy and was denounced by Alexander in December 1810.

  These tensions led Napoleon to initiate a war that he expected to be short. He invaded the Russian territory on June 24, 1812, with an army of more than 400,000 men. On June 28, the French were already in Vilna, and on August 18 they entered Smolensk, forcing the Russians to retreat.

  For the Russian people, the invasion was a national trauma, not only because of the brutality of the war-in one day, at the battle of Borodino, on September 7, 1812, the Russians lost 50,000 men and the French 40,000-but also because of its blasphemous dimension: Napoleon did not hesitate to use churches as stables. On September 14, when Napoleon entered the sacred capital, Moscow the Mother, he found the city empty and devastated by fires, which went on for five days. The burning of Moscow was a terrible shock, and it generated feelings of resentment from the Russian people toward Alexander. But soon it united all the Russians, whatever their social class, in a patriotic and mystic struggle against the invader. Napoleon’s promise to liberate the Russian peasants from serfdom had no effect on the people, who, along with the tsar and his elite, sensed the urgency of a physical, moral, and spiritual danger.

  NARIMANOV, NARIMAN

  For Napoleon, the situation was impossible: On the one hand the lack of supplies prevented him from going any farther; on the other hand, he was unable to force Alexander to negotiate. On October 16, the retreat of the Grand Army began in difficult conditions. Subject to cold, hunger, and typhus, attacked by the partisan movement and by peasants on their way back, less than 10 percent of the Grand Army was able to leave the Russian territory in December 1812.

  The French defeat was a fatal blow to the Napoleonic adventure and made Alexander the conqueror of Napoleon and the “savior of Europe.” In February 1815, Napoleon tried to regain his lost power, but the adventure did not last, and the Hundred Days did not harm Alexander’s prestige. The tsar personally took part in the Congress of Vienna and engaged in the construction of a new political and geopolitical order in Europe. During the congress, Alexander’s Russia took great advantage of the victory over Napoleon from both diplomatic and territorial points of view. But beyond this geopolitical concrete outcome, the collective and messianic triumph over the invader constituted in Russia a major step toward the birth of a modern national identity. See also: ALEXANDER I; AUSTERLITZ, BATTLE OF; BORODINO, BATTLE OF; KUTUZOV, MIKHAIL IL-IARONOVICH; FRANCE, RELATIONS WITH; FRENCH WAR OF 1812; TILSIT, TREATY OF; VIENNA, CONGRESS OF; WAR OF THE THIRD COALITION

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Cate, Curtis. (1985). The War of the Two Emperors. New York: Random House. Hartley, Janet. (1994). Alexander I. London: Longman. Palmer, Alan. (1967). Napoleon in Russia. London: Simon and Schuster. Tarle, Eugene. (1979). Napoleon’s Invas
ion of Russia, 1812. New York: Octagon Books. Wesling, Molly. (2001). Napoleon in Russian Cultural Mythology. New York: Peter Lang.

  MARIE-PIERRE REY

  NARIMANOV, NARIMAN

  (1870-1925), renowned educator, author, medical doctor, long-time Bolshevik, and head of the first soviet government of Azerbaijan from 1920 to 1922.

  In Soviet interpretations, Narimanov loomed large as the key native Bolshevik who supported sovietization of his homeland, Azerbaijan. He chaired the first Soviet of People’s Commissars (Sovnarkom), which was established with the Red Army’s overthrow of the independent government on April 28, 1920. Narimanov was not in the Azerbaijani capital of Baku at this time, and it is not clear that he supported this means of installing soviet power. Documents released in the late 1980s indicate that Narimanov’s vision of soviet rule in Azerbaijan was closer to an anticolonial program leading to native rule than to a means for the dominance of an industrial proletariat that, in Azerbaijan, was largely Russian. During the first years of soviet power, Narimanov found himself increasingly at odds with the nonnative leaders of the Transcaucasian party, especially Stalin’s pro-t?g?, Sergo Ordzhonikidze. Narimanov’s opposition to key policies, among them the merging of the three republics of Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Georgia into a Transcaucasian Federation (Zakfed-eratsiia, or ZSFSR), led to his removal in 1922 from Baku. His prominence was such that his removal was euphemized as a “promotion” to a post in Moscow.

  Narimanov’s prerevolutionary record as an educator and writer led him to take a hand in cultural policies in the early soviet period. He supported the Latinization policy for the Azerbaijani Turkish alphabet, which was an indigenous proposal, but which Moscow favored. He backed school reform projects that came from Russia’s Commissariat of Enlightenment. His speeches to teachers’ conferences, however, revealed that his ultimate goal was wide popular participation in government for Azerbaijani “toilers.” His use of that term rather than “proletariat,” coupled with his support for rural schools, suggest that he hoped for Azerbaijani villagers to have a genuine partnership in governing with urban workers, both Azerbaijani and other.

  Narimanov died in Moscow on March 19, 1925, allegedly of a weak heart. His body was cremated, which has no precedent in Azerbaijani (Muslim) tradition. Some scholars believe he may have been poisoned. His ashes were interred in the Kremlin wall. See also: AZERBAIJAN AND AZERIS; CAUCASUS; SOV-NARKOM; TRANSCAUCASIAN FEDERATIONS

  NARYSHKINA, NATALIA KIRILLOVNA

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Altstadt, Audrey. (1992). The Azerbaijani Turks: Power and Identity under Russian Rule. Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press.

  AUDREY ALTSTADT

  NARKOMINDEL See PEOPLE’S COMMISSARIAT OF NATIONALITIES. NARODNICHESTVO See POPULISM. while Charles was preoccupied in Poland. In July 1704 the Russian army returned to besiege Narva, held by a small Swedish garrison under general Horn. On August 20, 1704, Narva fell to Peter’s generals, Sheremetev, now field marshal, and the Austro-Scottish general Baron Georg Ogilvy. This victory strengthened Russia’s hold on the Baltic provinces and further weakened Sweden in its struggle with Peter. See also: GREAT NORTHERN WAR; PETER I; SWEDEN, RELATIONS WITH

  PAUL A. BUSHKOVITCH

  NARVA, BATTLES OF

  The first battle of Narva on November 30, 1700, was Peter the Great’s first major defeat in the Great Northern War. Immediately after the Russian declaration of war in August 1700, Peter marched his army into Swedish territory to try to capture the port town of Narva in northeastern Estonia, and on September 16 laid siege to the city with some 34,000 men. Meanwhile Charles XII, the King of Sweden, defeated Peter’s ally Denmark and brought his army to Estonia to relieve the siege. By November 27 the Russians heard that the Swedes were approaching, and the next day Peter left the army to join the approaching Russian reinforcements. The Russian army deployed in a curved line running from south to northwest of Narva under the command of the recently arrived Belgian officer Duke Eugene de Croy. The traditional Russian gentry cavalry under the boyar Boris Sheremetev held the left (southern) flank near the Narova river. Generals Adam Weyde (a Dutchman) and prince Ivan Trubetskoy held the center, and general Avtomon Golovin the right with the guards regiments, also by the river. After approaching the Russian line in a blinding snowstorm, Charles attacked the Russian center about one o’clock in the afternoon, his right under general Welling smashing Weyde’s troops and the Swedish left under General Carl Gustaf Rehnsk?ld overrunning Trubetskoy. Only some of Golovin’s and Sheremetev’s men were able to escape, with Russian losses at least eight thousand killed. Peter’s army, only recently created along European lines, was smashed. The battle established the eighteen-year-old king of Sweden’s military reputation.

  Peter returned to Novgorod with the remains of his army, which he rebuilt in the ensuing years

  NARYSHKINA, NATALIA KIRILLOVNA

  (1652-1694), second wife of Tsar Alexei (r. 1645-1676); mother of Peter I.

  Natalia was the daughter of a minor nobleman who served for a time in Smolensk, but was related by marriage to the up-and-coming official Ar-tamon Matveyev, later head of the Foreign Office, who may have brought her to the attention of the recently bereaved Tsar Alexei. In 1671 she became the tsar’s second wife, giving birth to Peter (1672-1725), Natalia (1673-1716), and Fyodora (1674-1678.) Widowed in 1676, during the early years of the reign of her stepson Theodore Alex-eyevich (1676-1682), Natalia and her children were marginalized; however, when Theodore died in 1682, nine-year-old Peter was elected tsar with the patriarch’s support, and Natalia prepared to act as regent. She was thwarted by Tsarevna Sofia Alex-eyevna and her party, who secured the election of Tsarevich Ivan Alexeyevich as Peter’s co-tsar. The fact that Natalia feared for her son’s life during the riots of 1682 and felt vulnerable during Sofia’s regency may have made her over-protective. After Sofia was ousted in 1689 and the Naryshkins and their clients assumed leading posts, there was a clash of wills between mother and son over such issues as Peter’s sailing expeditions and his failure to attend official receptions. The only known portraits show Natalia in nun-like widow’s garb with head modestly covered. She exerted the traditional influence of a tsaritsa, raising the fortunes of her clan and their clients, operating her own patronage networks, and undertaking public activities such as alms-giving, visiting shrines, and attending appropriate court ceremonies, but the business of government remained in male hands. Natalia

  NATIONAL LIBRARY OF RUSSIA

  died in January 1694 and was laid to rest in the Ascension Convent in the Kremlin. She remains a shadowy figure. See also: ALEXEI MIKHAILOVICH; PETER I

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Longworth, Philip. (1984). Alexis: Tsar of All the Russias. London: Secker and Warburg. Thyret, Isolde. (2000). Between God and Tsar: Religious Symbolism and Royal Women of Muscovite Russia, DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press.

  LINDSEY HUGHES

  NATIONAL LIBRARY OF RUSSIA

  The oldest state public library in Russia, the National Library of Russia is the second largest library in the Russian Federation, after the Russian State Library, with holdings of more than thirty-three million volumes, and a national center of librarianship, bibliography, and book studies.

  Founded in St. Petersburg in 1795 by Empress Catherine II as the Imperial Public Library, the origins of the National Library of Russia lie in Catherine’s devotion to the philosophy of the Enlightenment in the early period of her reign. She envisioned a library that would serve as a repository for all books produced in the Russian empire, books published in Russian outside the empire, and books about Russia published in foreign languages, and that would be open to the Russian public for the purpose of general social enlightenment. The library officially opened to the public on January 2, 1814. The nucleus of the original collection was the collection, brought to St. Petersburg from Warsaw in 1795, of Counts J?zef Andrzej and Andrzej Stanislaw Zaluski, eminent Polish aristocrats and bibliophiles. In 1810 Tsar Alexander I signed a spe
cial statute designating the library as a legal depository entitled to receive two mandatory copies of imprints produced in the Russian empire. Throughout its history, the library has had an enormous influence on the political, cultural, and scientific life of Russia.

  From 1845 to 1861 the library administered the Rumyantsev Museum that was later moved to Moscow and eventually became the Russian State Library. In March 1917 the Imperial Public Library was renamed the Russian Public Library. With the consolidation of Soviet power its status was redefined, and in 1925 its name changed to State Public Library in Leningrad, as it was designated the national library of the RSFSR, while the V. I. Lenin State Library of the USSR (later the Russian State Library) assumed the function of all-union state library. In 1932 it was renamed Saltykov-Shchedrin State Public Library, and a Soviet title of honor was added to its name in 1939. The library continued to function during the siege of Leningrad from 1941 to 1944, despite the evacuation of valuable materials. The Zaluski collection was returned to Poland between 1921 and 1927 and destroyed during World War II. In 1992, after the dissolution of the USSR, the facility acquired the name Russian National Library and became one of two national libraries in the Russian Federation.