Encyclopedia of Russian History

by James Millar

  Not that the language of classicism was always suitable for Russian aims. The awkward proportions of the Cathedral of St. Isaac (1819-1859) by Auguste Montferrand is testimony to how disastrous some attempts to design an Orthodox church in a classical style could be. Far more successful during Nicholas I’s reign is the work of Carlo Rossi, whose concern with entire architectural ensembles in St. Petersburg underlines his flair for the classical organization of space, for example in the streets, squares, and buildings that he designed to complement his Alexandrinsky Theatre (1828-1832), or in the General Staff Building (1819-1829), which completed Palace Square. This interest in town planning reverberated in provincial towns such as Odessa, where boulevards parallel to the cliff-top benefit from the dramatic views over the Black Sea.

  Painting and sculpture made a less distinguished contribution to neoclassicism in Russia than architecture, but certain artists stand out. During the last quarter of the eighteenth century, Mikhail Kozlovsky produced some notable sculpture on classical themes, and his monument to General Su-vorov portrayed the military leader rather improbably as an athletic young Mars. Ivan Martos, who had studied with Mengs in Rome, also attempted to invest his work with both Russian meanings and references to antiquity in his statue of Minin and Pozharsky (1804-1818) on Red Square, in which seventeenth-century heroes are clothed in a hybrid of classical tunics and the traditional Russian garb of long, belted shirts worn over trousers. Martos deployed the extravagant rhetorical gestures typical of much ancient sculpture, a device continued in Boris Orlovsky’s statues of Marshal Kutuzov and Barclay de Tolly in front of the Cathedral of the Virgin of Kazan in St. Petersburg. On a more intimate note, Fyodor Tolstoy designed bas-relief sculptures reminiscent of the work of the English neoclassical sculptor John Flaxman, while his acclaimed portrait medallions commemorating the Napoleonic War filtered patriotic sensibilities through the classical tradition of coin and medal design. In painting, Anton Losenko’s Vladimir and Rogneda of 1770 initiated a tradition of depicting Russian historical subjects in the so-called Grand Manner, the approved Academic approach which drew heavily on the classical practice of idealization, by the nineteenth century academic history painters were expected to work in the neoclassical style. In Fyodor Bruni’s painting Death of Camilla, the Sister of Horatio (1824), the classical hero, who has placed civic virtue above familial sentiment, strikes a suitably grandiloquent pose in the center of a composition arranged like a bas-relief. But the pictorial devices of neoclassicism were already being tempered by Romantic sensibilities, as is evident in Orest Kiprensky’s Portrait of Alexander Pushkin (1827) and Karl Bryullov’s The Last Day of Pompeii (1830-1833). Kiprensky may include a classical statuette in his portrait, and Bryullov may have chosen a classical subject, but the emphasis is now on the Romantic values of subjectivity and personal emotion, as opposed to the harmonic proportion and physical perfection of classical art. See also: ACADEMY OF ARTS; ARCHITECTURE; CATHERINE II; KREMLIN; MOSCOW BAROQUE

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Auty, Robert, and Obolensky, Dmitri, eds. (1980). An Introduction to Russian Art and Architecture. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Brumfield, William C. (1993). A History of Russian Architecture. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Kennedy, J. (1983). “The Neoclassical in Russian Sculpture.” In Art and Culture in Nineteenth-Century Russia, ed. T. G. Stavrou. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Sarabianov, Dmitry. (1990). Russian Art from Neoclassi-cism to the Avant-Garde. London: Thames and Hudson. Shvidkovsky, Dmitry. (1996). The Empress and the Architect: British Architecture and Gardens at the Court of Catherine the Great. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

  ROSALIND P. GRAY

  NERCHINSK, TREATY OF

  The Treaty of Nerchinsk was a Sino-Russian peace treaty negotiated and signed at the Siberian border point of Nerchinsk in August and September 1689.

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  NERONOV, IVAN

  Armed conflict in the Far East of Russia rose out of the advance of Russian colonists to Dahuria during the middle of the seventeenth century, since the Manchus claimed the Amur basin. The growing tension came to a head in the sieges of the fortress of Albazin in 1685 and 1686, when the Manchus ultimately forced the Russians to surrender. In a bid to settle the problem, in 1685 the Russian government appointed Fyodor Alexeyevich Golovin as its first ambassador plenipotentiary to China. His brief was to delineate a border on the Amur and gain the Russians a secure right to trade in the river valley.

  After two weeks of negotiations with Songgotu and T’ung Kuo-kang, a peace treaty was signed in September 1689 and the preconditions created for a stable trading relationship. The Russians ended up ceding all rights to the Amur valley, as well as to Albazin, but gained a regularized and potentially lucrative commercial relationship. The Chinese, having secured the areas near the Ch’ing dynasty’s ancestral home, permitted the Russians to keep Nerchinsk, recognizing its potential for trade. Merchants from either side were to be permitted to visit the other with proper passports. The arrival of the Manchu delegation for the negotiations also marked the beginning of large-scale border trade: At least 14,160 rubles’ worth of goods were imported that year from China through the new frontier trading post.

  The treaty envisaged Russian caravans traveling to Beijing once every three years, but during the decade following Nerchinsk, such trips were made more or less annually. In 1696 alone, 50,000 rubles’ worth of furs were exported via Nerchinsk.

  The treaty put an end to Sino-Russian armed conflict for 165 years.

  NERONOV, IVAN

  (1591-1670), ardent worker for church reform, first in the provinces and later in Moscow. He opposed Nikon and church reforms he implemented and suffered for his opposition.

  Neronov was of humble birth, but learned to read. He entered a church near Ustiug as a reader and chanter. Appalled by the lax manners and morals of the local clergy, Neronov complained to Patriarch Filaret, manifesting his zeal for religious reform. By the mid-1620s, Neronov had relocated to a village in the Nizhny Novgorod region. Many of those who would be energetic supporters of church reform in the second half of the seventeenth century were connected with this region. During the Smolensk War (1632-1633), Neronov moved to Moscow. In the mid-1640s he was associated with the Zealots of Piety, a circle of church reformers centered on the court and led by Tsar Alexis Mikhailovich’s confessor, Stefan Vonifatiev. In 1649 he was named archpriest of the Kazan Cathedral in Moscow. Early in 1653 Neronov was among the first to challenge the revised liturgical books printed under Patriarch Nikon. Retribution was swift: By the end of 1653 Neronov had been defrocked and exiled in chains to a monastery near Vologda. There he took monastic vows and assumed the name Grigory. Called before the Church Council of 1666, Neronov renounced his opposition to the new liturgies. Subsequently he was made archimandrite of a monastery near Moscow, where he lived out his days seeking reform within his monastery. See also: CHURCH COUNCIL; MONASTICISM; PATRIARCHATE; RELIGION; RUSSIAN ORTHODOX CHURCH

  See also: CHINA, RELATIONS WITH; FOREIGN TRADE

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Foust, Clifford M. (1969). Muscovite and Mandarin: Russia’s Trade with China and its Setting, 1725-1805. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Mancall, Mark. (1971). Russia and China: Their Diplomatic Relations to 1728 (Harvard East Asian Series 61). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Miasnikov, Vladimir Stepanovich. (1985). The Ch’ing Empire and the Russian State in the Seventeenth Century, tr. Vic Schneierson. Moscow: Progress.

  JARMO T. KOTILAINE

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Michels, Georg B. (1999). At War with the Church: Religious Dissent in Seventeenth-Century Russia. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

  CATHY J. POTTER

  NESSELRODE, KARL ROBERT

  (1770-1862), Russian foreign minister equivalent, 1814-1856; chancellor, 1845-1856.

  A baptized Anglican son of a Catholic West-phalian in Russia’s diplomatic service, a Berlin

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MATERIAL PRODUCT

  gymnasium graduate, and briefly in the Russian navy and army, Karl Nesselrode began his diplomatic career in 1801. Posted in Stuttgart, Berlin, and the Hague and attracted to the conservative equilibrium ideas of Friedrich von Gentz even more than Metternich was, Nesselrode became an advocate of the Third Coalition, yet assisted in the drawing up the Treaty of Tilsit (1807) and served in Paris. He played a major role in the forging of the 1813-1814 coalitions and the first Treaty of Paris (1814) and became Alexander I’s chief plenipotentiary at Vienna (1814-1815). Sharing the direction of Russia’s foreign affairs from 1814 to 1822 with the more liberal state secretary for foreign affairs, Ioannes Capodistrias, Nesselrode participated in the Congresses of Aix-la-Chapelle (1818), Laibach (1821), and Verona (1822). His European approach to the Eastern Question won over Alexander and led to the compromises after the Greek Rebellion of 1821.

  Nesselrode’s wide knowledge, clarity, complete loyalty to the crown, and earlier briefings of Nicholas I before 1825 led to retention by the latter in 1826. Though Nicholas often directed policy himself, Nesselrode remained the single most influential Russian in external affairs. He shepherded the London Protocol (with Britain, 1826) and the Convention of Akkerman (with Turkey, 1827), convinced Nicholas I to accept the moderate Treaty of Adrianople (with Turkey, 1829), and helped dissuade Nicholas from trying to depose Louis-Philippe of France (1830). Partially behind the defensive Russo-Turkish Treaty of Unkiar-Skelessi (1833), he promoted the Conventions of M?nchen-gr?tz and Berlin (1833), which associated Austria and Prussia with a status quo policy regarding the Ottoman Empire.

  Nesselrode subsequently helped prevent rising tensions with Britain from turning violent in 1838 by blocking a scheme to send warships into the Black Sea and removing Russia’s belligerently anti-British envoy to Tehran. Promoting compromises with Britain during the entire Eastern crisis of 1838-1841, Nesselrode blocked support of Serbian independence in 1842-1843 and limited the damage from Nicholas’s indescretions during his 1844 visit to England. Fearful of liberalization in Central Europe, Nesselrode supported the full restoration of monarchial power and the status quo there in 1848 and 1850 against both popular and Prussian expansionist aspirations.

  During the Eastern Crisis of 1852-1853, Russia’s nationalists achieved the upper hand. Nesselrode alerted the emperor about the dangers of undue pressure on the Ottomans but abetted the deceptions perpetrated by Russian’s mission in Istanbul and his own ministry’s Asiatic Department. Although he was one of the best “spin doctors” of his era, his eighteenth-century logic, devotion to the 1815 settlement, and impeccable French prose could not prevail over the determination of Nicholas and the nationalists to risk war with Britain and France and have their way with Turkey regarding the Holy Places and Russia’s claimed protectorate over the Ottoman Orthodox. Nor could he convince Austria to back Russia, but in the course of the Crimean War he continuously promoted a compromise and helped convince Alexander II to end hostilities in 1856. See also: ALEXANDER I; CRIMEAN WAR; NICHOLAS I; VIENNA, CONGRESS OF

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Grimsted, Patricia Kennedy. (1969). The Foreign Ministers of Alexander I. Berkeley: University of California Press. Ingle, Harold N. (1976). Nesselrode and the Russian Rapprochement with Britain, 1836-1844. Berkeley: University of California Press. Walker, Charles E. (1973). “The Role of Karl Nesselrode in the Formulation and Implementation of Russian Foreign Policy, 1850-1956.” Ph.D. diss., University of West Virginia, Morgantown.

  DAVID M. GOLDFRANK

  NET MATERIAL PRODUCT

  Net material product (NMP), the approach to national accounts based on Material Product System (MPS), was introduced in the USSR in the 1920s. Harmonized in 1969 by the Statistical Commission of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA), it was adopted by all centrally planned economies.

  The central indicator of the (Western) System of National Accounts (SNA) is gross domestic product (GDP), which is a basic measure of a country’s overall economic performance. For planned economies, the role of the main indicator in the MPS is assigned to the net material product.

  NMP covers material production (industry, agriculture, construction) and also includes material services that bring material consumer goods

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  NEVSKY, ALEXANDER YAROSLAVICH

  See from producers to consumers (transport and trade) and maintain the capital stock (maintenance and repairs). Nonmaterial services, such as health, education, administration, business, and personal services, are not included in productive activities; therefore, the central indicator NMP encompasses only the total income generated in the material branches, and the distinction is kept between “intermediate” and “final” products and between consumption and accumulation.

  The division of services into “material” and “nonmaterial” originates from a theoretical proposition of Karl Marx’s writings. Marx , in the classical tradition of Adam Smith, considered as productive only activities that yield tangible, material goods.

  Numerous incidental differences exist between GDP and NMP, including the treatment of business travel expenses, which are intermediate consumption in the SNA but labor compensation, and therefore part of the sectoral NMP, in the MPS. Cultural and welfare services provided by enterprises to employees are also intermediate consumption in the SNA but final consumption in the MPS. Some losses on fixed capital, the borderline between current and capital repair, and other relatively small items are treated differently. SNA has displaced MPS in all transition economies. See also: ECONOMIC GROWTH, SOVIET; MARXISM

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  World Bank. (1992). Statistical Handbook: States of the Former USSR. Studies of Economies in Transformation, 3. Washington, DC: World Bank. World Bank. (1993). Historically Planned Economies: A Guide to the Data. Washington, DC: World Bank.

  MISHA V. BELKINDAS

  NEVSKY, ALEXANDER YAROSLAVICH

  ALEXANDER YAROSLAVICH.

  NEW ECONOMIC POLICY

  As the civil war wound down in late 1920 and famine caused millions of deaths, peasant rebellions broke out against the compulsory grain procurements (prodrazverstka), which had been extracted by force and had led to reduced plantings. Strikes occurred in Petrograd and elsewhere. Late that winter an uprising occurred at Kronstadt, the naval base near the northern capital. Fearing counterrevolution from within, Vladimir Ilich Lenin accepted a “retreat” at the Tenth Party Congress in March, 1921. Under the New Economic Policy (NEP), Russia would have a mixed economy “seriously and for a long time,” as Lenin said. It would be based on an alliance (smychka) between the workers and the peasants.

  Requisitions from the peasantry would be replaced by a tax in kind (prodnalog) based on the rural household’s level of income and its number of dependents. (By 1923-1924, by which time the inflation was halted, this tax was converted to cash.) Peasants would be free to market any surplus left after mandatory deliveries, which were reduced from the quotas imposed in 1920-1921. Some effort was made to establish scientific farms and to persuade peasants to enter cooperatives, but few did until the forced collectivization of 1928-1929. Rural, interregional, and retail trade was freed, somewhat reluctantly, and taken up by privateers, known universally as “nepmen.” Prices were effectively free, despite the government’s efforts to fix them for such monopolized commodities as tobacco, salt, kerosene, and matches. Trade unions became voluntary, and workers were free to seek whatever employment they could find.

  In 1921 the Soviet government decided to lease back or sell back most medium- and small-sized enterprises to private owners or cooperatives. The largest 8.5 percent of them, called the “commanding heights,” were retained. They employed six-sevenths of all the industrial workers and produced more than nine-tenths of all industrial output even at the peak of NEP in 1925-1926. These larger factories were coordinated by the Supreme Council of National Economy (Vesenkha) and its “trusts.” Banks, railroads, and foreign trade also remained in the hands of the state. But the
state had insufficient fuel and materials to keep the larger plants open. Unemployment grew. Efforts to attract foreign concessionaires to provide timber, oil, and other materials were mostly unavailing. The sixty-eight foreign concessions that existed by 1928 provided less than 1 percent of industrial output. Foreign capitalists were rather reluctant to invest in a hostile and chaotic environment with a Bolshevik state that had defaulted on all tsarist debts, confiscated foreign property, and declared its intentions to overthrow the capitalist order worldwide.

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  NEW-FORMATION REGIMENTS

  To achieve some measure of efficiency the state now required industrial enterprises to operate on commercial principles (khozraschet), paying wages and other bills and to sell, even at distressed prices relative to the rising relative price of foodstuffs. By 1923-1924, the government balanced its budget by levying excise taxes, enterprise and personal taxes on income and property, and a forced bond issue. The tsarist vodka monopoly was reintroduced, to the dismay of many. Centralized expenditures, especially on education, were cut, and school fees introduced. All this allowed stabilization of the new currency (chervonets), which had replaced the ruined ruble or sovznak notes used before.

  The NEP period was also the golden era of Soviet economics, with many different points of view, mathematical and sociological, permitted to publish and debate. Nikolai Kondratiev, Alexander Chaya-nov, Yevgeny Preobrazhensky, Grigory Feldman, Stanislav Strumilin, and the young Vasily Leontiev, inventor of input-output analysis, were active at this time. In addition to theoretical matters, the industrialization debate centered on whether Russia’s peasant economy could produce enough voluntary savings to permit industrialization beyond the recovery phase. That debate, and most free inquiry, would end in 1928. Political freedom had already been closely limited to the Bolsheviks alone; by 1922 publications had to pass prior censorship.