Encyclopedia of Russian History

by James Millar

  During the reign of Emperor Paul (r. 1796-1801), Platon negotiated the return to the state church of some Old Believers (religious dissenters who had broken with the Orthodox Church because they rejected the liturgical innovations of Patriarch Nikon [r. 1652-1658]). The Old Believers accepting this compromise, known as the yedinoverie, or union, agreed to recognize the legitimacy and authority of the state church in exchange for the right to follow pre-Nikonian rituals and practices. As an ecumenical effort by the Russian Orthodox Church, the union failed to win over many adherents.

  Platon died in 1812, shortly after hearing of Napoleon Bonaparte’s retreat from Moscow. An excellent administrator and inspired preacher, he did not use his position to voice social criticism. Instead, he sought to make the church more effective in a limited ecclesiastical sphere through education and regulation. Platon’s collected works, which include his autobiography and a short history of the Russian Orthodox Church, fill twenty volumes. See also: NIKON, PATRIARCH; OLD BELIEVERS; ORTHODOXY

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Papmehl, K. A. (1983). Metropolitan Platon of Moscow (Petr Levshin, 1737-1812): The Enlightened Prelate, Scholar, and Educator. Newtonville, MA: Oriental Research Partners.

  J. EUGENE CLAY

  PLATONOV, SERGEI FYODOROVICH

  (1860-1933), Russian historian.

  Born in Chernigov, Sergei Platonov graduated from a private gymnasium in St. Petersburg (1878) and the Department of History and Philology of St. Petersburg University (1882). His tutor was Konstantin Bestuzhev-Ryumin, who recommended that he be allowed to remain at the university in order to “prepare to be a professor.” Platonov was influenced also by the works of Vasily Klyuchevsky. He belonged to the “St. Petersburg school” of Russian historiography, which paid special attention to the study and publication of historical sources. In 1888 Platonov defended his master’s thesis on the topic of Old Russian Legends and Tales About the Seventeenth-Century Time of Troubles as a Historical Source (published in the same year and honored with the Uvarov Award of the Academy of Sci ences). Despite not yet having earned a doctorate, in 1889 Platonov headed the Department of Russian History of St. Petersburg University. In 1899 Platonov defended his doctorate thesis by present ing a monograph, Studies in the History of the Trou bles in the Muscovite State in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. This work was Platonov’s masterpiece, based on a scrupulous analysis of sources. Platonov sought to “show, with facts, how . . . a modern state was being formed.” The main purpose of the “political mishaps and social ten sion” of the early seventeenth century was, ac cording to Platonov, the replacement of the boyar aristocracy with the nobility. He defined the Oprichnina of Ivan the Terrible, which became one of the initial causes of the Time of Troubles, not as the “whim of a timid tyrant,” but as a thought-out system of actions aimed at destroying the “ap panage aristocracy.” Platonov was also one of the first to show that one of the aspects of the Time of Troubles was the tension between the nobility and the serfs over land and freedom.

  Platonov earned wide acclaim through the repeatedly republished Lectures on Russian History (1899) and the Russian History Textbook For Middle School (in two parts, 1909-1910). From 1900 to

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  VYACHESLAV KONSTANTINOVICH

  1905, Platonov was the dean of the History and Philology Department of St. Petersburg University, and from 1903 to 1916 he served as the director of the Women’s Pedagogical Institute.

  Despite his negative opinions of the October Revolution, Platonov continued to work actively in several scholarly institutions. From 1918 to 1923, he was the head of the Petrograd branch of the Main Directorate of Archival Affairs. From 1918 he served as the chairman of the Archaeographical Commission of the Academy of Sciences. In 1920 Platonov was elected as a member of the Academy of Sciences. Platonov worked in the Academy of Sciences as the director of the Pushkin House (1925-1928) and the Library of the Academy of Sciences (1925-1929). The peak of his academic career was his election as the head (academic secretary) of the Department of Humanities and a member of the presidium of the Academy of Sciences in March 1929.

  During the 1920s Platonov published biographies of Boris Godunov (1921), Ivan the Terrible (1923), and Peter the Great (1926) and the monographs The Past of the Russian North (1923) and Muscovy and the West in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (1925). Platonov opposed the nihilist views on history before the Russian revolution and the purely negative depiction of the actions of Russian tsars.

  From 1929 to 1931 Platonov was the central figure of the so-called Academic Affair. The formal explanation for the persecution of scholars was the presence of political documents, including the act of resignation of Nicholas II, in the Library of the Academy of Science. The real motive of the Soviet regime in the Academic Affair was to bring the Academy under its control. In November 1929 the Politburo decided to release Platonov from all positions that he held. On January 12, 1930, Platonov was arrested. He was accused of being a member of the International Union of Struggle Toward the Rebirth of Free Russia, a monarchist organization fabricated by the prosecutors. According to the OGPU (secret police), the purpose of this fictional organization was to overthrow the Soviet regime and establish a constitutional monarchy; Platonov was the supposed future prime minister.

  While in custody Platonov was expelled from the Academy of Sciences. In August 1931 he was sentenced by the OGPU to five years of exile and deported, with his two daughters, to Samara. He died in Samara. See also: ACADEMY OF SCIENCES; PUSHKIN HOUSE

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Platonov, Sergei F. (1925). History of Russia. New York: Macmillan. Platonov, Sergei F. (1970). The Time of Troubles: A Historical Study of the Internal Crises and Social Struggle in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Muscovy. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas. Platonov, Sergei F. (1972). Moscow and the West. Hat-tiesburg, MS: Academic International. Platonov, Sergei F. (1973). Boris Godunov, Tsar of Russia, with an introductory essay, “S.F. Platonov: Eminence and Obscurity,” by John T. Alexander. Gulf Breeze, FL: Academic International Press. Platonov, Sergei F. (1974). Ivan the Terrible. Gulf Breeze, FL: Academic International Press. Tsamutali, Aleksei Nikolaevich. (1999). “Sergei Fe-dorovich Platonov (1860-1933): A Life for Russia.” In Historiography of Imperial Russia, ed. Tomas Sanders. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe.

  OLEG BUDNITSKII

  PLEHVE, VYACHESLAV KONSTANTINOVICH

  (1846-1904), leader of imperial police then minister in governments of Tsar Alexander III and Tsar Nicholas II.

  As a conservative statesman in late imperial Russia, Vyacheslav Plehve (von Plehwe) was a key figure in the tsarist regime’s struggle against revolution. An experienced prosecutor, he was tapped in 1881 to head the imperial police following the assassination of Tsar Alexander II. His success in arresting the perpetrators and destroying the People’s Will terrorist organization, combined with his remarkable energy and talent, led to appointments as Assistant Minister of the Interior (1885-1894), Minister State-Secretary for Finland (1894-1902), and Minister of the Interior (1902-1904).

  Assuming the post of minister in the wake of widespread peasant disorders and his predecessor’s murder by revolutionaries, Plehve sought above all to reimpose order and control. With the help of former Moscow police chief Sergei Zubatov, he extended throughout Russia a network of “security sections” (okhrany), which used covert agents to penetrate revolutionary and labor groups. He fired

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  Zubatov when his police-sponsored worker organizations triggered widespread strikes in 1903. He repressed the liberal press and the zemstvo organs of local self-government, leading to bitter clashes with leading public figures. His heavy-handed tactics alienated both the Russian public and his government colleagues, especially arch-rival Sergei Witte, the talented Finance Minister whose efforts to modernize Russia were seen by Plehve as contributing to unrest. But he won the support of Tsar Nicholas II, who reliev
ed Witte of his ministry in August 1903, and he backed aggressive ventures that helped provoke the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905. He also cracked down on subject nationalities such as Finns, Armenians and Jews; his alleged efforts to divert public anger from the government toward the Jews may have contributed to the Kishinev anti-Jewish pogrom of 1903. Ironically, this so incensed the Jewish police agent Evno Azef, who had managed to infiltrate the terrorists, that he helped them arrange Plehve’s murder in July 1904. Plehve thus died a failure, disparaged by both contemporaries and later historians. See also: NATIONALITIES POLICIES, TSARIST; NICHOLAS II; ZUBATOV, SERGEI VASILIEVICH

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Gurko, Vladimir I. (1939). Features and Figures of the Past. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Judge, Edward H. (1983). Plehve: Repression and Reform in Imperial Russia, 1902-1904. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press. Witte, Sergei I. (1990). Memoirs of Count Witte. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe. Zuckerman, Fredric S. (1996). The Tsarist Secret Police and Russian Society, 1880-1917. New York: New York University Press.

  EDWARD H. JUDGE

  PLEKHANOV, GEORGY VALENTINOVICH

  (1856-1918), the “Father of Russian Marxism.”

  Georgi Valentinovich Plekhanov was born into a minor gentry family, in Tambov Province. In 1876 he abandoned his formal education to devote himself entirely to the underground populist movement. It sought to instigate a peasant revolution that would overthrow the tsarist regime and create an agrarian socialist society. After years of intensive revolutionary activity, he fled abroad in 1880 and spent most of the rest of his life in Switzerland. Becoming disillusioned with populist ideology, and drawn instead to Marxian thought, in 1883, together with a few friends, he formed the first Russian Marxist organization, the Emancipation of Labor Group. In two major works, Socialism and Political Struggle and Our Differences Plekhanov endeavored to adapt Marxian ideas to Russian circumstances. Rather than the peasants, the nascent proletariat would constitute the principal revolutionary force. But a socialist revolution was out of the question for his backward homeland, he believed. Accordingly, Russia was destined to experience two revolutions: the first to establish a “bourgeois-democratic” political system; the second, after industrial capitalism and the proletariat had become well developed, to create a socialist society.

  During the 1890s, numbers of able individuals, including Vladimir Lenin, rallied to Plekhanov’s banner. In 1903, they convened a congress to establish a Russian Social-Democratic Workers’ Party. At its birth, the party split into two factions, the Bolsheviks (led by Lenin) and the Mensheviks. Initially Plekhanov sided with Lenin, but soon broke with him and thereafter usually sided with the Mensheviks.

  During the Revolution of 1905, Plekhanov’s theory was tested and found wanting. When world war broke out in 1914, unlike most Russian socialists Plekhanov supported Russia and its allies against Germany. He returned to Russia after the overthrow of tsarism in 1917. He vigorously attacked Lenin and the Bolsheviks, who were pressing for a second, socialist revolution. Because his views conflicted with those of the radicalized antiwar masses, he gained little support. With a broken heart, Plekhanov died in May 1918. See also: BOLSHEVISM; LENIN, VLADIMIR ILICH; MARXISM; MENSHEVIKS; REVOLUTION OF 1905

  SAMUEL H. BARON

  PLENUM

  A plenum, or plenary session, is a meeting of any organization, group, association, etc., which all members are expected to attend. During the Soviet period, the term plenum referred specifically to a

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  meeting of all members of a Communist Party committee at a national, regional, or local level. According to the Rules of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the Central Committee was required to hold a plenum at least once every six months, attended by both full and candidate members. At the first plenum after a Party Congress, the Central Committee elected the Politburo, Secretariat, and General Secretary. Other plenums usually coincided with important party or state events, such as a meeting of the Supreme Soviet or a significant international incident. During the three- to five-day session, members heard reports on party matters and approved prepared resolutions. Though originally intended by Vladimir Lenin to serve as the party’s supreme decision-making body between Party Congresses-proof of the party’s collective leadership-the Central Committee plenum became a more ceremonial than deliberative body by the mid-twentieth century. The plenum’s main function was to endorse Politburo decisions. Infrequently, the Central Committee plenum was called on to resolve Politburo conflict; for example, a 1964 plenum removed Nikita Khrushchev from power. Proceedings remained secret, but a formal statement was issued at the end of a plenum. All decisions approved at the plenum became formal party policy. Party plenums at lower levels (e.g., regional or local) convened more often than the Central Committee, endorsing party directives and deciding how best to implement them. See also: COMMUNIST PARTY OF THE SOVIET UNION

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Hill, Ronald J., and Frank, Peter. (1986). The Soviet Communist Party, 3rd ed. London: George Allen amp; Un-win. Smith, Gordon B. (1992). Soviet Politics: Struggling With Change, 2nd ed. New York: St. Martin’s Press.

  JULIE K. DEGRAFFENRIED

  POBEDONOSTSEV, KONSTANTIN

  (1827-1907), conservative statesman, professor and chair of civil law at Moscow University (1860-1865), senator, chief procurator of the Holy Synod (1880-1905).

  Konstantin Petrovich Pobedonostsev has often been seen as one of the primary conservative influences on Alexander III and Nicholas II. Although the “grey eminence” undoubtedly exerted influence upon domestic policy and was influential in bringing about a new version of “Orthodoxy, Autocracy, and Nationality,” historians have disputed the degree of his direct influence on policy formation.

  Pobedonostsev, son of a Moscow University professor, grew up in Moscow in an atmosphere of scholarship, discipline, and close family ties. He was the youngest of eleven children, and his father closely supervised his early education before sending him off to the School of Jurisprudence from 1841 to 1846. Pobedonostsev graduated second in his class and upon graduation was assigned a position in the eighth department of the Senate in Moscow. He worked diligently in his position while also pursuing scholarly research and writing. Throughout his life Pobedonostsev remained a prolific writer, publishing articles on law, education, philosophy, and religion in book form and in journals such as Grazhdanin (The Citizen), Moskovskie Vedomosti (Moscow News) and Russky Vestnik (Russian Newsletter). In 1853 he became secretary of the seventh department of the Senate, and in 1855 he served as secretary to two Moscow departments. By 1859 he had received a lectureship in Russian civil law at Moscow University.

  His scholarship, publications, translations, and reputation as an interesting and respected professor brought him to the attention of the court in 1861, and he was asked to tutor Grand Duke Nicholas Alexandrovich, heir to the throne. In that capacity he went on a tour of Russia with the heir and his entourage in 1863. According to several scholars, this journey profoundly influenced Pobedonostsev’s view of Russia and his ideas about its future. When Nicholas died in 1865, Pobedonos-tsev was asked to tutor Grand Duke Alexander and became executive secretary to the first department of the Senate. Although Pobedonostsev was honored by his appointments and felt bound by duty to accept them, he apparently missed Moscow and felt uncomfortable in court life. According to Pobedonostsev’s biographer, Robert Byrnes, this appointment “removed him from the library, the study, and the classroom and placed him in a position in which he was to develop a most inflexible political and social philosophy and to exert profound influence upon the course of Russian history” (p. 35). Pobedonostsev served in the senate from 1868 and in the State Council from 1872. He received his most important post, Ober Procurator of the Holy Synod, in 1880 and was to remain in it until his retirement in 1905.

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  Pobedonostsev worked closely with education
ministers as well and was instrumental in developing policies he hoped would prevent radicalism in the universities. Contemporaries and historians have usually felt that Pobedonostsev worked for the appointment of Ivan Delyanov (Minister of Education, 1882-1898) and that together they worked toward establishing a quota system in order to restrict the numbers of non-Russian and non-Orthodox students admitted to Russian universities. He also reestablished a separate network of primary schools, which came under the jurisdiction of the Holy Synod rather than the Ministry of Education. Despite concerns about the level of education that could be delivered in church schools, Pobedonostsev believed that the moral benefits of church schools would outweigh any intellectual deficiencies.

  Pobedonostsev has been considered one of the “most baleful influences on the reign” of Nicholas II and the ultra-conservative and reactionary force behind many of Alexander III’s and Nicholas II’s manifestos. Peter Banks, minister of finance from 1914 to 1917, noted that Pobedonostsev was the teacher who had the most influence on the tsar. Despite Pobedonostsev’s reputation as an arch-conservative, he was actively involved in work on preparing the liberal judicial statute of 1861. He also read widely, communicated with Boris Chicherin, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, and Slavophile thinkers, and was aware of the intellectual debates of his day.

  The year 1881 was a significant one for Pobedo-nostsev and for Russia. After the assassination of Alexander II, Pobedonostsev became one of the strongest forces arguing against the Mikhail Loris-Melikov constitution and Western-style reforms. He was responsible for drafting the manifesto that Alexander III read in April 1881 pledging to “preserve the power and justice of autocratic authority . . . from any pretensions to it.” Pobedonostsev is usually assumed to be the writer responsible for Nicholas II’s “senseless dreams” speech in 1895 when he proclaimed “it is known to me that voices have been heard of late in some zemstvo assemblies of persons carried away by senseless dreams of the participation of zemstvo representatives in the affairs of internal government.”