Encyclopedia of Russian History

by James Millar

  The populists did not accept the idea that the Russian people had a unique character or destiny. Instead they emphasized Russia’s backwardness, but in their view it was not necessarily a disadvantage, because backwardness would enable Russia to avoid the capitalist path and embark upon agrarian socialism based on a federal structure of self-governing units of producers and consumers. When this did not come to pass, some populists

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  PORT ARTHUR, SIEGE OF

  turned to more extreme measures, such as terrorism. All in all, the lessons learned from the failure of populism paved the way for a gradual move toward the emergence of social democracy in Russia during the 1890s. See also: GREAT REFORMS; LAND AND FREEDOM PARTY; PEOPLE’S WILL, THE; SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC WORKERS PARTY

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Geifman, Anna. (1993). Thou Shalt Kill: Revolutionary Terrorism in Russia, 1894-1917. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Offord, Derek. (1987). The Russian Revolutionary Movement in the 1880s. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Pipes, Richard. (1964). “Narodnichestvo: A Semantic Inquiry.” Slavic Review 23(3):441-458. Venturi, Franco. (1983). Roots of Revolution: A History of the Populist and Socialist Movements in 19th Century Russia. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Wortman, Richard. (1967). The Crisis of Russian Populism. New York: Cambridge University Press.

  CHRISTOPHER WILLIAMS

  PORT ARTHUR, SIEGE OF

  Originally constructed by the Chinese as a fortress in 1892, Port Arthur (modern Lushun) protected an important naval base and roadstead at the foot of the Liaotung Peninsula. In the great-power race for Chinese bases and influence that followed the Sino-Japanese War of 1894 to 1895, Russia in 1898 obtained a twenty-five-year lease on Port Arthur’s naval facilities and the surrounding territory. In an age of coal-burning vessels, Port Arthur was an important fueling station that would enable the growing Russian Pacific Squadron to interdict Japanese naval communications in the Yellow Sea and beyond.

  Short of resources, the Russians only began seriously improving Port Arthur in 1901. The Japanese surprise attack that opened the Russo-Japanese War on the night of February 8-9, 1904, caught Russian naval units and Port Arthur unprepared. Admiral Heihachiro Togo’s fleet soon bottled up the Russian squadron, while a Japanese army advanced overland from Dairen (Ta-lien) to lay siege to the Russian ground defenses. Although poorly led, the Russian defenders withstood four major assaults before the Japanese seizure of 203 Meter Hill enabled artillery observers to subject the warships in the port to accurate siege mortar fire. They were soon pounded to pieces. The garrison capitulated on January 2, 1905, thus freeing the besieging army to reinforce the four Japanese field armies already operating against Adjutant General Alexei N. Kuropatkin’s army group near Mukden.

  Port Arthur was both a symbol of heroic Russian resistance and a distraction that goaded Kuro-patkin to decisive field action earlier and farther south than he had originally planned. On the Russian home front, the fall of Port Arthur added fuel to the fire of popular disturbances that culminated in the Revolution of 1905. See also: CHINA, RELATIONS WITH; JAPAN, RELATIONS WITH; KUROPATKIN, ALEXEI NIKOLAYEVICH; RUSSO-JAPANESE WAR

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Menning, Bruce W. (2000). Bayonets before Bullets: The Imperial Russian Army, 1861-1914. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Westwood, J. N. (1986). Russia against Japan, 1904-05: A New Look at the Russo-Japanese War. Albany: State University of New York Press.

  BRUCE W. MENNING

  PORTSMOUTH, TREATY OF

  Signed September 5 (August 23 O.S.), 1905, in Portsmouth, Maine, this treaty terminated the Russo-Japanese war. U.S. president Theodore Roosevelt had offered to mediate between the warring parties, fearing that continued fighting would destabilize the Far East and jeopardize U.S. commercial interests in China. (Roosevelt went on to win the Nobel Prize for Peace for his efforts.)

  Russia recognized Japan’s interests in Korea, and ceded its lease over the Liaotung Peninsula to Japan, as well as the southern half of Sakhalin island and control of the Southern Manchurian railroad to Chang-chun. Russia also pledged that Manchuria would remain a part of China.

  The treaty ended any Russian hope of establishing protectorates over Manchuria and Korea. In addition, it represented the first defeat of a European Great Power by an Asian state during the modern age.

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  POSSESSORS AND NON-POSSESSORS

  The fall of Port Arthur, the defeat of the Russian Army at Mukden, the destruction of the Russian Baltic Fleet at Tsushima, and the outbreak of the 1905 Revolution convinced the government of Tsar Nicholas II that the war had to end. Count Sergei Witte was sent as plenipotentiary with orders to secure the best possible deal for Russia. A cunning negotiator, Witte skillfully used the U.S. press to swing international opinion against Japan. He also realized that Japan lacked the resources to follow up on its initial military victories and that he could afford to prolong the talks. In the end, Japan dropped its demands for a sizable indemnity and the complete evisceration of Russia’s position in the Far East. Witte’s diplomacy helped to compensate for Russia’s military weakness.

  Nevertheless, the Treaty of Portsmouth was perceived as a defeat for Russia and diminished its international stature, notably in the 1908 Bosnia crisis. Josef Stalin was to justify the Soviet entry into the war against Japan in 1945 in part on the grounds of reversing the 1905 “defeat.” See also: RUSSO-JAPANESE WAR; WITTE, SERGEI YULIEVICH slowly declined as princes had to share their authority with the mayor. The boyar elite of Novgorod and Pskov dominated the office of mayor.

  At first only one mayor in Novgorod was chosen for life. In the fourteenth century a collective mayoralty developed (posadnichestvo) consisting of six mayors, one for each of the five districts (two from Prussian Street), and one who served as Lord Mayor (stepenny posadnik). In 1354 the term of Lord Mayor was shortened to one year, and after 1387 the office rotated among Novgorodian borough mayors. In 1416 and 1417 the term was reduced to six months, while the number of borough mayors increased to eighteen. In 1423 the borough mayors grew to twenty-four, and in the second half of the fifteenth century to thirty-four. Current and former Lord Mayors, together with the chiliarch (the leader of a thousand men or troops) and sitting borough mayors, comprised Novgorod’s Council of Lords. The mayoralty disappeared with the fall of Novgorod to Moscow in 1478. See also: BOYAR; NOVGOROD JUDICIAL CHARTER; NOVGOROD THE GREAT; VECHE

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Fuller, William C., Jr. (1992). Strategy and Power in Russia, 1600-1914. New York: Free Press. Riasanovsky, Nicholas V. (1984). A History of Russia. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

  NIKOLAS GVOSDEV

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Langer, Lawrence. (1974). “V. L. Ianin and the History of Novgorod.” Slavic Review 33:114-119. Langer, Lawrence. (1984). “The Posadnichestvo of Pskov: Some Aspects of Urban Administration in Medieval Russia.” Slavic Review 43:46-62.

  PORUKA See COLLECTIVE RESPONSIBILITY.

  LAWRENCE N. LANGER

  POSADNIK

  A term meaning “mayor,” the leading political figure of Novgorod and Pskov.

  In Novgorod the posadnik was second only to the archbishop, the symbolic ruler of the city. The term derives from the verb posaditi, to sit, and reflects the practice of Kievan princes who “sat” their representatives, often family members, as princes of Novgorod.

  Toward the end of the tenth century the Nov-gorodian posadnik was separated from the governing prince, and after 1088 was chosen by a veche (assembly or gathering). Following Novgorod’s independence from Kiev in 1136, princely power

  POSSESSORS AND NON-POSSESSORS

  Possessors and non-possessors were purported rival monastic and church factions, c. 1480-1584.

  The binary opposition stiazhatel/nestiazhatel (literally, acquirer/non-acquirer; translated as “Pos-sessor”/“Non-possessor” in the literature) is misleading. The possessions of cenobites theoretically belonged to their cloister, while hermitages were dependent up
on the wealthy monasteries.

  The real justification for the movable and landed wealth of the church lay in its economic, political, cultural, ceremonial, and charitable functions. The practical politics of ecclesiastical wealth involved several confiscations of Novgorodian church lands under Ivan III, the concrete provisions

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  POSTAL SYSTEM

  of new or revised immunity charters, and the state, church, and combined legislation of 1550-1551, 1562, 1572, 1580, and 1584, which both protected and limited monastic land. By the early 1500s a new juncture of developments favored state confiscation of lands: the state needed military service lands, and a faction of monks condemned monastic opulence, with some advocating state management of church lands.

  The leading “Possessors” were well-placed figures who mobilized coworkers, disciples, employees, and consultants: Archbishop Gennady of Novgorod (r. 1484-1504); the founder-abbot Joseph of Volotsk (d. 1515); the latter’s successor and then Metropolitan of Moscow, Daniel (r. 1515-1522-1539); Archbishop of Novgorod and then Metropolitan of Moscow, Macarius (r. 1526-1542-1563); and several other prelates, mostly trained in the Iosifov-Volokolamsk Monastery. They defended church lands and Orthodoxy and created an inquisition of sorts. They also promoted commemorations, reformed and rationalized monasteries, strengthened episcopal administration and missionary activity, nationalized regional saints, patronized religious art, allowed allegorical innovations, commissioned a few scientific translations, attempted to introduce printing, contributed original compilations of history, hagiography, and canon law, and aided the state and court with ceremonies, ideology, military chaplains, colonizing clergy, and canon-legal decisions.

  The “Non-possessors” are harder to pin down. Vassian Patrikeyev (active from 1505 to 1531 and personally influential from 1511 to 1522) and those in charge of his literary legacy also expressed heated opposition to execution of even relapsed and obdurate heretics, while Artemy of Pskov (active 1540s-1550s) disputed that the people on trial were genuine heretics. Other erudite critics of monastic wealth, Maxim the Greek (active in Russia, 1517-1555) and Yermolai-Yerazm (active 1540s-1560s), did not take a stand on these two issues. Furthermore, the roles of Vassian and his “Trans-Volgan” mentor Nil Sorsky (d. 1508) in politicizing the latter’s stringent hesychastic spiritual principles are not clear. Recent textual analysis questions the traditional assumption, in place by 1550, that Nil had counseled Ivan III at a synod in 1503 to confiscate monastic villages, and shows that Nil, like Maxim, Ermolai-Erazm, and Artemy, staunchly defended Orthodoxy. As individuals, some “Non-possessors” made outstanding contributions to Russian spiritual, literary, and legal culture and political thought, but as a group they carried little weight.

  “Possessors” more or less dominated the Russian Church during 1502-1511, 1522-1539, and 1542-1566. The Josephites-Iosifov monastery elders and alumni prelates-were a formidable and often disliked “Possessor” faction, and not only by Kirillov-Belozersk Monastery elders, who patronized the northern Trans-Volgan hermitages. If Nil and Joseph collaborated against dissidence, Vassian and the Josephites were at loggerheads. Daniel had both Maxim and Vassian condemned and imprisoned for heresy. Later Macarius did the same to Artemy and maybe sponsored a purge of hermitages suspected of harboring dissidents. See also: DANIEL, METROPOLITAN; IVAN III; JOSEPH OF VOLOTSK, ST; MAKARY METROPOLITAN; MAXIM THE GREEK, ST.; RUSSIAN ORTHODOX CHURCH

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Ostrowski, Donald. (1986). “Church Polemics and Monastic Land acquisition in Sixteenth-Century Muscovy.” Slavonic and East European Review 64:355-79. Treadgold, Donald W. (1973). The West in Russia and China: Religious and Secular Thought in Modern Times. Vol. I, Russia, 1472-1917. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

  DAVID M. GOLDFRANK

  POSTAL SYSTEM

  The first regular postal routes in Russia (Moscow-Voronezh and later Moscow-St. Petersburg) were established at the start of the eighteenth century. In 1741 the service was expanded and intended to encompass all provinces of the empire. In reality, postal services were largely concentrated in European Russia, and mail was only delivered to one central location in a town, often a tavern. Beginning in the mid-eighteenth century, it became possible to send parcels through the mail as well as letters. Between 1830 and 1840, larger urban centers began to create systems for mail delivery within their confines, and this development spurred an increase not only in the number of mail distribution points within a given city but also in the number of letters being sent. In 1848 the first prestamped envelopes appeared, and periodicals began to be distributed by mail. Postal services were gradually extended to some larger villages in Russia starting in the 1870s.

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  During the eighteenth century, postal affairs were in the hands of the Senate, but in 1809 they were transferred to the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. In 1830 a Main Postal Administration was established as a separate government organ, and it was superseded from 1865 to 1868 by a new Ministry of Post and Telegraph. After 1868 the postal system again became part of the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

  The turmoil of the Russian Revolutions and Civil War greatly affected the postal system. Services had to be reestablished gradually as outlying areas were subdued by the Bolsheviks. At the center, a new ministry, The People’s Commissariat of Post and Telegraph (Narkompochtel) was established, but it was not until the mid-1920s that services were restored across the country. In 1924 the “circular-post” was set up, whereby horse-drawn carts were used to distribute mail and sell postal supplies along regular routes. Within a year, the network had 4,279 routes with more than 43,000 stopping points, and it covered 275,000 kilometers (170,900 miles). Permanent village postmen emerged in larger settlements as well in 1925, and they became responsible for home delivery when that aspect of the postal service was created in 1930.

  In 2002 the postal system was divided administratively into ninety-three regional postal departments with 40,000 offices and 300,000 employees. However, since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the postal system has declined dramatically. Letters routinely take weeks to arrive, and a sizeable number of customers are beginning to bypass the postal system in favor of private courier services. In order to remain profitable, many post offices have had to branch out into a wide array of services, including offering Internet access or renting some of their space to other retail outlets. The Russian government has also begun to consider the idea of merging the regional departments into a single joint-stock company to be called “Russian Post.” See also: MINISTRY OF INTERNAL AFFAIRS

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Rowley, Alison. (2002). “Miniature Propaganda: Self-Definition and Soviet Postage Stamps, 1917-1941.” Slavonica 8:135-157. Skipton, David, and Michalove, Peter. (1989). Postal Censorship in Imperial Russia. Urbana, IL: J. H. Otten.

  ALISON ROWLEY

  POTEMKIN, GRIGORY ALEXANDROVICH

  (1739-1791), prince, secret husband of Catherine II, statesman, commander, imperial viceroy, eccentric.

  Grigory Potemkin’s life contains many mysteries. His year of birth and paternity are both disputed. His father, Alexander Vasilievich Potemkin (c. 1690-1746), an irascible retired army officer from the Smolensk region, courted young Daria Skuratova (1704-1780) while she was still married. Grigory was the fifth born and sole male of seven children. A Moscow cousin provided care for the family after the father’s death. At school in Moscow, Potemkin displayed remarkable aptitude in classical and modern languages and Orthodox theology. Clerical friends led him to consider a church career. Potemkin entered the Horse Guards while continuing school at age sixteen. In 1757 he was one of a dozen students presented at court by Ivan Shuvalov, curator of Moscow University. Despite a gold medal, his academic career ceased with expulsion for laziness and truancy. He began active service with the Guards in Petersburg, participating in Catherine’s coup of July 1762, for which he was promoted to chamber-gentleman and granted six
hundred serfs. Accidental loss of an eye-mistakenly blamed on his patrons, the Orlov brothers-lent mystique to his robust physique and ebullient personality. He became assistant procurator of the Holy Synod in 1763 and spokesman for the non-Russian peoples at the Legislative Commission of 1767-1768. On leave from court for active army service in the Russo-Turkish War of 1768-1774, he fought with distinction under Field Marshal Peter Rumyantsev from 1769 to December 1773. At Petersburg he dined at court in autumn 1770, enhancing a reputation for devilish intelligence and wit, hilarious impersonations, and military exploits.

  After Catherine’s break from Grigory Orlov in 1772-1773, she sought a fresh perspective amid multiple crises. In December 1773 she invited Potemkin to Petersburg to win her favor. Installation as official favorite swiftly followed. He sat beside her at dinner and received infatuated notes several times per day. He was made honorary sub-colonel of the Preobrazhensky Guards, member of the Imperial Council, vice-president (later president) of the War Department, commander of all light cavalry and irregular forces, and governor-general of New Russia, and given many decorations capped

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  POTEMKIN MUTINY

  by Catherine’s miniature portrait in diamonds- only Grigory Orlov had another. Potemkin helped to conclude the war on victorious terms, to oversee the end of the Pugachev Revolt, and to craft legislation strengthening provincial government against renewed disorders.

  Apparently the lovers arranged a secret wedding in Petersburg on June 19, 1774. They spent most of 1775 in Moscow to celebrate victories over the Turks and Pugachev, ceremonies that Potemkin choreographed. Catherine supposedly gave birth to Potemkin’s daughter, Elizaveta Grigorevna Temk-ina (a tale debunked in Simon Montefiore’s biography). From early 1776, despite elevation to Prince of the Holy Roman Empire, Potemkin drifted away as a result of persistent quarrels over power and rivals. In New Russia he supervised settlement and arranged annexation of the Crimea, finally accomplished with minimal bloodshed in 1783 and renamed the Tauride region. This was part of the Greek Project that Potemkin and Catherine jointly pursued in alliance with Austria and that foresaw expulsion of the Turks from Europe and reconsti-tution of the Byzantine Empire under Russian tutelage. The couple constantly corresponded about all matters of policy and personal concerns, especially hypochondria. She regretted his ailments however petty, but when she fell into depression from favorite Alexander Lanskoi’s death in 1784, Potemkin rushed back to direct her recovery. He planned the flamboyant Tauride Tour of 1787 that took her to Kiev, then by galley and ship to the Crimea, and then back via Moscow. This inspired the myth of “Potemkin villages,” a term synonymous with phony display. He was awarded the surtitle of Tavrichesky (“Tauride”) during the tour.