Encyclopedia of Russian History

by James Millar

  The Great Purges are usually associated with Joseph V. Stalin and his police chiefs, Nikolai I. Yezhov and Lavrenty P. Beria. But their true origin lay in the Soviet regime’s inability to utilize modern techniques for managing institutions, political processes, and social relations. The purges showed that indiscriminate campaigns, police operations, and violence would play an important role as policy instruments and take priority over economic and administrative incentives to enlist popular support. They also showed the disastrous consequences of the system’s lack of independent watchdog agencies that could, if necessary, restrain the Party-state’s actions. The intent behind the purges bore some resemblance to social engineering, but the sociopolitical framework led to an outcome that had little in common with the original aims. See also: BERIA, LAVRENTI PAVLOVICH; GULAG; KOMANEV, LEV BORISOVICH; SHOW TRIALS; STALIN, JOSEF VIS-SARIONOVICH; STATE SECURITY, ORGANS OF; YEZHOV, NIKOLAI IVANOVICH; ZINOVIEV, GRIGORY YEVSEYEVICH

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Chase, William J. (2001). Enemies Within the Gates? The Comintern and the Stalinist Repression, 1934-1939. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Conquest, Robert. (1990). The Great Terror: A Reassessment. New York: Oxford University Press. Getty, J. Arch. (1985). Origins of the Great Purges: The Soviet Communist Party Reconsidered, 1933-1938. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Getty, J. Arch. (1999). The Road to Terror: Stalin and the Self-Destruction of the Bolsheviks, 1932-1939. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Getty, J. Arch. (2002). “’Excesses Are Not Permitted’: Mass Terror and Stalinist Governance in the Late 1930s.” Russian Review 2:113-138. Getty, J. Arch, and Manning, Roberta T., eds. (1993). Stalinist Terror: New Perspectives. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

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  Siegelbaum, Lewis, and Sokolov, Andrei. (2000). Stalinism as a Way of Life: A Narrative in Documents. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

  GABOR T. RITTERSPORN

  PUSHKIN, ALEXANDER SERGEYEVICH

  (1799-1837), considered Russia’s greatest poet, author of lyrics, plays, prose, and the novel in verse Eugene Onegin.

  Of the Russian poets, none is mentioned by Russians with more reverence than Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin. His work has been set to opera by Mikhail Glinka, Modest Mussorgsky, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, and Peter Tchaikovsky; his lyrics have been memorized by young schoolchildren throughout the former Soviet Union; and leading poets of the twentieth century, such as Anna Akhmatova, Marina Tsvetaeva, and Alexander Blok, emphasized his impact on their work and lives. Pushkin may indeed have opened the door for the later part of the so-called Golden Age of Russian literature. At the 1880 ceremony following the unveiling of the Pushkin statue in Moscow, Ivan Turgenev credited Pushkin with giving birth to the Russian literary language; Fyodor Dostoyevsky, in an impassioned, near-hysterical speech, declared Pushkin superior to Shakespeare.

  Such reverence is certainly merited, but reverence has its dangers. The author of the novel in verse Eugene Onegin, the historical play in verse Boris Godunov, the cryptic yet fluid “Belkin Tales,” the brilliant “Little Tragedies” (four plays in blank verse, three of which deal with crimes of passion) the stylized folktale “Ruslan and Lyudmila,” the tense, fatalistic story “Queen of Spades,” and hundreds of lyrics, a master of style who absorbed and transformed European literary traditions and gave Russian folklore an unprecedented poetic expression, Pushkin attained quasi-mythological status in the twentieth century, becoming a hero figure for the Soviet establishment and dissidents alike. Yet Pushkin was a complex figure: profoundly solitary yet immersed in the social life of the aristocracy; devoted to his friends but easily incited to violence. His female characters, such as Tatiana in Eugene Onegin, have remarkable depth and soul, but he himself was primarily attracted to physical beauty in women, and brought about his own early death partly on account of this. These contradictions in his character, while perhaps limiting his literary offering, account in part for its richness; his work is both immediate and layered, both sincere and wry.

  Pushkin was born in Moscow in 1799. His father Sergei descended from boyars, one of whom, mentioned in Pushkin’s Boris Godunov, had been a supporter of the False Dmitry during the Time of Troubles. Pushkin’s mother Nadezhda was the granddaughter of Abram Gannibal, an African slave. Abram had been brought from Africa as a gift for Peter I, who favored him and sent him to Paris for military education. With the accession of Elizabeth to the throne, Abram rose through the ranks to the status of general, but was retired following Elizabeth’s death. Pushkin took pride in his African heritage, referring to it often in his lyrics. Abram’s daughter Mariya, Pushkin’s grandmother, not only played the role of surrogate parent to Pushkin, whose own parents gave him little attention or affection, but also recounted family history, to be reflected later in Pushkin’s unfinished novel The Blackamoor of Peter the Great.

  Pushkin’s parents embraced the lifestyle of the aristocracy, though they could not afford it. Sergei, an adept conversationalist with a vast knowledge of French literature, invited some of Russia’s leading literary figures to the household, including the historian Nikolai Karamzin and poets Konstantin Batyushkov and Vasily Zhukovsky. Pushkin and his sister and brother grew up surrounded by literati. However, Pushkin’s childhood was unhappy. Pushkin was the least favored child, perhaps in part because of his African features and awkward manner. Only his grandmother and his nanny Arina Rodionova nurtured him emotionally; the latter told him folk tales and entertained him with gossip, and served later as the model for Tatiana’s nanny in Eugene Onegin.

  In 1811 Pushkin’s parents sent him to boarding school, the Lyceum, newly established by Alexander I in a wing of his palace in Tsarskoye Selo. There Pushkin received a first-rate education (though he was not a stellar student) in a relaxed and nurturing environment, and formed friendships that would prove lifelong, with classmates Ivan Pushchin, Anton Delvig, Wilhelm Kyukhel-becker, and others. While at the Lyceum, Pushkin enjoyed a social life filled with pranks and light romantic encounters, and he amazed his teachers and classmates with his verse. The aged poet Gavryl Derzhavin, upon hearing Pushkin recite his “Recollections in Tsarskoye Selo” during an examina1251

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  Portrait of Alexander Pushkin. THE BETTMAN ARCHIVE tion in 1815, recognized sixteen-year-old Pushkin as his poetic successor.

  Pushkin graduated from the Lyceum in 1817. From there he moved to Petersburg, where he spent his days sleeping late, taking walks, and attending parties in the evenings. Erratic and excitable, he made public scenes at the theater on several occasions. He frequented houses of prostitutes and had a number of romantic affairs. He was a member of the literary circle “The Green Lamp,” whose members, including Pushchin and Delvig, were also involved in secret political activities aimed at reform. Pushkin was not invited to join in the secret meetings, but he did write lyrics challenging the tsarist autocracy, including his ode “Freedom” (1817), “Noelles” (1818), and “The Village” (1819). The lyrics caused a stir; Pushkin was ordered to appear before Count Miloradovich, governor-general of St. Petersburg. Following that meeting in 1820, the tsar sent Pushkin into exile in the form of military service in South Russia under Lieutenant General Inzov.

  Pushkin’s exile was in many ways pleasant. He befriended General Rayevsky and his family and traveled with them around Caucasus and Crimea. He then spent nearly three years in Kishinev, where he wrote the verse tales “The Prisoner of the Caucasus” (1820-1821), “The Bandit Brothers” (1821-1822), and “The Fountain of Bakchisaray” (1821-1823). In addition, he wrote the scathing, mock-religious “Gavriiliada” (1821) and began his novel in verse Eugene Onegin (1823-1831). During this time Pushkin was captivated by Lord George Gordon Byron, particularly his Childe Harolde.

  In July 1823 he was transferred to Odessa, where he had a lively social life, attended theater, and had affairs with two married women. He finished “The Fountain of Bakchisaray” and chapter one of
Eugene Onegin, and began “The Gypsies.”

  From 1824 to 1826 he was exiled to his mother’s estate of Mikhailovskoye in North Russia. There he finished “The Gypsies” and wrote the historical play in verse Boris Godunov, “Graf Nulin,” and chapter two of Eugene Onegin.

  In November 1825, while Pushkin was still in Mikhailovskoye, Alexander I died. The confusion over the successor provided the opportunity for secret political societies (called the Decembrists after the event) to rise up in armed rebellion against the aristocracy before Nicholas was proclaimed emperor. The uprising took place in Petersburg in December 1825 and involved poet Kondraty Ryleev, Colonel Pavel Pestel, Pushchin, Kyukhelbecker, and others. Pushkin, while not present or involved, was implicated, as some Decembrists quoted his poetry in support of their movement. Ryleev and Pestel were sentenced to death, Pushchin and Kyukhel-becker to hard labor.

  In the spring of 1826 Pushkin petitioned Tsar Nicholas I for a release from exile. He met with the tsar and was granted release, but restrictions continued as before. He was under constant scrutiny, and his most minute activities were reported to the tsar.

  In 1829 Pushkin met and proposed to Natalia Goncharova, a society beauty. They were formally engaged on May 18, 1830. Pushkin was given permission to publish Boris Godunov. In September 1830 Pushkin went to Boldino in east-central Russia to make wedding arrangements. Because of the outbreak of asiatic cholera, he was forced to stay three months there. This time was the most productive of his life. As part of an overall transition from poetry to prose, he wrote the magnificent Tales of Belkin, a collection of stories in taut, swift-moving prose, revolving around mistaken identity

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  and, according to Andrej Kodjak (1979), containing an encoded message concerning the Decembrist uprising. Other works during this period include his “Little Tragedies” (“The Avaricious Knight,” “Mozart and Salieri,” “The Stone Guest,” and “Feast in the Time of the Plague”), as well as “The Little House in Kolomna,” “The Tale of the Priest and his Workman Balda,” the last chapter of Eugene One-gin, and some of his finest lyrics, including “The Devils.” He married Goncharova in February 1831, shortly after the unexpected death of Delvig, his closest friend after Pushchin.

  Pushkin’s marriage to Goncharova proved unhappy. She had little appreciation for his work, and he was unable to finance her extravagant lifestyle. Pushkin was beset with financial worries, and wrote little (including “Tale of the Golden Cockerel” (1834), the cycle of poems “Stone Island” (Kamenny ostrov, 1836) and his novel The Captain’s Daughter (1836). He published a quarterly journal The Contemporary, which added to his troubles and did not fare well.

  Natalia Goncharova loved mingling with the high aristocracy and playing society coquette; her many admirers included the tsar. The flirtation took on more serious tones when Baron Georges Charles d’Anth?s, a French exile living in St. Petersburg under the protection of the Dutch ambassador, began to pursue her in earnest. A duel between d’Anth?s and Pushkin took place on February 10, 1837. Pushkin, severely wounded, died two days later.

  Of Pushkin’s works, Eugene Onegin is the best known in the West, though by no means his sole masterpiece. Written over the course of eight years, it consists of eight chapters, each chapter broken into numbered stanzas in iambic tetrameter. Narrated by a stylized version of Pushkin himself, it portrays a Byronic antihero, Eugene Onegin, a bored society dandy who rejects the sincere and somber Tatiana. Onegin then flirts casually with Tatiana’s sister Olga, provokes a duel with his friend Vladimir Lensky, a second-rate poet infatuated with Olga, and kills Lensky in the duel. After some travels, Onegin returns to Petersburg to find out that Tatiana has married a wealthy general. He falls in love with her, but she rejects him out of loyalty to her husband. The work holds immense popular and scholarly appeal thanks to the playfulness and perfection of the verse, the layers of confession and commentary, the appeal of the heroine, and the complex element of prophecy of Pushkin’s own death. See also: DECEMBRIST MOVEMENT AND REBELLION; DERZHAVIN, GAVRYL ROMANOVICH; GOLDEN AGE OF RUSSIAN LITERATURE; PUSHKIN HOUSE

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Bethea, David M. (1998). Realizing Metaphors: Alexander Pushkin and the Life of the Poet. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Binyon, T. J. (2002). Pushkin: A Biography. London: HarperCollins. Evdokimova, Svetlana. Pushkin’s Historical Imagination. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Greenleaf, Monika. (1994). Pushkin and Romantic Fashion: Fragment, Elegy, Orient, Irony. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Pushkin, Alexander Sergeyevich. (1983). Complete Prose Fiction, tr. Walter W. Arndt and Paul Debreczeny. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Pushkin, Alexander Sergeyevich. (1991). Eugene Onegin, reprint ed., tr. Vladimir Nabokov. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Vitale, Serena. (1999). Pushkin’s Button, tr. Ann Goldstein and Jon Rothschild. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

  DIANA SENECHAL

  PUSHKIN HOUSE

  Pushkin House (Pushkinsky Dom), the Institute of Russian Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences (abbreviated in Russian IRLI RAN), was founded in St. Petersburg, in 1905 and named after Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin (1799-1837).

  The idea of creating a new monument to Russia’s premiere poet came about during the celebration of his centenary in 1899 and the Pushkin Exhibit organized by the Academy in May of that year. By 1907 the task of this monument supported by literary societies, theaters, and other groups from around Russia had evolved into gathering manuscripts, artifacts, and collections of works of prominent Russian authors. The acquisition of Pushkin’s personal library in 1906 with government funds laid the foundation for the institute’s library. At this time Pushkin House occupied temporary space at the Academy’s main building while the search for a permanent location continued. World War I and the February and October Revolutions delayed the process but also increased the institute’s holdings, especially those of the manu1253

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  script department. Among important additions were the archives, saved from the burning building of the gendarmes’ headquarters in February 1917, of the tsar’s secret police, documenting police surveillance of Pushkin and other nineteenth-century writers; Pushkin and Lermontov museum collections transferred in 1917 from the Lyceum in Tsarskoye Selo for safekeeping; and the Paris museum collection of A. F. Onegin contracted for in 1909 and transferred to Pushkin House in 1927, after the owner’s death. Pushkin House became a member institute of the Academy in 1918 and eventually received its own building in 1927, the old customs house at 2 Tuchkov Embankment (now Makarov Embankment). Thanks in part to the protection of Soviet writer Maxim Gorky, Pushkin House was able to continue acquiring manuscripts and literary memorabilia in the 1920s and 1930s. Publishing of scholarly works on Russian literature, source texts, textology, bibliography and the study of literary history, catalogs, and periodicals got underway in the 1920s. Since then, the academic editions of complete works by authors such as Pushkin, Dosto-evsky, Tolstoy, Gogol, and Lermontov produced by the institute have been considered authoritative and are used and cited by scholars around the world.

  Pushkin House continued to operate during the siege of Leningrad during World War II, although most of the manuscripts and staff were evacuated to cities in the country’s interior. The institute returned to the job of preparing specialists after the war and continues to train graduate and postgraduate students in Russian literature, awarding degrees in Russian literature (Ph.D. equivalent and professorship). The structure of the institute is divided into ten departments, including medieval Russian literature, oral poetry and audio archive, modern Russian literature (eighteenth and nineteenth centuries), Pushkin department, new Russian literature (twentieth century), Russian and foreign literary ties, manuscript department and medieval manuscript repository, library, and literary museum. After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, Pushkin House, like most government institutions, experienced serious funding deficits but rapid
expansion of cooperation with foreign scholars and universities that led to foreign grants, joint publishing projects, exchanges, and international conferences. See also: ACADEMY OF SCIENCES; EDUCATION; PUSHKIN, ALEXANDER SERGEYEVICH; UNIVERSITIES

  VANESSA BITTNER

  PUTIN, VLADIMIR VLADIMIROVICH

  (b. 1952), second president of the Russian Federation.

  Vladimir Putin was appointed acting president of the Russian Federation on December 31, 1999, and on March 26, 2000, he was elected to the presidency. Putin was born in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg). He attended school there and practiced judo, eventually becoming the city champion. As a boy, Putin dreamed of joining the secret police (KGB). When he was seventeen he went to KGB headquarters and asked a startled officer what he should do to “join up.” He was told to attend the university and major in law. Putin took his advice and attended Leningrad State University. In his second semester one of his teachers was Anatoly Sobchak, a man who would play a major role in his life. In 1974 Putin was offered a job in the KGB but told he had to wait a full year before entering the organization. In 1976 Putin was assigned to the First Directorate, the section engaged in spying outside of the USSR. In 1983 he married Ludmila Schkrebneva, a former airline hostess. Putin had hoped to be stationed in West Germany, but instead, in 1985, he was assigned to Dresden, in East Germany. While it is unclear what he did there, all indications are that he focused on recruiting visiting West German businessmen to spy for the USSR. In any case, he left as a lieutenant colonel, suggesting that his spying career was less than spectacular.

  In May 1990 Putin’s former professor Anatoly Sobchak was elected mayor of St. Petersburg, and he asked Putin, who was well aware that both the USSR and the KGB were falling apart, to come work for him. Putin agreed, left the KGB, and by all accounts impressed everyone he met with his ability to “get things done.” He was efficient, effective, honest, and decent to the people he interacted with, characteristics that were in short supply at that time. When Sobchak lost the mayoralty in the election of July 1996, Putin quit, but unknown to him he had been noticed by Anatoly Chubais, who helped him obtain a job with Paul Borodin, who ran the presidential staff in the Kremlin. As a result, he moved to Moscow.