Encyclopedia of Russian History

by James Millar

  In 1804 the square was repaved with cobblestones, but not until the rebuilding of Moscow after the 1812 fire was the dry moat filled and planted with trees. With the surge in Moscow’s economic and cultural significance in the latter half of the nineteenth century, Red Square underwent a fundamental change that included the building of the Historical Museum (1874-1883) and the expansion of the Upper and Middle Trading Rows (1888-1893 and 1889-1891, respectively).

  After the shift of the Soviet capital to Moscow in 1918, Red Square became the site of the country’s major demonstrations and its cobblestones were replaced with flat, granite paving blocks. The Lenin Mausoleum, first built of wood (1924) and then in its current form (1930), became the most visible symbol of the regime. On November 7,

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  RED TERROR

  1941, ranks of soldiers marched past the mausoleum tribune directly to the front during the deciding phase of the Battle of Moscow. During the postwar period the world’s attention continued to be riveted by the Red Square parades, but perhaps the most startling event occurred on May 28, 1987, when Mathias Rust, a teen-aged German pilot, landed a small plane in the center of Red Square. The repercussions of this act, which Rust proclaimed a gesture of peace, extended not only to the Defense Ministry but to the entire Soviet governing apparatus.

  In the post-Soviet area, Red Square continued to be a place of public demonstrations and tours. Although debates have continued about the role of certain features, such as the Lenin Mausoleum, Red Square seems to be one of the few areas of Moscow that will retain its present form into the twenty-first century. See also: ARCHITECTURE; CATHEDRAL OF ST. BASIL; KREMLIN; MOSCOW

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Brumfield, William Craft. (1993). A History of Russian Architecture. New York: Cambridge University Press. Murrell, Kathleen Berton. (1990). Moscow: An Architectural History. New York: St. Martin’s Press.

  WILLIAM CRAFT BRUMFIELD

  bellious provinces, along with thousands of captured White Russian officers and their families. White Russians were the counterrevolutionaries; the color white was a symbol of the old order and the color red was a symbol of revolution and communism.

  Red Terror was carried out by a new institution, called the Cheka (an abbreviation of the Russian for “extraordinary commission”). The Cheka was a state institution, subordinate only to the Communist Party Central Committee. It was a political police force that did not enforce the law but instead administered systematic terror arbitrarily. Local Chekas, especially in the Ukraine, were notorious for their cruelty, and for mass executions carried out in the summer of 1919. It was a party instrument for the conduct of legalized lawlessness. Settling of accounts and personal gain were often motives for denunciation. New concepts entered the lexicon, among them “enemies of the people,” “hidden enemies,” and “suspect social origin.” The long term consequence of Red Terror was a disregard for individual guilt or innocence, the institutional-ization of a class-based approach to justice, the designation of “suspect social groups,” fear and intimidation of entire population and, subsequently, an even greater wave of state-sponsored terror under Josef Vissarionovich Stalin. See also: BOLSHEVISM; DZERZHINSKY, FELIX EDMUNDO-VICH; STATE SECURITY, ORGANS OF; TERRORISM

  RED TERROR

  Initiated in 1918, Red Terror was a state policy of the Bolshevik government to suppress, intimidate, or liquidate real or potential adversaries of the regime. It started on September 5, when the survival of the Bolshevik regime was threatened by foreign and domestic foes. Individual guilt did not matter; belonging to a suspect social class did. It was, in other words, a class-based approach not to justice but to settling accounts with potential enemies. Its first victims were former tsarist officers, policemen, aristocracy, opposition parties’ leaders, and property owners who had enjoyed privileges under the old regime. In 1918 about fifteen thousand were executed. In 1919, other social groups were targeted: former landlords, entrepreneurs, and Cossacks, attacked for their suspected anti-Bolshevik attitudes. In 1920 the policy was extended to peasants in reBIBLIOGRAPHY Brovkin, Vladimir. (1994). Behind the Front Lines of the Civil War: Political Parties and Social Movements in Russia. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Courtois, St?phane et al. (1999). The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression, tr. Jonathan Murphy and Mark Kramer, consulting ed., Mark Kramer. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Figes, Orlando. (1989). Peasant Russia, Civil War: The Volga Countryside in Revolution. London: Oxford University Press. Leggett, George. (1981). The Cheka: Lenin’s Political Police. New York: Oxford University Press. Maximoff, G.P. (1979). The Guillotine at Work: The Leninist Counterrevolution. Orkney, UK: Cienfigos Press. Melgunov, Sergey. (1974). The Red Terror in Russia. West-port, CT: Hyperion. Pipes, Richard. (1995). Russia under the Bolshevik Regime. New York: Vintage Books.

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  REFERENDUM OF DECEMBER 1993

  Swain, Geoffrey. (1996). The Origins of the Russian Civil War. London: Longman.

  VLADIMIR BROVKIN

  REFERENDUM OF APRIL 1993

  The Referendum of April 1993 was the first and second-to-last referendum in new Russia, if one counts the national vote on the constitution in December 1993. It was held as a result of opposition between President Boris Yeltsin and the Congress of People’s Deputies. Yeltsin, who was highly popular at the time, relied on direct mandate, which he received two years earlier in the elections, and the Congress made active efforts at limiting his power, changing the constitution in its favor. Not one of the referendum questions provided for direct action; thus they were only significant as cards in a political game. There were four referendum questions: 1. Do you have confidence in Boris Yeltsin, president of the Russian Federation? (“yes”: 58.7%; “no”: 39.3%); 2. Do you approve of the socioeconomic political policy conducted by the president of the RF (Russian Federation) and by the RF government since 1992? (“yes”: 53%; “no”: 44.5%); 3. Do you consider it necessary to hold early elections for the president of the RF? (“yes”: 49.5%, or 31.7% of all voters, “no”: 47%, or 30.1% of voters); 4. Do you consider it necessary to hold early elections for RF delegates? (“yes”: 67.2%, or 43% of voters; “no”: 30.1%, or 19.3% of voters).

  With 64 percent participation, all questions but the third (concerning early presidential elections) had a majority of “yes” votes; however, less than half the voters responded to the questions concerning early presidential and RF delegate elections. The last point is significant in that, according to a decision of the Constitutional Court, the third and fourth questions, affecting the Constitution, required a constitutional majority. For this reason the referendum had a purely psychological impact, though a great one at that. It showed that with increasing conflict, neither the executive nor the representative branches of power enjoyed the support of the absolute majority of the population. Despite all the burdens of economic reform, the president and the government he formed still had a significant store of popular confidence. Taking into account Chechnya, where the referendum did not take place, and Tatarstan, where participation was little over 20 percent, voters in 28 out of 89 regions, including 14 national formations, did not express confidence in the president.

  Appealing to popular support that he received in the referendum, Yeltsin first accelerated the process of revising of the new, “presidential” constitution, and in the fall he resolved the conflict with the representative branch by means of force. The congress was dismissed, and a vote was scheduled for the new constitution, as well as elections to parliament on the basis of this new constitution. See also: CONGRESS OF PEOPLE’S DEPUTIES; CONSTITUTION OF 1993; OCTOBER 1993 EVENTS; YELTSIN, BORIS NIKO-LAYEVICH

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  McFaul, Michael. (2001). Russia’s Unfinished Revolution: Political Change from Gorbachev to Putin. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. McFaul, Michael, and Markov, Sergei. (1993). The Troubled Birth of Russian Democracy: Parties, Personalities, and Programs. Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press. Reddaway, Peter, and Glin
ski, Dmitri. (2001). The Tragedy of Russia’s Reforms: Market Bolshevism against Democracy. Washington, DC: U.S. Institute of Peace Press. White, Stephen; Rose, Richard; and McAllister, Ian. (1997). How Russia Votes. Chatham, NJ: Chatham House.

  NIKOLAI PETROV

  REFERENDUM OF DECEMBER 1993

  A referendum of December 12, 1993, ratified a new constitution for the Russian Federation, which had long been sought by President Boris Yeltsin. The collapse of the USSR in late 1991 made the ratification of a new constitution most urgent. As the USSR no longer existed as a legal entity, its laws technically no longer had legal force. To fill this void, President Yeltsin and the parliament concurred that the constitution and laws of the former RSFSR would continue to be observed until a new constitution could be adopted. This was a necessary but unsatisfactory situation, since the 1978 Constitution of the Russian Federation was the product of the Brezhnev era and reflected the values of the now repudiated communist system.

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  REFERENDUM OF MARCH 1991

  Throughout the period from 1991 to 1993, Yeltsin quarreled with the parliament over the outlines of a new constitution. In particular, progress toward approving a new constitution was delayed by heated disputes over three major issues: the allocation of powers between the executive branch and the legislative branch, the allocation of powers between central and subnational institutions, and the process for ratifying a new constitution. The deadlock was finally broken on September 21, 1993, when Yeltsin issued a decree dissolving the parliament. Anti-Yeltsin members of parliament refused to disband but were evicted by force on October 4, as Yeltsin ordered troops to fire on the Russian White House.

  The violent events of October 1993 cleared the way for new elections to be held on December 12, in which voters were asked to approve a draft constitution favorable to the president and also to elect a new lower house of parliament (Duma), called for in the draft.

  President Yeltsin issued a degree on October 15 calling for a plebiscite on his draft constitution. The document was made public on November 9, leaving only one month for debate and discussion. Yeltsin’s choice of terminology “plebiscite” rather than “referendum” was not accidental. According to the 1990 Law on Referenda, issues affecting the constitution required the support of a majority of all registered voters, rather than a majority of all those voting.

  Voter turnout for the December 12 referendum was low compared to previous elections. Only 54.8 percent of eligible voters turned out, and of those, only 58.4 percent supported the new constitution. Had ratification of the new constitution depended on the referendum, it would have lost, since only about 31 percent of all eligible voters supported the new constitution. However, Yeltsin declared a victory for the new constitution in the plebiscite, and the document became generally regarded as the legitimate Constitution of the Russian Federation. See also: CONSTITUTION OF 1993; OCTOBER 1993 EVENTS; YELTSIN, BORIS NIKOLAYEVICH

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Marsh, Christopher. (2002). Russia at the Polls: Voters, Elections and Democratization. Washington, DC: CQ Press. White, Stephen; Rose, Richard; and McAllister, Ian. (1997). How Russia Votes. Chatham, NJ: Chathan House.

  GORDON B. SMITH

  REFERENDUM OF MARCH 1991

  On March 17, 1991, a referendum was held in the Soviet Union in which voters were asked the following question: “Do you consider necessary the preservation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics as a renewed federation of equal sovereign republics, in which the rights and freedoms of an individual of any nationality will be fully guaranteed?” The referendum was sponsored by the Soviet president, Mikhail S. Gorbachev, who hoped it would make clear that despite rising separatist sentiments in many parts of the USSR, a majority of Soviet citizens wanted the country to remain unified. The six union republics where separatist aspirations were strongest-Armenia, Estonia, Georgia, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldavia (Moldova)-boycotted the referendum. However, their populations made up only approximately 7 percent of the total USSR population. Overall turnout was 80.0 percent, and 76.4 percent of those participating voted “yes.” In Russia, turnout was 75.4 percent, with 71.3 percent voting “yes,” while in Ukraine turnout was 83.4 percent, with 70.2 percent voting “yes” (the lowest percentage among all union republics). In all six republics with traditionally Muslim majorities, well over 90 percent voted “yes.”

  The results were initially interpreted as a victory for Gorbachev and other defenders of the union. However, the significance of the referendum was undermined by the ambiguity of the question. It was unclear, for example, what was meant by “a renewed federation of equal sovereign republics.” In addition, some of the participating republics added supplemental questions to the ballot. In Russia, for example, voters were asked to endorse the establishment of a directly elected Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic (RSFSR) president, which was understood as an opportunity to support the leader of the Russian government and Gorbachev’s principal rival at the time, Boris Yeltsin. In Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan, voters were asked whether they supported their republic’s sovereignty as part of a new union, while in Kazakhstan the wording of the referendum was changed by substituting “equal sovereign states” for “equal sovereign republics.” In each case, the electorate approved the supplemental questions. Thus the referendum failed to resolve the Soviet Union’s crisis of territorial integrity. Nine months later, the USSR passed into history as a legal entity. Nevertheless, in the long term the referendum left a legacy of post-independence resentment in those areas where

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  REFUSENIKS

  the electorate had voted in favor of a preserved union; many people felt that the USSR’s dissolution had been opposed by the great majority of Soviet voters. See also: GORBACHEV, MIKHAIL SERGEYEVICH; NATIONALITIES POLICIES, SOVIET; YELTSIN, BORIS NIKO-LAYEVICH

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Brady, Henry E., and Kaplan, Cynthia S. (1994). “Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union.” In Refer-endums around the World: The Growing Use of Direct Democracy, ed. David Butler and Austin Ranney. Washington, DC: AEI Press. Walker, Edward W. (2003). Dissolution: Sovereignty and the Breakup of the USSR. Boulder, CO: Rowman amp; Lit-tlefield.

  EDWARD W. WALKER

  REFUSENIKS

  Beginning in the mid-1960s, a movement began among Soviet Jews seeking permission to emigrate to Israel. Despite an agreement to allow emigrations, Soviet authorities subjected most of those who sought to leave to a campaign of intimidation: Soviet citizenship might be revoked; many were fired from their jobs; they were harrassed, their phones were bugged, and they faced hostile interrogations. The most vocal activists, such as Anatoly (later Natan) Sharansky and Vladimir Slepak, were arrested on charges of treason and espionage and sent to psychiatric hospitals or labor camps. Although eventually, in the 1970s and again in the Gorbachev era, tens of thousands of Jews were allowed to leave, many were denied exit visas for months, years, and even decades on grounds of national security or political animosity. These unfortunates became known as “re-fuseniks,” and their plight, both in itself and as shorthand for the plight of Soviet Jewry in general was a cause c?l?bre in the West and a sticking point in U.S.-Soviet relations.

  Jews had always faced pervasive discrimination in the USSR, but several factors coincided in the 1960s to crystallize Jewish national consciousness and stimulate a drive to emigrate. Some were the same factors that spurred the dissident movement. The Khrushchev-era Thaw produced new interest in Jewish culture. The trial of Andrei Sinyavsky and Yuly Daniel in 1966 signaled a crackdown on the intelligentsia, a disproportionate number of whom were Jews. The 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia convinced many that their hopes for reform were pipe dreams.

  Other factors were specific to the Jewish question. Jewish groups in the West began to organize around the issue of Soviet antisemitism and to make contact with Soviet Jews. Most importantly, Israel’s stunning victory in the Six-Day War (1967) stirred the imagination of Soviet Jews and made them lis
ten more attentively to Israel’s call, while the vicious and scurrilous anti-Zionist campaign that followed made Jews feel that there was no place for them in the USSR.

  Large-scale Jewish emigration began in earnest in 1971. Nearly 13,000 left that year, followed by 32,000 in 1972. Most of the early immigrants went to Israel. The flow of ?migr?s ebbed in the mid-1970s, then soared to a high of 50,000 in 1979, with more than half going to the United States before slowing to a trickle following the U.S. boycott of the 1980 Olympics in Moscow under the repressive hands of Yuri Andropov and Kon-stantin Chernenko. Why did the Soviet government allow Jews to emigrate at all? One theory cites external factors, including intense pressure from Jewish and human-rights organizations in the West, Soviet attempts to win concessions in the era of d?-tente, and legal measures such as the Jackson-Vanik Amendment in the United States, which tied most-favored-nation trading status to a country’s emigration policies. Another theory gives primary credit to internal factors: the pressure of Jewish nationalism itself, a desire to rid the country of troublemakers, the hope of using emigration to plant spies in capitalist countries. Both theories presume that Soviet emigration policy was coherent and followed a set of clear goals articulated at the top. Archival documents reveal the contrary; the central authorities had little expertise on the issue and reacted on the spur of the moment to biased reports from self-interested bureaucracies.

  In 1987, after initial hesitation, Mikhail Gorbachev allowed the majority of refuseniks to leave as perestroika and glasnost gathered steam. With the fall of the Soviet Union, most restrictions on emigration were rescinded, and the Jewish exodus became a flood. See also: ISRAEL, RELATIONS WITH; JEWS; SINYAVSKY-DANIEL TRIAL; THAW, THE