Encyclopedia of Russian History

by James Millar

  Although RAPP was the best-known proletarian artistic group of the Cultural Revolution, its tactics and ideas were adopted by similar groups in fields such as music, architecture, and the plastic arts. RAPP had local branches throughout Russia and affiliated organizations in each Union Republic. There was also a sister peasant organization (the All-Russian Society of Peasant Writers, or VOKP). RAPP’s most important leaders included the critic Leopold Averbakh, the playwright Vladimir Kir-shon, and the novelists Alexander Fadeyev, Fyodor Panferov, and Yuri Libidiensky.

  By 1931, RAPP’s inability to produce the promised new cadres of working-class writers, continued persecution of many pro-Soviet authors, and claims to autonomy from the Central Committee led to its fall from favor with the party leadership. The Central Committee’s April 1932 resolution “On the Restructuring of Literary-Artistic Organizations” ordered RAPP’s dissolution. Its eventual replacement, the Union of Soviet Writers, was more inclusive and acknowledged its subordination to the Party. Without the complete politicization of literature spearheaded by RAPP, however, the powerful new Writers’ Union was unthinkable. See also: CULTURAL REVOLUTION; UNION OF SOVIET WRITERS

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Brown, Edward J. (1953). The Proletarian Episode in Russian Literature, 1928-1932. New York: Columbia University Press. Fitzpatrick, Sheila. (1978). “Cultural Revolution as Class War.” In Cultural Revolution in Russia, ed. Sheila Fitz-patrick. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Kemp-Welch, A. (1991). Stalin and the Literary Intelligentsia, 1928-1939. London: Macmillan. Maguire, Robert A. (1987). Red Virgin Soil: Soviet Literature in the 1920s, rev. ed. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

  BRIAN KASSOF

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  RUSSIAN FEDERAL SECURITIES COMMISSION

  RUSSIAN FEDERAL SECURITIES COMMISSION

  The Russian Federal Securities Commission was created in 1996 to oversee registration of equity shares issued by Russian private enterprises.

  Although the stock market existed in Russia prior to mass privatization of state enterprises, the volume and significance of stock exchange transactions increased many times as a result the rapid privatization that began in 1992. It therefore became necessary for the Russian government to develop the institutional structure necessary for a stock market and private equity ownership to work efficiently and lawfully. Among other things, this requires a public registry of stock-share ownership. This had not been required prior to 1996, and Russian enterprises maintained their own registries, a situation that was conducive to fraud, misrepresentation, and difficulty of access. The 1996 Federal Securities Law mandated that companies place stock registries with an independent organization, and created the Russian Federal Securities Commission to resolve custody disputes and settlements in accordance with international practice.

  The Federal Securities Commission was also charged with coordinating the activities of the several agencies that have overlapping jurisdictions governing the securities market, including the Central Bank, the Anti-Monopoly Committee, the Ministry of Finance, and certain Parliamentary committees. This has not been an easy task. Also, although legislation gives the commission the power to levy civil and even criminal penalties, it must rely upon the police and tax inspectors to enforce any penalties. Enforcement has remained a problem, but much progress has been made since 1996. See also: PRIVATIZATION; STOCK MARKET

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Gregory, Paul R., and Stuart, Robert C. (2001). Russian and Soviet Economic Performance and Structure. New York: Madison Wesley. Gustafson, Thane. (1999). Capitalism Russian-Style. New York: Cambridge University Press.

  JAMES R. MILLAR

  RUSSIAN FEDERATION

  The Russian Federation (formerly the RSFSR, one of the fifteen republics of the USSR) covers almost twice the area of the United States of America, or 17,075,200 square kilometers (6,591,100 square miles). It is divided into eighty-nine separate territories. The country reaches from Moscow in the west over the Urals and the vast Siberian plains to the Sea of Okhotsk in the east. The Russian Federation is bounded by Norway and Finland in the northwest; by Estonia, Latvia, Belarus, and Ukraine in the west; by Georgia and Azerbaijan in the southwest; and by Kazakhstan, Mongolia, and China along the southern land border. The Kaliningrad region is a Russian exclave on the Baltic Sea and is bordered by Lithuania and Poland.

  The Russian Federation was established in 1991, when the USSR disintegrated and the former RSFSR became an independent state. A declaration of state sovereignty was adopted on June 12, 1991 (now a national holiday), and official independence from the USSR was established on August 24, 1991. The Russian Federation replaced the USSR as a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. The term Russia has been applied loosely to the Russian Empire until 1917, to the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic (RSFSR) from 1917 to 1991, to the Russian Federation since 1991, or even (incorrectly) to mean the whole of the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). The term has also been used to designate the area inhabited by the Russian people, as distinguished from other Eastern Slavs and from non-Slavic peoples.

  Moscow, the ninth largest city in the world, the largest Russian city, and the capital of the Russian Federation, was founded in 1147. The city’s focal point is Red Square, bound on one side by the Kremlin and its thick red fortress wall containing twenty towers. The tsars were crowned there; in fact, Ivan the Terrible’s throne is situated near the entrance. The second largest city, St. Petersburg, is situated northwest of Moscow and was known as a cultural center with elegant palaces. The city is spread over forty-two islands in the delta of the Neva River.

  The terrain of the Russian Federation consists of broad plains with low hills west of the Urals; vast coniferous forest and tundra in Siberia; and uplands and mountains along the southern border

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  RUSSIAN GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY

  regions. Although the largest country in the world in terms of area, the Russian Federation is unfavorably located in relation to the major sea lanes of the world. Despite its size, much of the country lacks proper soils and climates (either too cold or too dry) for agriculture. It does, however, have enormous resources of oil and gas, as well as numerous trace metals.

  Since 1991, Russia has struggled in its efforts to build a democratic political system and market economy to replace the strict social, political, and economic controls of the Communist period. The country adopted a constitution on December 12, 1993, and established a bicameral Federal Assembly (Federalnoye Sobraniye). Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin was elected to the office of president of the Federation on May 7, 2000, with 52.9 percent of the vote, as opposed to 29.2 percent for the Communist representative, Gennady Zyuganov, and 5.8 percent for the democratic centrist, Grigory Yavlinsky. See also: GORBACHEV, MIKHAIL SERGEYEVICH; PUTIN, VLADIMIR VLADIMIROVICH; RUSSIAN SOVIET FEDERATED SOCIALIST REPUBLIC; YELTSIN, BORIS NIKO-LAYEVICH

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Brown, Archie, ed. (2001). Gorbachev, Yeltsin, and Putin: Political Leadership in Russia’s Transition. Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Herspring, Dale R., ed. (2003). Putin’s Russia: Past Imperfect, Future Uncertain. Lanham, MD: Rowman amp; Littlefield. Kotkin, Stephen. (2001). Armageddon Averted: The Soviet Collapse, 1970-2000. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Malia, Martin. (1999). Russia under Western Eyes: From the Bronze Horseman to the Lenin Mausoleum. Cambridge, MA: Belnap Press. Satter, David. (2003). Darkness at Dawn: The Rise of the Russian Criminal State. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Shevtsova, Lilia. (2003). Putin’s Russia. Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Sunlop, John B. (1993). The Rise of Russia and the Fall of the Soviet Empire. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

  JOHANNA GRANVILLE

  RUSSIAN GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY

  The Russian Geographical Society is one of the world’s oldest geographical societies, dating to 1845 (“Imperial Russian Geographical Society”). The name reappeared in 1917 after the October Revolution, only t
o be replaced by the “State Geographical Society” (1926-1938). After 1938, the organization became identified with the USSR until 1991, when it became the Russian Geographical Society again.

  In 1917 the Geographical Society was composed of eleven subdivisions and 1,000 members. By 1971, membership had soared to 19,000 individuals, who sent delegates to an All-Soviet Geographical Congress held every five years. Between congresses, the affairs of the society were administered by a scientific council, selected by the delegates at the congress, and its presidium led by a president. Past presidents include Yuri Shokalsky, Nikolai Vavilov, Lev Berg, Yevgeny Pavlovsky, and Stanislav Kalesnik. Sergei Lavrov serves currently. By 2003, membership had again declined to one thousand.

  In 1970 the Geographical Society, based in Leningrad, supervised fourteen geographical societies in the constituent republics, fifteen affiliates in the Russian Socialist Federal Soviet Republic (RSFSR), and approximately one hundred sub-branches. Between 1947 and 1991, the society authorized discussion of more than sixty thousand scientific papers, the convening of a wide array of scientific conferences, and All-Union Congresses in Leningrad, Moscow, Kiev, Tbilisi, and several other Soviet cities. The Geographical Society also provided practical expertise and consultation to the Soviet government on issues pertaining to geography and regional development, and organized or sponsored twenty to fifty scientific expeditions every year. Society members were urged to popularize the results of their research at public meetings. More than fifty of the affiliates published their own journals, the most famous of which is the Moscow affiliate’s Problems of Geography (Voprosy geografii, first published in 1946).

  As of 2003, the Moscow affiliate alone could claim a mere 200 to 300 employees, who existed on paper only, coming to the offices in the affiliate’s twenty-story skyscraper simply to retrieve their biweekly $35 salary. Former members provided consulting to the Russian government, while the more ambitious went into business.

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  RUSSIAN JUSTICE

  See also: GEOGRAPHY; IMPERIAL RUSSIAN GEOGRAPHY SOCIETY

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Harris, Chauncy D. (1962). Soviet Geography: Accomplishments and Tasks. New York: American Geographical Society.

  VICTOR L. MOTE

  RUSSIAN JUSTICE

  The chief code of law in Kievan Rus, the Pravda Russkaya, or “Rus Justice,” survives in about one hundred copies that may be grouped into three basic versions: Short, Expanded, and Abbreviated. The so-called Short version, usually thought to be the oldest, is attested in only two fifteenth-century copies and several from much later. Essentially a list of compensations to be paid for physical wrongs, the first section is sometimes linked with Grand Prince Yaroslav (1019-1054), whose name appears in the heading, but nowhere in the text. The second section attributes to several of Yaroslav’s successors a codification of law, providing fees for the homicide of the prince’s servitors as well as compensation for various property and criminal offenses. Separate articles establish provisions for the prince’s “bloodwite” (wergild) collector, as well as a tithe for the church from the prince’s fees. A final article somewhat incongruously establishes payments for bridge builders.

  The Expanded version is much more detailed and survives in many more manuscripts; the oldest copies date from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, but numerous other copies originated in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Whereas the Short version included no more than forty-three articles, the Expanded version includes at least 121 articles and betrays a much more consciously rational form of organization, highlighted in many copies with special headings. The first articles repeat many of the measures of the Short Pravda, but overall the Expanded version establishes a much more detailed inventory of offenses and their resolution. Separate groups of articles examine slavery, commercial transactions, and loans, as well as inheritance disputes.

  The Abbreviated version, which survives in only a handful of copies, none older than the seventeenth century, seems to have been the result of a conscious reworking of the Expanded version, adapted to the circumstances of early modern Russia. Several traces of the Short Pravda remain, but the scarcity of copies along with the fact that Muscovite Rus generated its own legal codes has persuaded most scholars that this Abbreviated version had little practical importance.

  The emphasis of the law in both the Short and Expanded versions is to entrust the process of conflict resolution mainly to the persons directly involved. The first article of the Short version, in fact, authorized blood vengeance by relatives of homicide victims and provided for monetary compensation only in the absence of kin. According to the second article of the Expanded version, the sons of Yaroslav outlawed vengeance justice when they met to revise the law sometime in the 1070s, after which homicides were redeemable by payment of compensation to the victim’s kin, along with a fine payable to the prince. In general, compensation alone appears as a remedy in the Short Pravda, but both fines and compensation figure in the Expanded Pravda-an indication, some have argued, of a growing political apparatus that controlled litigation in later medieval Rus.

  Both the Short and Expanded versions make scant reference to judicial process, however, and describe instead a self-help process that indicates the minimal role played by judicial personnel. In cases of theft, for example, the codes describe a process of confrontment, according to which the victim who recognized his stolen property was to announce his loss, and seek the help of the current owner in finding out from whom he had acquired it, and so on, all the way back to the original thief. The Expanded version articulates an identical process for slave theft, using the slave as a witness in tracing the transactions that separated the original thief from the present slaveowner.

  The Pravda provides considerable information on the economy of Kievan Rus. Few articles examine farming, despite the obvious importance of agriculture to the economy. The code does establish, however, compensation for livestock either lost or stolen, and also protects some farming implements. By contrast, the Expanded version dwells at length on trading and commercial transactions, suggesting to some scholars that this law served a primarily urban and commercial society. The prominence of slavery in the law indicates that the economy and society of Kievan Rus depended upon various forms of involuntary labor, much of it probably provided by war captives. Inasmuch as

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  RUSSIAN ORTHODOX CHURCH

  the code mainly considers men rather than women, some students of Kievan society have questioned the status of women in Kievan Rus. One controversial provision seems to provide a penalty for killing a woman that is only half as large as the penalty that attached to the homicide of a man. See also: KIEVAN RUS; NOVGOROD JUDICIAL CHARTER; PSKOV JUDICIAL CHARTER

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Kaiser, Daniel H. (1980). The Growth of the Law in Medieval Russia. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Kaiser, Daniel H. (1991). “The Economy of Kievan Rus’: Evidence from the Pravda Rus’skaia.” In Ukrainian Economic History: Interpretive Essays, ed. I. S. Ko-ropeckyj. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Kaiser, Daniel H., ed., tr. (1992). The Laws of Rus’: Tenth to Fifteenth Centuries. Salt Lake City, UT: Charles Schlacks, Jr. Shchapov, Yaroslav N. (1993). State and Church in Early Russia, Tenth-Thirteenth Centuries, tr. Vic Shneierson. New Rochelle, NY: A. D. Caratzas. Vernadsky, George. (1969). Medieval Russian Laws. New York: New York: Norton.

  DANIEL H. KAISER

  cated a foreign policy that would confront the United States, which was depicted as controlled by Jewish capital, and would be dedicated to ensuring Russia’s world supremacy.

  Russian National Unity operated as a paramilitary organization, rather than an orthodox party. Members were organized into detachments, underwent military training, and wore uniforms. The Party claimed that its symbol, the left swastika, had been worn by medieval Russian knights and conferred mystical powers on party members. Though Party membership probably never exceeded ten thousand, local organizations were particularly active in
Moscow and several other regions. In some cities sympathetic local officials allowed party detachments to operate as informal druzhiniki (volunteer social monitors), a practice often accompanied by acts of violence and intimidation against ethnic minorities. In the few instances in which the party put forth candidates in elections, they were soundly defeated. After 1999 the party suffered a decline, the result of increased criticism of its program and tactics and feuding among the leadership. The party’s electoral bloc, called Spas, was denied registration in the 1999 Duma elections, and court orders banned local organizations in Moscow and other key regions because of their advocacy of racial hatred and their use of Nazi symbols. See also: PAMYAT

  RUSSIAN NATIONAL UNITY PARTY

  The Russian National Unity Party (Russkoe na-tionalnoe edinstvo) emerged in the fall of 1990 and subsequently became one of the most active of the small fascist-style parties that sprang up in Russia in the first post-Soviet decade. Founded by disaffected members of Pamyat, the party was led by Alexander Barkashov, a former electrical worker and Pamyat activist. The party espoused an ultra-nationalist, anti-semitic ideology. Its program, as set forth in Barkashov’s Azbuka russkogo national-ista (ABC of Russian Nationalism), advocated the establishment of a “Greater Russia” encompassing Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus. The rule of ethnic Russians would be assured through a national dictatorship that would preside over a council dominated by ethnic Russians representing labor, management, the intelligentsia, and other groups. Non-slavic peoples would be confined to their “historic homelands” and the state would protect the genetic purity of the Russian nation through the prohibition of mixed marriages. The party advoBIBLIOGRAPHY Jackson, William D. (1999). “Fascism, Vigilantism, and the State: The Russian National Unity Movement.” Problems of Post-Communism 46:34-42. Shenfield, Stephen D. (2000). Russian Fascism: Traditions Tendencies Movements. London: M. E. Sharpe.