Encyclopedia of Russian History
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bennigsen, Alexandre A., and Wimbush, S. Enders. (1979). Muslim National Communism in the Soviet Union: A Revolutionary Strategy for the Colonial World. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
DANIEL E. SCHAFER
SUMAROKOV, ALEXANDER PETROVICH
(1717-1777), playwright and poet.
Ranked with Racine and Voltaire during his day, Alexander Petrovich Sumarokov was a founder of modern Russian literature, and arguably one of Russia’s first professional writers. Together with Mkhail Lomonosov and Vasily Tredyakovsky, Sumarokov helped introduce syllabotonic versification, created norms for the new literary language, and established many literary genres and tastes of the day. Sumarokov created the first Russian tragedies, comedies, operas, ballet, and model poetic genres including the fable, romance, sonnet, and others. He established the national theater in 1756, with the help of Fyodor Volkov’s Yaroslav troupe (it became a court theater in 1759, and lay the foundation for the Imperial Theaters). Sumarokov published the first private literary journal, Tru-dolyubivaya pchela (The Industrious Bee, 1759), inspiration for the “satirical journals” of the late 1760s and 1770s. An early supporter of Catherine II, after her ascension to power (or coup) he was given the right to publish at her expense, of which he made prolific use. Despite poetic admonitions to fellow noblemen to treat their serfs humanely, when Catherine asked his opinion of freeing the serfs at the time of the Nakaz, Sumarokov was dismissive. Gukovsky (1936) and others have tried to link Sumarokov to a so-called noble “fonde” and to
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the “Panin party,” not altogether convincingly. Sumarokov’s reputation went into total eclipse in the nineteenth century, when the literary movement he spearheaded was declared merely “pseudo-Classicism.” It was not until the Soviet period that his achievement began to be reevaluated. See also: CATHERINE II; LOMONOSOV, MIKHAIL VASILIEVICH; THEATER
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Levitt, Marcus C. (1995). “Aleksandr Petrovich Sumaro-kov.” Dictionary of Literary Biography 150: 370-381. Detroit: Bruccoli Clark Layman and Gale Research.
MARCUS C. LEVITT
SUPREME SOVIET
The Supreme Soviet was described in the 1936 and 1977 constitutions as the “highest organ of State power.”
In the USSR, the bicameral Supreme Soviet was the chief, central legislative organ of the Soviet state. The constitutions of 1936 and 1977 followed closely the wording of the two preceding constitutions of 1918 and 1924 in describing the powers and functions of this body (earlier known as the Congress of Soviets) and its executive Presidium.
As in preceding years, the deputies to the Supreme Soviet, elected to four-year terms throughout the republics, regions, provinces and other political-administrative subdivisions of authority throughout the USSR, were said to represent the interests of the workers, peasants, soldiers, and intellectuals. That the deputies would faithfully serve those interests, it was claimed in documents explaining the workings of the central legislature, was guaranteed by fact that the Communist Party at all levels played the determining role in selecting the single-list candidates for election to the legislative body. By the 1936 and 1977 constitutions, non-Party deputies could run for election and be elected. These deputies, too, were carefully vetted by the Party “aktivs.” Polling places for election of deputies seldom provided voting booths.
The USSR Supreme Soviet was divided into two chambers, called the Soviet of the Union and the Soviet of Nationalities. The former was based on representation by geographic, political-administrative territorial units nationwide; the latter was
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based on national, or ethnic, territorial units. The rationale given for this in official documents was that in this way the Soviet people would be represented both by geographic location as well as by ethnicity.
Representation was based on one deputy per every 300,000 of the population. There was no class restriction as found in the first, 1918, constitution.
The numbers of deputies in each body tended to increase over the years. This reflected the growth in population. No officially recognized cap was put on the total number of deputies, yet a limit nevertheless seemed to be in effect. The Soviet authorities apparently preferred to keep both bodies at approximately equal and manageable size. In that sense, the Communist Party leadership exercised control over the size of the legislative bodies as well as the texts of the bills submitted to it for enactment-always enacted unanimously by a show of hands.
From 1937 to the 1960s, the Soviet of the Union increased from 569 to 791 deputies. The members of the second, or lower, chamber during the same period climbed from 574 to 750. The increase in the latter came from the addition of several new Union Republics to the USSR. These were the result of territorial annexations made before and during World War II.
Both chambers met either separately or in joint session in the Supreme Soviet building within the Kremlin. They would meet jointly especially when the powerful executive Presidium of the Supreme Soviet was elected (every four years) along with elections of the USSR Supreme Court and of the Council of Ministers (formerly, Council of People’s Commissars), or government and cabinet. The chairman of the Presidium was considered to be, as head of state, the Soviet President. By the constitution the chambers were to meet twice per year in which the closely regulated sessions lasted only about a week. Prior to the 1950s, the two Soviets sometimes met more than twice per year.
Besides effecting indirect Communist Party control over the legislative proceedings, each chamber of the Supreme Soviet established a Council of Elders. This body, though unmentioned in the constitution, served as a further conduit for Party control. Each council numbered approximately 150 elders. It consisted of leading figures from the republics, territories, and provinces. Besides proposing legislation, the councils supervised the formation of legislative committees, known as commissions,
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY
SUPREME SOVIET
The Yakutsk delegation to the Supreme Soviet in 1938 included secret police chief Nikolai Yezhov, bottom left. © HULTON-DEUTSCH COLLECTION/CORBIS within both houses. The committees oversaw affairs concerned with the State budget, legislation, the courts, foreign affairs, credentials, and so forth.
The work of the committees was closely regulated. Often a leading member of the Communist Party Central Committee would chair a committee, such as that concerned with foreign affairs.
Soviet propaganda aimed at a foreign audience boasted of the heterogeneous, democratic makeup of the USSR Supreme Soviet. One such document, Andrei Vyshinsky’s Law of the Soviet State (Gosu-darstvo i pravo), noted that in the 1930s and 1940s. the Soviet legislature had a far greater proportion of women deputies than Western parliaments or the U.S. Congress. The alleged working-class backgrounds of the deputies was also touted. Party representation in the legislature stood at around 18 percent, or several times that of the percentage of Party members within the population at large. Government officials were said to constitute some 15 percent of the deputies.
Soviet juristic writings explicitly denied that the Soviet Union’s political system recognized the Western principle of the separation of powers between the legislative, executive, and judicial organs. Instead, it was claimed, the Soviet political system stressed the merging of executive, legislative, and judicial functions that was further afforded by the system’s centralized structure. Such unity was further enhanced by the parallel Communist Party hierarchy that was likewise structured to emphasize unity of function at all levels of administration and political authority.
When the time came for voiced criticism of the system-beginning to surface within the illegal reform movement, or samizdat, of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s-the dissidents, some of whom were put on trial and served sentences in the labor camps, called in some instances for retaining the basic structure of the soviets. Yet they demanded radical overhaul of the functions of the soviets at all levels of autho
rity as well as elimination of exclusive Communist Party supervision of soviet elections and legislative deliberations. Some reformers called for incorporation of the principle of separation of powers.
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY
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See also: COMMUNIST PARTY OF THE SOVIET UNION; CONGRESS OF PEOPLE’S DEPUTIES; CONSTITUTION OF 1936; CONSTITUTION OF 1977; DISSIDENT MOVEMENT; PRESIDIUM OF SUPREME SOVIET; STATE COMMITTEES
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Reshetar, John Stephen, Jr. (1978). The Soviet Polity Government and Politics in the USSR, 2nd ed. New York: Harper amp; Row. Towster, Julian. (1948). Political Power in the U.S.S.R., 1917-1947: The Theory and Structure of Government in the Soviet State. New York: Oxford University Press. Vyshinsky, Andrei Y. (1979). The Law of the Soviet State. Westport, CT: Greenwood.
ALBERT L. WEEKS
SUSLOV, MIKHAIL ANDREYEVICH
(1902-1982), high-ranking Communist Party leader.
Mikhail Suslov was a member of the Politburo from 1955 to 1982 and headed the agitation and propaganda department of the Central Committee from 1947 to 1982. An ideologist of the Stalinist school, Suslov was a reactionary and doctrinaire defender of Marxist-Leninist orthodoxy. Like many in his generation of party leaders, Suslov had humble origins. He was born into a peasant family in 1902 in the village of Shakhovskoye, within present-day Saratov oblast. From 1918 to 1920 he served as assistant secretary of the Committee of Poor Peasants (Kombed) and organized a Komsomol branch in his village. In 1921 he joined the Communist Party and enrolled in a school for workers in Moscow. He went on to study economics at the Institute of Red Professors and the Plekhanov Economics Institute before entering the party-state apparatus in 1931. Suslov was a ruthless player in the party purges of the Josef Stalin era and rose through the ranks by moving into positions opened up by mass arrests. In 1937 he became a Rostov oblast party committee secretary. Two years later he headed the Stavropol regional party committee, a position he held until 1944. In 1944, as chairman of the Central Committee’s bureau for Lithuanian affairs, he supervised the incorporation of Lithuania into the USSR and the subsequent deportation of thousands of people.
In 1947 Suslov became a secretary of the Central Committee in charge of shaping, protecting, and enforcing official ideology. He also held au1502
Mikhail Suslov, shown here in 1956, headed the Communist Party’s agitation and propaganda department from 1946 until his death in 1982. © BETTMANN/CORBIS thoritative positions in foreign affairs and was noted for his demand for strict adherence to Soviet foreign policy by foreign communist parties. In 1949, at a Cominform meeting in Budapest, he denounced the Yugoslav Communist Party for its independent stance and in 1956 went to Hungary with Anastas Mikoyan and Marshal Grigory Zhukov to supervise the suppression of the Hungarian uprising. Suslov was a shrewd political operator who served three Soviet leaders: Josef Stalin, Nikita Khrushchev, and Leonid Brezhnev. Very different from Khrushchev in temperament and outlook, he opposed de-Stalinization and economic reform, but supported him in 1957 against the an-tiparty group. In 1964, however, he turned on his former boss and was instrumental in the removal of Khrushchev and the installation of Brezhnev as first secretary of the Communist Party. Eschewing the limelight, Suslov did not seek the highest party or state positions for himself, but was content to remain chief party theoretician and ideologist.
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY
SUVOROV, ALEXANDER VASILIEVICH
Deeply conservative, Suslov oversaw the official press and personally scrutinized publications to ensure conformity. According to Fedor Burlatsky (1988), he would also comment on everything written by members of the Central Committee departments. In 1969 he directed the dismissal of the progressive Novy mir editorial board. A hardline supporter of communism, he disliked the company of Westerners. At one Kremlin reception he placed tables between himself and foreign diplomats. Known as the “sea-green incorruptible of the Soviet establishment,” Suslov protested against increasing corruption in the party. In 1982 he died from a stroke that reportedly followed a heated discussion with an individual who was trying to cover up Brezhnev family scandals. See also: AGITPROP; CENTRAL COMMITTEE; COMMITTEES OF THE VILLAGE POOR; COMMUNIST PARTY OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION; COMMUNIST PARTY OF THE SOVIET UNION; HUNGARIAN REVOLUTION
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Burlatsky, Fedor. (1988). Khrushchev and the First Russian Spring, tr. Daphne Skillen. New York: Scribners. McCauley, Martin. (1997). Who’s Who in Russia since 1900. London: Routledge. Tatu, Michel (1968). Power in the Kremlin: From Khrushchev to Kosygin, tr. Helen Katel. New York: Viking.
ELAINE MACKINNON
portunities provided by a relaxation of tsarist censorship in 1865, the demands of an increasingly literate population, the mass production made possible by the new printing technology, and fast reporting of news by means of the telegraph.
As a seasoned literary critic and aspiring playwright, Suvorin in 1895 started his own theatrical company and installed it in his own theater. He wrote the revealingly personal Diary of A. S. Suvorin (1923), an account of the literary and political life of his time never translated into English.
Suvorin recognized the literary promise of Anton Chekhov when he first published stories in small Russian publications. During their thirteen-year collaboration from 1886 to 1899, Chekhov published major stories and plays with Suvorin. The two became close friends, and that bond eased for Suvorin the tragedies of his own family life. Both his first wife and a son committed suicide, while another son and a daughter died of illnesses. See also: CHEKHOV, ANTON PAVLOVICH; JOURNALISM
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Ambler, Effie. (1972). Russian Journalism and Politics: The Career of Aleksei S. Suvorin, 1861-1881. Detroit: Wayne State University Press. Bartol, R. (1974). “Aleksei Suvorin: Russia’s Millionaire Publisher.” Journalism Quarterly 51:411-417.
CHARLES A. RUUD
SUVORIN, ALEXEI SERGEYEVICH
(1834-1912), publisher, editor, critic, playwright.
Alexei Sergeyevich Suvorin was born into a provincial military family and, by becoming a journalist, made his greatest contribution to Russia as publisher and editor of its most influential pre-Revolution conservative daily newspaper, New Times, and as publisher of Chekhov.
First commissioned in the military, Suvorin resigned at age nineteen to concentrate on teaching, journalism, and literature. After working for several Russian newspapers and periodicals over the next fifteen years, he and a partner acquired the faltering St. Petersburg daily, New Times, in 1867. It became the flagship of a financially successful business that came to include book publishing, sales in company bookstores and railway station kiosks, and a school for printers. Suvorin grasped the opENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY
SUVOROV, ALEXANDER VASILIEVICH
(1730-1800), generalissimo (1799), prince, field marshal, and count.
Perhaps the greatest Russian military leader of all time, Alexander Suvorov never lost a battle. He is generally credited among the founders of the Russian school of military art. Suvorov entered service in 1748 and first saw conventional combat during the Seven Years’ War (1756-1763). As a regimental commander from 1763 to 1769, he devised a regulation that became a model for combat training and service practices. As a brigadier and major general from 1768 to 1772 he was instrumental in defeating the Polish Confederation of Bar. During Catherine II’s First Turkish War (1768-1774)
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he won ringing victories at Turtukai and Kozludji (both 1773). Suvorov subsequently (1776-1779, 1782-1784) campaigned in the Crimea and the Kuban, where he imposed greater Russian control and where he refined unconventional tactics appropriate to circumstance and enemy. During Catherine’s Second Turkish War (1787-1792), he defended Kinburn (1787), fought at Ochakov (1788), won battles of near-annihilation at Fokshani and Rymnik (1789), and successfully stormed Izmail (1790). After service against the Swedes in 1791, he returned to the
southwest, where in 1794 and 1795 he subjugated rebellious Polish patriots.
Though briefly banished under Paul I (1796-1801), Suvorov served in the war of the Second Coalition against revolutionary France. In Italy during 1799, he led Austro-Russian armies to dazzling victories on the Adda and the Trebbia and at Novi. After disagreement with the Austrians, Suvorov in September 1799 successfully extricated Russian forces from northern Italy over the Swiss Alps in a campaign that probably exceeded the achievements of Hannibal two millennia before.
Suvorov left three important legacies to his military heirs. First, he insisted on progressive, realistic training tailored to the characteristics of the peasant soldier. Second, he left in his Art of Victory (1795-1796) a set of prescriptions for battlefield success. He saw the primary objective in war as the enemy’s main force. He counseled commanders in pursuit of victory to observe his triad of “speed, assessment, and attack.” Speed was all-important: “One minute decides the outcome of battle, one hour the success of a campaign, one day the fate of empires ... I operate not by hours but by minutes” (Menning, 1986, pp. 82-83). Third, Suvorov’s record in the field inspired emulation from subsequent generations of Russian military officers. However, many would-be inheritors forgot his admonitions about flexibility, and sought slavish imitation rather than flexible adaptation. See also: MILITARY ART; MILITARY, IMPERIAL ERA; RUSSO-TURKISH WARS
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Longworth, Philip. (1965). The Art of Victory. The Life and Achievements of Field-Marshal Suvorov, 1729-1800. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Menning, Bruce W. (1986). “Train Hard, Fight Easy: The Legacy of A. V. Suvorov and His ‘Art of Victory.’” Air University Review 38(1):79-88.
BRUCE W. MENNING
SVANS
Svans call themselves Mushw?n (plural Shwan?r). Nominally Georgian Orthodox, they preserve many pagan beliefs and practices. They inhabit a high mountainous area in northwestern Georgia beneath the main Caucasus chain, in the upper reaches of the rivers Ingur (Upper Svanetia) and Tskhenis-Tsqali (Lower Svanetia). Svan was first to split from the Common Kartvelian that also produced Georgian, Mingrelian, and Laz. The four main (and divergent) dialects are: Upper and Lower Bal (Upper Svanetia); and Lent’ekh and Lashkh (Lower Svanetia), although linguistic particularities characterize virtually each hamlet. The language is not taught, and all Svans educated in Svanetia since the introduction of universal schooling by the early Soviets have received instruction in Georgian. The largely mono-ethnic population of Svanetia is usually estimated at 50,000, although the disastrous winter of 1986-1987 caused many to abandon the region, especially Upper Svanetia. In the 1926 Soviet census, 13,218 declared Svan nationality, although thereafter all Kartvelian speakers became classified as Georgians. Annual heavy snowfalls meant that Svans were historically excluded from the outside world for months, penned up with their livestock inside appropriately compartmentalized stone dwellings, alongside which stood the unique, twelfth-century, square towers for which Svanetia, especially Upper Svanetia, is famous. While rich in forests and minerals, the limited arable areas produce little apart from grass and hay, potatoes, and barley, the source of the local hard liquor (har?q’). Goiters were frequent through iodine deficiency; the difficulties associated with providing another staple were depicted in the silent film Salt for Svanetia. Ibex, chamois, and bears have long been hunted. Svan men often served as migrant laborers in Mingrelia during the winter months.