by James Millar
Roshtkala Vrang Tajikis 1992. © MARYLAND CARTOGRAPHICS. REPRINTED WITH PERMISSION Indeed, many were the economic and political elite of the Bukharan Emirate, which was prominent in the sixteenth to the early twentieth centuries. The Emirate eventually became a Protectorate of the Russian Empire in the 1870s and until 1917 was closely associated with the tsarist regime. After the Bolshevik Revolution and Russian Civil War, which brought about the Uzbek S.S.R., the Tajik Autonomous S.S.R was established. On October 5, 1929, the Soviet government officially declared it a full-fledged Union Republic. At 143,000 square kilometers, Tajikistan is one of the smaller countries in the region. It is largely mountainous, with the Pamirs dominating the eastern part of the country (the region known as the Badakhshon Autonomous Region).
Within a year of independence from the USSR, the Tajik government collapsed due to infighting among rival groups and a five-year civil war ensued (1992-1997). The war was largely seen as a struggle between regional rivals. In 1997, the opposing sides agreed to form a National Reconciliation Committee (NRC) that set the stage for a peaceful resolution to the conflict. President Imo-mali Rakhmonov successfully consolidated his authority in the postwar era and in the early twenty-first century has a firm control of the coun1514
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try, which continues to be dominated by regional and clan rivalries.
Tajikistan is an overwhelmingly mountainous country that has few natural resources other than mineral wealth. Tajikistan was the source of strategic minerals for the Soviet nuclear program and continues to be a supplier of other minerals for export. In particular, aluminum is deemed important and is the foundation for one of the region’s largest aluminum processing plants in Tursun-Zade. There are modest oil and gas deposits, but these are used exclusively for domestic consumption. Cotton is also a product traditionally exported.
Because of the civil war, economic development in the country has been abysmally low. It is estimated that the production levels of the country are less than half of the 1991 figures. Since 2001, international financial institutions have increased their commitments to Tajikistan to begin the process of rebuilding the economy. Of particular interest are the possibilities in hydroelectric energy and continued development of mineral reserves. The total gross national product (GNP) for 2001 was $7.5 billion, giving an estimated purchasing power parity (PPP) at $1,140 per capita. Per capita income is actually less than $600, with many earning as little as $10 per month in actual salary.
Because it is a landlocked country that requires open access to outside trade routes, Tajikistan is dependent upon building strong relations with its neighbors-China, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, and the Kyrgyz Republic. Of particular importance is the fact that Tajiks are prominent in neighboring Uzbekistan, especially in the historic cities of Bukhara and Samarkand. Another key issue for Tajikistan is the fact that Iran feels some affinity toward the country. Iran played a key role in facilitating the peace talks in the mid-1990s and, at least at that time, felt it could be a more significant player in the country.
Finally, Tajik support of the U.S.-led campaign in Afghanistan has paid modest returns. There is currently a small U.S.-base facility in Dushanbe and strategic assistance from the United States to Tajikistan has increased substantially. Tajikistan is now part of the NATO Partnership for Peace program. The Tajik government hopes that these increased external relations will eventually translate into increased economic assistance. In turn, this aid will help stabilize a very precarious domestic situation. See also: ISLAM; NATIONALITIES POLICIES, SOVIET; NATIONALITIES POLICIES, TSARIST
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Abdullaev, Kamoludin and Barnes, Catherine, eds. (2001). Politics of Compromise: The Tajikistan Peace Process, Accord No. 10. London: Conciliation Resources. Akiner, Shirin. (2002). Tajikistan: Disintegration or Reconciliation? London: Royal Institute of International Affairs. Allworth, Edward, ed. (1994). Central Asia: 130 Years of Russia Dominance, A Historical Overview. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Atkin, Muriel. (1989). The Subtlest Battle: Islam in Soviet Tajikistan. Philadelphia: The Foreign Policy Research Institute. Atkin, Muriel. (1997). “Thwarted Democratization in Tajikistan.” In Conflict, Cleavage, and Change in Central Asia and the Caucasus, ed. Karen Dawisha and Bruce Parrott. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Bennigsen, Alexandre and Wimbush, S. Enders. (1985). Muslims of the Soviet Empire: A Guide. London: C. Hurst. Cummings, Sally, ed. (2002). Power and Change in Central Asia. London: Routledge. Rakowska-Harmstone, Teresa. (1970). Russia and Nationalism in Central Asia: The Case of Tadzhikistan. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins Press.
ROGER KANGAS
TALE OF AVRAAMY PALITSYN
The Tale of Avraamy Palitsyn is one of the earliest, most popular and widely diffused (over 200 manuscript copies are known to exist) narratives about the Time of Troubles. Although the author was a monk, he took part in many important events of the period such as the negotiations with the Poles in 1610. He used eyewitness accounts and official documentation to compose the tale some time around 1617. The first six chapters, which some scholars attribute to another author, narrate the onset of the Troubles from the time of Ivan IV to the reign of Vasily I. Shuisky. The core of the tale (in chapters seven through fifty-two) is comprised of an epic, eyewitness description of the siege of the Trinity St. Sergius monastery between 1608-1610 by Polish forces. The last chapters are
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devoted to the liberation of Moscow, the process of electing Mikhail Fyodorovich Romanov, and the end of the conflict with the Poles. The text emphasizes the important role played by the Trinity monastery in stopping the Polish advance and organizing resistance. Avraamy also stresses the role he played in inspiring the liberation movement and assisting it with his deeds and prayers. The tale exists in several versions, but scholars disagree over the extent to which variations represent authorial interventions. Like other works of the period, the tale displays both stylistic and structural innovations. It has long been appreciated by scholars for its range of linguistic registers, use of direct speech, rhythmic prose, and rhetorical skill. See also: IVAN IV; ROMANOV, MIKHAIL FYODOROVICH; SHUISKY, VASILY IVANOVICH; TIME OF TROUBLES; TRINITY ST. SERGIUS MONASTERY
BRIAN BOECK TAMBOV UPRISING See ANTONOV UPRISING.
TANNENBERG, BATTLE OF
The Battle of Tannenberg, in August 1914, was the consequence of Russia’s commitment to an immediate offensive during World War I. On the grand strategic level, the tsarist empire’s major problem involved making sure its major continental ally, France, was not forced out of the war before Russia could bring its full strength to bear. That in turn justified taking strategic risks. The principal question was whether the attack should concentrate on Germany or Austria, and the Russian army seemed to have ample strength to pursue both options.
Russia’s war plan against Germany involved sending two armies against the exposed province of East Prussia, defended by what seemed little more than a token force. The First Army, under General Pavel Rennenkampf, advanced west across the Niemen River; the Second Army, under General Alexander Samsonov, moved northwest from Russian Poland. Both initially achieved local successes against indecisive opposition. The Russian commanders, however, failed to coordinate their movements and to press their advantage. Poor logistics and intelligence further slowed the advance, particularly in the Second Army’s sector. That gave
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a new German command team of Paul von Hin-denburg and Erich Ludendorff time to develop plans already outlined by staff officers on the ground- to concentrate their entire force against the Second Army.
After five days of hard fighting, between August 26 and August 30, there were 50,000 Russian casualties, and 90,000 prisoners. Samsonov committed suicide and the Germans turned on Rennenkampf, driving the First Army back over the frontier between September 7 and 14, in the Battle of the Masurian Lakes.
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The Russians came closer to victory in East Prussia than is generally realized. Their failure was primarily a consequence of attempting a campaign of maneuver arguably beyond the capacity of any army under the tactical conditions of 1914. But while the losses in men and material were replaced, the blow Tannenberg inflicted on Russian national morale was never restored throughout the war. See also: WORLD WAR I
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Golovine, N. N. (1934). The Russian Campaign of 1914, tr. A. G. S. Muntz. Ft. Leavenworth, KS: The Command and General Staff School Press. Showalter, Dennis. (1991). Tannenberg: Clash of Empires. Hamden, CT: Archon.
DENNIS SHOWALTER
TARKOVSKY, ANDREI ARSENIEVICH
(1932-1986), Russian film director.
Tarkovsky was born in the village of Za-vrazhye on the Volga river in the Ivanovo province, northeast of Moscow. His father, Arseny Alexan-drovich (1907-1989), was a poet, at that time working as a translator before achieving acclaim in later years. His mother, Maria Ivanovna (Vish-nyakova), had studied with Arseny at the Moscow Institute for Literature but was working as a proofreader for First State Publishing House in Moscow. Soon after the family moved to Moscow in 1935, Tarkovsky’s parents separated and later divorced. Tarkovsky remained with his mother and sister, but his father continued to play an important role in his intellectual and emotional development.
Tarkovsky started school in Moscow in 1939, but after the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union was
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evacuated in 1941 to relatives in the town of Yuryevets, near his birthplace. In 1951 Tarkovsky entered the Institute for Oriental Studies but soon abandoned his academic life. In 1953 he joined a geological expedition to Siberia. On returning, he enrolled the following year at the All-Union State Institute of Cinematography, where he studied under the supervision of the renowned Soviet director Mikhail Romm. Fellow students included Andrei Konchalovsky, who also later achieved international fame as a director, and Vadim Yusev, who worked as director of photography on several of Tarkovsky’s early films.
In 1957 Tarkovsky married classmate Irma Rausch. In 1960 he graduated from film school with honors. For his diploma work, he wrote and directed a fifty-minute feature film called The Steamroller and the Violin, which treats several themes- childhood, innocence and loss, male friendship, and the redemptive power of art-which later become central to his work. In 1961 Tarkovsky started work on a Mosfilm commission, released the following year under the title Ivan’s Childhood. This film, which explores the relationship between a young boy and two adult soldiers experiencing the physical and psychological dislocations of war, immediately won international acclaim. Tarkovsky’s next film, Andrei Rublev, is considered by many to be his masterpiece. This long, complex account of the life of the early fifteenth-century Russian icon painter took five years to complete (1961-1966) and, because of its unconventional treatment of national history, its vivid depiction of medieval cruelties, and its central concern with the relationship between spirituality and artistic creation, encountered the hostility of the Soviet authorities, who delayed its release by another three years. During this period, Tarkovsky left his first wife and, in 1970, married the actress Larisa Pavlovna (Yegork-ina), who worked in many of his later films.
During the next decade, Tarkovsky directed three more films in the Soviet Union, each intellectually challenging and stylistically innovative: Solaris (1972), a profound reflection, in a science-fiction setting, on human relationships, mortality, and the nature of existence; Mirror (1975), a kaleidoscope of autobiographical episodes exploring themes of childhood, maternal love and marriage, time, memory, and loss, which provoked official disapproval for its subjective nature but won widespread critical acclaim; and Stalker (1979), a grim allegory of the human quest for moral salvation. Tarkovsky’s next film, Nostalghia (1983) was a joint Soviet-Italian production. Following its completion, the director decided to remain in Western Europe. He finished his final film, Sacrifice (1986), while already suffering from lung cancer. He died in Paris at the end of the year. In the late 1980s Mikhail Gorbachev’s new cultural policy inaugurated a posthumous celebration of Tarkovsky’s work in the Soviet Union. Since 1991 his reputation, both in Russia and internationally, as one of cinema’s great artists has not diminished. See also: MOTION PICTURES; RUBLEV, ANDREI
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Green, Peter. (1993). Andrei Tarkovsky: The Winding Quest Basingstoke, UK: Macmillan. Johnson, Vida T., and Graham Petrie. (1994). The Films of Andrei Tarkovsky: A Visual Fugue. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Tarkovsky, Andrey. (1986). Sculpting in Time: Reflections on the Cinema. London: The Bodley Head. Turovskaya, Maya. (1989). Tarkovsky: Cinema as Poetry. London: Faber.
NICK BARON
TASHKENT
Tashkent is the capital city of the Republic of Uzbekistan, a country located in the region of Central Asia between the Amu Darya and Syr Darya rivers. The city itself is located on the Zarafshan River, just to the west of the Ferghana Valley. The history of Tashkent goes back more than 2,500 years, to a time when there was evidence of habitation in the region. The name itself means “city of stone,” perhaps indicative of the stones used in its construction. It grew to be a significant stop on the great silk road in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, yet remained in the shadows of the more important city of Samarkand, which is approximately 300 kilometers (185 miles) to the south.
The city’s fall to Russian forces in 1865 signaled the beginning of Imperial Russian rule over the region. It was designated as the capital city of the Turkestan Governor-Generalship and was the Russian capital of Central Asia. Indeed, as the city grew in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, distinct districts were formed, for both indigenous peoples and for the European colonizers. Tashkent was the scene of some of the bitterest
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Boy selling musical instruments at a Tashkent market. © NEVADA WIER/CORBIS fighting during the Russian Revolutions of 1917 and the subsequent civil war. For much of this period, Tashkent was a Red bastion, surrounded by anti-Bolshevik forces.
The political importance of Tashkent continued through the Soviet period. While Samarkand was initially designated as the capital of the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic (UzSSR), in 1929 the honor was given to Tashkent. During World War II, numerous factories and industries were moved to Tashkent from areas within Russia and Ukraine that were threatened by invading German forces. Consequently, Tashkent became industrialized from the 1940s onward, giving the city a strong economic importance to Central Asia and the Soviet Union as a whole.
In 1966 Tashkent experienced a devastating earthquake that left significant portions of the city in ruins. The Soviet government made the city’s reconstruction a national effort, and citizens from all parts of the country moved to Tashkent to help in the rebuilding, with a number staying afterward. As a result, the population of the city quickly exceeded one million, and by the late 1980s was more than 2.5 million. As of 2002 the official population of the city was 2.6 million residents, although some estimates are closer to 3.0-3.5 million, or 12-14 percent of Uzbekistan’s total population. While Samarkand and Bukhara make claims to be the cultural centers of Uzbekistan, Tashkent remains the political and economic power of the country. Moreover, it is a major transportation and trade hub for Central Asia. See also: CENTRAL ASIA; ISLAM; UZBEKISTAN AND UZBEKS
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Allworth, Edward, ed. (1994). Central Asia: 130 Years of Russia Dominance, A Historical Overview. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Bennigsen, Alexandre, and Wimbush, S. Enders. (1985). Muslims of the Soviet Empire: A Guide. London: C. Hurst and Company. Bulatov, M. (1979). Tashkent. New York: Smithmark Publishing.
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MacLeod, Calum, and Mayhew, Bradley. (1999). Uzbekistan: The Golden Road to Samarka
nd. London: Odyssey. Sahadeo, Jeff. (2000). “Creating a Russian Colonial Community: City, Nation, Empire in Tashkent, 1865-1923.” Ph.D. diss., University of Illinois at Ur-bana-Champaign.
ROGER KANGAS
TASS
TASS, the Telegraph Agency of the USSR, was founded in July 1925 with the goal of centralizing control over the distribution of foreign news in the Soviet Union under the oversight of the Commissariat of Foreign Affairs and the Soviet of Peoples’ Commissars (Sovnarkom). Until the collapse of the USSR, TASS remained the single most important supplier of foreign news to the Soviet mass media, a major producer of domestic news, and a key instrument for conveying information and propaganda from the Soviet government to foreign governments and populations. After 1991 TASS became ITAR-TASS (Information Telegraph Agency of Russia), the central information distributor for the Russian Federation.
TASS’s predecessor, the Russian Telegraph Agency, or ROSTA, was founded by the Bolsheviks in September 1918 and charged with an array of functions including provision of news reports to the Soviet press, instruction of journalists in training, and supervision of provincial newspapers. ROSTA staff and financial resources were clearly not adequate to these huge tasks and, in fact, the provincial press was run by local initiatives during the civil war. In the winter of 1921 to 1922 the newly created Press Section of the Party Central Committee’s Agitprop Department took over supervision of the provincial press and ROSTA was restricted to wire service functions.
TASS never had a monopoly on the collection and distribution of either foreign or domestic news. Until the late 1920s RATAU, the Ukrainian Republic’s official wire service, maintained correspondents abroad and engaged in a series of turf wars with ROSTA/TASS over distribution of foreign news in Ukraine. Major newspapers such as Pravda, Izves-tia, and Trud (the central labor union newspaper) generally posted several correspondents abroad.