Encyclopedia of Russian History

by James Millar

  STEPHEN JONES

  TRANS-DNIESTER REPUBLIC

  The label Transnistria has historically applied to lands that today lie inside both the Republic of Moldova and Ukraine, but it now refers specifically to the area between the Dniester River and the Ukrainian border. Since 1990, residents of this territory have claimed independence from Moldova. Despite a lack of international recognition, the Dniester Moldovan Republic (DMR) functions as a de facto sovereign state.

  The DMR sits upon a thin strip of land, less than thirty kilometers wide and only 4,118 square kilometers in area. Although the political and economic elite is primarily of Slavic origin, 39.9 percent of the population are ethnic Moldovan (Romanian speaking). Ukrainians form the largest minority with 28.3 percent, and 25.5 percent of the population claim Russian heritage. There is a Slavic concentration in the urban centers, particularly in the capital of Tiraspol. The Moldovan population constitutes a majority in the countryside.

  Despite its plurality of Romanian speakers, Transnistria has never been part of the greater Ro1568 manian lands to the west of the Dniester. The region formed part of Kievan Rus and then the Gali-cia-Volhynian Kingdom between the ninth and fourteenth centuries. It was subsequently drawn into the Ottoman Empire before being annexed by the Russian Empire in 1812. Following the Bolshevik Revolution and ensuing civil war, Transnistria was briefly incorporated into Soviet Ukraine.

  In 1924, land stretching from the Dniester in the west to the Bug River in the east was carved off of Soviet Ukraine to form the Moldovan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (MASSR). The creation of the MASSR formed part of the Soviet Union’s policy of national liberation, which was designed to draw bordering states (Bessarabia) away from the influence of bourgeois neighbors (Romania). Tiraspol was named capital of the MASSR in 1929, though the right was reserved to shift the capital to Chisinau upon reunification with rump Moldova. Following the Soviet Union’s annexation of Bessarabia in 1940, six western districts were integrated with Bessarabia to form the Moldovan Soviet Social Republic (MSSR). The remaining MASSR territory reverted to Soviet Ukraine.

  Despite the merging of Transnistria and Bessarabia between 1940 and 1991, social, political, and economic differences between the two regions remained. Having been significantly sovietized between World War I and World War II, the Transnis-trian political elite was considered by Moscow to be more reliable than its Bessarabian counterpart. Moldovan Communist Party (CPM) members from Transnistria were, therefore, relatively overrepre-sented in the Moldovan Soviet structure. Transnistria was the focus of Soviet industrial expansion in the region, particularly the steel industry, while Bessarabia remained agrarian. Sizable Ukrainian and Russian immigration also shifted the demographic balance during this period, though ethnic Moldovans remained in the majority.

  From 1987, Mikhail Gorbachev’s policy of per-estroika allowed ethnic Moldovans to seek a redress of the socioeconomic imbalance in the MASSR. A devolution of power from Moscow to the constituent republics, and the introduction of direct elections to the Moldovan Supreme Soviet in 1989, enabled Bessarabians to increase their influence over national policy.

  Conflict between Chisinau and Tiraspol began to mount from 1989. Tensions were exacerbated

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  TRANSITION ECONOMIES

  by the introduction of a number of restrictive language laws that favored the Moldovan language over Russian. Sporadic violence began in 1989 and continued intermittently until a peace accord was signed in July 1992.

  Transnistrian resistance was initially led by the United Council of Work Collectives, under the leadership of Ukrainian national Igor Smirnov. Protests swiftly became violent, as industrial managers mobilized their workers against Moldovan police forces. An autonomous Dniester Moldovan Soviet Socialist Republic was proclaimed on September 2, 1990. This proclamation was followed by a declaration of full independence on August 27, 1991, with Smirnov as president.

  Conflict peaked in the summer of 1992 following the intervention of the Russian Fourteenth Army, which was stationed in Transnistria. Although Moscow claimed credit for taking swift action, the decision to engage was likely taken by Fourteenth Army commander Yuri Netkachev, without official sanction from the Russian government. Netkachev was soon replaced by Alexander Lebed. Throughout the conflict, the Fourteenth Army provided troops and armaments to the Transnistrian forces. With a disorganized defense- led by poorly armed police forces-Moldovan troops were unable to retain control of their positions in Transnistria and suffered considerably more casualties than Transnistrian and Russian forces. Overall casualties have been estimated at between seven hundred and one thousand. A pact signed on July 21, 1992, between Russian president Boris Yeltsin and Moldovan president Mrcea Snigur ended armed hostilities, and Russian forces began to withdraw in 1994.

  At the turn of the century, the DMR remained autonomous, though the international community refused to recognize its claims to statehood. See also: LEBED, ALEXANDER IVANOVICH; MOLDOVA AND MOLDOVANS; PRIMAKOV, YEVGENY MAXIMOVICH

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Hill, Ronald J. (1979). Soviet Political Elites: The Case of Tiraspol. New York: St. Martin’s Press. King, Charles. (2000). The Moldovans: Romania, Russia, and the Politics of Culture. Stanford, CA: Hoover Press. Kolst?, Pal. (1993). “The Dniester Conflict: Between Ir-redentism and Separatism.” Europe-Asia Studies 45(6):973-1000. O’Loughlin, J.; Kolossoc, V.; and Tchepalyga, A. (1998). “National Construction, Territorial Separatism, and Post-Soviet Geopolitics in the Transdniester Moldovan Republic.” Post-Soviet Geography and Economics 39(6):332-358.

  JOHN GLEDHILL

  TRANSITION ECONOMIES

  The term transition has been applied to the countries that have abandoned the Soviet-type political and economic system at the end of the twentieth century. As it suggests a passage from one state to another, it is important to define both the point of departure and the point of arrival.

  The point of departure may be considered the communist system that appeared in Russia following the October 1917 Revolution, and which was imposed on the countries of Central and Eastern Europe under Soviet rule after World War II. The core of this system may be described in terms of three features. First, economic life was under the control of a single party. In the USSR, this was the CPSU (Communist Party of the Soviet Union). All the national parties in Central and Eastern Europe were subordinate to the CPSU until the very end of the system, notwithstanding some crises, even though not all were officially labeled communist. The two exceptions were Yugoslavia and Albania, whose leaders broke with the Soviet system in 1948 and 1961, respectively. The second feature was that the economic institutions were based upon state ownership of the means of production. The private sector was nonexistent or negligible, and market ways of operating could only be found in an illegal underground economy. Finally, the third feature was compulsory central planning that regulated production, trade, and distribution of incomes.

  The transition process began as a rejection of these three foundations of the communist economic system. The initial shock came with the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989, which triggered the collapse of the communist parties and the beginning of a threefold process: from one-party rule to democracy, from state ownership to private property, and from plan to market. In the Soviet case, the transition process also included the collapse of the Soviet state as a federation of republics; this led to the independence of the three Baltic states, and later of the other twelve former republics. Officially the Soviet Union was dissolved

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  in December 1991. The Russian Federation was the biggest Soviet Republic and the dominant one, both economically and politically.

  All the former communist countries in the world, with the exceptions of North Korea and Cuba, became engaged in a transition process. In the case of the Asian countries, particularly China and Vietnam, the transition pro
cess was well under way in the beginning of the twenty-first century. Although perhaps more advanced economically than in some former European communist countries, the transition did not touch the political system, which remained communist. Can one still speak of transition? The question is debated.

  In all the countries the basic transition policies were identical in their economic design. They were prepared by the new governments with the help of Western experts and international organizations, with the dominant influence of the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (the first institution created solely for the purpose of assisting the transition). The building blocks of the transition were again threefold. First, there was an overall liberalization of the economic activities. Prices that had been fixed or controlled by the state were freed, as were the rates of exchange (for converting foreign into local currencies and vice-versa) and the rates of interest. People became free to undertake business activities and engage in domestic and foreign trade. Second, a stabilization program was instituted to eradicate inflation, control the budget deficit, and limit the foreign debt. Third, a structural transformation was intended to create the institutions of a market economy. The main component of the transformation was privatization: the task not only of putting the former state ownership into private hands-individual or corporate-but also of creating a new private sector. Transformation also implied a banking reform, which would put an end to the monopoly of a single state bank and allow the new private sector to be financed by credit. Tax reform and the building of a modern financial market were on the agenda. In order to replace the former social security system where the citizens were in complete charge of the state through subsidized health, education, housing, and even recreation systems, a market-type social security safety net only partly financed by the state was needed.

  These measures were applied in Russia as in most of the Central and East European countries,

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  under a program that started with Boris Yeltsin’s first term on January 2, 1992, and was conducted by a team of reformers headed by Yegor Gaidar. Liberalization was swift and stabilization was achieved, albeit with difficulties and some crises. However, structural transformation progressed slowly and unevenly, and, ten years later, it could not be considered finished. The private sector was dominant, but the restructuring of the former state enterprises had not been completed, and monopolies prevailed in such crucial sectors as energy. The private companies were not applying the rules of a transparent corporate governance. The banking reform continued, with the banking sector suffering as a result of the financial crisis of 1998. The social security reform was not implemented.

  The former Soviet Republics were in a still more difficult position. They were hit by the collapse of the USSR. Their links with Moscow and among themselves, defined by the former central plan, were disrupted. Most of them, except for states rich in oil and natural resources, such as Kazakhstan or Turkmenistan, could only rely on foreign assistance to conduct their reforms. Some of them, such as Belarus, or to a lesser extent Ukraine, hardly began their structural transformation. Some others, such as the Caucasian states, or the southern republics of Central Asia, are still plagued by ethnic conflicts or border wars.

  The full transition to a market economy was not yet completed in Russia ten years after its beginning. Why has it been a much more chaotic process than in the countries of Central Europe, or even Eastern Europe? Several factors may explain these differences: the length of the Communist rule in Russia; Russia’s size and diversity; paradoxically, its huge natural resources, which relieved the state of the need for more radical reforms and allowed a small minority of corrupt businessmen to grab these resources through the mechanisms of privatization; and, the lack of incentives and assistance, which were provided to Central and Eastern Europe through the European Union enlargement process but were not available to the CIS countries. See also: ECONOMY, POST-SOVIET; MARKET SOCIALISM; PRIVATIZATION

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Aslund, Anders. (1995). How Russia Became a Market Economy. Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution.

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  TRIANDAFILLOV, VIKTOR KIRIAKOVICH

  Braguinsky, Serguey, and Yavlinsky, Grigory. (2000). Incentives and Institutions: The Transition to a Market Economy in Russia. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. (1999). Transition Report 1999: Ten Years of Transition. London: EBRD. Kolodko, Grzegorz W. (2000). From Shock to Therapy: The Political Economy of Postsocialist Transformation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lavigne, Marie. (1999). The Economics of Transition: From Socialist Economy to Market Economy, 2nd ed. New York: St. Martin’s Press. United Nations Economic Commission for Europe. (2000). Economic Survey of Europe, vol. 1. New York: UNECE.

  MARIE LAVIGNE

  TRANS-SIBERIAN RAILWAY

  The construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway between 1891 and 1916 ended the era of great transcontinental railway building. The Trans-Siberian stretches 5,776 miles between Moscow’s Yaroslavsky Station and Vladivostok (6,117 miles from St. Petersburg). It takes a minimum of a week to traverse that distance by train.

  The longest railway in the world, the Trans-Siberian project was mired in controversy from the moment Tsarevich Nicholas shoveled an inaugural spade full of dirt into an awaiting wheelbarrow in Vladivostok on May 31, 1891, until the completion of the Amur River Bridge at Khabarovsk in 1916. A technological marvel at the time, it soon bore the reputation of “a monument to bungling.” The rails and crossties were too light, causing frequent derailments; the wooden bridges were flimsy; and, since the builders were mostly exiles and convicts, there was justifiable reason to believe that much of the line had been sabotaged.

  Moreover, the estimated costs in 1916 U.S. dollars ranged from $770 million to $1 billion, which represented one-fifth of Russia’s national debt at the time. During its construction, the Trans-Siberian was a serious drain on the Russian economy and, between 1914 and 1916, on the war effort. Despite the criticism, the great railway more than paid for itself during the twentieth century. Still the only transportation artery to span Siberia and the Russian Far East, the Trans-Siberian has solidified Moscow’s hold on Russia’s eastern periphery.

  ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

  Fanatically supported by high-ranking tsarist officials like Count Sergei Witte (1849-1915) and Anatoly Kulomzin (1838-1924), the Trans-Siberian’s influence was immediate. The annual number of migrants to Siberia and the Russian Far East doubled (to 88,000) between 1896 and 1904 and then doubled again (to 174,000) between 1905 and 1914. Between 1895 and 1916, a total of 2.5 million land-poor peasants migrated to the region from European Russia. This Great Siberian Mgra-tion represented 57 percent of everyone who had migrated to Siberia and the Russian Far East since 1796. Additionally, the Siberian economy, which had been almost nonexistent, exploded. New settlers rapidly cultivated West Siberia’s virgin black earth, doubling the sown area. The region quickly became one of Russia’s major breadbaskets. Flour mills sprang up like mushrooms. West Siberia’s butter industry jumped from nonexistence to becoming the second leading butter exporter behind Denmark. Virtually every railhead had sawmills, stockyards, and slaughterhouses. Without the Trans-Siberian Railroad, Siberia’s industrial revolution never would have succeeded.

  The Trans-Siberian’s principal commodities are coal, oil and oil products, and wood and wood products. Major non-Russian users of the railway, which is now double-tracked and electrified for much of its distance, are China, Japan, and South Korea. See also: RAILWAYS; SIBERIA; TRADE ROUTES

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Marks, Steven G. (1991). Road to Power. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Mote, Victor L. (1998). Siberia: Worlds Apart. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Treadgold, Donald. (1957). The Great Siberian Migration. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Tupper, Harmon. (1965). To the Great Ocean. Boston: Little, Brown. />
  VICTOR L. MOTE

  TRIANDAFILLOV, VIKTOR KIRIAKOVICH

  (1894-1931), military theorist and intellectual.

  Triandafillov was one of the key intellectual leaders of the Red Army during the inter-war period (1918-1939). Triandafillov was instrumental

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  TRINITY ST. SERGIUS MONASTERY

  in formulating a new and revolutionary understanding of modern war. Up until the Industrial Revolution, military campaigns had consisted of a single decisive battle or series of inconclusive combats. The industrialization of war set in motion a revolutionary change in the means and methods of waging war. Campaigns became more protracted, battles were less decisive, and armies were more widely distributed in a theater of operations. Triandafillov, along with Mikhail N. Tukhachevsky, Alexander A. Svechin, Boris M. Shaposhnikov, Mikhail V. Frunze, and G. S. Is-serson, recognized that the material transmutation of war demanded a corresponding conceptual transformation. He believed that one could no longer think about modern war using a Napoleonic paradigm.

  Triandafillov’s unique contribution was to help overturn the old Napoleonic cut that framed war in the dual strategy-tactics creative structure. The German military theorist Carl von Clausewitz (1780-1831) had associated each of the levels of military art with a particular activity. Strategy was concerned with campaigns and tactics with battles. Other Soviet theorists argued that the complexity of war demanded a new creative component that they referred to as operational art (operativnoe iskusstvo). The creative domain of operational art became the operation (operatsiia). Triandafillov made his seminal theoretical contribution concerning the modern operation in a book entitled The Nature of the Operations of Modern Armies (1929, 1932, 1936, and 1937). Triandafillov defined the modern operation as a distinct military activity consisting of a “mosaic” of battles and maneuvers, distributed in space and time but unified by aim and purpose, conducted for the object of strategy. Triandafillov was killed in a plane crash in July 1931 while he was in the process of revising his work to consider the practical problems of creating a mass mechanized Red Army. See also: MILITARY, SOVIET AND POST-SOVIET