Encyclopedia of Russian History

by James Millar

  Unfortunately, additional frictions-the U-2 spy plane incident (1960), building of the Berlin wall (1961), the Cuban missile crisis (1962), Soviet suppression of the Czechoslovak “socialism with a human face” (1968), repression of internal dissent, the Vietnam War, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (1979), and the Korean Airliner incident (1983)-kept the Cold War alive into the 1980s. The Brezhnev-era d?tente, however, had produced a number of softer, more realistic policies that led to expanded exchanges, arms limitations talks, additional Soviet-American summit meetings, and limited emigration of Jews and other voices of Soviet dissent.

  Throughout the Cold War, mutual respect prevailed in regard to cultural and scientific achievements, creating pressure in both countries for more communication and efforts at understanding. This culminated in the Gorbachev-era relaxations of the once officially closed society. The rewriting of distorted history, the opening of archives, the liberation of Eastern Europe, the unification of Germany, and, finally, the breakup of the Soviet Union and the collapse of Communism seemed to herald the end of the Cold War and the beginning of a new era in Soviet-American relations. This conclusion, however, is clouded by an unfinished and indistinct search for new identity and purpose in both countries.

  ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

  See also: ALASKA; ALLIED INTERVENTION; ARMS CONTROL; COLD WAR; CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS; D?TENTE; GRAND ALLIANCE; JEWS; U-2 SPY PLANE INCIDENT; WORLD WAR I; WORLD WAR II

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Allen, Robert V. (1988). Russia Looks to America: The View to 1917. Washington, DC: Library of Congress. Bohlen, Charles E. (1973). Witness to History, 1929-1969. New York: Norton. Bolkhovitinov, Nikolai. (1975). The Beginnings of Russian-American Relations, 1775-1815, tr. Elena Levin. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Dukes, Paul. (2000). The Superpowers: A Short History. London: Routledge. Foglesong, David S. (1995). America’s Secret War Against Bolshevism: U. S. Intervention in the Russian Civil War, 1917-1920. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Gaddis, John Lewis. (1978). Russia, the Soviet Union and the United States: An Interpretive History. New York: John Wiley and Sons. Gaddis, John Lewis. (1997). We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History. New York: Oxford University Press. Hoff Wilson, Joan. (1974). Ideology and Economics: U S. Relations with the Soviet Union, 1918-1933. Columbia: University of Missouri Press. Kennan, George F. (1956, 1958). Soviet-American Relations, 1917-1920. 2 vols. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Kennan, George F. (1961). Russia and the West under Lenin and Stalin. Boston: Little, Brown. LaFeber, Walter. (1997). America, Russia, and the Cold War, 1945-1996. New York: McGraw-Hill. Laserson, Max M. (1962). The American Impact on Russia, 1784-1917: Diplomatic and Ideological. New York: Collier. Saul, Norman E. (1991). Distant Friends: The United States and Russia, 1763-1867. Lawrence: University of Press Kansas. Saul, Norman E. (1996). Concord and Conflict: The United States and Russia, 1867-1914. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas. Williams, Robert C. (1980). Russian Art and American Money, 1900-1940. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Williams, William Appleman. (1952). American-Russian Relations, 1781-1947. New York: Rinehart.

  NORMAN E. SAUL

  1619

  UNITY (MEDVED) PARTY

  UNITY (MEDVED) PARTY

  Boris Yeltsin’s second and final term as president would expire in June 2000, and he anxiously searched for a viable successor. In summer 1999 a serious challenge emerged from two powerful regional leaders, Moscow mayor Yuri Luzhkov and Tatarstan president Mintimer Shaimiev. They merged the two movements they headed, Fatherland and All Russia, into an alliance headed by Yevgeny Primakov, the prime minister whom Yeltsin had fired in March. Victory for Fatherland/All Russia in the State Duma election in December 1999 would give Luzhkov or Primakov a good chance of defeating the Kremlin’s candidate for the presidency in June 2000.

  In response the presidential staff hastily created a new loyalist party, Yedinstvo (Unity), also known as Medved or Bear (from its official name, Interregional Movement “Unity,” whose first letters spell MeDvEd). Unity was launched in September 1999, just three months before the election. Unity mobilized the administrative resources of government ministries and regional governors, thirty-two of whom backed the new electoral alliance. Unity’s philosophy was simple: support for Prime Minister Putin, who was leading the fight against Chechen bandits. Putin declined to lead Unity; its official head was the ambitious young minister for emergency situations, Sergei Shoigu. In 1999 Unity was helped by oligarch Boris Berezovsky, whose television station ORT launched relentless personal attacks on Unity’s rivals, Luzhkov and Primakov. Ironically, a year later Berezovsky fell out with the Kremlin and was forced into exile.

  Apart from Gennady Zyuganov’s Communist Party of the Russian Federation, Russian political parties were exceptionally weak and unstable. Previous attempts to create a pro-government party, such as Russia’s Choice (1993) or Our Home is Russia (1995), had failed. People were willing to vote for a strong president but voiced their discontent by voting for opposition parties in parliamentary elections. About 20 to 30 percent of voters supported the communists, and a similar number supported the various democratic parties. Unity hoped to pull support from across the spectrum, especially from voters who were skeptical of all ideologies and preferred pragmatic leaders.

  Much to everyone’s surprise, Unity did well in the December 1999 election, winning 23 percent on the national party list, close behind the Commu1620 nists’ 24 percent, and ahead of Fatherland/All Russia at 13 percent. This cleared the way for Putin’s successful run for the presidency. Unity then forged a tactical alliance with the Communists in parliament, and in 2000 and 2001 the Duma passed nearly all of Putin’s legislative proposals, from START II ratification to land reform.

  Surveys suggested that Unity was maintaining its electoral support and gaining some influence in regional elections. In July 2001 Luzhkov’s Fatherland party, recognizing Unity’s administrative muscle and fearing defeat in the next election, reluctantly merged with Unity. Shaimiev’s All-Russia later followed suit. The three parties held a founding congress to form a new party, called United Russia, on December 1. The party claimed to have 200,000 members, but its support seemed to derive entirely from Putin’s popularity.

  In November 2002 legislator Alexander Be-spalov was replaced as head of United Russia by Interior Minister Boris Gryzlov, signalling the Kremlin’s desire to keep tight control over the party as it prepared for its main test: the December 2003 State Duma elections. A new July 2002 law introduced party list elections for half the seats in regional legislatures, giving Unified Russia a chance of establishing a presence at a regional level throughout Russia. See also: PUTIN, VLADIMIR VLADIMIROVICH

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Malyakin, Ilya. (2003). “The ‘United Russia’ Project: Snatching Defeat from the Jaws of Victory.” Russia and Eurasia Review 2, No. 5 (March 4). June 20. «http://www.jamestown.org/pubs/view/rer_002 _005_003.htm ».

  PETER RUTLAND

  UNIVERSITIES

  In 1725 Peter the Great founded the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences, which, unlike its Western models, included a school of higher education known as the Academic University. The primary task of the university was to prepare selected young men to enter the challenging field of scientific scholarship. The university encountered difficulties in attracting and retaining students. Because all instructors- members of the Academy-were foreigners, there

  ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

  UNIVERSITIES

  Students gather for class at Moscow State University. © MICHAEL NICHOLSON/CORBIS was also a serious language barrier. The general atmosphere did not favor the new teaching venture, and the university folded before the end of the century.

  After a slow start, Moscow University, founded in 1755, ended the century as a dynamic enterprise with a promising future. The initial charter of the university guaranteed a high degree of academic autonomy but limited the enrollment to free estates, which excluded a vast majority of the
population. In 1855, on the occasion of the centenary celebration of its existence, the university published an impressive volume on its scholarly achievements.

  The beginning of the nineteenth century manifested a vibrant national interest in both utilitarian and humanistic sides of science. During the first decade of the century, the country acquired four new universities. Dorpat University, actually a reestablished Protestant institution, immediately

  ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

  1621

  UNIVERSITIES

  began to serve as a link to Western universities and as an effective center for training future Russian professors. The universities at Kharkov, Kazan, and St. Petersburg benefited from an initial appointment of Western professors displaced by the Napoleonic wars. St. Petersburg University also benefited from the presence of the Academy of Sciences in the same city.

  It was not unusual for the members of the Academy of Sciences to offer courses at the university. Kiev University was founded in 1833 with the aim of contributing to the creation of a new Polish nationality favorably disposed toward the spirit of Russia, a quixotic government plan that collapsed in a hurry allowing the university to follow the normal course of development.

  The 1803 university charter adopted the Western idea of institutional independence and opened up higher education to all estates. Conservative administrators, however, continued to favor the upper levels of society. The liberalism and humanism of government management of higher education was a passing phenomenon. In the 1820s, the Ministry of Public Education, dominated by extreme conservatism, encouraged animosity toward foreign professors and undertook extensive measures to eliminate the influence of Western materialism on Russian science. Geology was eliminated from the university curriculum because it contradicted scriptural positions.

  In a slightly modified form, extreme conservatism continued to dominate the policies of the Ministry of Public Education during the reign of Nicholas I (1825-1855). The 1833 university charter vested more authority in superintendents of school districts-subordinated directly to the Minister of Public Education-than in university rectors and academic councils. Professors’ writings were subjected to a multilayered censorship system.

  Russia’s defeat in the Crimean War in 1855-1856 stimulated rising demands for structural changes in the nation’s sociopolitical system; in fact, the Epoch of Great Reforms-as the 1860s were known-was remembered for the emergence of an ideology that extolled science as a most sublime and creative expression of critical thought, the most promising base for democratic reforms. As Ivan Petrovich Pavlov, the famed neurophysiolo-gist, noted, the Nihilist praise for the spirit of science as an epitome of critical thought sent young men in droves to university natural-science departments.

  1622

  Inspired by the waves of liberal thought and sentiment, the government treated the universities as major national assets. Budgetary allocations for the improvement of research facilities reached new heights, as did the official determination to send Russian students to Western universities for advanced studies. New universities were founded in Odessa and Warsaw. In 1863 the government enacted a new university charter with a solid emphasis on academic autonomy.

  At the same time, the government abrogated the more crippling provisions of the censorship law inherited from the era of Nicholas I. This reform, however, had a short history: In response to the Nihilists’ and related groups’ growing criticism of the autocratic system, the government quickly restored a long list of previous restrictions. This development, in turn, intensified student unrest, making it a historical force of major proportions. The decades preceding the World War I were filled with student strikes and rebellions.

  The 1884 university charter was the government’s answer to continuing student unrest: It prohibited students from holding meetings on university premises, abolished all student organizations, and subjected student life to thorough regimentation. The professors not only lost their right to elect university administrators but were ordered to organize their lectures in accordance with mandatory specifications issued by the Ministry of Public Education.

  Student unrest kept the professors out of classrooms but did not keep them out of the libraries and laboratories. The waning decades of the tsarist reign were marked by an abundance of university contributions to science. Particularly noted was the pioneering work in aerodynamics, virology, chromatography, neurophysiology, soil microbiology, probability theory in mathematics, mutation theory in biology, and non-Aristotelian logic.

  World War I brought so much tranquility to universities that the Ministry of Public Education announced the beginning of work on a new charter promising a removal of the more drastic limitations on academic autonomy. The fall of the tsarist system in early 1917 brought a quick end to this particular project. During the preceding twenty years new universities were founded in Saratov and Tomsk.

  The last decades of Imperial Russia showed a marked growth of institutions of higher education outside the framework of state universities. To bolENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

  UNKIAR SKELESSI, TREATY OF

  ster the industrialization of the national economy, the government both improved the existing technical schools and established new ones at a university level. The St. Petersburg Polytechnical Institute was a major addition to higher education. There was also a successful effort to establish Higher Courses for Women financed by private endowments and treated as equal to universities. Sha-niavsky University in Moscow, established by a private endowment, presented a major venture in higher education. In the admission of students, it was less restrictive than the state universities and was the first institution to offer such new courses as sociology.

  In 1899 the total enrollment of students in state universities was 16,497. Forty percent of regular students sought law degrees, 28 percent chose medicine, 27 percent were in the natural sciences, and only 4 percent chose the social sciences and the humanities. Law was favored because it provided the best opportunity for government employment.

  The February Revolution in 1917 placed the Russian nation on a track leading to a political life guided by democratic ideals. The writer Maxim Gorky greeted the beginning of a new era in national history in an article published in the popular journal Priroda (Nature) underscoring the interdependence of democracy and science. The new political regime wasted no time in abolishing censorship in all its multiple manifestations and granted professors the long-sought right to establish a national association for the protection of both science and the scientific community. A government decision confirmed the establishment of a university in Perm.

  Immediately after the October Revolution in 1917, the Bolshevik authorities enacted a censorship law that in some respects was more comprehensive and penetrating than its tsarist predecessors. The new government began to expand the national network of institutions of higher education; in 1981, the country had 835 such institutions, including eighty-three universities. The primary task of universities was to train professional personnel; scholarly research was relegated to a secondary position. This policy, however, did not prevent the country’s leading universities with research traditions from active scholarship in selected branches of science. The universities also concentrated on Marxist indoctrination. The curriculum normally included such Marxist sciences as historical materialism, dialectical materialism, dialectical logic, and Marxist ethics. To be admitted to postgraduate

  ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

  studies, candidates were expected to pass an examination in Marxist theory with the highest grade. Marxist theory was officially granted a status of science, and Marxist philosophers were considered members of the scientific community.

  In their organization and administration, Soviet universities followed the rules set up by institutional charters, specific adaptations to a government-promulgated model. Faculty councils elected high administrators, but, according to an unwritten law, the candidates for these positions needed approval
by political authorities. Local Communist organizations conducted continuous ideological campaigns and tracked the political behavior of professors. In the post-Stalin era political control and ideological interference lost much of their intensity and effectiveness.

  During the last two decades of the Soviet system the government encouraged a planned expansion of scientific research in all universities. Selected universities became pivotal components of the newly founded scientific centers, aggregates of provincial research bodies involved primarily in the study of acute problems of regional economic significance. Metropolitan universities expanded and intensified the work of traditional and newly established research institutes. Leading universities were involved in publishing activity, some on a large scale. In university publications there was more emphasis or theoretical than on experimental studies. Mathematical research, in no need of laboratory equipment, continued to blossom in Moscow, Leningrad, and Kiev universities. See also: ACADEMY OF SCIENCES; EDUCATION

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Kassow, Samuel D. (1961). Students, Professors, and the State in Tsarist Russia. Berkeley: University of California Press. Vucinich, Alexander. (1963-1970). Science in Russian Culture. 2 vols. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.