Encyclopedia of Russian History
Page 371
ALEXANDER VUCINICH
UNKIAR SKELESSI, TREATY OF
Signed July 8, 1833, between Russia and the Ottoman Empire, the Treaty of Unkiar Skelessi reflected the interest of Tsar Nicholas I in preserving
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USHAKOV, SIMON FYODOROVICH
legitimate authority and the territorial integrity of existing states in Europe and the Near East. Nicholas was concerned about the domino effect of successful revolutions against dynastic states. Unable to contain the rebellion of Muhammad Ali in Egypt, the Ottoman state was threatened by his advance across Syria and Anatolia in 1832. In response, on February 20, 1833, a Russian naval squadron arrived in Constantinople, followed by Russian ground forces, with the intent of protecting the Sultan’s capital from the rebels.
The treaty created an eight-year alliance between Russia and the Ottomans and provided for Russian aid in the event of an attack against the Sultan. It reconfirmed the 1829 Treaty of Adri-anople, which recognized Russian gains in the Balkans and the Caucasus as well as providing free access through the Straits for Russian merchant ships. A secret addendum to the treaty also required the Ottoman Empire to close the Straits to foreign warships. Nicholas and his foreign minister, Count Karl Nesselrode, preferred to see the Straits remain in Ottoman hands rather than risk the disintegration of the Ottoman state whereby another European power such as France or Britain might take control of this strategic waterway.
The treaty appealed to Nicholas’s sense of Russia as the premier defender of legitimism in post-Napoleonic Europe. It also confirmed Russian supremacy in the Black Sea basin and guaranteed the free passage of Russian commercial vessels into the Mediterranean, an important point given the growing importance of Russia’s export trade from ports such as Odessa.
The treaty was superseded by the Straits Convention of July 13, 1841, when a five-power consortium guaranteed the permanent closure of the Straits to all warships. Hopes for a more permanent Russo-Ottoman alliance were dashed, however, when the alliance was not renewed, helping to lay the groundwork for the Crimean War. See also: NICHOLAS I; TURKEY, RELATIONS WITH
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Fuller, William C, Jr. (1992). Strategy and Power in Russia, 1600-1914. New York: Free Press. Riasanovsky, Nicholas V. (1984). A History of Russia. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
NIKOLAS GVOSDEV
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USHAKOV, SIMON FYODOROVICH
(1626-1686), renowned Russian artist.
Simon Ushakov has been called the last great master of Russian painting. At the age of twenty-two (1648) he was appointed court painter and entrusted with the state icon painting studios in the Armory Palace. He not only painted icons, but made signs, did jewelers’ work, embroidered, and even designed coins. In addition, he became an expert on fortifications, mapmaking, and engraving. As the head of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich Romanov’s (r. 1645-1676) workshop, he painted several portraits of the tsar and the royal family. The tsar had a profound interest in western European culture and hired foreign actors and musicians to perform at court. Western architecture also held the ruler’s interest, so it is understandable why Ushakov’s westernized icon style became the most acceptable form in court circles.
Ushakov became involved in theoretical art discussions. He wrote “Words to the Lovers of Icons,” which advanced his views on painting with an emphasis on naturalism. The idealization of the saints’ faces in his icons led others to refer to him as a Slavic Raphael. The colors Ushakov favored included rose pink, olive green, pale lilac, occasionally sky blue, and shades of tans and brown. Western influence can be seen not only in the saints’ lifelike faces but also in the use of classical architecture, as well as landscapes and scenery borrowed from German paintings and etchings.
One of themes that Ushakov painted frequently was the Mandilion (Spas Nerukotvorny or “The Savior Painted without Use of Human Hands”). Even though he continued to use egg tempera, rather than the new oil painting broadly adopted in the West, he nevertheless abandoned the traditional two-dimensional, bright-colored style that emphasized intense inner spirituality. Instead he prettified the faces, creating images that in many ways resembled the Madonnas painted by the Italian Renaissance master, Raphael. A mixed style characterizes Ushakov’s work at this time. His style became the official Orthodox style, copied by many contemporary Russian icon painters.
Ushakov’s most famous and revolutionary icon is the Vladimir Mother of God and the Planting and Spreading of the Tree of the Russian State, painted in 1668. This is a blatantly political icon. A huge rosebush symbolizes the Muscovite state; within it is a
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UVAROV, SERGEI SEMENOVICH
representation of the most venerated icon in Russia, the Vladimir Mother of God. Christ appears at the very top, directing his angels to spread his sheltering cloak. The rosebush springs out of the Kremlin; Metropolitan Peter and Grand Duke Ivan Danilovic water it. The tsarist family appears near the planting, while within the spreading branches are medallions depicting Russia’s secular and ecclesiastical princes and her most famous saints.
With his mixed technique Ushakov had a very strong impact on the development of icon painting in Russia. Among his pupils who became famous icon painters were Georgy Zinoviev, Ivan Maxi-mov, and Mkhail Malyutin. After Ushakov’s time, the traditional style that had preceded him survived, but progressive artists adapted his more Western style up to the twentieth century. See also: ARCHITECTURE; ICONS
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Onasch, Konrad. (1963). Icons. London: Faber and Faber. Hamilton, George H. (1990). The Art and Architecture of Russia.. London: Penguin Group.
A. DEAN MCKENZIE
USSR See UNION OF SOVIET SOCIALIST REPUBLICS.
USTINOV, DMITRY FEDOROVICH
(1908-1984), marshal of the Soviet Union; Soviet minister of defense; member of the Politburo, leader of wartime production in the Soviet Union during World War II; Hero of the Soviet Union.
Dmitry Ustinov was born in Samara before the Bolshevik Revolution. In 1922, at the age of fourteen, he volunteered for service in the Red Army. In 1923 he was demobilized and attended a poly-technical institute in Makarev and then began to work in defense industry. A member of the emerging Soviet technical intelligentsia, he joined the Communist Party in 1927, graduated from the Military Mechanical Institute in 1934, and joined the Scientific-Technical Institute for Naval Artillery the same year. In 1937 he began work as a design engineer at the Bolshevik defense industry complex in Leningrad and in 1938 became the plant director. With the German invasion of the Soviet Union
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY
he was appointed people’s commissar of armaments. In this capacity he played a leading role in organizing production of Soviet defense industries and was a leading member of Stalin’s war cabinet, the State Committee of Defense. In 1944 he was promoted to the military rank of colonel-general. In the postwar period Ustinov continued his leadership of Soviet defense industries down to 1957. He held the posts of deputy chairman of the Council Mnisters and first deputy chairman of the Council of Ministers from 1957 to 1965. From 1965 to 1976 he served in the Secretariat of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, where he directed the activities of research institutions, design bureaus, and enterprises. Ustinov was a candidate member of the Politburo in 1976 and a Full Member from 1976 until his death in 1984. In April 1976 he was appointed minister of defense. During his tenure as minister, the Soviet Union began its ill-fated intervention in Afghanistan. See also: BREZHNEV, LEONID ILICH; MILITARY, SOVIET AND POST-SOVIET; STATE DEFENSE COMMITTEE; WAR ECONOMY
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Barber, John, and Harrison, Mark. (1999). The Soviet Defence-Industry Complex from Stalin to Khrushchev. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Gelman, Harry. (1984). The Brezhnev Politburo and the Decline of D?tente. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Spielmann, Karl F. (1978). Analyzing Soviet Strategic Arms Decisions. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Ustinov, Dmitry. (1983). Servi
ng the Country and the Communist Cause. Oxford: Pergamon Press.
JACOB W. KIPP
UVAROV, SERGEI SEMENOVICH
(1786-1855), minister of education (1833-1849) and Academy of Sciences president (1818-1855).
Sergei Uvarov was the longest-tenured and most influential minister of education and Academy of Sciences president in Imperial Russian history. From 1810 to 1821, he also served as superintendent of the St. Petersburg Educational District. Indeed, Uvarov spent his entire life involved with the arts and sciences. He published poetry in his teens; actively participated in the literary quarrels of his day; authored two dozen essays on literary and
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historical topics; and in retirement, completed the work for a doctorate in classical studies.
As a statesman, from the 1810s Uvarov acted upon a certainty that Russia was in its youth and developing into a West European-style nation. He was determined, however, that the process of maturation would occur without European-style revolutions and that the educational system would provide the map for following this special path. He gave his system a slogan, “Orthodoxy, Autocracy, Nationality” (Pravoslavie, Samoderzhavie, Narodnost). This tripartite formula offered a simple, accessible, patriotic affirmation of native values and an antidote against revolutionary ideas. Devotion to the Russian Orthodox Church would offset modern materialism. Autocracy would provide stability with patriarchal but progressive tsarist leadership. The concept of nationality promoted an indigenous attempt to answer the problems of modern development, a quest, though, that was to be defined and guided by the state, not the narod, or people.
Uvarov believed that raising the Russian educational system to a level of excellence was the sine qua non for the empire’s progress toward maturity. He transformed the Academy of Sciences from a shambles into a world-renowned center of learning. Uvarov created two first-rate universities, St. Petersburg (1819) and St. Vladimir’s (1833) and brought the others to a golden age. He reformed the gymnasia by introducing the classical curriculum and the study of Russian grammar, history, and literature. He patronized a new emphasis on technology and science in education, and he oversaw the birth of Oriental, Slavic, classical, and philological studies. For these accomplishments, he received the title of count in 1846.
While Uvarov’s accomplishments are notable, his reputation suffered during his lifetime because of his personal traits, such as greed and arrogance, and his autocratic handling of his ministry, especially in the area of censorship. Historians have tended to dismiss Uvarov as a liberal during the reign of Alexander I and a reactionary during the time of Nicholas, ascribing this to his groveling before the powers-that-be. This interpretation is gainsaid by the fact that he resigned twice, in 1821 and 1849, when tsarist policy turned reactionary and threatened the aim of educational excellence to which he had dedicated his life. See also: EDUCATION; UNIVERSITIES
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
Riasanovsky, Nicholas V. (1959). Nicholas I and Official Nationality in Russia, 1825-1855. Berkeley: University of California Press. Whittaker, Cynthia H. (1984). The Origins of Modern Russian Education: An Intellectual Biography of Count Sergei Uvarov, 1786-1855. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press.
CYNTHIA HYLA WHITTAKER
UZBEKISTAN AND UZBEKS
The Uzbeks are a people who settled in the oases regions of Central Asia more than five hundred years ago. Early references to Uzbeks suggest that they were nomadic peoples who lived in the steppes of what is today Kazakhstan and southern Siberia, although there is conflicting evidence as to their origin. Gradually moving southward, they became a political force in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and were associated with the region between the great rivers of the Amu Darya and the Syr Darya. During the early twenty-first century, ethnic Uzbeks can be found in Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, as well as smaller communities in Turkey and China. The majority of Uzbeks live in the country of Uzbekistan, which is located among the states noted above in the region between the Aral Sea to the west and the Tien Shan and Pamir mountains to the east. Uzbekistan has an area of 447,400 square kilometers (172,700 square miles) and a population estimated at 25,563,441 people. Approximately 20,450,000 of these citizens are ethnic Uzbeks (80%). Significant minorities in Uzbekistan include Russians (5.5%), Tajiks (5.0%), Kazakhs (3.0%), Karakalpaks (2.5%), and Tatars (1.5%). The capital city of Uzbekistan is Tashkent, which has an estimated population of 2.6 million, although unofficial counts place the number at nearly 3.5 million people. Other significant cities include Samarkand, Bukhara, Andijon, Namangan, and Fergana.
The majority of Uzbeks are Sunni Muslims of the Hanafi School. Given that several key cities of Uzbekistan, specifically Bukhara and Samarkand, were centers of learning in the Islamic world for centuries, the traditions of that faith are strong in the country. Even during the Soviet period, when there were stringent restrictions on Islamic practices, the religion was practiced in the country.
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY
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Uzbekistan, 1992. © MARYLAND CARTOGRAPHICS. REPRINTED WITH PERMISSION Other religions coexist in Uzbekistan and reflect the ethnic minorities, such as the Russians.
Linguistically, Uzbek is a Turkic language and, to varying degrees, is mutually intelligible with the other Turkic languages in the region such as Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Karakalpak, and Turkmen. Originally Uzbek was written in the Arabic script. During the Soviet period, this was switched to the Latin script in the 1920s and later to the Cyrillic script in 1940. In the post-Soviet period, the Uzbek government decided to return to a Latin script, using Turkish orthography.
There are significant discussions as to the origins of the Uzbeks and when they arrived in the region they occupy today. Indeed, it is accepted that Tamerlane (Timur the Lame) was an Uzbek and the first Uzbek unifier of Central Asia. Interestingly, the Timurid dynasty under Babur (Tamerlane’s grandson) was defeated by Shaybani Khan, an Uzbek leader, at the beginning of the sixteenth century. Many international historians consider this event to be the true introduction of Uzbeks to the region and the first Uzbek state in Central Asia. For the next four centuries, three main Uzbek states developed in Central Asia-the Emirate of Bukhara and the Khanates of Khiva and Kokand. Identity at this time focused on which city one belonged to, or more importantly, to one’s faith-Islam. At the time, these states were not really identified with the ethnic group of Uzbeks, which was seen as a population more divided by and distinguished among tribal sub-groupings. Up through the twentieth century, these states more often used Persian as the court languages, while Uzbek was used among the common people.
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An elderly woman and children in Muyank, Uzbekistan, in
1989. © DAVID TURNLEY/CORBIS
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p; During the 1850s and 1860s the Russian empire began to aggressively seek control over the various regions of Central Asia. This has often been couched in terms of the Great Game with the British Empire, which was a contest for dominance in the region. In 1865 Russian military forces systematically took over cities in the Kokand Khanate and Bukharan Emirate, beginning with the sacking of Tashkent in that year. By 1876 the Khanate of Kokand was dissolved and incorporated into the Governor-Generalship of Turkestan. The Khanate of Khiva in the west and the Bukharan Emirate were reduced to the status of protectorates. During the next forty years, this region was part of the Russian empire. In general, the Russian overlords sought to obtain taxes and raw materials from the region and left the indigenous populations to their own social and cultural traditions.
The Russian Revolution of 1917 and the Civil War resulted in radical changes for Central Asia.
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Eventually, the region was consolidated under Bolshevik rule and new political structures were created. The first entity called Uzbekistan appeared in 1924 with the National Delimitation in the Soviet Union. The Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic actually included the Tajik Autonomous Republic. This easternmost portion was granted full Union Republic status in 1929. With modest border adjustments over the ensuing decades, the Uzbek S.S.R. was considered to be the homeland for the Uzbeks living in the Soviet Union. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the Uzbek S.S.R. declared its independence and has henceforth been called the Republic of Uzbekistan.
For much of the Soviet period, Uzbekistan was the primary cotton-producing region of the Soviet Union, with annual quotas exceeding four and five million metric tons by the 1980s. In addition, Uzbekistan was a major supplier of gold, strategic minerals, gas, and agricultural products. In the post-Soviet period, these commodities remain the foundation for Uzbekistan’s economy. Uzbekistan is one of the few states of the former Soviet Union that did not experience a radical drop in production and income during the 1990s, largely because of its reliance on exporting these goods. However, the country’s economy has not rebounded quickly because of difficulties in the currency market and the obstacles faced by foreign investors. Moreover, the steady increase in population has resulted in a growing labor force that continues to experience a high unemployment rate.