A history of Russia
Page 2
Berkeley, California Nicholas V. Riasanovsky
May, 1999
CONTENTS
Part I INTRODUCTION
I A Geographical Note 3 II Russia Before the Russians 11
Part II KIEVAN RUSSIA
III The Establishment of the Kievan State 23
IV Kievan Russia: A Political Outline 29
V Kievan Russia: Economics, Society, Institutions 43
VI Kievan Russia: Religion and Culture 52
Part III APPANAGE RUSSIA
VII Appanage Russia: Introduction 63
VIII The Mongols and Russia 67
IX Lord Novgorod the Great 77
X The Southwest and the Northeast 88
XI The Rise of Moscow 95
XII Appanage Russia: Economics, Society, Institutions 114
XIII Appanage Russia: Religion and Culture 120
XIV The Lithuanian-Russian State 132
Part IV MUSCOVITE RUSSIA
XV The Reigns of Ivan the Terrible, 1533-84, and of Theodore,
1584-98 143 XVI The Time of Troubles, 1598-1613 157 XVII The Reigns of Michael, 1613-45, Alexis, 1645-76, and
Theodore, 1676-82 175 XVIII Muscovite Russia: Economics, Society, Institutions 183 XIX Muscovite Russia: Religion and Culture 196
Part V IMPERIAL RUSSIA
XX The Reign of Peter the Great, 1682-1725 213 XXI Russian History from Peter the Great to Catherine the Great: The Reigns of Catherine 1, 1725-27, Peter II, 1727-30, Anne, 1730-40, Ivan VI, 1740-41, Elizabeth, 1741-62, and Peter III, 1762 242 XXII The Reigns of Catherine the Great, 1762-96, and Paul, 1796-
1801 254 XXIII The Economic and Social Development of Russia in the
Eighteenth Century 276 XXIV Russian Culture in the Eighteenth Century 285 XXV The Reign of Alexander I, 1801-25 300 XXVI The Reign of Nicholas I, 1825-55 323 XXVII The Economic and Social Development of Russia in the First
Half of the Nineteenth Century 341 XXVIII Russian Culture in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century 348 XXIX The Reign of Alexander II, 1855-81 368 XXX The Reign of Alexander III, 1881-94, and the First Part of the
Reign of Nicholas II, 1894-1905 391 XXXI The Last Part of the Reign of Nicholas 11: The Revolution of
1905 and the Constitutional Period, 1905-17 404 XXXII The Economic and Social Development of Russia from the
"Great Reforms" until the Revolutions of 1917 422 XXXIII Russian Culture from the "Great Reforms" until the Revolutions
of 1917 435 XXXIV The Revolutions of 1917 453
Part VI SOVIET RUSSIA
XXXV Soviet Russia: An Introduction 465 XXXVI War Communism, 1917-21, and the New Economic Policy,
1921-28 474 XXXVII The First Three Five-Year Plans, 1928-41 492 XXXVIII Soviet Foreign Policy, 1921-41, and the Second World War, 1941-45 509 XXXIX Stalin's Last Decade, 1945-53 527
XL The Soviet Union after Stalin, 1953-85 539 XLI Soviet Society and Culture 567
XLII The Gorbachev Years, 1985-91, and the Collapse of the Soviet Union 588
Part VII RUSSIAN FEDERATION
XLIII Yeltsin's Russia, 1991-1999 611
Bibliography 631
Appendix tables
1-4 Russian Rulers 647
5 Political Subdivisions of the U.S.S.R. as of January 1, 1976 652
A Select List of Readings in English on Russian History 655
LIST OF MAPS
MAPS HAVE BEEN PREPARED BY VAUGHN GRAY AND BILL NELSON.
1 Vegetation and Soils 6-7
2 Early Migrations 12
3 Kievan Russia in the Eleventh Century 35
4 Trade Routes during Kievan Period 44
5 Appanage Russia from 1240 64
6 Mongols in Europe, 1223-1380
Mongols in Asia at Death of Kublai Khan, 1294 68
7 Lord Novgorod the Great, 15th Century 78
8 Volynia-Galicia c. 1250 89
9 Rostov-Suzdal c. 1200 92
10 Rise of Moscow, 1300-1533 96
11 The Lithuanian-Russian State after c. 1300 133
12 Russia at the Time of Ivan IV, 1533-1598 144
13 The Time of Troubles, 1598-1613 161
14 Industry and Agriculture - 17th Century 184
15 Expansion in the 17th Century 193
16 Europe at the Time of Peter the Great, 1694-1725 215
17 Central and Eastern Europe at Close of the 18th Century 255
18 Poland 1662-1667; Partitions of Poland 269
19 Industry and Agriculture - 18th Century 280
20 Central Europe, 1803 and 1812 309
21 Europe, 1801-1855 316
22 The Crimean War, 1854-1855 339
23 The Balkans, 1877-1878 388
24 Russo-Japanese War, 1904-1905 402
25 Russia in World War I - 1914 to the Revolution of 1917 419
26 Industry and Agriculture - 19th Century All
27 Revolution and Civil War in European Russia, 1917-1922 481
28 Industry and Agriculture - 1939 500
29 Russia in World War II, 1939-1945 519
30 Population Growth 570
31 Contemporary Russia 612
ILLUSTRATIONS
After page 126
Scythian embossed goldwork of the sixth century b.c. {Leningrad Museum)
Ancient monuments of Polovtsy (Sovfoto)
Icon: St. George and the Dragon (Sovfoto)
Icon: The Old Testament Trinity, by A. Rublev, early fifteenth century
(Tretiakov Gallery in Moscow) (Sovfoto) Icon: The Deesis Festival Tier: Entrance into Jerusalem (Sovfoto) St. Nicholas, Bishop of Myra (Sovfoto) Icon: Our Lady of Vladimir (Sovfoto) Ipatiev Monastery in Kostroma (Howard Sochurek) Fourteenth-century wooden church (Howard Sochurek) Preobrazhenskii Cathedral on Volga at Uglich (Howard Sochurek)
After page 244
Fresco: Head of St. Peter (Sovfoto)
Holy Gates of the Rizpolozhenskii Monastery in Suzdal (Mrs. Henry Shapiro)
Preobrazhenskaia Church in Kizhy near Petrozavodsk (Sovfoto)
Sixteen-century view of the city of Moscow (Corbis)
Red Square in Moscow, 1844 (Corbis)
Church of St. Basil the Blessed, Moscow (Ewing Galloway)
Zagorsk (Holy Trinity-St. Sergius Monastery) (Sovfoto)
Moscow Kremlin (Ewing Galloway)
Moscow State University, on Lenin Hills (Wide World Photos)
Hermitage Museum, Leningrad, 1852 (Sovfoto)
Simeon Stolpnik Church on Moscow's Kalinin Prospect (Sovfoto)
After page 360
Ministries opposite the Winter Palace, Leningrad (Sovfoto)
Kazan Cathedral, Leningrad (Sovfoto)
Ivan the Terrible and His Son by Repin (Sovfoto)
View of Admiralty and St. Isaac's Cathedral, Leningrad (Sovfoto)
Petrodvorets (Peterhof), near Leningrad (author)
Cossacks of the Zaporozhie by Repin (Sovfoto)
St. Dmitrii Cathedral in Vladimir (Mrs. Henry Shapiro)
A church in ancient Suzdal (Mrs. Henry Shapiro)
Ivan the Terrible (Sovfoto)
Catherine the Great (Sovfoto)
Peter I, the Great (Sovfoto)
Ivan III, the Great (Sovfoto)
Leo Tolstoy (New York Public Library)
Ivan Turgenev (New York Public Library)
Vissarion Belinsky (Sovfoto)
Fedor Dostoevsky (New York Public Library)
After page 504
Michael Lomonosov (Sovfoto)
Dmitrii Mendeleev (New York Public Library)
Nicholas Lobachevsky (Sovfoto)
Ivan Pavlov (Sovfoto)
Maxim Gorky and Theodore Chaliapin (Sovfoto)
Nicholas Gogol (Sovfoto)
Anton Chekov (New York Public Library)
Nicholas Chernyshevsky (New York Public Library)
Michael Lermontov (Sovfoto)
Alexander Pushkin (New York Public Library)
Boris Pasternak (New York Public Library)
Alexander Herzen (Sovfoto)
/> Dmitrii Shostakovich (Sovfoto)
Waslaw Nijinsky (New York Public Library)
Anna Akhmatova (Zephyr Press, Brockline, MA)
Modest Musorgsky (Sovfoto)
Peter Tchaikovsky (New York Public Library)
Ernest Ansermet, Serge Diaghilev, Igor Stravinsky, and Serge Prokofiev (New
York Public Library) Leon Trotsky (New York Public Library) Joseph Stalin (Sovfoto) Lenin (New York Public Library) Nikita Khrushchev (Sovfoto) Stalin's Funeral (Sovfoto) Soviet Leaders Celebrating the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution
(Wide World Photos)
After page 598
Leaders of the communist world in Moscow, 1986 (Wide World Photos) Eastern Orthodox Christmas procession in Red Square (Agence France-Presse) Patriarch Aleksy II blessing Yeltsin (Wide World Photos) Yeltsin being inaugurated as president of the Russian republic (Wide World
Photos) Ethiopian youths standing on the toppled statue of Lenin (Agence France-Presse) Demonstrators pulling down the statue of Dzerzhinsky (Wide World Photos) Children playing on a toppled statue of Lenin following the failed coup (Wide
World Photos)
Gorbachev and Yeltsin at the Extraordinary Congress of People's Deputies
(Reuters/Bettmann) Yuri Luzhkov greets Patriarch Aleksy II at Christ Savior Cathedral (Corbis/Agence
France Presse) Evgeny Primakov (Corbis/Agence France Presse) Aleksandr Lebed (Corbis/Agence France Presse)
Part I: INTRODUCTI ON
1
A GEOGRAPHICAL NOTE
Russia! what a marvelous phenomenon on the world scene! Russia - a distance of ten thousand versts * in length on a straight line from the virtually central European river, across all of Asia and the Eastern Ocean, down to the remote American lands! A distance of five thousand versts in width from Persia, one of the southern Asiatic states, to the end of the inhabited world - to the North Pole. What state can equal it? Its half? How many states can match its twentieth, its fiftieth part?… Russia - a state which contains all types of soil, from the warmest to the coldest, from the burning environs of Erivan to icy Lapland; which abounds in all the products required for the needs, comforts, and pleasures of life, in accordance with its present state of development - a whole world, self-sufficient, independent, absolute.
POGODIN
Loe thus I make an ende: none other news to thee But that the country is too cold, the people beastly bee.
AMBASSADOR GEORGE TURBEVILLE REPORTING TO ELIZABETH I OF ENGLAND
These poor villages,
This barren nature -
Native land of enduring patience,
The land of the Russian people!
TIUTCHEV
The Russian empire, and later the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, represented a land mass of over eight and one-half million square miles, an area larger than the entire North American continent. To quote the leading Russian encyclopedia: "The Russian empire, stretching in the main latitudinally, occupies all of eastern Europe and northern Asia, and its surface constitutes 0.42 of the area of these two continents. The Russian empire occupies 1/22 part of the entire globe and approximately 1/6 part of its total land surface."
Yet, this enormous territory exhibits considerable homogeneity. Indeed, homogeneity helps to explain its size. The great bulk of Russia is an immense plain - at one time the bottom of a huge sea - extending from central and even western Europe deep into Siberia. Although numerous hills and chains of hills are scattered on its surface, they are not high enough or sufficiently concentrated to interfere appreciably with the flow of the mighty plain, the
* A versta is not quite two-thirds of a mile, or a little over a kilometer.
largest on the entire globe. The Ural mountains themselves, ancient and weather-beaten, constitute no effective barrier between Europe and Asia, which they separate; besides, a broad gap of steppe land remains between the southern tips of the Ural chain and the Caspian and Aral seas. Only in vast northeastern Siberia, beyond the Enisei river, does the elevation rise considerably and hills predominate. But this area, while of a remarkable potential, has so far remained at best on the periphery of Russian history. Impressive mountain ranges are restricted to Russian borders or, at the most, borderlands. They include the Carpathians to the southwest, the high and picturesque Caucasian chain in the south between the Black Sea and the Caspian, and the mighty Pamir, Tien Shan, and Altai ranges farther east along the southern border.
Rivers flow slowly through the plain. Most of them carry their waters along a north-south axis and empty either into the Baltic and the Arctic Ocean or into the Black and the Caspian seas. In European Russia, such rivers as the Northern Dvina and the Pechora flow northward, while others, notably the Dniester, the Bug, and the larger Dnieper, Don, and Volga proceed south. The Dnieper and the Don empty into the Black Sea, the Volga into the Caspian. Siberian rivers, the huge Ob and Enisei, as well as the rapid Lena, the Indigirka, and the Kolyma, drain into the Arctic Ocean. The exception is the Amur, which flows eastward, serves during much of its course as the boundary between Russia and China, and empties into the Strait of Tartary. South of Siberia in Central Asia both the Amu Daria and the Syr Daria flow northwestward to the Aral Sea, although the former at one time used to reach the Caspian. These rivers and their tributaries, together with other rivers and lakes, provide Russia with an excellent system of water communication. The low Valdai hills in northwestern European Russia represent a particularly important watershed, for it is there that the Dnieper and the Volga, as well as the Western Dvina and the Lovat, have their sources.
But while Russia abounds in rivers and lakes, it is essentially a landlocked country. By far its longest coastline opens on the icy Arctic Ocean. The neighboring seas include the Baltic and the Black, both of which must pass through narrow straits, away from Russian borders, to connect with broader expanses of water, and the Caspian and the Aral, which are totally isolated. Major Russian lakes include Ladoga and Onega in the European part of the country, and the huge and extremely deep Lake Baikal in Siberia. The Russian eastern coastline too is subject to cold and inclement weather, except for the southern section adjacent to the Chinese border.
Latitude and a landlocked condition largely determine Russian climate, which can be best described as severely continental. Northern and even
central Russia are on the latitude of Alaska, while the position of southern Russia corresponds more to the position of Canada in the western hemisphere than to that of the United States. The Gulf Stream, which does so much to make the climate of western and northern Europe milder, barely reaches one segment of the northern coastline of Russia. In the absence of interfering mountain ranges, icy winds from the Arctic Ocean sweep across European Russia to the Black Sea. Siberian weather, except in the extreme southeastern corner, is more brutal still. Thus in northern European Russia the soil stays frozen eight months out of twelve. Even Ukraine is covered by snow three months every year, while the rivers freeze all the way to the Black Sea. Siberia in general and northeastern Siberia in particular belong among the coldest areas in the world. The temperature at Verkhoiansk has been registered at as low as -90°F. Still, in keeping with the continental nature of the climate, when summer finally comes - and it often comes rather suddenly - temperatures soar. Heat waves are common in European Russia and in much of Siberia, not to mention the deserts of Central Asia, which spew sand many miles to the west.
Climate determines the vegetation that forms several broad belts extending latitudinally across the country. In the extreme north lies the tundra, a virtually uninhabited frozen waste of swamps, moss, and shrubs covering almost 15 per cent of Russian territory. South of the tundra stretches the taiga, a zone of coniferous forest, merging with and followed by the next zone, that of mixed forest. The two huge forested belts sweep across Russia from its western boundaries to its eastern shoreline and account for over half of its territory. Next comes the steppe, or prairie, occupying southern European Russia
and extending into Asia up to the Altai mountains. Finally, the southernmost zone, that of semi-desert and desert, takes up most of Central Asia (now divided among five successor states to the Soviet Union). Being very wide if considerably shorter than even the steppe belt, it occupies somewhat less than one-fifth of the total area of the former Soviet land mass.
One important result of the climate and of this pattern of vegetation in Russia has been a relative dearth of first-rate agricultural land. Only an estimated one million square miles out of an area more than eight times that size are truly rewarding to the tiller of the soil. Other sections of the country suffer from the cold and from insufficient precipitation, which becomes more inadequate as one progresses east. Even the heavy snowfalls add relatively little moisture because of the rapid melting and the quick run-off of water in the spring. In Central Asia farming depends almost entirely on irrigation. The best land in Ukraine and Russia, the excellent black soil of the southern steppe, offers agricultural conditions comparable to those on the great plains of