by James Millar
As economic growth and development occur, the relative importance of the major producing sectors changes, usually with a declining relative importance for agriculture and a growing relative importance of industry and services. This means that, in the early stages of economic development, agriculture is an important sector in which productivity growth sustains the growth of output. This process involves the substitution of capital for labor and changes the role of agriculture itself as economic growth and development proceed.
In the Russian case, the agricultural sector has always been surrounded by controversy. The reasons for this controversy are best understood within the context of the individual periods of Russian and Soviet economic growth and development, although there are common threads throughout. Not only are policies and institutions important, but ideology has played a major if not always constructive role in this essential sector.
Prior to the legal end of serfdom in 1861, the Russian rural economy was organized on a communal basis (the mir). The premodern agriculture under this feudal-manorial system was characterized by limited mechanization, archaic modes of land usage, and the limited development of human capital.
With the formal end of serfdom in Russia and the emergence of significant economic growth after 1880, attention focused on the extent to which a modern agriculture (emerging market institutions, market policies, investment in both human and physical capital, and so forth) was emerging in Russia and could therefore serve as the underpinning of industrialization. From an ideological
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perspective, this would mean the development of capitalism. Two major schools of thought, the agrarian crisis view and the revisionist view, address this issue in different ways. The agrarian crisis view argues that backwardness was sustained prior to the Bolshevik revolution in 1917, while the revisionist view sees significantly greater change in the agricultural and other sectors. These interpretations have both been important for our understanding of the level of economic development in 1917, the ideological options available to Lenin and the Bolsheviks, and the subsequent discussions regarding agriculture during the New Economic Policy (NEP) period.
The second important era in which agriculture became controversial in Russia is the NEP of the 1920s and its termination through mass collectivization. While the role of agriculture in Russian economic development was an issue of major importance in the 1920s, the implementation of collectivization by Josef Stalin in the late 1920s radically changed the institutional arrangements: It attempted to create a mechanism to support rapid industrialization, while at the same time imposing the ideology of collectivism. It has been argued that, from a strategic point of view, the policies and institutions established did not in fact finance Soviet industrialization. Worse, it has also been argued that the legacy of these institutions and related policies, and especially their manner of implementation, led to serious negative long-term consequences for the necessary but unachieved long-term growth of agricultural productivity. In these respects, collectivization has been viewed, in broad perspective, as a mistake.
The third important era for Russian agriculture is the post-collectivization experience through the end of the 1980s. In spite of continuing attention to and controversy surrounding agriculture in this era, it is agreed that agricultural productivity declined from the 1950s through the 1980s to such a degree that significant grain imports became necessary beginning in the 1960s. Thus agriculture became increasingly expensive (an effect of poor productivity performance) and was artificially sustained by large state subsidies. From a structural point of view, agriculture in this era failed in the sense that agricultural productivity change could not support necessary structural change, a legacy that would await the reformers of the transition era.
Finally, when the Soviet system collapsed and Russia faced economic transition to capitalism, agriculture as a sector was largely neglected. Whereas it was commonly predicted that agriculture would be a leading sector in transition economies, this was not the case in Russia. From a twenty-first-century perspective, it is evident that during transition agriculture has been a low-priority sector, one in which institutional change has been at best modest. Although markets have emerged and trade patterns have changed, the most fundamental element of market agriculture, namely the pursuit of private property rights along with appropriate institutional support, remains controversial and elusive. See also: AGRARIAN REFORMS; COLLECTIVE FARM; COLLECTIVIZATION OF AGRICULTURE; COUNTRY ESTATES; ECONOMIC GROWTH, IMPERIAL; ECONOMIC GROWTH, SOVIET; NEW ECONOMIC POLICY; PEASANT ECONOMY; SERFDOM; SOVKHOZ
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Gregory, Paul R., and Stuart, Robert C. (2001). Russian and Soviet Economic Performance and Structure, 7th ed. New York: Addison Wesley Longman. Volin, Lazar. (1970). A Century of Russian Agriculture. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
ROBERT C. STUART
AIGUN, TREATY OF
The Treaty of Aigun (May 28, 1858) granted the expanding Russian Empire vast new territories in eastern Siberia at the expense of China, which had entered upon a period of decline. In the late 1840s, after more than a century of stable relations with China, governed by the Treaties of Nerchinsk (1689) and Kiakhta (1728), Russia renewed its eastward expansion under the leadership of Nikolai Muraviev, the governor-general of Eastern Siberia, and Count E. V. Putiatin and General Nikolai Ig-natiev, both of whom were diplomatic envoys. The three men shared a vision of Russia as a Pacific power, and operated as quasi-independent agents of an imperial state in this era before modern transportation and communications.
In the early 1850s, Russia sent a naval flotilla down the Amur River, established military settlements along its northern bank, and ignored Chinese protests. Focused on suppressing the Taiping rebellion that threatened the dynasty’s hold on power, Chinese officials greatly feared Russian military
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power, the strength of which they overestimated. When they failed to persuade the Russians to withdraw from territories they considered part of their own domain, the Chinese had no choice but to negotiate with Muraviev, who had threatened them with war.
In accordance with Muraviev’s demands, the Treaty of Aigun established the Russo-Chinese boundary along the Amur, from the Argun River in the west to the Sea of Okhotsk in the east. Russia was accorded navigation rights on the Amur, Ussuri, and Sungari rivers along with China, but third countries were excluded, as Muraviev feared encroachment by the British Navy. Trade, which had been previously been restricted to one point along the border, was now permitted along its entire length. China viewed the Treaty of Aigun as a temporary concession to Russian military pressure, but Muraviev and St. Petersburg correctly understood it as a giant step in Russia’s rise as an Asia-Pacific power. See also: CHINA, RELATIONS WITH; MURAVIEV, NIKITA
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Clubb, O. Edmund. (1971). China and Russia: The “Great Game.” New York: Columbia University Press. Mancall, Mark. (1971). Russia and China: Their Diplomatic Relations to 1728. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Paine, S. C. M. (1997). Imperial Rivals: Russia, China, and Their Disputed Frontier. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe. Quested, Rosemary. (1984). Sino-Russian Relations: A Short History. Boston: George Allen amp; Unwin. Tien-fong Cheng. (1973). A History of Sino-Russian Relations. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1973.
STEVEN I. LEVINE
The Ajarian Autonomous Republic was established on July 16, 1921, as a result of Turkey ceding Batumi to Georgia, along with territory to its north, in accordance with the terms of the Russo-Turkish Treaty of March 16, 1921. Ajaria (capital: Batumi) occupies 2,900 square kilometers in southwestern Georgia and borders the provinces of Guria, Meskheti, and (predominantly Armenian) Dzhavakheti; the Black Sea; and Turkey (Lazistan and the old Georgian region of Shavsheti). The last Soviet census (1989) showed 324,806 Ajar residents, constituting 82.8 percent of the autonomous republic’s population. The local dialect suggests both Laz and Turkish influence-Islam w
as introduced here and in other border regions to the east by the Ottoman Turks. Ajarians share with the Abkhazians, some of whom settled the area in late-tsarist times, a subtropical microclimate with similar agriculture, although Ajaria held first place in the USSR for precipitation, with sea-facing slopes experiencing an annual rainfall of 2,500-2,800 millimeters.
When Stalin deported to Central Asia the neighboring Meskhians (usually called “Meskhetian Turks,” though their precise ethnicity is disputed), Hemshins (Islamicized Armenians), and other Muslim peoples in the northern Caucasus in 1943 and 1944, the Ajars escaped this fate. The regional leader, Aslan Abashidze, appointed by Georgian president Zviad Gamsakhurdia in the dying years of Soviet rule, managed, in the turmoil that followed Georgia’s 1991 independence, to turn Ajaria into a personal fiefdom to the extent that central government writ was (as of January 2002) no longer running in what had by then effectively become an undeclared but de facto independent state. See also: CAUCASUS; GEORGIA AND GEORGIANS; ISLAM; NATIONALITIES POLICIES, SOVIET; NATIONALITIES POLICIES, TSARIST
AJARS
In 1913 Josef Stalin posed the question, “What is to be done with the Mingrelians, Abkhasians, Ad-jarians, Svanetians, Lezghians, and so forth, who speak different languages but do not possess a literature of their own?” Of the Ajars, however, who call themselves Ach’areli (plural Ach’arlebi), he more accurately observed, two paragraphs later, that they were a people “who speak the Georgian language but whose culture is Turkish and who profess the religion of Islam.”
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Burdett, Anita L. P., ed. (1996). Caucasian Boundaries: Documents and Maps, 1802-1946. Slough, UK: Archive Editions. The Golden Fleece (Songs from Abkhazia and Adzharia). (1993). Leiden, Netherlands: Pan Records Ethnic Series. Stalin, Joseph. (1913). “Marxism and the National Question.” In his Marxism and the National and Colonial Question. London: Martin Lawrence.
B. GEORGE HEWITT
AKHMATOVA, ANNA ANDREYEVNA
AKAYEV, ASKAR AKAYEVICH
(b. 1944), president of Kyrgyzstan who served in that post throughout the country’s first decade of independence.
Askar Akayev was born in the Kyrgyz Soviet Republic (Kyrgyzia) and earned a doctor of sciences degree at the Leningrad Precision Mechanics and Optics Institute. He returned to Kyrgyzia in 1972, assuming a teaching post at the Politechnical Institute in Frunze (now Bishkek). He authored more than one hundred scientific works and articles on mathematics and computers, and in 1989 became president of the Kyrgyz Academy of Sciences. He also served as a department head for the Central Committee of the Kyrgyz Communist Party.
As the Soviet Union began to break apart, he was elected to the presidency of the republic in 1990 by the republic’s legislature, and in 1991 Kyr-gyzstan gained independence and Akayev was elected president in a popular election. In contrast to other post-Soviet states in Central Asia, whose leaders retained their power from Soviet times, Kyr-gyzstan made an attempt to break with the Soviet past. In his first years in office, Akayev won international acclaim as a backer of political and economic liberalization, aiming to turn his country into the “Switzerland of Central Asia.” Akayev was reelected president in 1995 and in 2000. In the mid-1990s, however, some called his democratic credentials into question as he launched campaigns against journalists, imprisoned political opponents, and pushed through constitutional amendments to augment the powers of the presidency. In 2000 elections he won 75 percent of the vote, but observers claimed these elections were marred by fraud. Throughout 2002 and 2003, he was the target of protesters in Kyrgyzstan, who blamed him for chronic corruption and mounting economic difficulties. Nonetheless, in February 2003 he won approval of more changes to the constitution that enhanced his powers still further and won support in a referendum to confirm his term of office until December 2005. After these events, critics charged that he had become much like the Central Asian dictators.
While in office, Akayev has tried to assure inter-ethnic harmony in the country (30% of the population is ethnically Uzbek) and cracked down on small groups of Islamic militants. He has maintained good relations with Russia, and in 2001 of Kyrgyzstan president Askar Akayev. COURTESY OF THE EMBASSY OF
KYRGYZSTAN
fered air bases and other support to U.S. forces operating in Afghanistan. See also: KYRGYZSTAN AND KYRGYZ; NATIONALITIES POLICIES, SOVIET
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Akayev, Askar. (2001). Kyrgyzstan: An Economy in Transition. Canberra: Asia-Pacific Press. Anderson, John. (1999). Kyrgyzstan, Central Asia’s Island of Democracy? Amsterdam: Harwood Academic.
PAUL J. KUBICEK
AKHMATOVA, ANNA ANDREYEVNA
(1889-1966), leading Russian poet of the twentieth century; member of the Acmeist group.
Anna Akhmatova (Anna Andreyevna Gorenko) was born on June 23, 1889, near Odessa, and grew
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up in Tsarskoye Selo, the imperial summer residence, where Pushkin had attended the Lyceum. She studied law in Kiev, then literature in St. Petersburg. She married poet Nikolai Stepanovich Gu-milev in 1910, and the couple visited western Europe on their honeymoon. She made a return visit to Paris in 1911, and Amedeo Modigliani, still an unknown artist at the time, painted sixteen portraits of her.
In 1912, Akhmatova published her first collection of poetry, Vecher (Evening), and gave birth to her son Lev. The clarity, simplicity, and vivid details of her poetry amazed her contemporaries. For instance, in 1934, Marina Tsvetaeva praised Akhmato’s “Poem of the Last Meeting,” extolling the lines “I slipped my left-hand glove/Onto my right hand” as “unique, unrepeatable, inimitable.”
Also in 1912, Gumilev founded the Poets’ Guild, a group whose opposition to the Symbolists led to the name “Acmeist,” from the Greek akme, “perfection.” The Acmeists, including Gumilev, Akhmatova, and Osip Mandelshtam, advocated simplicity, clarity, and precision over the vagueness and otherworldliness of the Symbolists.
Akhmatova’s marriage with Gumilev was unhappy and ended in divorce. Her second collection, Chetki (Rosary), published in 1914, revolves around the decline of the relationship, her sense of repentance, and her identity as a poet. In her following collections, Belaya Staya (White Flock, 1917), Podor-ozhnik (Plantain, 1921), and Anno Domini (1922), Akhmatova assumed the role of poetic witness, responding to the chaos, poverty, and oppression surrounding the Revolution and civil war.
In 1921, Gumilev was charged with conspiracy and executed. None of Akhmatova’s work was published in the Soviet Union between 1923 and 1940. Yet, unlike many of her contemporaries, Akhmatova refused to emigrate. Her view of emigration is reflected in her 1922 poem from Anno Domini, “I am not one of those who left the land.”
Between 1935 and 1940 Akhmatova wrote the long poem Requiem, a lyrical masterpiece. Dedicated to the victims of Josef Stalin’s terror, and largely a maternal response to her son Lev’s arrest and imprisonment in 1937, it recalls the Symbolists in its use of religious allegory, but maintains directness and simplicity. Akhmatova’s next long poem, the complex, dense, polyphonic Poema bez geroya (Poem without a Hero, 1943) interprets the suicide of poet and officer Vsevolod Knyazev as a sign of the times. Some critics place it alongside Requiem as her finest work; others see it as the beginning of Akhmatova’s poetic decline.
At the outbreak of World War II, Stalin briefly relaxed his stance toward writers, and Akhmatova was published selectively. In 1946, however, Andrei Zhdanov, secretary of the Central Committee, denounced her and expelled her from the Writers’ Union. In 1949, her son Lev was arrested again and exiled to Siberia. In a desperate and futile effort to secure his release, Akhmatova wrote a number of poems in praise of Stalin. She later requested the exclusion of these poems from her collected work.
After Stalin’s death, Akhmatova was slowly “rehabilitated.” Publication of her work, including her essays and translations, resumed. She received international recognition, including an honorary degree from Oxford in 1965. She
died on March 5, 1966, and is remembered as one of Russia’s most revered poets. See also: DISSIDENT MOVEMENT; GUMILEV, LEV NIKO-LAYEVICH; GUMILEV, NIKOLAI STEPANOVICH; INTELLIGENTSIA; MANDELSHTAM, OSIP EMILIEVICH; PURGES, THE GREAT
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Akhmatova, Anna Andreevna. (1973). Poems of Akhmatova: Izbrannye Stikhi, ed. and tr. Stanley Kunitz and Max Hayward. Boston: Little, Brown. Akhmatova, Anna Andreevna. (1990). The Complete Poems of Anna Akhmatova, tr. Judith Hemschemeyer, ed. Roberta Reeder. Somerville, MA: Zephyr. Amert, Susan. (1992). In a Shattered Mirror: The Later Poetry of Anna Akhmatova. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Ketchian, Sonia. (1985). “Akhmatova, Anna Andreevna.” In Handbook of Russian Literature, ed. Victor Terras. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Leiter, Sharon. (1983). Akhmatova’s Petersburg. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
DIANA SENECHAL
AKHROMEYEV, SERGEI FYODOROVICH
(1923-1991), chief of the Soviet General Staff and first deputy minister of defense (1984-1988) and national security advisor to President Mikhail Gorbachev (1988-1991).
AKHUNDOV, MIRZA FATH ALI
Marshal Sergei Akhromeyev played a key role in ending the Cold War and the negotiation of key arms control agreements: the INF (Inter-Mediate Range Nuclear Forces) Treaty (1987) and the CFE (Conventional Forces in Europe) Treaty (1990) between NATO and Warsaw Treaty Organization member states. He also oversaw the Soviet military withdrawal from Afghanistan. According to Admiral William Crowe, his American counterpart, “He was a communist, a patriot and a soldier.” Dedicated to the rejuvenation of the Soviet system, Akhromeyev found that perestroika had unleashed deep conflicts within the USSR and undermined the system’s legitimacy. After playing a part in the unsuccessful coup of August 1991, he committed suicide in his Kremlin office.
