by James Millar
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Brumfield, William Craft. (1991). The Origins of Modernism in Russian Architecture. Berkeley: University of California Press. Brumfield, William Craft. (1993). A History of Russian Architecture. New York: Cambridge University Press. Cracraft, James. (1988). The Petrine Revolution in Russian Architecture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Hamilton, George Heard. (1983). The Art and Architecture of Russia. New York: Penguin Books. Khan-Magomedov, Selim O. (1987). Pioneers of Soviet Architecture. New York: Rizzoli.
WILLIAM CRAFT BRUMFIELD
ARCHIVES
Research access to and knowledge about archives in the Russian Federation since 1991 have been key factors in the opening of historical and cultural inquiry in what had previously been a predominantly closed society. Yet the opening of archives would have had much less impact on society and history had in not been for the central attention given to archives under Soviet rule. And Russian archives would hardly be so rich in the early twenty-first century had it not been for the early manuscript repositories in the church and the long tradition of preserving the records of government and society in Russian lands. For example, the “Tsar’s Archive” of the sixteenth century paralleled archives of the government boards (prikazy) of the Muscovite state. Peter the Great’s General Regulation of 1720 decreed systematic management of state records. During the late nineteenth century, the Moscow Archive of the Ministry of Justice became the most important historical archive. Before the revolutions of 1917, however, most recent and current records were maintained by state agencies themselves, such as the various ministries, paralleled, for example, by the archive of the Holy Synod, the governing body of the Orthodox Church. The Imperial Archeographic Commission, provincial archival commissions, the Academy of Sciences, major libraries, and museums likewise contributed to the growth of archives and rich manuscript collections.
The Bolshevik seizure of power in October 1917 had as revolutionary an impact on archives as it did on most other aspects of society and culture, and stands as the single most important turning point in the history of Russian archives. To be sure, the turmoil of the revolution and civil war years brought considerable disruption, and indeed destruction, to the archival and manuscript legacy. Yet it brought with it the most highly centralized state archival system and the most highly state-directed principles of preservation and management of documentary records that the world had ever seen. Deeply grounded in historical theory and committed to its own orthodoxy of historical interpretation, Marxism-Leninism as an ideology gave both extensive philosophical justification and crucial political importance to documentary control. As the highly centralized political system established firm rule over of state and society, the now famous archival decree of Vladimr Lenin (June 1, 1918) initiated total reorganization and state control of the entire archival legacy of the Russian Empire.
One of the most significant Soviet innovations was the formation of the so-called State Archival Fond (Gosudarstvennyi arkhivnyi fond-GAF), a legal entity extending state proprietorship to all archival records regardless of their institutional or private origin. With nationalization, this theoretical and legal structure also extended state custody and control to all current records produced by curARCHIVES rent agencies of state and society. Subsequently a parallel Archival Fond of the Communist Party emerged with proprietorship and custody of Party records.
A second innovation was the establishment of a centralized state agency charged with the management of the State Archival Fond, enabling the centralization, standardization, and planning that characterized Soviet archival development. Indicative of the importance that Stalin attributed to control of archives and their utilization, from 1938 through 1960 the Main Archival Administration of the USSR (Glavarkhiv SSSR) was under the Commissariat and later (after 1946), Ministry of Internal Affairs (NKVD, MVD). Subsequently it was responsible directly to the Council of Ministers of the USSR.
A third innovation saw the organization of a network of archival repositories, although with substantial reorganizations during the decades of Soviet rule. A series of central state archives of the USSR paralleled central state archives for the union republics, with a hierarchical network of regional archives, all controlled and adopting standardized organizational and methodological guidelines dictated by Glavarkhiv in Moscow. Strict disposal and retention schedules regulated what went into the archives. A parallel network of Communist Party archives emerged. Records of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs remained separate, as did those of the security services and other specialized repositories ranging from geological data to Gosfilmofond for feature films. The Academy of Sciences maintained its own archival network, and archival materials in libraries and museums remained under their own controlling agencies.
Public research availability of the nation’s documentary legacy was severely restricted during the Soviet era, although there was a brief thaw after 1956, and more significant research possibilities starting in the Gorbachev era of glasnost after the mid-1980s. But while limited public access to archives was a hallmark of the regime, so was the preservation and control of the nation’s documentary legacy in all spheres.
In many ways, those three Soviet innovations continue to characterize the archival system in the Russian Federation, with the most notable innovation of more openness and public accessibility. Already in the summer of 1991, a presidential decree nationalized the archival legacy of the Communist Party, to the extent that the newly reorganized state archival system was actually broader than its Soviet predecessor. The Soviet-era Glavarkhiv was replaced by the Archival Service of the Russian Federation (Rosarkhiv, initially Roskomarkhiv). Russia’s first archival law, the Basic Legislature of the Russian Federation on the Archival Fond of the Russian Federation and Archives, enacted in July 1993, extended the concept of a state “Archival Fond.” Although it also provided for a “non-State” component to comprise records of non-governmental, commercial, religious, and other societal agencies, it did not permit re-privatization of holdings nationalized during the Soviet period. Nor did it provide for the apportionment of archival records and manuscript materials gathered in central Soviet repositories from the union republics that after 1991 emerged as independent countries. The latter all remained legally part of the new Russian “Archival Fond.”
In most cases, the actual archival repositories that developed during the Soviet era continue to exist, although almost all of their names have changed, with some combined or reorganized. As heir to Soviet-period predecessors, fourteen central state archives constitute the main repositories for governmental (and former Communist Party) records in different historical, military, and economic categories, along with separate repositories for literature and art, sound recordings, documentary films, and photographs, as well as technical and engineering documentation. As a second category of central archives, a number of federal agencies still have the right to retain their own records, including the Ministries of Foreign Affairs, Defense, Internal Affairs, and the security services. Municipal archives in Moscow and St. Peteresburg comprise a third category. As there were in the Soviet period, there are also many archival repositories in institutes and libraries under the Russian Academy of Sciences, and libraries and museums under the Ministry of Culture and other agencies. The extensive network of regional state (including former Communist Party) archives for each and every subject administrative-territorial unit of the Russian Federation, all of which have considerable more autonomy from Moscow than had been the case before 1991.
The most important distinction between Russian archives in the early twenty-first century and those under Soviet rule is the principle of openness and general public accessibility. Significantly, such openness extends to the information sphere, whereby
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published directories now identify all major repositories and their reference systems. New archival guides and specialized finding aids reveal the holdings of many important archives (many with foreign subsidies)
. And since 1997, information about an increasing number of archives is publicly available in both Russian and English-language versions on the Internet.
Complaints abound about continued restrictions in sensitive areas, such as the contemporary archives of the Ministries of Foreign Affairs, Defense, and the security services. Declassification has been all to slow in many areas, including more recent Communist Party records, and new laws governing state secrets often limit the otherwise proclaimed openness. Yet often the most serious research complaints stem from economic causes- closures due to leaking roofs or lack of heat, slow delivery time, and high copying fees. While Russia has opened its archives to the world, there have been more dangers of loss due to inadequate support for physical facilities and professional staff, leading to commercialization and higher service charges, because the new federal government has had less ideological and political cause than its Soviet predecessors to subsidize new buildings, physical preservation, and information resources adequately for the archival heritage of the nation. See also: CENSORSHIP; NATIONAL LIBRARY OF RUSSIA; RUSSIAN STATE LIBRARY; SMOLENSK ARCHIVE
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Grimsted, Patricia Kennedy. (1989). A Handbook for Archival Research in the USSR. Washington, DC,: Ken-nan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies and the International Research amp; Exchanges Board. Grimsted, Patricia Kennedy. (1998). Archives of Russia Seven Years After: “Purveyors of Sensations” or “Shadows Cast out to the Past.” Washington, DC: Cold War International History Project, Working Paper, no. 20, parts 1 and 2. Electronic version: «http://cwihp .si.edu/topics/pubs». Grimsted, Patricia Kennedy, ed. (2000). Archives of Russia: A Directory and Bibliographic Guide to Holdings in Moscow and St. Petersburg. 2 vols. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe. Grimsted, Patricia Kennedy. (2003). “Archives of Rus-sia-ArcheoBiblioBase on Line.” «http://www.iisg .nl/~abb».
PATRICIA KENNEDY GRIMSTED
ARMAND, INESSA
(1874-1920), n?e Elisabeth Stefan, revolutionary and feminist, first head of the zhenotdel, the women’s section of the Communist Party.
Born in France, Inessa Armand came to Russia as a child when her parents died and her aunt took a job as governess in the wealthy Armand merchant family. At age nineteen she married Alexander Armand, who was to support her and her numerous Bolshevik undertakings throughout his life. In 1899 she became involved in the Moscow Society for Improving the Lot of Women, a philanthropic organization devoted to assisting prostitutes and other poor women. By 1900 she was president of the society and working hard to create a Sunday school for working women.
In 1903, disillusioned with philanthropic work, she joined the Social Democratic Party and became active in revolutionary propaganda work. In exile in Europe from 1909 to 1917, with a brief illegal return to Russia, she helped Vladimir Lenin establish a party school at Longjumeau, France, in 1911; she taught there herself. When Russian women workers gained the right to vote and be elected to factory committees in 1912, Armand, Nadezhda Krupskaya, and others persuaded Lenin to create a special journal Rabotnitsa (Woman Worker). Although Armand and other editors insisted that women workers were not making special demands separate from those of men, they did recognize the importance of writing about women’s health and safety issues in the factories.
During World War I Armand was one of Lenin’s and the party’s principal delegates to international socialist conferences, especially those of women protesting the war. In April 1917 Armand returned to Petrograd with Lenin and Krupskaya. Soon she was made a member of the Executive Committee of the Moscow Provincial Soviet and of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee (VtsIK), as well as chair of the Moscow Provincial economic council. Her crowning achievement, however, was her role in founding the women’s section of the Communist Party, the zhenotdel.
In that role she worked on problems as diverse as supporting legislation legalizing abortion, combating prostitution, creating special sections for the protection of mothers and infants in the Health Commissariat, working with the trade unions, and developing agitation methods for peasant women. In all of these, Armand advocated the creation of
ARMENIA AND ARMENIANS
special methods for work among women, given women’s historical backwardness and the prejudices of many men towards women’s increased participation in the workforce and in society.
However, Armand’s tenure as director of the zhenotdel was short-lived. On September 24, 1920, while on leave in the Caucasus, she succumbed to cholera and died. See also: FEMINISM; KRUPSKAYA, NADEZHDA KONSTAN-TINOVNA; LENIN, VLADIMIR ILICH; ZHENOTDEL
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Clements, Barbara Evans. (1997). Bolshevik Women. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Elwood, Ralph C. (1992). Inessa Armand: Revolutionary and Feminist. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. McNeal, Robert H. (1972). Bride of the Revolution: Krup-skaya and Lenin. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Stites, Richard. (1975). “Kollontai, Inessa, and Krupskaia: A Review of Recent Literature.” Canadian-American Slavic Studies 9(1):84-92. Stites, Richard. (1978). The Women’s Liberation Movement in Russia: Feminism, Nihilism, and Bolshevism, 1860-1930. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Wood, Elizabeth A. (1997). The Baba and the Comrade: Gender and Politics in Revolutionary Russia. Bloom-ington: Indiana University Press.
ELIZABETH A. WOOD
ARMENIA AND ARMENIANS
Armenia is a landlocked, mountainous plateau that rises to an average of 3,000 to 7,000 feet (914 to 2,134 meters) above sea level. It extends to the Anatolian plateau in the west, the Iranian plateau in the southwest, the plains of the South Caucasus in the north, and the Karadagh Mountains and the Moghan Steppe in the south and southeast. The Armenian highlands stretch roughly between longitudes 37° and 48.5° east, and 38° and 41° north latitudes, with a total area of some 150,000 square miles (388,500 square kilometers). In present-day terms, historic Armenia comprises most of eastern Turkey, the northeastern corner of Iran, parts of the Azerbaijan and Georgian Republics, as well as the entire territory of the Armenian Republic.
GEOLOGY, GEOGRAPHY, AND CLIMATE
The Kur (Kura) and Arax (Araxes) Rivers separate the Armenian highlands in the east from the lowlands that adjoin the Caspian Sea. The Pontus Mountains, which connect to the Lesser Caucasus mountain chain, separate Armenia from the Black Sea and Georgia and form the region’s northern boundary. The Taurus Mountains, which join the upper Zagros Mountains and the Iranian Plateau, form the southern boundary of Armenia and separate it from Syria, Kurdistan, and Iran. The western boundary of Armenia has generally been between the western Euphrates River and the northern stretch of the Anti-Taurus Mountains. Armenians also established communities east of the Kur as far as the Caspian Sea, and states west of the Euphrates as far as Cilicia on the Mediterranean Sea.
Lying on the Anatolian fault, the Armenian plateau is subject to seismic tremors. Major earthquakes have been recorded there since the ninth century, some of which have destroyed entire cities. The most recent earthquake in the region, occurring on December 7, 1988, killed some 25,000 people and leveled numerous communities.
Some fifty million years ago, the geological structure of Armenia underwent many changes, creating great mountains and high, now-inactive, volcanic peaks throughout the plateau. The larger peaks of Mount Ararat (16,946 feet; 5,279 meters), Mount Sipan (14,540 feet; 4,432 meters), and Mount Aragats (13,410 feet; 4,087 meters), and the smaller peaks of Mount Ararat (12,839 feet; 3,913 meters), and Mount Bingol (10,770 feet; 3,283 meters), from which the Arax and the Euphrates Rivers originate, are some examples. Tufa, limestone, basalt, quartz, and obsidian form the main composition of the terrain. The mountains also contain abundant deposits of mineral ores, including copper, iron, zinc, lead, silver, and gold. There are also large deposits of salt, borax, and obsidian, as well as volcanic tufa stone, which is used for construction.
Armenia’s mountains give rise to numerous rivers, practically all unnavigable, which have created deep gorges, ravines, and waterfalls. The longest
is the Arax River, which starts in the mountains of western Armenia, joins the Kur River, then empties into the Caspian Sea. The Arax flows through the plain of Ararat, which is the site of the major Armenian cities. Another important river is the Euphrates, which splits into western and
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eastern branches. Both branches flow westward, then turn south toward Mesopotamia. The Euphrates was the ancient boundary dividing what became Lesser and Greater Armenia. The Kur and the Tigris and their tributaries flow briefly through Armenia. Two other rivers, the Akhurian, a tributary of the Arax, and the Hrazdan, which flows from Lake Sevan, provide water to an otherwise parched and rocky landscape devoid of forests.
A number of lakes are situated in the Armenian highlands, the deepest and most important of which is Lake Van in present-day Turkey. Van’s waters are charged with borax, and hence un-drinkable. Lake Sevan is the highest in elevation, lying some 6,300 feet (1,917 meters) above sea level. It is found in the present-day Armenian Republic.
