by James Millar
Avvakum was appalled by the ignorance, dis-orderliness, and impiety of popular religious practices and early in his career manifested a zeal for reform. By 1647 Avvakum was associated with the Zealots of Piety, a Moscow-based group led by Tsar Alexis Mikhailovich’s confessor, the archpriest of the Annunciation Cathedral, Stefan Vonifatiev. Av-vakum’s enthusiasm for religious and moral reform was not matched by that of his provincial parishioners and soon brought him into conflict with the local authorities. His house was burned, and he was compelled to flee with his family to Moscow. There he found refuge with Stefan Voni-fatiev. Avvakum returned to his parish in the Nizhny Novgorod district to continue his work, but by 1652 was obliged to flee to Moscow again. Av-vakum soon was assigned to Yurevets-Povolsky and elevated to archpriest, but by the end of 1652 he was back in Moscow, serving at the Kazan Cathedral with Ivan Neronov, a man Avvakum recognized as his mentor.
Avvakum was an ardent supporter of religious and spiritual reform, but not of the liturgical reforms advocated by other members of the Zealots of Piety. In early 1653 Avvakum joined Neronov and others in protest against some changes and simplifications made in the Psalter, recently printed under the direction of Patriarch Nikon. Vocal and adamant in opposition, Ivan Neronov was arrested on August 4, 1653. The arrest of Avvakum and other supporters followed on August 13. Thanks to the personal intervention of the tsar, Avvakum escaped defrocking and exile to a monastery. Instead he and his family were transferred to the distant and less desirable post of Tobolsk in Siberia, where he served as archpriest until the end of July 1655. In Tobolsk, despite the support and protection of Governor Vasily Ivanovich Khilkov and Archbishop Simeon, Avvakum’s abrasive approach ignited conflict and contention. In 1656, to remove him from the scene of contention, the tsar ordered Avvakum to accompany an expeditionary force led by Commander Afanasy Pashkov, intended to pacify and bring Christianity to the native tribes of northern Siberia. The assignment was not a success. Avvakum’s religious zeal alienated many of the soldiers and enraged the commander. In his Life, Avvakum vividly recounted the multiple humiliations and torments inflicted upon him by Pashkov. In 1657 Pashkov sent a petition to Moscow, ostensibly written by several of the soldiers, accusing Avvakum and his supporters of fomenting rebellion and requesting that the archpriest be condemned to death. Once again, Avvakum’s friends in high places came to his aid. Archbishop Simeon of Tobolsk intervened, and in 1658 Pashkov was replaced as commander of the expedition.
In the spring of 1661 Avvakum was directed to return to Moscow with his family. Difficulties along the way and a stop in Ustiug Veliky slowed the journey. The family did not arrive in Moscow until the beginning of 1664. Much had changed. In 1658 Patriarch Nikon had quarreled with the tsar and abandoned the patriarchal throne. The unprecedented act caused consternation and confusion, but it did not shake the commitment to church reform, including liturgical reform. The tsar and his closest associates received Avvakum graciously. The zealous archpriest met and conversed with the leading figures behind the continuing reform program, including Simeon Polotsky and Epi-fany Slavinetsky. He debated changes introduced into the rituals by the new liturgical books with Fyodor Rtishchev, arguing that, among other things, the sign of the cross must be made with three fingers, rather than two. The three-fingered sign of the cross would become a visible symbol for those who opposed the so-called Nikonian reforms. Further, Avvakum challenged the assertions of Rtishchev and others that “rhetoric, dialectic, and philosophy” had a role to play in religious understanding. In this period, Avvakum was even offered a post as corrector (spravshchik) at the Printing Office, the center of activity for the revision and printing of the new church service books and other religious works.
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If such efforts were intended to mollify Av-vakum, bring him back into the circle of reformers, and gain his talents for the ongoing process of church reform, they failed. Avvakum remained intransigent in his opposition to all changes introduced in the religious rituals and in the printed service books, petitioning the tsar to intervene and preaching his dissident views publicly. In this same period he became the confessor to the noblewoman Feodosia Morozova and her sister, Princess Yev-dokia Urusova, convincing them of the correctness of his position. Both sisters accepted Avvakum’s views and in 1675 suffered martyrdom rather than recant.
In August 1664 Avvakum and his family once again were dispatched into exile in Siberia, arriving in Mezen at the end of the year. A year later, Av-vakum was recalled to Moscow to appear before a church council (1666). At this important council Nikon officially was removed as patriarch, but the reform program itself was affirmed. Those who actively opposed the reforms, including the revised service books, were tried. Some, such as Ivan Neronov, recanted. Others, led by Avvakum, stood firm. Following the council, Avvakum was defrocked, placed under church ban, and imprisoned in chains in a monastery. Subsequent attempts to persuade him to repent failed. In August 1667, Av-vakum and his supporters were sentenced to exile in Pustozersk in the remote north. Two of Av-vakum’s friends and supporters, Lazar and Epifany, also exiled, had their tongues cut out; Avvakum was spared this punishment. By the end of the year the prisoners reached their destination.
Exile and prison did not deter Avvakum from indefatigably petitioning the tsar and communicating with his followers. In the 1670s repression of religious dissidents increased. Avvakum, his family, and the small band of prisoner-exiles in Pustozersk were subjected to new afflictions. Moreover, the colony increased with the addition of those seized after the suppression in 1676 of a rebellion at the Solovetsky monastery, ostensibly against the new service books. In the meantime, religious dissenters incited disturbances in Moscow and other towns and villages. Frustrated in all attempts to silence the dissidents, in 1682 the church council transferred jurisdiction to the secular authorities. An investigation was ordered, and on April 14, 1682, Avvakum was burned at the stake, “for great slander against the tsar’s household.” Avvakum is remembered primarily as a founding father of the movement known in English as Old Belief, a schismatic movement that assumed a coherent shape and a growing following from the beginning of the eighteenth century. In Avvakum’s lifetime, however, he was engaged in a relatively esoteric dispute with other educated members of the clerical and lay elites. He attracted a circle of devoted disciples and supporters, but not a mass following. His position as one of the founding fathers of Old Belief rests on the lasting influence of his writings, which were collected, copied, and disseminated. Avvakum was a prolific writer of petitions to the tsar, letters of advice and exhortation to his acquaintances, sermons, polemical tracts, and pamphlets. All contributed to the shape of Old Belief as an evolving movement. An important example of Avvakum’s dogmatic and polemical work is The Book of Denunciation, or the Eternal Gospels (c. 1676). Written by Avvakum as part of a dispute with one of his disciples, this tract clarified his position on several dogmatic issues. This work continued to be a focal point of criticism for spokesmen of the official church into the early eighteenth century.
In addition to their religious significance, Av-vakum’s writings are of considerable interest to linguists and literary historians. His writing style was forceful and dramatic. He juxtaposed great erudition with penetrating direct observation and mixed the tonalities and phraseology of the popular spoken Russian of his day with the traditional ornate and formal rhetorical style. Perhaps Avvakum’s best-known work is his autobiographical Life. Three versions were written between 1672 and 1676. Of the two later versions, the copies written by Avvakum himself, along with numerous others, are preserved. Building on traditional genres such as hagiography, sermons, chronicles, folktales, and others, Avvakum created not only a new genre, but a new mentality that, according to some scholars, manifests the seeds of modern individual self-consciousness. See also: NIKON, PATRIARCH; OLD BELIEVERS; ORTHODOXY; RUSSIAN ORTHODOX CHURCH
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Avvakum Petrovich. (1979). Archpr
iest Avvakum: The Life Written by Himself, with the Study of V. V. Vinogradov, tr. Kenneth N. Brostrom (Michigan Slavic Publications). Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Lupinin, Nickolas. (1984). Religious revolt in the Eighteenth century: The Schism of the Russian Church. Princeton, NJ: Kingston Press.
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Michels, Georg B. (1999). At War with the Church: Religious Dissent in Seventeenth-Century Russia. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Zenkovski, S. A. (1956). “The Old Believer Avvakum: His Role in Russian Literature,” Indiana Slavic Studies, 5:1-51. Ziolkowski, Margaret, comp., tr. (2000). Tale of Boiary-nia Morozova: A Seventeenth-Century Religious Life. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.
CATHY J. POTTER
AZERBAIJAN AND AZERIS
The Republic of Azerbaijan is a country located in the Caucasus region of west Asia. Azerbaijan has a total area of 86,600 square kilometers and shares borders with the Russian Federation in the north (284 kilometers), Georgia to the northwest (322 kilometers), Armenia on the west (566 kilometers), Iran to the south (432 kilometers), and the Caspian Sea on the east (800 kilometers). Geographically, Azerbaijan is considered part of the Middle East. However, it is a border country and not part of the heartland. This borderland quality has had a profound impact on the country’s history.
From the time of ancient Media (eighth to seventh century B.C.E.) and the Achaemenid (Persian) period, Azerbaijan has mainly shared its history with Iran. In 300 B.C.E., Alexander the Great conquered the Achaemenid Kingdom, retaining Persian satraps to govern as his forces advanced eastward. According to one account, the name Azerbaijan is derived from the name of Alexander’s original satrap, Atropatanes. Another explanation traces the origin of the name to the Persian word for fire keepers, “Azerbaycan.” This is in reference to the fires burning in local Zoroastrian temples, fed by abundant sources of crude oil.
Azerbaijan maintained its Iranian character even after its subjugation by the Arabs in the mid-seventh century and the conversion to Islam. During the eleventh century, the migrations of Oghuz tribes under the Seljuk Turks settled into the region. These Turkic-speaking newcomers merged with the original population so that over time, the Persian language was supplanted by a Turkic dialect that eventually developed into a distinct Azeri-Turkish language.
Under Shah Ismail (1501-1524), first among the Safavid line of rule, the Shiasect of Islam became the “official and compulsory religion of the state ”(Cleveland, p. 58), and remains the majority faith in Azerbaijan in the early twenty-first century. When the two hundred-year Safavid Dynasty ended in 1722, indigenous tribal chieftains filled the void. Their independent territories took the form of khanates (principalities). The tribal nature of these khanates brought political fragmentation and eventually facilitated conquest by Russia. Russia’s interest in the region was primarily driven by the strategic value of the Caucasian isthmus. Russian military activities have been recorded as early as Peter the Great’s abortive Persian expedition to secure a route to the Indian Ocean (1722). However, penetrations into Persian territory were more successful under Catherine II (1763-1796).
Russo-Iranian warfare continued into the nineteenth century, ending with the Treaty of Turk-manchai (February 10, 1828). As a result, Azerbaijan was split along the Araxes (Aras) River with the majority of the population remaining in Iran. This frontier across Iran was laid for strategic purposes, providing Russia with a military avenue of approach into Iran while outflanking rival Ottoman Turkey.
The Turkmanchai settlement also had far-reaching economic consequences. With Russia as the established hegemon, exploitation of Azerbaijan’s substantial petroleum resources increased rapidly after 1859.
Over time, haphazard drilling and extraction led to a decline in oil production. By 1905 Azerbaijan ceased to be a major supplier to world energy markets. In 1918, with the great powers preoccupied by World War I and Russia in the throes of revolution, Azerbaijan proclaimed its independence on May 28, 1918. However, the independent Democratic Republic of Azerbaijan lasted only two years before Bolshevik forces invaded and overthrew the nascent government.
With its new status as a Soviet republic, Azerbaijan experienced the same transition as other parts of the Soviet Union that included an industrialization process focused on the needs of the state, collectivization of agriculture, political repression, and the Great Purges.
During World War II, Azerbaijan’s strategic importance was again underscored when the Trans-caucasian isthmus became an objective of Nazi Germany’s offensive. Hitler hoped to cut Allied supply lines from their sources in the Persian Gulf.
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Caspian Sea Azerbaijan was also coveted as a valuable fuel source for the German military. This operation was thwarted by the battle of Stalingrad.
Azerbaijan was also the scene of an early Cold War confrontation. On March 4, 1946, Soviet Army brigades deployed into Azerbaijan. The United States perceived this provocation as the first step in a Soviet strategy to penetrate the Middle East. In the face of shrewd Iranian diplomacy backed by Western resolve, the Soviet forces withdrew, averting an international crisis.
The limitations of the Soviet command economy coupled with the Western strategy of containment contributed to political and economic stagnation, especially in the last decades of the Soviet regime. A rekindled nationalism ignited by an outbreak of ethnic violence occurred in 1988 when neighboring Armenia voiced its claim to the district of Karabakh. As violence escalated, a national emergency ensued and new political groups, such as the People’s Front of Azerbaijan emerged to challenge the predominant Communist Party of Azerbaijan (CPAz) upon the dissolution of the USSR. On August 30, 1991, Azerbaijan, once again became an independent republic.
However, the early years of independence were marred by political instability, exacerbated by the ongoing Karabakh conflict. The hostilities contributed to the fall of several administrations in the fledgling government with a favorable solution to the conflict taking precedence over the achievement of key political and economic reforms. On October 3, 1993, Heidar Aliyev, a former Communist Party secretary, filled the power vacuum. Signing a tentative cease-fire agreement with Armenia over the Karabakh conflict allowed him to concentrate reform efforts in Azerbaijan’s government and economy.
In the early twenty-first century, the Republic of Azerbaijan is a secular democracy with a government based on a separation of powers among its three branches. The executive power is vested with the president, who serves as head of state, bearing ultimate responsibilities for domestic and foreign matters. The president of the republic also serves as the commander in chief of the armed forces and is elected for a term of five years with the provision to serve a maximum of two consecutive terms. The legislative power is executed by the National Parliament (Milli Majlis), a unicam-eral body consisting of 125 members. The ParliaAzerbaijan, 1992 © MARYLAND CARTOGRAPHICS. REPRINTED WITH PERMISSION ment holds two regular sessions-the spring session (February 10-May 31) and the fall session (September 30-December 30).
The judicial branch includes a Supreme Court, an economic court, and a constitutional court. The president, subject to approval by the parliament, nominates the judges in these three courts.
Azerbaijan’s economy has been slow to emerge from its Soviet era structuring and decay. The CIA World Fact Book (2002) indicates that the agricultural sector employs the largest segment of the working population at 41 percent. Recognizing the significance of the petroleum industry in stimulating the economy, the Azerbaijani government has promoted investment from abroad to modernize its deteriorated energy sector. A main export pipeline
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from the capital, Baku, to the Turkish port of Cey- CIA. (2002). The World Factbook-Azerbaijan. «www.cia han will facilitate transport of oil to Western mar- .gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/aj.html». kets. Cleveland, William L. (1999). A History of the Modern
&nbs
p; Middle East. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. See also: ARMENIA AND ARMENIANS; ISLAM; NATIONALITIES POLICIES, SOVIET; NATIONALITIES POLICIES, TSARIST Swietockhowski, Tadeusz. (1995). Russia and Azerbaijan: A Borderland in Transition. NY: Columbia University Press.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Alstadt, Audrey. (1992) The Azerbaijani Turks: Power and Identity under Russian Rule.Stanford, CA: Hoover In- GREGORY TWYMAN stitution Press.
108 ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY
BABEL, ISAAC EMMANUYELOVICH
(1894-1940), regarded as one of the finest writers of fiction of the twentieth century.
Babel was born to a middle-class Jewish family in Odessa. Though nonobservant, he remained interested in Jewish culture-he translated Shalom Aleichem-and Jewish identity became a central interest of his art. Odessa was a vibrant port city, without a heritage of serfdom, more cosmopolitan than was the custom in Russia. Babel saw it as fertile ground for a southern school of Russian literature-sunny, muscular, centered on sensuous experience, free of the metaphysical yearnings and somber seriousness of the Russian tradition. French literature attracted him. He had a Flaubertian dedication to his craft; Maupassant’s skill in depicting the surface of things was a model. Babel’s playful side is most evident in his first cycle of short stories, The Odessa Tales (1921-1924). But an age of war, revolution, and terror demanded sterner stuff. Babel responded with his tragic Red Cavalry (1923-1925) and his study of the complexities of growing up Jewish, The Story of My Dovecot (1925-1931).
Babel was sympathetic to the aims of the Russian Revolution and served it in several capacities, including a stint as translator for the secret police (Cheka). For a long time he enjoyed the benefits and celebrity of a Soviet writer, though he eventually became a victim of Soviet terror. In 1920 he signed on as correspondent with the First Cavalry Army, a leading unit of the Reds in the civil war, at the time engaged in battle with Poland. His summer with this largely Cossack army gave him the material for his great book of revolution and war.
