Encyclopedia of Russian History

by James Millar

  The language of the birchbark documents was at first something of a puzzle. The spelling, grammar, and, to some extent, the vocabulary differ in some respects from the presumed norms of correct writing on parchment. This discrepancy was initially attributed to the presumed insufficient education and resulting semiliteracy of the writers. However, it is now clear that birchbark linguistic deviations from parchment norms are not random errors. Indeed, in most cases they are not errors at all. Birchbark literacy is consistent with its own conventions, and the documents reflect a vibrant and functional urban literacy with a strong local vernacular accent. The birchbark documents therefore add a vital new dimension to our understanding of the history of the Russian language.

  The contents of the birchbark documents are remarkably varied. Many of them are concerned with money or (especially among the later letters) property. These range from brief lists of private debtors-just a sequence of names and the sums they owe-to fairly systematic registers of tax or tribute obligations from a village or region. Sometimes payment is a matter of dispute, and the documents reveal much about the processes of conflict resolution, whether informal (through family and associates) or formal (through judicial process and administrative enforcement). Although birchbark was mainly for ephemeral communication, not designed for official use, a few of the documents appear to contain drafts of texts whose official versions were destined for parchment, such as testaments for the disposal of property. Among the later documents are even found formal petitions sent from outlying settlements to their urban-dwelling lords. Yet it would be misleading to characterize the birchbark documents as merely a form of unsystematic unofficial business and financial archive. Their delight, for the modern researcher,

  148

  BIROBIDZHAN

  lies in their apparent randomness, in the serendipitous, unexpected nature of their contents: love letters, fragments of folksy wisdom, amuletic incantations, family squabbles, childish doodles, drafts of designs for icons, a correspondence between nuns, practice alphabets, prayers. Each fresh season produces novelties, and even after more than half a century of discoveries there is no reason to suppose that birchbark is close to exhausting its capacity to surprise, and to add continually to the understanding of early Rus history.

  At the end of the fifteenth century the continuous tradition of regular writing on birchbark came to an end. No contemporary commentator mentions this, so the reasons are subject to speculation. Perhaps the birchbark simply lost out in competition with paper, as a less fragile and more adaptable material. Or perhaps there were also structural factors, such as the spread of bureaucratic administration, which expanded the market for paper and pushed down its price while highlighting the comparative crudity of the traditional local alternative. Whatever the explanation for its demise, the age of birchbark literacy, in a country where written sources in general are notoriously scarce, has provided researchers with an expanding body of writing unique in medieval Europe. See also: NOVGOROD THE GREAT

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Franklin, Simon. (1985). “Literacy and Documentation in Early Medieval Russia.” Speculum 60:1-38. Franklin, Simon. (2002). Writing, Society, and Culture in Early Rus, c. 950-1300. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Levin, Eve. (1997). “Lay Religious Identity in Medieval Russia: The Evidence of Novgorod Birch-Bark Documents.” General Linguistics 35:131-155. M?hle, Eduard. (1994). “Commerce and Pragmatic Literacy: The Evidence of Birchbark Documents (from the Mid-Eleventh to the First Quarter of the Thirteenth Century) on the Early Urban Development of Novgorod.” In California Slavic Studies XIX: Medieval Russian Culture II, eds. Michael S. Flier and Daniel Rowland. Berkeley: University of California Press. Thompson, M. W. (1967). Novgorod the Great. London: Evelyn, Adams, and Mackay. Vermeer, Willem. (1995). “Towards a Thousand Birch-bark Letters.” Russian Linguistics 19:109-123.

  SIMON FRANKLIN

  BIROBIDZHAN

  Beginning in 1928 the Soviet Union set aside a territory the size of Belgium for Jewish settlement, located some five thousand miles east of Moscow along the Soviet-Chinese border near Khabarovsk. Believing that Soviet Jewry, like other national minorities, deserved a territorial homeland, the regime decided to create a Jewish enclave that would become the Jewish Autonomous Region in 1934 and is popularly known as Birobidzhan, the region’s capital city. The Soviet leadership hoped that Birobidzhan would serve as an alternative to Palestine by fostering the development of a secular, Jewish culture rooted in socialist principles. Yiddish, and not Hebrew, was intended to serve as the bedrock of a proletarian Soviet Jewish culture and community. Birobidzhan would promote the national-cultural consolidation of Soviet Jewry. The establishment of Birobidzhan was the first instance of an officially acknowledged Jewish national territory since ancient times.

  During Birobidzhan’s first decade of existence, the study of Yiddish was obligatory in all schools; along with Russian, Yiddish had been made an official language of the region. Consequently, all government and party documents appeared in both Russian and Yiddish. In addition, a Jewish theater and a library with a sizable Judaica collection were established. In 1935 the local authorities decreed that all government documents had to appear in both Yiddish and Russian. Many left-wing Jews and pro-Soviet organizations in the United States, Canada, and elsewhere closely followed events in Birobidzhan; many sent money and machinery, while perhaps one thousand to two thousand Jews decided to move to the purported Soviet Zion during in the 1930s.

  Despite efforts to encourage Jews to resettle in the region during the first decade of its existence and again for a few years after the end of World War II, the Birobidzhan experiment failed dismally. Not only did the region fail to attract many Jews because of its remoteness from the center of Jewish population, but the harsh conditions kept significant numbers of Jews from migrating. By 1939 just less than 18,000 of the region’s approximately 109,000 inhabitants were Jews. Soviet Jews were more inclined to move to one of the major cities of the western Soviet Union, such as Minsk, Leningrad, Kiev, Moscow, or Odessa, than to uproot themselves to the marshes of Birobidzhan,

  149

  BIRON, ERNST JOHANN

  where there were limited educational and job opportunities. Moreover, the Kremlin’s attitude toward Jews turned hostile by the time of the Great Purges of 1936-1938, when the regime clamped down on Jewish settlement. The government closed almost all the Yiddish schools in the region, dismantled agencies dealing with Jewish resettlement, shut down many cultural and social Jewish institutions, and promoted the cultural assimilation of Jews. While retaining Yiddish as an official language and maintaining the fiction that Birobidzhan embodied the national and cultural aspirations of Soviet Jewry, the regime nonetheless stifled the emergence of Jewish culture and society.

  In the wake of World War II, the Kremlin revived in 1946 and 1947 Jewish migration to Birobidzhan and resuscitated Yiddish culture. But the emergence of government-sponsored anti-Semitism during the last years of Josef Stalin’s life destroyed any hope that Birobidzhan would develop into the center of Soviet Jewish life. Still, Yiddish remains one of the official languages of the region to this day, and since the early 1930s a Yiddish newspaper, one of the few of its kind, has been published continuously, except when World War II disrupted publication for several years. Indeed, in the early 1990s the offices of the KGB displayed plaques in both Russian and Yiddish, as did all other government buildings, despite the fact that Jews numbered no more than several thousand out of a total population of more than 200,000. Even fewer Jewish inhabitants knew Yiddish, and even fewer know it today. Nevertheless, Birobidzhan’s continued existence is a curious legacy of Soviet nationality policy. See also: JEWS; NATIONALITIES POLICIES, SOVIET

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Abramsky, Chimen. (1978). “The Biro-Bidzhan Project, 1927-1959.” In The Jews in the Soviet Union since 1917, 3rd ed., ed. Lional Kochan. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kagedan, Allan Laine. (1994). Soviet Zion: The Quest for a Russian Jewish Homela
nd. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Mintz, Mattityahu. (1995). “The Birobidzhan Idea: When Was It First Proposed?” Jews in Eastern Europe 1(26):5-10. Schwarz, Solomon. (1969). “Birobidzhan. An Experiment in Jewish Colonization.” In Russian Jewry, 1917-1967, ed. Jacob Frumkin et al. London: Thomas Yoseloff. Weinberg, Robert. (1998). Stalin’s Forgotten Zion: Birobidzhan and the Making of a Soviet Jewish Homeland, an Illustrated History, 1928-1996. Berkeley: University of California Press.

  ROBERT WEINBERG

  BIRON, ERNST JOHANN

  (1690-1772), count, duke of Courland, regent of Russia, imperial favorite, alleged kingpin of the dark era of foreign dominance, or Bironovshchina, a term invented long afterwards.

  Of Baltic German origins, Ernst Johann Biron (von B?hren or Bieren) rose through court service to Anna Ivanovna in her capacity as the widowed duchess of Courland after 1711 and then as empress of Russia (1730-1740). One of three sons and five daughters, Biron gained status by marriage (c. 1723) to Benigna Gotlib Trott von Treyden (1703-1782) and by court service at Mitau. The couple had two sons, Peter (1724-1800) and Karl (1728-1801), and one daughter, Hedvig (1727-1796). Upon Anna Ivanovna’s accession in 1730, Biron became grand chamberlain and count of the Holy Roman Empire, his wife became lady-in-waiting, and his brothers Karl (1684-1746) and Gustav (1700-1746) entered the Russian army. Although elected Duke of Courland in 1737, Biron rarely visited it, instead supervising the court stables and a training school in St. Petersburg. He was reputed to address people like horses, and horses like people. He also patronized visiting theatrical troupes.

  Biron allegedly dominated Empress Anna emotionally. She took up horseback riding to spend more time with him, whereas he supposedly tried to marry a son into the ruling family. When the empress collapsed on October 16, 1740, and died twelve days later, Biron reluctantly became regent for infant Ivan VI. As regent he tried to conciliate the Brunswick heirs (Anna Leopoldovna and her family) with an annual allowance of 200,000 rubles and an additional 50,000 to Princess Yeliza-veta Petrovna. On the night of October 18/19, 1740, Biron and his wife were roughly arrested by troops under Field Marshal Burkhard von M?nnich and imprisoned for interrogation. The accusations against Biron included insulting the Brunswick family, defrauding the treasury, and offending officials. Eventually he admitted insulting the Brunswick family but denied threatening to bring Peter of Holstein, another Romanov heir, to Russia. Sentenced on April 25, 1741, with explicit parallel to the usurper Boris Godunov, Biron avoided

  150

  BLACK HUNDRED

  death by quartering, and the entire family was exiled to Siberia. They all arrived at Pelym in November, but were partially pardoned in 1742 by Empress Elizabeth, who allowed their transfer to Yaroslavl. Peter III permitted Biron’s return to court, and Catherine II restored him in Courland, visiting him at Mitau in 1764. Aged and ill, Biron ceded the duchy to his son Peter in 1769; he died on December 18, 1772. Biron’s career exemplifies some vagaries behind the rise and fall of aristocratic families enmeshed in the dynastic politics of early modern Russia. He is now seen as more victim than victimizer. See also: ANNA IVANOVNA

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Alexander, John T. (1990). “Favourites, Favouritism, and Female Rule in Russia, 1725-1796.” In Russia in the Age of the Enlightenment, ed. Roger Bartlett and Janet M. Hartley. London: Macmillan. Curtiss, Mina. (1974). A Forgotten Empress: Anna Ivanovna and Her Era, 1730-1740. New York: Frederick Un-gar.

  JOHN T. ALEXANDER

  ten possesses nodules of calcium carbonate, which during frequent droughts rises to the A-horizon through capillary action. Windblown silts known as loess further enrich chernozems by imparting a loamy soil texture.

  Chernozems form in areas of cold winters and hot summers that are conducive to rapid evaporation. The resultant imbalance encourages the capillary rise of soluble nutrients from the B- to the A-horizon. Grasses thrive in these conditions, but their matted root systems create a sod that could not be breached by early wooden plows. Accordingly, until the invention of the steel-tipped plow in the 1800s, settlers considered grasslands useless. Requiring irrigation, the black earths now make up the great commercial grain belts. See also: AGRICULTURE; CLIMATE; GEOGRAPHY

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Strahler, Arthur N. (1969). Physical Geography, 3rd ed. New York: Wiley.

  VICTOR L. MOTE

  BLACK EARTH

  The black earths, or mollisols (Seventh Approximation), are the richest soils on the planet. Known as chernozems in the Russian language (chernaya, meaning “black,” and zemlya, meaning “earth”), they are found in semiarid grasslands, or steppes, which are wedged between arid deserts and humid forests. In the Soviet successor states, black earths stretch west to east from Moldavia and Volyno-Podolia in western Ukraine to the Russian North Caucasus and deep into Siberia as a steadily narrowing wedge to Irkutsk near Lake Baikal. Transitional between areas with a soil moisture surplus (forests) and areas with a conspicuous soil moisture deficit (deserts), grassland soils are only slightly leached during sporadic thunderstorms. The relative lack of precipitation ensures that solubles like calcium (Ca), sodium (Na), potassium (K), and magnesium (Mg) are accessible to the uppermost humus layer (horizon) of the soil. The A-horizon consists of grass litter and extensive root systems that draw on a thick black to chestnut-brown humus zone that is rich in ionized colloids and natural fertility. The underlying B-horizon ofBLACK HUNDRED The Black Hundred was a far-right monarchist movement that emerged during the 1905 Revolution in an effort to defend the autocracy against increasing civil unrest. Some Black Hundred groups were composed of upper-class officials and nobles who concentrated on lobbying the tsar and the government to resist demands for liberal reform. A more radical tendency was prevalent among right-wing lower- and middle-class urban elements such as shopkeepers, merchants, and workers, who staged pogroms against Jews and attacked perceived revolutionaries.

  The movement grew rapidly with the creation of the main Black Hundred organization, the Union of the Russian People (URP; Soyuz russkogo naroda). This group was formed by the physician Alexander Dubrovin after continuing unrest forced the tsar to issue the October Manifesto, which conceded most basic civil liberties and provided for power sharing with an elected Duma. The URP subsumed many other monarchist organizations and smaller pogrom groupings and succeeded in uniting upper-class nobles, middle-class professionals, and lower-class workers in a common organization. Although

  151

  BLACK MARKET

  estimates of the URP’s membership vary widely, it probably totaled several hundred thousand at its peak from late 1905 to 1907.

  The URP propagated its ideology through its newspaper, Russkoye Znamya (The Russian banner). Coarsening the ideas of previous generations of pan-Slavs and Slavophiles, the URP mixed Russian chauvinism with virulent anti-Semitism, hostility to the intelligentsia and capitalism, and die-hard support for the autocracy. The fight against revolutionaries was always a paramount task, relegating international issues to a relatively unimportant role. The URP’s anti-Semitic message drew the most support in Russia’s western provinces of the Pale of Settlement, where many Jews resided.

  Under Dubrovin’s direction, the URP headquarters in St. Petersburg created a paramilitary force that assassinated two Jewish-born Duma members from the liberal Kadet Party, Mikhail Gertsenshtein and Grigory Iollos, and undertook a failed attempt to kill former finance minister Sergei Witte. Local branches also formed paramilitary forces that engaged in violent crimes like pogroms. In cities like Odessa, the state used URP groups as a virtual auxiliary police force to help fight revolutionaries in the streets.

  The URP was vehemently opposed to the First Duma, which was dominated by socialists and liberals. It nevertheless organized a campaign and got a handful of deputies elected to the Second Duma. The election of a loyalist majority to the Third Duma thanks to a change in the electoral law caused the Black Hundred movement to begin fracturing. URP Vice President Vladimir Purishkevich, who now accep
ted the Duma, formed a rival organization due to personal and ideological conflicts with Dubrovin, who still opposed the Duma. In 1910 Dubrovin was driven from his own organization by Duma member Nikolai Markov, who gained control of the URP, forcing Dubrovin to form his own splinter group. The schisms cost the Black Hundred much of its power and influence. Membership declined from 1908, although the various factions were kept afloat by substantial subsidies from various state organs, especially from the Internal Affairs Ministry. Public knowledge of these subsidies and their refusal to countenance criticism of the tsar gave Black Hundred leaders the reputation of being government lackeys, even though they often bitterly condemned the government and the bureaucracy for displaying insufficient vigor in fighting revolutionaries. After 1908 the Black Hundred was mostly active in fighting for right-wing causes in the political arena. Members were key agitators for the anti-Semitic prosecution of the Mendel Beilis case, and Purishkevich gained a final bit of notoriety for the movement when he helped kill Grigory Rasputin, the royal family’s spiritual advisor whom Purishkevich believed to be discrediting the tsar. The Black Hundred lost its raison d’etre when the autocracy was overthrown. Black Hundred branches immediately closed, and some were burnt down. Markov went into hiding and later emigrated to Germany, where he worked with the budding far-right movement there. The Bolsheviks shot Dubrovin after they seized power, while Pur-ishkevich, the only Black Hundred leader to stay politically active in Russia after the February Revolution, died from typhus in 1920 while agitating for the White armies. See also: DUMA; JEWS; REVOLUTION OF 1905