Encyclopedia of Russian History

by James Millar

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Brock, John. (1972). “The Theory and Practice of the Union of the Russian People, 1905-1907: A Case Study of Black Hundred Politics.” Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Rawson, Don. (1995). Russian Rightists and the Revolution of 1905. New York: Cambridge University Press. Rogger, Hans. (1964). “The Formation of the Russian Right, 1900-1906.” California Slavic Studies 3:66-94. Rogger, Hans. (1964). “Was there a Russian Fascism? The Union of Russian People.” Journal of Modern History 36:398-415.

  JACK LANGER

  BLACK MARKET

  A black market was a major structural feature of the Soviet economy throughout the communist era. Having emerged during World War I in response to the regulation of prices and supplies, the black market burgeoned after the Bolshevik seizure of power. In 1918-1919, the Bolsheviks’ radical vision of socialism as an economy without capitalists or market mechanisms led to the closure of virtually all private shops. Until their re-legalization in 1921, in connection with the New Economic Policy, the distribution system consisted of a vast, bu152

  BLACK REPARTITION

  reaucratized, socialized network of state and cooperative outlets, and an equally vast underground trade.

  In subsequent decades, the black market reflected the general condition of the economy. Through the early 1950s, staple foods, clothes, and other necessities predominated. World War II marked the zenith of this tendency, as the urban population was forced to sell off surplus possessions on the black market in order to purchase supplementary food. As survival-threatening crises receded, the array of goods sold on the black market widened to reflect the rising expectations of Soviet consumers. By the 1980s, observers noted the prevalence of such items as automobile spare parts, imported blue jeans, rock-and-roll records, and home decor. Foreign currency (especially U.S. dollars) was also the object of black-market transactions throughout the postwar period, with underground exchange rates for foreign bills greatly exceeding the official rate.

  Three factors complicate assessments of the black market. First, a black market by definition eludes data collection and reporting. Quantitative estimates of its aggregate role in the Soviet economy thus necessarily remain speculative.

  Second, the Soviet Union’s unstable legal environment makes it difficult to track changes over time. The basic juridical rubric for the black market was speculation (buying and reselling goods with the intention of making a profit), which was outlawed in every Soviet criminal code. It was applied sparingly and rather arbitrarily during the New Economic Policy, but Josef Stalin’s renewed assault on the private sector in the late 1920s created pressures for a formal redefinition. The law of August 22, 1932, mandated a five-year labor-camp sentence for speculation, including petty sales, but it failed to standardize prosecution, which exhibited the campaign character (extreme fluctuations in prosecution rates) typical of the criminal justice system as a whole. The law was finally softened in 1957 through the redefinition of petty speculation as a noncriminal offense, and then through the reduced prison sentence for criminal speculation in the 1960 RSFSR Criminal Code.

  Third, the black market’s parameters are blurred by the fact that some private transactions remained legal. Through at least the 1950s, most black-market sales took place at outdoor markets or bazaars. The primary function of these venues, from an official point of view, was to enable farmers to sell surplus produce after all delivery obligations had been met. Their secondary function, however, was to provide a space where any citizens could hawk used clothes and surplus possessions, and where registered artisans could sell certain kinds of handmade goods. These transactions, which eventually came to include the private provision of services, included many shadings of legality. Aron Katsenelinboigen accordingly argued that the Soviet economy should be thought of in terms of a spectrum of colored markets, and not just black versus red.

  In sum, the black market was a product of regulated prices, shortages, and geographical disparities in the availability of goods, as well as a legal system that criminalized most private transactions. See also: SECOND ECONOMY

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Katsenelinboigen, Aron. (1977). “Coloured Markets in the Soviet Union.” Soviet Studies 29(1):62-85.

  JULIE HESSLER

  BLACK REPARTITION

  To Russian peasants, black repartition (cherny pere-del) meant the long-anticipated seizure and redistribution of all nonpeasant lands (those held by the gentry, townspeople, the Crown, etc.) by and among the peasants who lived near them. Most peasants desired such a land settlement and exercised it whenever government power weakened, giving them the opportunity. Examples of black repartitions abound in the revolutions of 1905-1906 and especially in 1917-1918. Peasants placed so much priority on seizure of land and permanent expulsion of nonpeasants from the countryside that they often destroyed valuable farm equipment, animals, and buildings in the process.

  The term was also claimed by a short-lived Russian Populist revolutionary group, Land and Freedom, the first Populist group, which appeared in the wake of the 1873-1874 Going to the People movement. In October 1879 it foundered on doctrinal issues and broke into two groups. The larger one, called People’s Will, focused on a revolutionary terror campaign to bring down the autocracy and spark a socialist revolution. The smaller group, Black Repartition, preferred a path of gradualism

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  and propaganda to develop a revolutionary consciousness among the people. Just as hostile to the autocracy as People’s Will, Black Repartition did not think that a terror campaign could succeed, because merely changing political institutions (if that were possible) would mean nothing without an accompanying social revolution.

  Black Repartition’s doubts were proved right when the People’s Will terror campaign, culminating in the assassination of Emperor Alexander II on March 1 1881, led not to a revolution but instead to popular revulsion toward and severe police repression of all revolutionary groups. These included Black Repartition, which fell apart in Russia as most of its members were arrested and its printing press seized. By the autumn of 1881, Black Repartition had ceased to exist in Russia. Only a few leaders (Georgy Plekhanov, Vera Zasulich, and Pavel Ax-elrod) escaped abroad to Switzerland. There Black Repartition’s leaders turned from doctrinaire populism to Marxist socialism and formed the first Russian Marxist organization, Emancipation of Labor.

  Neither Black Repartition nor Emancipation of Labor had significant influence over the small revolutionary movement inside of Russia in the 1880s, though Emancipation of Labor participated as the Russian representatives to the socialist Second International. Isolated in Switzerland, Black Repartition was ill-equipped to build the revolutionary consciousness among workers that they had deemed essential to a real revolution. Their leaders were important, however, in the formation of the Russian Social Democratic Workers Party at the turn of the century. See also: LAND AND FREEDOM PARTY; MARXISM; PEASANT ECONOMY; PEOPLE’S WILL, THE; SECOND ECONOMY; TERRORISM

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Barron, Samuel H. (1963). Plekhanov: The Father of Russian Marxism. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Haimson, Leopold H. (1955). The Russian Marxists and the Origins of Bolshevism. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Naimark, Norman. (1983). Terrorists and Social Democrats. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Venturi, Franco. (1960). Roots of Revolution. New York: Grosset amp; Dunlap.

  A. DELANO DUGARM

  BLACK SEA FLEET

  The Black Sea Fleet came into being in 1783, when naval units were formed in the Bay of Akhtiar (and from 1784 at Sevastopol) to serve in the Sea of Azov and in wars against Turkey. During the Crimean War (1853-1856) it fought several naval battles, and its sailors were deployed on land in the defense of Sevastopol. The Paris Peace Conference in 1856 allowed Russia to have naval units in the Black Sea, a right expanded by the 1871 London Conference. At the start of World War I, the Black Sea Fleet consisted of five battleships, two cruisers, seventee
n destroyers, and a number of auxiliary vessels; during the conflict it engaged in several actions against the Germans and Turks.

  The fleet also became a center of revolutionary activity. In 1904 socialist cells were organized among its sailors, and this led to the mutiny on the battleship Potemkin the following year. In December 1917 Bolsheviks and other factions were active among the sailors. In May 1920 units that had sided with the Bolsheviks were organized as the Black Sea and Azov naval units, both of which took part in the fighting against Peter Wrangel’s White forces. The Tenth Party Congress in 1921 decided to form a fleet in the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov using two repaired destroyers and five escort vessels. Over the years these were substantially reinforced by the addition of larger ships and naval aviation. On January 11, 1935, the Council of People’s Commissars combined the Azov and Black Sea units to form a new Black Sea Fleet. The Great Terror took a heavy toll among naval officers, and all of the fleet’s commanders were purged. In January 1938, I. S. Iumashev was appointed commander, only to be replaced by F. S. Oktiabrsky in August 1939.

  At the start of World War II the fleet had one battleship, six cruisers, seventeen destroyers, and numerous cutters, minelayers, mine sweepers, torpedo boats, and auxiliary vessels. It also had 625 aircraft. The Luftwaffe, operating with little opposition in the early days of the war, destroyed many Soviet ships and port facilities, but nonetheless the Black Sea Fleet managed to evacuate Odessa and Sevastopol. Overall, however, the performance of the Red Army in the Crimea in 1941 and 1942 was a succession of defeats at the hands of an outnumbered and outgunned enemy. During October and November 1941, Vice Admiral G. I. Levchenko commanded the defense of the Crimea, but in December he was arrested and sentenced to ten years

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  BLOCH, JAN

  (later released). When German forces advanced into the Caucasus, the Black Sea Fleet landed troops behind their lines at Novorossiysk, an inconclusive battle glorified when Leonid Brezhnev was in power because of his participation as a political officer. In 1943, with the German defeat at Stalingrad and retreat from the Caucasus, the navy conducted another landing at Kerch, which also failed. In May 1943 Oktiabrsky was replaced by L. A. Vladimirsky, but he was reinstated in March 1944 and continued as commander until November 1948. In 1944 and 1945, the Black Sea Fleet and the Danube Flotilla supported the Red Army’s offensive opera tions in southeastern Europe.

  Beginning in the 1950s, the Black Sea Fleet began to receive new ships and was a major component of the Soviet advance into the Mediterranean and the third world, but its buildup was marred by an explosion on the Novorossiysk in October 1955, the greatest peacetime disaster in the history of the Soviet Navy, which cost the commander in chief of the Navy, Admiral N. G. Kuznetsov, his job. The buildup, which even included the introduction of aircraft carriers, continued until the breakup of the Soviet Union. After 1991 both Russia and Ukraine claimed ownership of the fleet. An agreement on May 28, 1997, gave Russia the more modern ships and a twenty-year lease on the Sevastopol naval base. The Black Sea Fleet is now a shadow of its once-proud self, decaying along with other Russian military assets. See also: CRIMEAN WAR; POTEMKIN MUTINY; PURGES, THE GREAT; TURKEY, RELATIONS WITH; WORLD WAR I; WORLD WAR II

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Felgenhauer, Tony. (1999). Ukraine, Russia and the Black Sea Fleet Accords. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs Case Study. Available at «www .wws.princeton.edu/~cases/papers/ukraine.html». Nekrasov, George. (1992). North of Gallipoli: The Black Sea Fleet at War, 1914-1917. New York: Columbia University Press.

  MICHAEL PARRISH

  Blat, common slang in Soviet times, comes from an older Russian expression, blatnoy zhargon, “thieves’ talk”, which accompanied misdemeanors. For example, an industrial tolkach (“pusher” or expediter) might use blat to obtain a necessary part or material without a planned allocation order (naryad). This could be better than waiting for essential supplies through formal channels, because the monthly and yearly plans had deadlines for fulfillment. One way of accommodating a friendly pusher would be to declare perfectly good output “rejects,” which could be legally sold without an allocation order. Use of blat would be more likely if the receiving enterprise were producing a low-priority consumer good. A citizen might also employ blat to secure a larger apartment in a favorable location.

  Generally speaking, use of blat implied a reciprocal obligation in the future, but it could involve a gift of a bottle of vodka or small bribe. Blat usually functioned between friends or relations; one hesitated to deal with complete strangers because these transactions were illegal and penalties could be severe. With taut planning, when goods and apartments were always short, a popular folk saying was “Blat is higher than Stalin!” Such informal arrangements were vital to offset the many gaps of Soviet planning and to allow managers to fulfill their plans and citizens to survive and live with some comfort. In many cases, then, blat may be said to have been functional for the totalitarian order, even if somewhat illicit. On the other hand, it also detracted from the competitive advantage the system’s directors wished to give to important production, which was subject to stringent control. See also: BLACK MARKET

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Berliner, Joseph. (1957). Factory and Manager in the USSR. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

  MARTIN C. SPECHLER

  BLAT

  The use of personal influence to obtain something of value.

  BLOCH, JAN

  (1836-1902), Jewish-Polish born industrialist, banker, railroad magnate, and adviser to the Russian Ministry of Finance; author of Future War in Its Technical, Economic, and Political Relations (1898).

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  BLOK, ALEXANDER ALEXANDROVICH

  Jan Bloch, also known as Jean de Bloch and Ivan Stanislavovich Bliokh, was born in Radom, in the kingdom of Poland, to Jewish parents. He converted to Calvinism in the 1850s and to Catholicism upon his marriage into a prominent banking family of Warsaw. Bloch made his fortune in the railway boom of the 1860s, when he funded the construction of rail lines in southwest Russia. He was a strong advocate of liberal reform.

  Bloch addressed the technical, economic, and political aspects of modern, industrial war. He combined a detailed analysis of military technology and the changes it was bringing to the battlefield with a strategic-operational assessment of the role of railroads, and concluded that defense would dominate the offense, making impossible a single, decisive battle. Maneuver would give way to firepower and positional warfare. Indecision, when coupled with the capacity of modern economies to generate war materials for the front, would turn a general European war into a protracted and bloody conflict. Modern war in this form would lead to social crisis and revolution. Bloch concluded that a general European war would be so destructive that statesmen would be prudent enough to avoid unleashing one.

  Bloch’s pacifism was not utopian, but rather was founded upon pragmatism and pessimism. Behind Bloch’s analysis of future war stood several decades of sustained study of railroads and their impact on the national economy, national finances, and the study of the so-called Jewish question and modern anti-Semitism. Moreover, his research work rested upon a methodology that was distinctly modern and interdisciplinary, involving the collective research of specialists in a research institute. Bloch’s practical influence on the government of Nicholas II was limited and short-lived, culminating in a call for a European disarmament conference. Bloch opposed any military adventure in the Far East. He died in 1902, before the Russo-Japanese War provided a warning of political and military things to come. See also: MILITARY, IMPERIAL ERA; RAILWAYS

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Bloch, Jan. (1991). Is War Now Impossible? Being an Abridgement of the War of the Future in Its Technical, Economic, and Political Relations. London: Gregg Revivals. Kipp, Jacob W. (1996). “Soldiers and Civilians Confronting Future War: Lev Tolstoy, Jan Bloch, and Their Russian Military Critics.” In Tooling for War: Milita
ry Transformation in the Industrial Age, ed. Stephen D. Chiabotti. Chicago: Imprint Publications.

  JACOB W. KIPP

  BLOK, ALEXANDER ALEXANDROVICH

  (1880-1921), poet, playwright, essayist.

  Alexander Blok, one of Russia’s greatest poets and a key figure in the Symbolist movement, was born in St. Petersburg in 1880, into an aristocratic family of German and Russian descent. His father was a professor of law at the University of Warsaw and a talented musician; his mother, a poet and translator. Blok’s parents separated shortly after his birth; he spent his childhood with his maternal grandfather, botanist Andrei Beketov, until his mother obtained legal divorce in 1889, remarried, and brought Blok with her into her new apartment. Blok wrote verse from his early childhood on, but his serious poetry began around age eighteen. He studied law without success at the University of Petersburg, transferred to the Historical-Philosophical Division, and received his degree in 1906.

  As a young writer, Blok made the acquaintance of Symbolist poets, including Vladimir Soloviev and Andrei Bely. His first poetry collection Stikhi o prekrasnoy dame (Verses on a beautiful lady) was published in 1904. Inspired by a mystical experience and his relationship with Lyubov Men-deleyeva, daughter of the famous chemist, whom he married in 1903, the poems, resonant with Romantic influence, depict a woman both earthly and divine, praised and summoned by the poet. Despite the sublime character of these poems, there are early signs of rupture and disturbance; the supplicatory tone itself borders on despair.

  Blok followed his first collection with the lyric drama Balaganchik (The fair show booth), staged in 1906, and his second poetry collection, Nechayannaya radost (Inadvertent joy, 1907). These propelled him to fame. From there he continued to write prolifically, developing a distinctly tumultuous and sonorous style and influencing his contemporaries profoundly. His unfinished verse epic Vozmezdie (Retribution, 1910-1921), occasioned by the death of his father, chronicles his family history as an allegory of Russia’s eventual spiritual resurrection; the cycle Na pole Kulikovom (On the field of kulikovo, 1908), celebrates Russia’s victory