Encyclopedia of Russian History
Page 50
In 1700, at the age of thirty-one, Bruce achieved the rank of major general and commanded forces in the Great Northern War against Sweden. After a humiliating defeat by the Swedes near Narva on November 19, 1700, after which Peter reputedly wept, Peter vowed to improve his army and defeat Sweden in the future. He concluded that a modern army needed a disciplined infantry equipped with the latest artillery (rifles). This infantry was supposed to advance while firing and then charge with fixed bayonets. (The Russian army had consisted mostly of cavalry, its officer corps composed of foreign mercenaries.)
Bruce was one of the new trainers Peter employed to improve the quality of the Russian army. On July 8, 1709, Russian artillery defeated Charles’s army and sent it into retreat. That year Bruce was awarded the Order of St. Andrew for his decisive role in reforming artillery as master of ordnance in the Great Northern War. In 1712 and 1713 Bruce headed the allied artillery of Russia, Denmark, and Poland-Saxony in Pomerania and Holstein. In 1717 he became a senator and president of Colleges of Mines and Manufacture. He was also placed in charge of Moscow print and St. Petersburg mint. As first minister plenipotentiary at the Aland and Nystad congresses, Bruce negotiated and signed the Russian peace treaty with Sweden in 1721, the same year he became count of the Russian Empire. He retired in 1726 with the rank of field marshal.
Bruce corresponded with Jacobite kinsmen and took pride in his Scottish ancestry. He owned a library of books in fourteen languages and was known by many as the most enlightened man in Russia.
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See also: GREAT NORTHERN WAR; PETER I
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Chambers, Robert, and Thomson, Thomas. (1996). The Biographical Dictionary of Eminent Scotsmen. Bristol, UK: Thoemmes Press. Fedosov, Dmitry. (1996). The Caledonian Connection: Scotland-Russia Ties, Middle Ages to Early Twentieth Century. Old Aberdeen, Scotland: Centre for Scottish Studies, University of Aberdeen. Fedosov, Dmitry. (1992). “The First Russian Bruces.” In The Scottish Soldier Abroad, ed. Grant G. Simpson. Edinburgh, Scotland: John Donald.
JOHANNA GRANVILLE
cavalry) until his death. A consummate cavalryman and a flexible military professional, Brusilov saw his primary career obligation as patriotic service to his country, whether tsarist or revolutionary. See also: FEBRUARY REVOLUTION; OCTOBER REVOLUTION; RUSSO-TURKISH WARS; WORLD WAR I
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Wildman, Allan K. (1980). The End of the Russian Imperial Army. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
BRUCE W. MENNING
BRUSILOV, ALEXEI ALEXEYEVICH
(1853-1926), Russian and Soviet military figure, World War I field commander.
Born in Tiflis (Tbilisi), Alexei Alexeyevich Brusilov entered military service in 1871, graduated from the Corps of Pages in 1872, and completed the Cavalry Officers School in 1883. As a dragoon officer during the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878, he fought with distinction in the Trans-Caucasus. Between 1883 and 1906 he served continuously at the Cavalry School, eventually becoming its commandant. Although he did not attend the General Staff Academy or serve in the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905), he rose during the period from 1906 to 1914 to repeated command assignments, including two postings as a corps commander. At the outset of World War I his Eighth Army won important successes during its advance into Galicia and the Carpathians. Between May and July of 1916, Brusilov’s Southwestern Front conducted one of the most significant ground offensives of World War I, in which his troops broke through the Austro-Hungarian defenses to occupy broad expanses of Volynia, Galicia, and Bukovina.
As supreme commander (May-July 1917) of the Russian armies after the February Revolution, Brusilov presided over the ill-fated summer offensive of 1917. After the October Revolution, unlike many of his colleagues, he refused to join the counterrevolutionary cause. Instead, at the outset of the war with Poland in 1920, he entered the Red Army, serving the new Soviet regime in various military capacities (including inspector general of
BRYUSOV, VALERY YAKOVLEVICH
(1873-1924), poet, novelist, playwright, critic, translator.
Born in Moscow, Valery Bryusov was an early proponent of Symbolism in Russia. As editor of the almanac Russkie Simvolisty (Russian symbolists, 1894-1895), Bryusov presented the first articulation of the tenets of Modernism in Russia. Bryusov’s poetry in this almanac illustrated the points set forth in the declarations, with elements of decadence, synaesthesic imagery, and Symbolist motifs.
In 1899 Sergei Polyakov invited Bryusov to participate in the founding of the Skorpion Publishing House. In addition to publishing the works of leading Symbolists, Skorpion Publishing House in 1904 sponsored the literary journal Vesy (The scales), which became the leading forum for writers of that time. By 1906 Bryusov became increasingly critical of writers and poets with whom he disagreed, instituting a vitriolic polemic against the proponents of mystical anarchism and the so-called younger generation of Symbolists, especially those involved with the journal Zolotoye runo (The golden fleece).
In the 1910s Bryusov continued to work in all aspects of artistic culture, writing plays, a novel, and literary criticism, and engaging the Futurists in a lively debate on poetry. In 1913 Bryusov wrote a book of poems under the pseudonym Nelli, combining an ironic life story of a tragic poet with experimental, Futurist-inspired poems. The ironic mystification met with consternation and derision by the Futurists.
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Bryusov was an enthusiastic supporter of the Russian Revolution, believing it to be a transformative event in history. Bryusov became a member of the Communist Party in 1920 and was active in Narkompros (The People’s Commissariat for Enlightenment), serving as head of its printing and library divisions. In 1921 Bryusov organized the Higher Institute of Literature and Art and was the director until his death. See also: FUTURISM; SILVER AGE
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Pyman, Avril. (1994). A History of Russian Symbolism. New York: Cambridge University Press. Rice, Martin. (1975). Valery Briusov and the Rise of Russian Symbolism. Ann Arbor, MI: Ardis.
MARK KONECNY
BUCHAREST, TREATY OF
The Treaty of Bucharest brought the Turkish war of 1806-1812 to an end. Having advanced the Russian frontier to the Dniester River in 1792, Catherine the Great intended to include Moldavia and Wallachia within a Dacian Kingdom under one of her favorites. The immediate occasion for the war, however, were the intrigues of Napoleon’s ambassador at Constantinople, General Horace Se-bastiani, who dismissed two pro-Russian princes in violation of protective rights obtained by the tsar in 1802. Catherine’s grandson Alexander I opened hostilities in 1806 when sixty thousand men, initially led by General Mikhail Kamensky and later by Mikhail Kutuzov, crossed the Danube. This campaign proved desultory, even though in 1807 a Russian administration replaced the Greek Princes nominated by the Turks. When Napoleon met Tsar Alexander I at Tilsit (1807) and later at Erfurt (1808) to partition the Ottoman Empire, the former was willing to concede control of both principalities to Russia but was unwilling to give up Constantinople, the ultimate prize the French emperor had sought. In consequence, the good relations between the two emperors deteriorated. When it became apparent that Napoleon was planning a coalition for an invasion of Russia in 1812, the tsar, unwilling to fight Turks and French on two fronts, sent a delegation under General Count Alexander de Langeron, General Joseph Fonton, and the Russian ambassador to Constantinople, Count Andrei Italinsky, to negotiate with the Turks in Bucharest. The latter were represented by the Grand Vizier Ahmed Pasha, the Chief Interpreter (Drogman) Mehmed Said Galid Effendi, and his colleague Demetrius Moruzi. They met at the inn of a wealthy Armenian Mirzaian Manuc. The talks were confrontational: the Turks unwilling to cede one inch of territory, the Russians demanding the whole province of Moldavia. In the end, Sir Stratford Canning, a young English diplomat who replaced the vacationing English ambassador Sir Robert Adair, made a diplomatic debut that earned him a brilliant career
on the eve of the Crimean War. He argued that the Turks lacked the resources to continue the war, while the Russians needed the troops of Admiral Pavel Chichagov (taking over Ku-tuzov’s command) who returned to Russia to face the Napoleonic onslaught. In the end, Canning cited an obscure article of the Treaty of Tilsitt (article 12) negotiated by the Russian Chancelor Peter Rumyantsev as an acceptable compensation. This territory, misnamed by the Russians “Bessarabia” (a name derived from the first Romanian princely dynasty of Wallachia, which controlled only Moldavia’s southern tier), advanced the Russian frontier from the Dniester to the Pruth and the northern mouth of the Danube (Kilia). This represented a gain of 500,000 people of various ethnic stock, 45,000 kilometers, five fortresses, and 685 villages. By sacrificing the coveted prize of both principalities and withdrawing the army from Turkey, the tsar was able to confront Napoleon on a single front. This, according to General Langeron, made a difference at the battle of Borodino (1812).
Not content at having saved most of the Moldo-Wallachian provinces, the Turks, who had no legal right to a territory over which they exercised de jure suzerainty, vented their frustration by hacking their chief interpreter Moruzi to pieces and hanging his head at the Seraglio. From a Romanian standpoint, the cession of Bessarabia to Russia in 1812 marked a permanent enstrangement in Russo-Romanian relations, which continued in the early twenty-first century with the creation of a Moldavian Republic within the Russian Commonwealth. See also: ROMANIA, RELATIONS WITH; RUSSO-TURKISH WARS; TURKEY, RELATIONS WITH
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Dima, Nicholas. (1982). Bessarabia and Bukovina: The Soviet Romanian Territorial Dispute. New York and Boulder, CO: East European Monographs.
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Florescu, Radu. (1992). The Struggle Against Russia in the Romanian Principalities (1821-1854). Munich: Romanian Academic Society. Jewsbury, George F. (1976). The Russian Annexation of Bessarabia 1174-1828. New York: East European Monographs.
RADU R. FLORESCU
See also: CIVIL WAR OF 1917-1922; COSSACKS; WORLD WAR II
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Budyonny, Smeyon. (1972). The Path of Valour. Moscow: Progress Publishers. Vitoshnov, Sergei. (1998). Semen Budennyi. Minsk: Kuzma.
JONATHAN D. SMELE
BUDENNY, SEMEON MIKHAILOVICH
(1883-1973), marshal of the Soviet Union.
Born near Rostov-on-Don to non-Cossack parents, Budenny served in Cossack regiments during the Russo-Japanese War and in World War I (receiving four St. George’s Crosses for bravery as a noncommissioned officer). Having joined the Bolsheviks in 1918 and being an accomplished horseman, he organized cavalry detachments around Tsaritsyn during the civil war before creating and commanding the legendary First Cavalry Army in actions against the Whites and the Poles. From 1924 to 1937 he served as Inspector of Cavalry, reaching the exalted rank of marshal in 1935. He actively helped purge the Red Army in 1937, as commander of Moscow military district, but the Nazi invasion revealed him to be completely out of his depth in modern, mechanized warfare. As commander-in-chief of the SouthWest Direction of the Red Army in Ukraine and Bessarabia, Budenny was largely responsible for the disastrous loss of Kiev in August 1941. Probably only his closeness to Josef Stalin and Kliment Voroshilov (a legacy of his civil war service at Tsaritsyn/Stalingrad) saved him from execution. Instead, he was removed from frontline posts in September 1941, becoming commander of cavalry in 1943 and deputy minister of agriculture, in charge of horse breeding. He was a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1939 to 1952. Virtually uneducated but with enormous charisma (and even more enormous moustaches), Budenny became a folklore figure, a decorative accoutrement to the grey men of the postwar Soviet leadership, and a museum piece. Present at all parades and state occasions, bedecked with medals and orders, he was a living relic of the heroic days of the Civil War. Several thousand streets, settlements, and collective farms were named in his honor, as was a breed of Russian horses. He lived out his last years quietly in Moscow, pursuing equestrian interests.
BUKHARA
Established in the sixteenth century, the Bukharan khanate maintained commercial and diplomatic contact with Russia. Territorial conflicts with neighboring Khiva and Kokand prevented formation of a united front against Russia’s encroachment in the mid-nineteenth century.
War from 1866 to 1868 ended with Russia’s occupation of the middle Zarafshan River valley, including Samarkand, and the grant of trading privileges to Russian merchants. The 1873 treaty opened the Amu Darya to Russian ships; pledged the emir to extradite fugitive Russians and abolish the slave trade; and ceded Samarkand, leaving Russia in control of the water supply of the lower Zarafshan, including that of the capital.
Bukhara as a Russian protectorate was slightly larger than Great Britain and Northern Ireland, with a population of two and a half to three million. Urban residents comprised 10 to 14 percent of the total; the largest town was the capital, with population of 70,000 to 100,000. The dominant ethnic group was the Uzbeks (55-60%), followed by the Tajiks (30%) and the Turkmen (5-10%). Bukhara was ruled by an hereditary autocratic emir. Muzaffar ad-Din (1860-1885) was succeeded by his son Abd al-Ahad (1885-1910) and the lat-ter’s son Alim (1910-1920).
In reducing Bukhara to a wholly dependent but internally self-governing polity, Russia aimed to acquire a stable frontier in Central Asia, to prevent Britain alone from filling the political vacuum between the two empires, and to avoid the burdens of direct rule. This policy succeeded for half a century. After 1868 no emir contemplated using his army against his protector; in 1873 Britain and Russia recognized the Amu Darya as separating a Russian sphere of influence (Bukhara) from a British sphere (Afghanistan); and the emirs maintained sufficient domestic order.
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Russia’s impact increased over the years. In the mid-1880s Bukhara’s capital was connected by telegraph with Tashkent; a Russian political agency was established; and the Central Asian Railroad was built across the khanate. In the latter part of the 1880s three Russian urban enclaves, and a fourth at the turn of the century, were established; by the eve of World War I they contained from thirty-five to forty thousand civilians and soldiers. In 1895 the khanate was included in Russia’s customs frontier, and Russian troops and customs officials were stationed along the border with Afghanistan.
Russo-Bukharan trade increased sixfold from the coming of the railroad to 1913. Production of cotton, which represented three-fourths of the value of Bukhara’s exports to Russia, expanded two and a half times between the mid-1880s and the early 1890s, grew slowly thereafter, but doubled during World War I. Unlike Turkestan, the khanate remained self-sufficient in foodstuffs.
After the fall of the tsarist regime, Emir Alim resisted pressure for reforms from the Provisional Government and the Bukharan Djadids (moderniz-ers). With the Bolsheviks in control of the railroad, the Russian enclaves, and the water supply of his capital from December 1917, the emir maintained strained but correct relations with the Soviet government during the Russian civil war.
In the late summer of 1920 the Red Army overthrew Alim. A Bukharan People’s Soviet Republic, led by Djadids, was proclaimed. Russia renounced its former rights, privileges, and property in Bukhara, but controlled the latter’s military and economic affairs. The Djadids were purged in 1923, and the following year the Bukharan People’s Soviet Republic was divided along ethnic lines between the newly formed Uzbek and Turkmen Soviet Socialist Republics. See also: CENTRAL ASIA; KHIVA; NATIONALITIES POLICIES, SOVIET; NATIONALITIES POLICIES, TSARIST; TURKMENISTAN AND TURKMEN; UZBEKISTAN AND UZBEKS
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Becker, Seymour. (1968). Russia’s Protectorates in Central Asia: Bukhara and Khiva, 1865-1924. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
SEYMOUR BECKER
BUKHARIN, NIKOLAI IVANOVICH
(1888-1938), old Bolshevik economist and theoretician who was ousted as a Rightist in 1929 and
executed in 1938 for treason after a show trial.
The son of Moscow schoolteachers, raised in the spirit of the Russian intelligentsia, Nikolai Ivanovich Bukharin was a broadly educated and humanist intellectual. Radicalized as a high school student during the 1905 Revolution, he was drawn to the Bolshevik faction, which he formally joined in 1906. He enrolled at Moscow University in 1907 to study economics, but academics took second place to party activity. He rose rapidly in the Moscow Bolshevik organization, was arrested several times, and in 1911 fled abroad, where he remained until 1917. These six years of emigration strengthened Bukharin’s internationalism; he matured as a Marxist theorist and writer and became known as a radical voice in the Bolshevik party. After a year in Germany, he went to Krakow in 1912 to meet Vladimir Lenin, who invited him to write for the party’s publications. Bukharin settled in Vienna, where he studied and drafted several theoretical works. Expelled to Switzerland at the beginning of World War I, he supported Lenin’s radical antiwar platform, continuing his activities in Scandinavia and then New York City.
When revolution broke out in Russia in early 1917, Bukharin hastened home. Arriving in May, he immediately took a leading role in the Moscow Bolshevik organization, which was dominated by young radicals. His militant stance brought him close to Lenin. In July 1917 he was elected a full member of the Central Committee, and in December he was appointed editor of the party newspaper, Pravda. Bukharin opposed the peace negotiations with the Central Powers at Brest-Litovsk and headed the Left Communists who called for a revolutionary war against capitalism; later he also opposed Lenin’s view that state capitalism would be a step forward for Russia. In mid-1918, ending his opposition, he resumed his party positions as the burgeoning civil war led to war communism and rebellion by the Left Socialist Revolutionaries. In 1919, when a five-man Politburo was formally established, Bukharin became one of three candidate members and also became deputy chairman of the newly established Comintern. Serving in various capacities during the civil war, Bukharin also published extensively: including Imperialism and World Economy (1918), the popularizing and militant ABC of Communism (1920, with Yevgeny Preobrazhen178