by James Millar
CHERKESS
From the 1880s until his death, Chekhov suffered from tuberculosis, a disease that necessitated his move in 1898 from a small estate (purchased in 1892) outside Moscow to the milder climate of Yalta in the Crimea. He also spent time on the French Riviera. Finally in 1904 he went to Germany in search of treatment and died in Badenweiler in southern Germany in July of that year. See also: MOSCOW ART THEATER; SUVORIN, ALEXEI SERGEYEVICH; THICK JOURNALS
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Heim, Michael Henry, and Karlinsky, Simon, tr. (1973). Anton Chekhov’s Life and Thought: Selected Letters and Commentary. Berkeley: University of California Press. Rayfield, Donald. (1998). Anton Chekhov: A Life. New York: Henry Holt. Simmons, Ernest J. (1962). Chekhov: A Biography. Boston: Little, Brown.
ANDREW R. DURKIN
CHERKESS
The Cherkess are one of the two titular nationalities of the north Caucasian Republic of Karachaevo-Cherkessia in the Russian Federation. In the Soviet period this area underwent several administrative reorganizations but was then established as an autonomous oblast (province) within the Stavropol Krai. The capital is Cherkessk and was founded in 1804. The Cherkess form only about 10 percent of the oblast’s population, which numbers 436,000 and 62 percent of whom make their livings in agriculture, animal husbandry, and bee-keeping. Health resorts are also an important local source of employment and revenue here, as it is in most of the North-West Caucasian region.
The Cherkess belong to the same ethnolinguis-tic family as the Adyge and the Kabardians, who live in neighboring republics, and they speak a sub-dialect of Kabardian, or “Eastern Circassian.” Soviet nationalities policies established these three groups as separate “peoples” and languages, but historical memory and linguistic affinity, as well as post-Soviet ethnic politics, perpetuate notions of ethnic continuity. An important element in this has been the contacts, since the break-up of the Soviet Union, with Circassians living in Turkey, Syria, Israel, Jordan, Western Europe, and the United States. These are mostly the descendents of migrants who left for the Ottoman Empire in the mid-and late nineteenth century after the completion of the Russian conquest of the Caucasus. The long and painful process of conquest firmly established “the idea of Circassians” as “noble savages” in the Russian imagination.
The Cherkess are Muslims, but other religious influences can be discerned in their cultural practices, including Greek Orthodox Christianity and indigenous beliefs and rituals. The Soviet state discouraged the practice of Islam and the perpetuation of Muslim identity among the Cherkess, but it supported cultural nation-building. In the post-Soviet period, interethnic tensions were clearly apparent in the republic’s presidential elections. However, Islamic movements, generally termed “Wahhabism,” are in less evidence among the Cherkess than with other groups in the North Caucasus. The wars in Abkhasia (from 1992 to 1993) and Chechnya (1994-1997; 1999-2000) have also affected Cherkess sympathies and politics, causing the Russian state to intermittently infuse the North West Caucasus republics with resources to prevent the spreading of conflict. See also: ADYGE; CAUCASUS; KABARDIANS; NATIONALITIES POLICIES, SOVIET; NATIONALITIES POLICIES, TSARIST
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Baddeley, John F. (1908). The Russian Conquest of the Caucasus. London: Longmans, Green amp; Co. Borxup, Marie Bennigsen. Ed. (1992). The North Caucasus Barrier: The Russian Advance towards the Muslim World. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Gammer, Moshe. (1994). Muslim Resistance to the Tsar: Shamil and the Conquest of Chechnia and Daghestan. London: Frank Cass. Jaimoukha, Amjad. (2001). The Circassians: A Handbook. New York: Palgrave. Jersild, Austin. (2002). Orientalism and Empire: North Caucasus Mountain Peoples and the Georgian Frontier, 1854-1917. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queens University Press. Matveeva, Anna. (1999). The North Caucasus: Russia’s Fragile Borderland. Great Britain: The Royal Institute of International Affairs.
SETENEY SHAMI
CHERNENKO, KONSTANTIN USTINOVICH
CHERNENKO, KONSTANTIN USTINOVICH
(1911-1985), general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (1983-1985).
Konstantin Chernenko was born on September 24, 1911, in a village in the Krasnoyarsk region of Russia. He spent his entire career in the party and worked his way up the ranks in the field of agitation and propaganda. In 1948 he became the head of the Agitation and Propaganda Department in the new Republic of Moldavia. There he got to know the future party leader Leonid Brezhnev, who became the republic’s first secretary in 1950. Cher-nenko rode Brezhnev’s coattails to the pinnacle of Soviet power. After Brezhnev became a Central Committee secretary, he brought Chernenko to Moscow in 1956 to work in the party apparatus. When Brezhnev became the chairman of the USSR Supreme Soviet in 1960, he appointed Chernenko the head of its secretariat. After Brezhnev became General Secretary, Chernenko became the head of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) General Department in 1965, a Central Committee secretary in 1976, a candidate member of the Politburo in 1977, and a full member of the Politburo in 1978. In the Secretariat Chernenko oversaw its administration and controlled the paper flow within the party.
At the end of his life, Brezhnev was actively advancing Chernenko to be his successor. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Chernenko was given a broader role in the party and a higher profile than any of the other contenders: He traveled frequently with Brezhnev and published numerous books and articles. In an apparent effort to show that he would pay attention to the growing pressures for reform of the Soviet system, Chernenko started an active campaign for paying more attention to citizens’ letters to the leadership. He also stressed the importance of public opinion and the need for greater party democracy. He warned that dangers similar to those that arose from Poland’s Solidarity movement could happen in the Soviet Union if public opinion was ignored. However, his experience in the party remained very limited, and he never held a position of independent authority.
When Brezhnev died in November 1982, Cher-nenko was passed over, and the party turned to the more experienced Yuri Andropov as its new leader. However, when Andropov died a little over a year later in February 1984, the party chose the seventy-two-year-old Chernenko as its leader. This was a last desperate effort by the sclerotic Brezhnev generation to hold on to power and block the election of Mikhail Gorbachev, who was Cher-nenko’s chief rival for the job and had been advanced by Andropov. As had become the practice after Brezhnev became party leader, Chernenko also served as Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, the head of state.
Chernenko served only thirteen months as party leader. During the last few months he was ill, and he rarely appeared in public. This was primarily a period of marking time, and little of note happened in domestic or foreign policy during his tenure. The rapid pace of personnel changes that had begun under Andropov ground to a halt, as did the few modest policy initiatives of his predecessor. Mikhail Gorbachev’s active role during this period was marked by intense political maneuvering to succeed the frail Chernenko. When Cher-nenko died in March 1985, the torch was passed to the next generation with the selection of Gorbachev as his successor. See also: AGITPROP; BREZHNEV, LEONID ILICH; COMMUNIST PARTY OF THE SOVIET UNION
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Zemtsov, Ilya. (1989). Chernenko: The Last Bolshevik. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers. Zlotnik, Marc. (1984). “Chernenko Succeeds.” Problems of Communism 33 (2):17-31.
MARC D. ZLOTNIK
CHERNOBYL
The disaster at Chernobyl (Ukrainian spelling: Chornobyl) on April 26, 1986 occurred as a result of an experiment on how long safety equipment would function during shutdown at the fourth reactor unit at Ukraine’s first and largest nuclear power station. The operators had dismantled safety mechanisms at the reactor to prevent its automatic shutdown, but this reactor type (a graphite-moderated Soviet RBMK) became unstable if operated at low power. An operator error caused a power surge that blew the roof off the reactor unit, releasing the contents of the reactor into the atmosphere for a period o
f about twelve days.
The accident contaminated an area of about 100,000 square miles. This area encompassed about 20 percent of the territory of Belarus; about
CHERNOBYL
8 percent of Ukraine; and about 0.5-1.0 percent of the Russian Federation. Altogether the area is approximately the size of the state of Kentucky or of Scotland and Northern Ireland combined. The most serious radioactive elements to be disseminated by the accident were Iodine-131, Cesium-137, and Strontium-90. The authorities contained the graphite fire with sand and boron, and coal miners constructed a shelf underneath it to prevent it from falling into the water table.
After the accident, about 135,000 people were evacuated from settlements around the reactor, including the town of Pripyat (population 45,000), the home of the plant workers and their families, and the town of Chernobyl (population 10,000), though the latter remained the center of the cleanup operations for several years. The initial evacuation zone was a 30-kilometer (about 18.6 miles) radius around the destroyed reactor unit. After the spring of 1989 the authorities published maps to show that radioactive fallout had been much more extensive, and approximately 250,000 people subsequently moved to new homes.
Though the Soviet authorities did not release accurate information about the accident, and classified the health data, under international pressure they sent a team of experts to a meeting of the IAEA (The International Atomic Energy Agency) in August 1986, which revealed some of the causes of the accident. The IAEA in turn was allowed to play a key role in improving the safety of Soviet RBMK reactors, though it did not demand the closure of the plant until 1994. A trial of Chernobyl managers took place in 1987, and the plant director and chief engineer received sentences of hard labor, ten and five years respectively.
Chernobyl remains shrouded in controversy as to its immediate and long-term effects. The initial explosion and graphite fire killed thirty-one operators, firemen, and first-aid workers and saw several thousand hospitalized. Over the summer of 1986 up until 1990, it also caused high casualties among cleanup workers. According to statistics from the Ukrainian government, more than 12,000 “liquidators” died, the majority of which were young men between the ages of twenty and forty. A figure of 125,000 deaths issued by the Ukrainian ministry of health in 1996 appears to include all subsequent deaths, natural or otherwise, of those living in the contaminated zone of Ukraine.
According to specialists from the WHO (World Health Organization) the most discernible health im An aerial view of the Chernobyl complex shows the shattered reactor facility. A/P WIDE WORLD. REPRODUCED BY PERMISSION. pact of the high levels of radiation in the affected territories has been the dramatic rise in thyroid gland cancer among children. In Belarus, for example, a 1994 study noted that congenital defects in the areas with a cesium content of the soil of one-five curies per square kilometer have doubled since 1986, while in areas with more than fifteen curies, the rise has been more than eight times the norm.
Among liquidators and especially among evacuees, studies have demonstrated a discernible and alarming rise in morbidity since Chernobyl when compared to the general population. This applies particularly to circulatory and digestive diseases, and to respiratory problems. Less certain is the concept referred to as “Chernobyl AIDS,” the rise of which may reflect more attention to medical problems, better access to health care, or psychological fears and tension among the population living in contaminated zones. Rises in children’s diabetes and anemia are evident, and again appear much higher
CHERNOMYRDIN, VIKTOR STEPANOVICH
in irradiated zones. The connection between these problems and the rise in radiation content of the soil have yet to be determined.
To date, the rates of leukemia and lymphoma- though they have risen since the accident-remain within the European average, though in the upper seventy-fifth percentile. One difficulty here is the unreliability or sheer lack of reporting in the 1970s. The induction period for leukemia is four to fifteen years, thus it appears premature to state, as some authorities have, that Chernobyl will not result in higher rates of leukemia.
As for thyroid cancer, its development has been sudden and rapid. As of 2003 about 2,000 children in Belarus and Ukraine have contracted the disease and it is expected to reach its peak in 2005. One WHO specialist has estimated that the illness may affect one child in ten living in the irradiated zones in the summer of 1986; hence ultimate totals could reach as high as 10,000. Though the mortality rate from this form of cancer among children is only about 10 percent, this still indicates an additional 1,000 deaths in the future. Moreover, this form of cancer is highly aggressive and can spread rapidly if not operated on. The correlation between thyroid gland cancer and radioactive fallout appears clear and is not negated by any medical authorities.
After pressure from the countries of the G7, Ukraine first imposed a moratorium on any new nuclear reactors (lifted in 1995) and then closed down the Chernobyl station at the end of the year 2000. The key issue at Chernobyl remains the construction and funding of a new roof over the destroyed reactor, the so-called sarcophagus. The current structure, which contains some twenty tons of radioactive fuel and dust, is cracking and is not expected to last more than ten years. There are fears of the release of radioactive dust within the confines of the station and beyond should the structure collapse.
It is fair to say that the dangers presented by former Soviet nuclear power stations in 2003 exceed those of a decade earlier. In the meantime, some 3.5 million people continue to live in contaminated zones. From a necessary panacea, evacuation of those living in zones with high soil contamination today has become an unpopular and slow-moving process. Elderly people in particular have returned to their homes in some areas. See also: ATOMIC ENERGY; BELARUS AND BELARUSIANS; UKRAINE AND UKRAINIANS
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Marples, David R. (1988). The Social Impact of the Chernobyl Disaster. London: Macmillan. Medvedev, Zhores. (1992). The Legacy of Chernobyl. New York: Norton. Petryna, Adriana. (2002). Life Exposed: Biological Citizens after Chernobyl. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Shcherbak, Yurii. (1988). Chernobyl: A Documentary Story. London: Macmillan. Yaroshinskaya, Alla. (1995). Chernobyl: The Forbidden Truth. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
DAVID R. MARPLES
CHERNOMYRDIN, VIKTOR STEPANOVICH
(b. 1938), prime minister of the Russian Federation from December 1992 to March 1998.
Trained in western Siberia as an engineer and later an economist, Viktor Chernomyrdin alternated between working as a communist party official who monitored industrial enterprises and actually running such enterprises in the gas industry. From 1978 he worked in the heavy industry department of the party’s central apparatus in Moscow, before becoming minister for the oil and gas industries in 1985. In 1989 he was a pioneer in turning part of his ministry into the state-owned gas company Gazprom. He was the first chairman of the board, and oversaw and benefited from its partial privatization.
In 1990 he ran for the newly formed Russian Republic (RSFSR) Congress of People’s Deputies, but lost. In May 1992 President Yeltsin appointed him a deputy prime minister of the newly independent Russian Federation. In December, following an advisory vote of the Congress in which he finished second, a politically besieged Yeltsin made him prime minister. Although a typical Soviet official in most respects, Chernomyrdin gradually adapted to free market processes. His concern not to move too precipitately on economic reform enabled him, with his powers of conciliation and compromise, to appease the communists in some measure throughout the 1990s. They looked to him to moderate the radicalism of the “shock therapist” wing of the government.
In the regime crisis of fall 1993, when, violating the Constitution, Yeltsin dispersed the parliaCHERNOV, VIKTOR MIKHAILOVICH
Viktor Chernomyrdin speaks to journalists after the Duma rejected Yeltsin’s attempts to reappoint him prime minister in
1998. © SACHA ORLOV/GETTY IMAGES
ment by military force a
mid much bloodshed, Chernomyrdin supported Yeltsin without wavering. His reputation suffered as a result of both this and his poor handling of the financial crisis of October 1994 (Black Tuesday). Nonetheless, in April 1995 he founded the first avowedly pro-government political party, “Our Home is Russia”, which was covertly funded by Gazprom. This was designed to create a reliable, pro-Yeltsin bloc in the parliament elected in December 1995. However, although Chernomyrdin predicted that it would win almost a third of the 450 seats, in the event it got only 55, gaining the support of a mere 10.1 percent of voters. Apart from the fact that he was a weak leader, it had suffered from public allegations by prominent figures that his earlier leadership of Gazprom had enabled him to accumulate personal wealth of some five billion dollars. Apparently his denials did not convince many voters. Later, the public documentation of massive corruption in his government did not evoke even pro forma denials.
In March 1998 Yeltsin dismissed him without explanation, only to nominate him as acting prime minister the following August. However, the parliament twice refused to confirm him, seeing him as one of the individuals most responsible for the financial collapse of that month. So the floundering president withdrew his nomination. However, Yeltsin named him the next spring as his special representative to work with NATO on resolving the Yugoslav crisis over Kosovo.
