by James Millar
DERZHAVA
border. Recognition of the failure of this latter strategy led the regime to turn in the opposite direction, toward prophylactic strikes to remove the same groups from border areas to prevent their own attraction to their co-ethnics abroad.
World War II brought mass deportations on an even greater scale. First, the Soviet occupation of the Baltic states (Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia) and parts of Poland and Rumania as a result of the Nazi-Soviet agreement of August 1939 was followed by mass deportations of the cultural, political, and economic elites of these states. The scale of the arrests and deportations was remarkable. Pavel Po-lian estimates that 380,000 people were deported in these operations from early 1940 to June 1941.
After the German invasion of June 1941, Joseph Stalin ordered the mass deportation of entire nationalities. Thirteen national groups in all were rounded up by special police units and deported by train to Central Asia in operations that lasted only a few days each. The first operations occurred in August and September 1941, when 89,000 Finns and 749,613 Germans were deported to Kazakhstan and Siberia. Hitler made no secret of his plans to use the German minority in the Soviet Union as a building block for his new racial order in the East, and his mass evacuation of ethnic Germans from the Baltic states to Germany in 1939 on the eve of the Soviet invasion of those states set the tone for Stalin’s deportations of Germans. As in World War I, the regime deported ethnic Germans from the western and southern parts of the empire, but this time added the large German population in the middle Volga region. Germans accounted for nearly half of the wartime ethnic deportations. The Finns were deported largely from the Leningrad region in August 1941 as the Finnish Army was advancing toward the city.
From November 1943 to November 1944, the Kalmyks, Karachai, Chechens, Ingush, Balkars, Crimean Tatars, Crimean Greeks, Meskhetian Turks, Kurds, and Khemshils were all deported en masse to Central Asia. These deportations were accompanied by accusations of collaboration while under German occupation, but the long histories of resistance among some of these groups to Russian rule doubtless was an important factor as well. This was particularly true in Chechnya, where an insurgency formed during the war and conducted raids and assassinations against Soviet officials.
In the final analysis, of course, there can be no rational explanation for the mass deportation of entire nationalities. The deportations were recognized as early as the 1950s as one of Stalin’s greatest crimes. The conditions of the deported groups were improved and restrictions on their movement were partially lifted between 1954 and 1956. The easing of conditions from 1954 to 1956 led to major unsanctioned return journeys of many of the Caucasus nationalities. This was a factor in the government’s decisions from 1956 to 1958 to allow the Karachai, Balkars, Kalmyks, Chechens, and Ingush to return and to restore their local national governmental autonomy. But official rehabilitation for the Germans came only in 1964 and for the Crimean Tatars in 1967, and in neither case were their national autonomous governments restored, nor were these groups given permission to return to their homelands until the late 1980s and early 1990s. The mass deportations of the twentieth century left a bitter legacy that contributed to the determination of national movements from the Baltics to Chechnya to acquire full independence from Moscow. See also: NATIONALITIES POLICIES, SOVIET; NATIONALITIES POLICIES, TSARIST; PALE OF SETTLEMENT; WORLD WAR I; WORLD WAR II
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Lohr, Eric. (2003). Nationalizing the Russian Empire: The Campaign against Enemy Aliens during World War I. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Martin, Terry. (1998). “The Origins of Soviet Ethnic Cleansing.” The Journal of Modern History 70(4): 813-861. Nekrich, Aleksandr M. (1978). The Punished Peoples: The Deportation and Fate of Soviet Minorities at the End of the Second World War. New York: Norton.
ERIC LOHR
DERZHAVA See PEOPLE’S PARTY OF FREE RUSSIA.
DERZHAVIN, GAVRYL ROMANOVICH
(1743-1816), poet.
Gavryl Derzhavin, one of the most original Russian poets of the eighteenth century, was regarded as the greatest national poet before Alexander Pushkin. Following a period in the army, he worked as a civil servant for more than twenty years. He served first as provincial governor from 1786 to 1788 in Tambov, a city in south-central European
DE-STALINIZATION
Russia founded in 1636 as an outpost against the Crimean Tatars. A man of the Enlightenment, he became poet laureate and served as minister of justice for Catherine II from 1802 to 1805. Derzhavin also served briefly as Catherine’s private secretary.
Derzhavin’s most famous works, listed chronologically, include The Courtier (1776), The Death of Prince Meshchersky (1779-1783), Felitsa (1782), Ode to God (1784), To the Potentates and Judges (1780), and The Waterfall (1791-1794). While Derzhavin favored the ode as genre, he differed from the poet Lomonosov in that he did not consider it a laudatory form. His style is more reminiscent of the Roman lyric poet and satirist, Horace (65 B.C.E.-8 B.C.E.). Derzhavin first caught Catherine the Great’s attention with his ode to her, Felitsa, named after a character in Catherine’s own story “The Tale of Prince of Khlor.” Here he broke several taboos, praising the sovereign not with awe, but with easy familiarity. She walks “on foot,” eats, reads, writes, enjoys jokes, and treats people nicely. Derzhavin then contrasts her to the petty self-centeredness of the nobles surrounding her, with their feasts, fancy dress, and endless entertainments. Derzhavin sharply criticizes court life in The Courtier and To the Potentates and Judges, lampooning the unjust bureaucrats and parasitic aristocracy.
Derzhavin’s poetry and memoirs present a rich and complex portrait of his time, employing a diverse range of topics from war and peace to love and dining. Open to the influence of all contemporary currents and at ease with various philosophical perspectives, Derzhavin is remembered as the poet who loved truth more than he loved kings. In his poetry he was a defender of justice and an independent spirit. Politically, however, Derzhavin remained a staunch monarchist and general opponent of liberal ideas. Along with Admiral Alexander Shishkov (a defender of serfdom), Derzhavin established the Colloquy of Lovers of the Russian Word (Beseda Lyubitelei Russokogo Slova, 1811-1816)-a formal literary society with as many as five hundred members whom Derzhavin would invite to his large home on the banks of the Fontanka in St. Petersburg.
In Derzhavin’s poetical development, the themes of time and immortality become increasingly more prominent, until the other motifs-the poet’s relationship with other people, his memories, and his own life experience-become varying aspects of his central poetic obsession with the element of time. When, on the morning of July 9, 1815, relatives discovered Derzhavin’s corpse, they spotted an unfinished poem scrawled on a blackboard. Immortalized as “the slate ode” by Osip Mandelshtam more than a hundred years later, the poem begins: Time’s river carries on its current All the affairs of men; it flings To the abysm of oblivion Drowned nations, kingdoms even as kings. And if the voice of lyre and trumpet Awhile holds aught above the spate, That, too, eternity will swallow, That, too, await the common fate.
The presence of Derzhavinian time imagery can be detected in the works of later Russian poets such as Pushkin, Tyutchev, Fet, and Mandelshtam. With its emphasis on the ode and on emulation of literary models, Derzhavin’s poetry represents the culmination and expansion of Russian Classicism, rather than the first step toward Russian Romanticism. Unlike the Romantics, Derzhavin also demonstrated a Classicist-oriented belief in the stability of the world order, which he as an odist exalted. See also: LOMONOSOV, MIKHAIL VASILIEVICH; PUSHKIN, ALEXANDER SERGEYEVICH
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Crone, Anna Lisa. (2001). The Daring of Derzavin: the Moral and Aesthetic Independence of the Poet in Russia. Bloomington, IN: Slavica. Derzhavin, Gavryl Romanovich. (2001). Poetic Works: a Bilingual Album, tr. Alexander Levitsky and Martha Kitchen. Providence, RI: Dept. of Slavic Studies, Brown University. Sandler, Stephanie. (1999). Rereading Russian Poetry. New Haven, CT: Yale University Pres
s.
JOHANNA GRANVILLE
DE-STALINIZATION
De-Stalinization refers to the attempt to handle the Stalin legacy following Stalin’s death. Its chronological boundaries are not clearly defined, but the process began soon after Stalin died in March 1953 and was generally halted in the early years of the Brezhnev period following Khrushchev’s ouster in October 1964. There were four principal elements of de-Stalinization.
DE-STALINIZATION
The first element is official pronouncements. The two most important were Khrushchev’s speeches to the Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) in 1956 and the Twenty-Second Congress in 1961. The former speech was delivered in closed session to the congress and was not published in the USSR until 1990, although it was published in the West in 1956 and was read to closed party meetings across the country. The second speech was delivered in open session and published in the Soviet press at the time of its delivery. The first speech sought to deflate the exaggerated image of Stalin and to place the responsibility for the terror and repressions upon him alone. Khrushchev sought to argue that Stalin was responsible for the application of terror to the Party (no mention was made of the suffering of anyone outside the party) and that he steered Soviet development off of the healthy course upon which the Party had set it. In the second speech, Khrushchev further attacked the image of Stalin and sought to associate some of his own current political opponents with Stalin’s crimes.
Second are his policies. The policies embarked on by the Khrushchev leadership in many respects reversed or modified those pursued by Stalin. Among the most important of these were the formal reaffirmation of the principle of collective leadership; restoration of the Communist Party to the central place in the political system; the elimination of terror as a central aspect of life, including the rehabilitation of some of those who suffered; the opening of some of the labor camps and the return of many of the prisoners and internees to Soviet society; the increased priority given to light industry, without displacing heavy industry as the main priority; and a more flexible foreign policy. Such changes were crucial because of the freeing up of general life that they signified. The removal of the overt threat of terror was particularly important here.
Third is the freeing up of intellectual life. While this was, strictly speaking, a change in policy, its nature and importance warrants separate mention. The tight restrictions upon discussion, literature, and all forms of cultural expression were relaxed. Although censorship, especially self-censorship, remained firmly in place, the boundaries of acceptable expression expanded significantly. Particularly important was the emergence of so-called camp literature, which discussed life in the labor camps and brought a new perspective on the Stalinist experience. The publication of Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1962) was particularly important in this regard. So was the rewriting of Soviet history to downplay, and at times almost eliminate, Stalin’s role.
Fourth is symbolism: The manifestations of the Stalin cult disappeared as soon as Stalin died. His image and person ceased to dominate the Soviet media. And in a process that gathered speed following Khrushchev’s 1956 speech, Stalin’s name was removed from everything that had been named after him, all statues, busts, and portraits were removed from public display (except in his birthplace, Gori), and his writings were removed from public availability in the libraries. In 1962 his body was removed from the mausoleum on Red Square and buried in a simple plot beneath the Kremlin wall.
The impetus for de-Stalinization came from both above and below. It was widely recognized throughout society that some change would be necessary following Stalin’s death, but there was widespread disagreement about how substantial such change should be. At the top of the political system, the issue of de-Stalinization became tangled up with factional conflict among the leaders. From 1956, Khrushchev became the major Soviet leader pressing the cause of de-Stalinization, while others like Kaganovich and Molotov, who had been closer to Stalin, sought to restrict the dimensions of this process. Similar disagreements about how far de-Stalinization should extend were evident within the community as a whole. Many intellectuals, responding to the greater scope for free expression, played an important part in fueling de-Stalinization. Many scholars, writers, artists, poets, and playwrights continually sought to push back the frontiers of what could and could not be said. This process was very uneven; many of the key positions in the artistic and creative worlds were held by conservatives who sought to hold the line against too much innovation and who were in a position to hinder publication and exhibition. In addition, the line coming from the top was not consistent; Khrushchev and his supporters were continually wavering about de-Stalinization, sometimes pushing it forward, at other times winding it back. Everyone was uncertain about how far and how fast the process could be undertaken, and the political elite in particular was concerned to ensure that de-Stalinization did not undermine the power and legitimacy of the system. In this sense even Khrushchev, while recognizing that changes had to be made, was uncertain about their speed and extent.
D?TENTE
De-Stalinization constituted a classic case of liberalization. It was designed to bring about change without altering the basic Soviet power structure. In this sense de-Stalinization was limited in its effect and, when a more conservative leadership came to power under Brezhnev and Kosygin, many of these changes were wound back. This was especially clear in the cultural sphere, where the crackdown on free expression was important in generating the dissident movement. However, de-Stalinization left its mark nonetheless. In the short term it was important for the regime’s ability to survive the crisis induced by Stalin’s death, but in the longer term it was crucial in shaping many of those who were to come to the fore when Gorbachev sought to bring major change to the system in the 1980s. De-Stalinization was an important source of pere-stroika. See also: KHRUSHCHEV, NIKITA SERGEYEVICH; STALIN, JOSEF VISSARIONOVICH
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Breslauer, George W. (1982). Khrushchev and Brezhnev as Leaders: Building Authority in Soviet Politics. London: George Allen amp; Unwin. Linden, Carl A. (1966). Khrushchev and the Soviet Leadership 1957-1964. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press. Tatu, Michel. (1968). Power in the Kremlin: From Khrushchev to Kosygin. New York: Viking Press. Van Goudoever, A. P. (1986). The Limits of Destaliniza-tion in the Soviet Union: Political Rehabilitations in the Soviet Union since Stalin. New York: St Martin’s Press.
GRAEME GILL
D?TENTE
By d?tente (a French word for “release from tension”), historians refer to the period of gradually improved relations between the USSR and the West, during the 1960s and early 1970s.
The first signs of d?tente appeared shortly after Josef Stalin’s death, with the signature of the peace treaty granting Austrian independence in May 1955 and the Geneva summit in July that opened the way for dialogue between the USSR, the United States, Britain, and France. In March 1956, during the Twentieth Congress of the CPSU, “peaceful co-existence” became the “baseline of Soviet Foreign policy.” Competition with the West was not over, but, for Nikita Khrushchev, this competition had to be ideological, economic, and technological rather than military. The USSR kept however improving its military potential (it fired its first inter-continental ballistic missile in August 1957 and launched the first Sputnik the following October) and, regarding the Third World, all means of influence were still contemplated. This new approach to international relations led Khrushchev and Nikolai Bulganin to visit Western countries (Britain in 1956, the United States. in 1959, and France in 1960) and to participate in the Paris summit meeting in 1960. However, d?tente did not go without tensions and crises, such as the first Berlin Crisis in 1958, the U-2 incident in May 1960, the second Berlin Crisis in August 1961 that led to the construction of the Berlin Wall, and the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962.
The Cuban crisis was actually a turning point for d?tente: it led Washington and Mos
cow to establish a hotline, so as to prevent the risk of a nuclear war that could arise from a lack of communications, and in August 1963 the USSR signed with the United States and Great Britain the first Nuclear Test Ban treaty. Despite Khrushchev’s dismissal in October 1964 and the promotion of a new leadership with Leonid Brezhnev, Nikolai Pod-gorny, and Alexei Kosygin, d?tente was not only maintained but fostered, for the Soviets perceived it as the best way to achieve their two major objectives: obtaining the official recognition of the post-World War II European territorial status quo and improving the standard of living of the population, by devoting more resources to civil production than to the military-industrial complex and by importing Western advanced technologies and products.
And indeed, from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s, d?tente became a multilateral process as well as a bilateral one.
As a bilateral process between the USSR and the United States, d?tente focused primarily on strategic issues; it first led in July 1968 to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and, in May 1972, to the SALT I treaty limiting strategic arms; however, d?tente dealt also with economic matters: During his historical trip to the Soviet Union, President Nixon signed several agreements on cooperation and trade, including grain exports to the Soviet State; one year later, new agreements were signed during Brezhnev’s visit of June 1973 to the United States. This Soviet-American d?tente was not limDEVELOPED SOCIALISM ited to domestic questions, as shown by the active cooperation displayed by the two super-powers in the 1973 Arab-Israeli War.
