Encyclopedia of Russian History
Page 99
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Avineri, Shlomo. (1971). Karl Marx: Social and Political Thought. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Carver, Terrell. (1983). Marx and Engels: The Intellectual Relationship. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Evans, Alfred B., Jr. (1993). Soviet Marxism-Leninism: The Decline of an Ideology. Westport, CT: Praeger.
ALFRED B. EVANS JR.
DICTATORSHIP OF THE PROLETARIAT
The concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat originated with Karl Marx and was applied by Vladimir Lenin as the organizational principle of the communist state after the Russian Revolution. Josef Stalin subsequently adopted it to organize workers’ states in Eastern Europe following the Soviet takeover after 1945. In China, Mao Zedong claimed that the communist revolution of 1949 was the first step to establishing a proletarian dictatorship, even though the peasantry had been largely responsible for the revolution’s success.
In The Communist Manifesto (1848), Marx gave the reasoning for establishing absolute authority in the name of the working class: “The first step on the path to the workers’ revolution is the elevation of the proletariat to the position of ruling class. The proletariat will gain from its political domination by gradually tearing away from the bourgeoisie all capital, by centralizing all means of production in the hands of the State, that is to say in the hands of the proletariat itself organized as the ruling class.” In Critique of the Gotha Program (1875), he theorized how “between capitalist and communist society lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. There corresponds to this also a political transition period in which the State can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat.” Marx employed the term, then, as absolutist rule not by an individual but an entire socio-economic class. If capitalism constituted the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, it would be replaced by socialism-a dictatorship of the proletariat. In turn, socialist dictatorship was to be followed by communism, a classless, stateless society.
In his 1891 postscript to Marx’s The Civil War in France (1871), Friedrich Engels addressed social-democratic critics of this concept: “Well and good, gentlemen, do you want to know what this dictatorship looks like? Look at the Paris Commune. That was the Dictatorship of the Proletariat.” Differences over the principle-and over whether a conspiratorial communist party was to incorporate this idea-were to divide the left into revolutionary (in Russia, Bolshevik) and reformist (Menshe-vik) wings.
Lenin developed the praxis of proletarian dictatorship in State and Revolution (1917): “The proletariat only needs the state for a certain length of time. It is not the elimination of the state as a final aim that separates us from the anarchists. But we assert that to attain this end, it is essential to utilize temporarily against the exploiters the instruments, the means, and the procedures of political power, in the same way as it is essential, in order to eliminate the classes, to instigate the temporary dictatorship of the oppressed class.” A dictatorship by and for the proletariat would realize Lenin’s dictum that the only good revolution was one that could defend itself. Dictatorship would alDIOCESE low the working class to consolidate political power, suppress all opposition, gain control of the means of production, and destroy the machinery of the bourgeois state. Political socialization would follow: “It will be necessary under the dictatorship of the proletariat to reeducate millions of peasants and small proprietors, hundreds of thousands of office employees, officials, and bourgeois intellectuals.” Paradoxically, Lenin saw this form of dictatorship as putting an end to “bourgeois-democratic parliamentarism” and replacing it with a system expanding democratic rights and liberties to the exploited classes.
In sum, for Lenin, “only he is a Marxist who extends his acknowledgement of the class struggle to an acknowledgement of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat.” Moreover, “the dictatorship of the proletariat is a stubborn struggle-bloody and bloodless, violent and peaceful, military and economic, educational and administrative-against the forces and traditions of the old society” (Collected Works, XXV, p. 190).
In Foundations of Leninism (1924), Stalin identified three dimensions of the dictatorship of the proletariat: 1) as the instrument of the proletarian revolution; 2) as the rule of the proletariat over the bourgeoisie; and 3) as Soviet power, which represented its state form. In practice, Lenin, and especially Stalin, invoked the concept to rationalize the Communist Party monopoly on power in Russia, arguing that it alone represented the proletariat. See also: COMMUNISM; LENIN, VLADIMIR ILICH; MARXISM; STALIN, JOSEF VISSARIONOVICH
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Balibar, Etienne. (1977). On the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. London: NLB. Draper, Hal. (1987). Dictatorship of the Proletariat from Marx to Lenin. New York: Harper Review Press. Ehrenberg, John. (1992). The Dictatorship of the Proletariat: Marxism’s Theory of Socialist Democracy. New York: Routledge.
RAY TARAS
DIOCESE
In early Greek sources (eleventh and twelfth centuries), the term signified a province, either secular or ecclesiastical. In Rus’, and later in Russia, the term was used only in the ecclesiastical sense to mean the area under the jurisdiction of a prelate.
Church organization evolved along with the spread of Christianity. The metropolitan of Kiev headed the Church in Rus’. Bishops and dioceses soon were instituted in other principalities. Fifteen dioceses were created in the pre-Mongol period. Compared with their small, compact Greek models centered on cities, these dioceses were vast in extent with vague boundaries and thinly populated, like the Rus’ land itself.
The Mongol invasions changed the course of political and ecclesiastical development. The political center shifted north, ultimately finding a home in Moscow. Kiev and principalities to the southwest were lost, although claims to them were never relinquished. Church organization adapted to these changes. In the initial onslaught, several dioceses were devastated and many remained vacant for long periods. Later new dioceses were created, including the diocese of Sarai established at the Golden Horde. By 1488 when the growing division in the church organization solidified with one metropolitan in Moscow and another in Kiev, there were eighteen dioceses. Nine dioceses (not including the metropolitan’s see) were subordinated to Moscow; nine dioceses looked to the metropolitan seated in Kiev.
The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries witnessed the elevation of the metropolitan of Moscow to patriarch (1589), periods of reform directed at strengthening church organization and raising the spiritual level of parishioners, and the subordination of the see of Kiev with its suffragens to the Moscow patriarch (1686). Ecclesiastical structure responded to these profound changes. By 1700 the number of dioceses had increased to twenty-one (excluding the Patriarchal see) as the Church struggled to create an effective organization able to meet the spiritual needs of the people and suppress dissident voices that had emerged. Thirteen of these dioceses were headed by metropolitans, seven by archbishops, and one by a bishop.
In 1721 the patriarchate was abolished and replaced by the Holy Synod. Despite this momentous change in ecclesiastical organization, the long-term trend of increasing the number of dioceses continued. In 1800 there were thirty-six dioceses; by 1917 the number had grown to sixty-eight. More and smaller dioceses responded to increased and changing responsibilities, particularly in the areas of education, charity, and missionary activity, but
DIONISY
also in the area of social control and surveillance as servants of the state.
The Bolshevik Revolution destroyed the organization of the Russian Church, making prisoners, fugitives, exiles, and martyrs of its prelates. The catastrophes that characterized the beginning of World War II prompted Stalin to initiate a partial rapprochement with the Church. This permitted a revival of its organization, but under debilitating constraints. In the 1990s, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Russian Orthodox Church entered a new period institutionally. Constraints were lifted, the dioceses revived and liberated. By 2003 there w
ere 128 functioning dioceses. See also: RUSSIAN ORTHODOX CHURCH
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Cracraft, James. (1971). The Church Reform of Peter the Great. London and Basingstoke, UK: Macmillan and Co. Ltd. Fennell, John. (1995). A History of the Russian Church to 1448. London and New York: Longman. Muller, Alexander V., trans. and ed. (1972). The Spiritual Regulation of Peter the Great. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Popielovsky, Dmitry. (1984). The Russian Church under the Soviet Regime 1917-1982. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press. Russian Orthodox Church. «http://www.russian-orthodox-church.org.ru/en.htm»
CATHY J. POTTER
DIONISY
(c. 1440-1508), renowned Russian painter.
Dionisy was the first Russian layman known to have been a religious painter and to have run a large, professional workshop. He was associated with the Moscow School and is considered the most outstanding icon painter of the later fifteenth century in Russia. His biographer, Joseph of Volotsk (1440-1515), called him “the best and most creative artist of all Russian lands.” Certainly this can be considered true for his time period.
Dionisy’s first recorded works were frescoes in the Church of St. Parfuntiev in the Borovsky Monastery, completed around 1470 when he was an assistant to the painter Mitrophanes. In 1481 the Archbishop Vassian of Rostov, a close friend of the Great Prince of Moscow Ivan III, asked Dionisy to paint icons for the iconostasis of the Cathedral of the Dormition, Russia’s main shrine in the Moscow Kremlin. This cathedral had just been finished by Aristotle Fioravanti, a well-known architect and engineer from Bologna, Italy. In this task Dionisy was assisted by three coworkers: Pope Timothy, Yarete, and Kon. Some fragmentary frescoes in this cathedral are also attributed to Dion-isy, painted prior to the icon commission. The Theotokos by Dionisy. © RUSSIAN STATE MUSEUM, ST. PETERSBURG, RUSSIA/LEONID BOGDANOV/SUPERSTOCK
In 1484 Paisi the Elder and Dionisy, with his sons Fyodor and Vladimir, painted icons for the Monastery of Volokolamsk. It is generally agreed that the greatest achievement of Dionisy is the group of frescoes in the Church of the Nativity of the Virgin at St. Ferapont Monastery on the White Lake. He signed and dated this work 1500-1502. He was assisted again by his two sons. The entire fresco program centers on the glorification of the
DISENFRANCHIZED PERSONS
Virgin Mary. However, the usual Pantocrator (Christ enthroned, “Ruler of All”) appears in the dome, but without the severity of earlier representations. In the apse the enthroned Virgin and Child are represented above the Liturgy of the Church Fathers. The nave walls have frescoes illustrating scenes from the Akathist Hymn praising the Virgin. Some unusual scenes of the life and miracles of Christ also appear (Parables of the Prodigal Son, Widow’s Mite, and so forth). Dionisy apparently invented some compositions instead of copying traditional representations.
Stylistically he was very much indebted to the venerated Andrei Rublev who died in 1430. Characteristic of Dionisy’s style is the “de-materialized bouyancy” (Hamilton) of his figures, which appear to be extremely attenuated. In addition, his figures have a certain transparency and delicacy that are distinctive to his approach.
Icon panels attributed to Dionisy include a large icon of St. Peter, the Moscow Metropolitan, St. Alexius, another Moscow Metropolitan, St. Cyril of Byelo-Ozersk, a Crucifixion icon, a Hodegetria icon, and an icon glorifying the Virgin Mary entitled “All Creation Rejoices in Thee.” The Crucifixion icon especially characterizes his style. Christ’s rhythmical, languid body with tiny head (proportions 1:12) dominates the composition while his followers, on a smaller scale, levitate below. A curious addition- perhaps from western influence-are the depictions of the floating personified Church and Synagogue, each accompanied by an angel.
The influence of Dionisy is clearly evident in subsequent sixteenth-century Russian icons and frescoes as well as in manuscript illuminations. See also: CATHEDRAL OF THE DORMITION; RUBLEV, ANDREI; THEOPHANES THE GREEK
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Hamilton, George H. (1990). The Art and Architecture of Russia. London: Penguin Group. Lazarev, Viktor. (1966). Old Russian Murals and Mosaics: From the Eleventh to the Sixteenth Century. London: Phaidon. Simonov, Aleksandr Grigorevich. (1970). The Frescoes of St. Pherapont Monastery. Moscow: Iskusstvo Publishing House.
A. DEAN MCKENZIE
DISENFRANCHIZED PERSONS
Soviet Russia’s first Constitution of 1918 decreed that the bourgeois classes should be disenfranchised. The categories of people marked for disen-franchisement included those who hire labor for the purpose of profit; those who live off unearned income such as interest money or income from property; private traders and middlemen; monks and other clerics of all faiths and denominations; agents of the former tsarist police, gendarmes, prison organs, and security forces; former noblemen; White Army officers; leaders of counterrevolutionary bands; the mentally ill or insane; and persons sentenced by a court for crimes of profit or depravity. However, many more people were vulnerable to the loss of rights. Vladimir Lenin declared that his party would “disenfranchise all citizens who hinder socialist revolution.” In addition, family members of disenfranchised persons shared the fate of their relatives “in those cases where they are materially dependent on the disenfranchised persons.”
Also described as lishentsy, the disenfranchised were not only denied the ability to vote and to be elected to the local governing bodies or soviets: Under Josef Stalin the disenfranchised lost myriad rights and became effective outcasts of the Soviet state. They lost the right to work in state institutions or factories or to serve in the Red Army. They could not obtain a ration card or passport. The disenfranchised could not join a trade union or adopt a child, and they were denied all forms of public assistance, such as a state pension, aid, social insurance, medical care, and housing. Many lishentsy were deported to forced labor camps in the far north and Siberia.
In 1926, the government formalized a procedure that made it possible for some of the disenfranchised to be reinstated their rights. Officially, disenfranchised persons could have their rights restored if they engaged in socially useful labor and demonstrated loyalty to Soviet power. Hundreds of thousands of people flooded Soviet institutions with various appeals for rehabilitation, and some managed to reenter the society that excluded them.
According to statistics maintained by the local soviets, over 2 million people lost their rights, but these figures on the number of people disenfranchised are probably underestimated. In the electoral campaigns of 1926 to 1927 and 1928 to 1929, the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR)
DISHONOR
reported roughly 3 to 4 percent of rural and 7 to 8 percent of the urban residents disenfranchised as a percentage of the voting-age population. Rates of disenfranchisement were higher in those areas with large non-Russian populations. Although portrayed as bourgeois elements, the disenfranchised actually included a wide variety of people, such as gamblers, tax evaders, embezzlers, and ethnic minorities. The poor, the weak, and the elderly were especially vulnerable to disenfranchisement.
Disenfranchisement ended with Stalin’s 1936 Constitution, which extended voting rights to all of the former categories of disenfranchised people except for the mentally ill and those sentenced by a court to deprivation of rights. Nonetheless, “former people,” or those with ties to the old regime, remained vulnerable during subsequent campaigns of Stalinist terror. See also: BOLSHEVISM; CONSTITUTION OF 1918; CONSTITUTION OF 1936; LENIN, VLADIMIR ILICH
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Alexopoulos, Golfo. (2003). Stalin’s Outcasts: Aliens, Citizens, and the Soviet State, 1926-36. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Fitzpatrick, Sheila. (1993). “Ascribing Class: The Construction of Social Identity in Soviet Russia.” Journal of Modern History 65:745-770. Kimberling, Elise. (1982). “Civil Rights and Social Policy in Soviet Russia, 1918-36.” Russian Review 41:24-46.
GOLFO ALEXOPOULOS
DISHONOR See BECHESTIE.
DISSIDENT MOVEMENT
&nbs
p; Individuals and informal groups opposed to Communist Party rule.
This movement comprised an informal, loosely organized conglomeration of individual and group-based dissidents in the decades following the death of Josef Stalin in March 1953 through the end of the Cold War in the late 1980s. They opposed their posttotalitarian regimes, accepting, as punishment, exile, imprisonment, and sometimes even death. The dissidents subjected their fellow citizens to moral triage. By the year 1991, they helped to bring down the regimes in Europe, which, for a number of reasons, had already embarked upon a political modernization and democratization process. Dissidents were less successful in the East and Southeast Asian countries of the communist bloc. It may be ironic that with the reversion to authoritarian practices in such former Soviet republics as the Russian Federation, Belarus, and the Ukraine by the turn of the twenty-first century, dissidents have reappeared in the 2000s as individuals, or, at most, small groups, but not as a movement.
DEFINITIONS
The most precise historical usage dates from the late 1960s. The term “dissident” (in Russian, inakomys-liachii for men or inakomysliachaia for women) was first applied to intellectuals opposing the regime in the Soviet Union. Then, in the late 1970s, it spread to Soviet-dominated East Central and Southeast Europe, which was also known as Eastern Europe. Most broadly, a dissident may be defined as an outspoken political and social noncomformist.