Encyclopedia of Russian History

by James Millar

  The medium by which Gaspirali propagandized his new method, both as pedagogue and social transformer, was the modern press. Beginning in April 1883, he published a dual-language newspaper in both Turkic and Russian entitled The Interpreter (Terc?man in Turkic, Perevodchik in Russian). It appeared without interruption until early 1918, becoming the longest surviving and most influential Turkic periodical within the Russian Empire. In later years, Gaspirali published other newspapers- The World of Women (Alem-i Nisvan), The World of Children (Alem-i Sibyan), and Ha, Ha, Ha! (Kha, Kha, Kha!), a satirical review-and numerous essays and didactic manuals on subjects ranging from Turkic relations with Russia to pedagogy, geography, hygiene, history, and literature.

  Gaspirali’s espousal of substantive social change raised opposition from both Russian and Turkic

  GATCHINA

  sources, but his moderate and reasoned tone won him important allies within local and national official circles, allowing him to continue his work with little interference. The intensification of ethnic controversy by the early twentieth century, however, increasingly marginalized him in relation to advocates of more strident nationalist sentiments and the politicization of Russian-Turkic relations. He died September 11, 1914 after a long illness. See also: CRIMEAN TATARS; ISLAM; JADIDISM

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Fisher, Alan W. (1988). “Ismail Gaspirali, Model Leader for Asia.” In Tatars of the Crimea: Their Struggle for Survival, ed. Edward Allworth. Durham: Duke University Press. Kuttner, Thomas. (1975). “Russian Jadidism and the Islamic World: Ismail Gasprinskii in Cairo-1908. A Call to the Arabs for the Rejuvenation of the Islamic World.” Cahiers du monde russe et sovi?tique 16:383-424. Lazzerini, Edward J. (1988). “Ismail Bey Gasprinskii, the Discourse of Modernism, and the Russians.” In Tatars of the Crimea: Their Struggle for Survival, ed. by Edward Allworth. Durham: Duke University Press. Lazzerini, Edward J. (1992). “Ismail Bey Gasprinskii’s Perevodchik/Terc?man: A Clarion of Modernism.” In Central Asian Monuments, ed. by H.B. Paksoy. Istanbul: Isis Press.

  EDWARD J. LAZZERINI

  GATCHINA

  One of the great imperial country palaces to the south of St. Petersburg, Gatchina was located near the site of a village known since 1499 as Khotchino. In 1708 Peter I granted the land to his beloved sister Natalia Alexeyevna, after whose death in 1717 the property belonged to a series of favored court servitors. In 1765 Catherine II purchased the estate from the family of Prince Alexander Kurakin and presented it to Grigory Orlov. She commissioned the Italian architect Antonio Rinaldi to design for Orlov a lavish palace-castle in a severe and monumental neoclassical style. Rinaldi, who had worked with the Neapolitan court architect Luigi Vanvitelli, created not only a grandiose palace ensemble but also a refined park.

  The palace, begun in 1766 but not completed until 1781, was conceived as a three-story block with square, one-story service wings-designated the Kitchen and Stables-attached to either side of the main structure by curved colonnades. In order to project the appearance of a fortified castle, Rinaldi departed from the usual practice of stuccoed brick and surfaced the building in a type of limestone found along the banks of the nearby Pudost River. The flanking towers of the main palace and its restrained architectural detail further convey the appearance of a forbidding structure. On the interior, however, the palace contained a display of luxurious furnishings and decorative details, including lavish plaster work and superb parquetry designed by Rinaldi. Rinaldi also contributed to the development of the Gatchina park with an obelisk celebrating the victory of the Russian fleet at Chesme. The exact date of the obelisk is unknown, but presumably it was commissioned by Orlov no later than the mid-1770s in honor of his brother Alexei Orlov, general commander of the Russian forces at Chesme.

  Following the death of Orlov in 1783, Catherine bought the estate and presented it to her son and heir to the throne, Paul. He in turn commissioned another Italian architect, Vincenzo Brenna, to expand the flanking wings of the palace. Brenna, with the participation of the brilliant young Russian architect Adrian Zakharov, added another floor to the service wings and enclosed the second level of a colonnade that connected them to the main palace. Unfortunately, these changes lessened the magisterial Roman quality of the main palace structure. Brenna also modified and redecorated a number of the main rooms, although he continued the stylistic patterns created by Rinaldi.

  Grand Duke Paul was particularly fond of the Gatchina estate, whose castle allowed him to indulge his zeal for a military order based, so he thought, on Prussian traditions. The palace became notorious for military drills on the parade grounds in front of its grand facade. With the accession of Paul to the throne after the death of Catherine (November 1796), the Gatchina regime extended throughout much of Russia, with tragic results not only for the emperor’s victims but also for Paul himself. After his assassination, in 1801, the palace reverted to the crown.

  Among the many pavilions of the Gatchina park, the most distinctive is the Priory, the product of another of emperor Paul’s fantasies. After their expulsion from the island of Malta, Paul extended to the Maltese Order protection and refuge, including the design of a small pseudo-medieval palace known as the Priory, intended for the prior

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  GENERAL SECRETARY

  of this monastic military order. In his construction of the Priory, the architect Nikolai Lvov made innovative use of pressed earth panels, a technique that Paul had observed during a trip to France. The relatively isolated location of the Priory made it a place of refuge in 1881-1883 for the new emperor, Alexander III, concerned about security in the wake of his father’s assassination.

  For most of the nineteenth century the palace drifted into obscurity, although it was renovated from 1845 to 1852 by Roman Kuzmin. After the building of a railway through Gatchina in 1853, the town, like nearby Pavlovsk, witnessed the development of dacha communities. Gatchina briefly returned to prominence following the Bolshevik coup on November 7, 1917. The deposed head of the Provisional Government, Alexander Kerensky, attempted to stage a return from Gatchina, but by November 14 these efforts had been thwarted. In the fall of 1919 the army of General Nikolai Yu-denich also occupied Gatchina for a few weeks before the collapse of his offensive on Petrograd.

  After the Civil War, the palace was nationalized as a museum, and in 1923 the town’s name was changed to Trotsk. Following Trotsky’s fall from power, the name was changed again, in 1929, to Krasnogvardeysk. With the liberation of the town from German occupation in January 1944, the imperial name was restored. Notwithstanding the efforts of museum workers to evacuate artistic treasures, the palace ensemble and park suffered catastrophic damage between September 1941 and 1944. Major restoration work did not begin until the 1970s, and in 1985 the first rooms of the palace museum were reopened. See also: ARCHITECTURE

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Brumfield, William Craft. (1993). A History of Russian Architecture. New York: Cambridge University Press. Orloff, Alexander, and Shvidovsky, Dmitri. (1996). St. Petersburg: Architecture of the Tsars. New York: Abbeville Press.

  WILLIAM CRAFT BRUMFIELD

  Elena Stasova. After the Bolsheviks came to power in 1917, Lenin gave the position of secretary in the ruling Communist Party of Russia to Yakov Sverd-lov, a man with a phenomenal memory. After Sverdlov’s death in 1919, three people shared the position of secretary. In 1922, in recognition of the expanding party organization and the complexity of the newly formed USSR, a general secretary was appointed. Josef Stalin, who had several other administrative assignments, became general secretary, and used it to build a power base within the party. Lenin, before his death, realized Stalin had become too powerful and issued a warning in his Last Testament that Stalin be removed. However, skillful use of the patronage powers of the general secretary solidified Stalin’s position. After Stalin’s death in 1953, the position was renamed first secretary of the Communist Party (CPSU) in an attempt to reduce its significance. Nonetheless, Nikita S. Khrushchev (1953-1964) succeede
d in using the position of first secretary to become the single most powerful leader in the USSR. Khrushchev’s successor, Leonid I. Brezhnev (1964-1982) restored the title of general secretary and emerged as the most important political figure in the post-Khrushchev era. Mikhail S. Gorbachev, working as unofficial second secretary under general secretaries Yuri V. Andropov (1982-84) and Konstan-tin U. Chernenko (1984-85), solidified his position as their successor in 1985. Gorbachev subsequently reorganized the presidency in 1988-89, and transferred his attention to that post. After the 1991 coup, Gorbachev resigned as general secretary, one of several steps signaling the end of the CPSU.

  The position of general secretary was the most influential role in leadership for most of the Soviet period. Its role was closely associated with the rise of Stalin and the end of the position was also a signal of the end of the Soviet system. See also: COMMUNIST PARTY OF THE SOVIET UNION; SUCCESSION OF LEADERSHIP, SOVIET

  GENERAL SECRETARY

  Top position in the Communist Party

  Prior to the revolution, Vladimir I. Lenin, the head of the Bolshevik faction, had a secretary,

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Hough, Jerry F. and Fainsod, Merle. (1979). How the Soviet Union Is Governed. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Smith, Gordon B. (1988). Soviet Politics: Continuity and Contradiction. New York: St. Martin’s Press.

  NORMA C. NOONAN

  GENEVA SUMMIT OF 1985

  GENETICISTS

  Adherents of a prescriptive theoretical model for economic development planning in a controversy of the 1920s.

  The geneticists participated in an important theoretical controversy with the teleologists over the nature and potential limits to economic planning. The issue was fundamental and cut to the heart of the very possibility of central planning. Would a central planning agency be constrained by economic laws, such as supply and demand, or by other fixed economic regularities, such as sector proportions, or could planners operate to shape the economic future according to their own preferences?

  The geneticists argued that it was necessary to base economic plans on careful study of economic laws and historical determinants of economic activity. The past and certain general laws constrained any plan outcome. In this view, planning was essentially a form of forecasting. The teleolo-gists argued on the contrary that planners should set their objectives independently of such constraints, that planning could seek to override market forces to achieve maximum results focused on decisive development variables, such as investment. Proponents of the geneticist view included Nikolai Kondratiev and Vladimir Groman and were well disposed to the New Economic Policy (NEP) of the 1920s. The teleologists included Stanislav Stru-milin and Pavel Feldman who were less well disposed toward the NEP and believed it would be possible to force economic development through binding industrial and enterprising targets.

  The argument became quite heated and oversimplified. The degree of freedom of action that the geneticists allowed planners was miniscule, and it appeared that planning would involve little more than filling in plan output cells based almost entirely on historical carryover variables. The teleol-ogists claimed a degree of latitude to planners that was almost total. In the end the geneticists lost, and Soviet planning followed the teleologists’ approach: it consisted of a set of comprehensive targets designed to force both the pace and the character of development. Soviet experience over the long run, however, suggests that the geneticists were closer to the mark concerning constraints on development. See also: ECONOMIC GROWTH, SOVIET; KONDRATIEV, NIKOLAI DMITRIEVICH; NEW ECONOMIC POLICY; TELE-OLOGICAL PLANNING

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Gregory, Paul R., and Stuart, Robert C. (1990). Soviet Economic Structure and Performance, 4th ed. New York: HarperCollins. Millar, James R. (1981). The ABCs of Soviet Socialism. Ur-bana: University of Illinois Press.

  JAMES R. MILLAR

  GENEVA SUMMIT OF 1985

  A summit meeting of U.S. president Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev took place in Geneva, Switzerland, on November 19-20, 1985. It was the first summit meeting of the two men, and indeed of any American and Soviet leaders in six years. Relations between the two countries had become much more tense after the Soviet military intervention in Afghanistan at the end of 1979, and the election a year later of an American president critical of the previous era of d?tente and disposed to mount a sharp challenge, even a crusade, against the leaders of an evil empire. However, by 1985 President Reagan was ready to meet with a new Soviet leader and test the possibility of relaxing tensions.

  Although the Geneva Summit did not lead to any formal agreements, it represented a successful engagement of the two leaders in a renewed dialogue, and marked the first step toward several later summit meetings and a gradual significant change in the relationship of the two countries. Both Reagan and Gorbachev placed a high premium on direct personal encounter and evaluation, and they developed a mutual confidence that helped steer national policies.

  Gorbachev argued strongly at Geneva for a reconsideration of Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI, or Star Wars), but to no avail. He did, however, obtain agreement to a joint statement that the two countries would “not seek to achieve military superiority” (as well as reaffirmation that “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought”). This joint statement was given some prominence in Soviet evaluations of the summit, and was used by Gorbachev in his redefinition of Soviet security requirements. Although disappointed at Reagan’s unyielding stance on SDI, Gorbachev had come to realize that it represented a personal moral commitment by Reagan and was not simply a scheme of the American military-industrial complex.

  GENOA CONFERENCE

  The Geneva summit not only established a personal bond between Reagan and Gorbachev, but for the first time involved Reagan fully in the execution of a strategy for diplomatic reengagement with the Soviet Union, a strategy that Secretary of State George Schultz had been advocating since 1983 despite the opposition of a number of members of the administration. For Gorbachev, the summit signified recognition by the leader of the other superpower. Although it was too early to predict the consequences, in retrospect it became clear that the renewed dialogue at the highest level would in time lead to extraordinary changes, ultimately contributing to the end of the Cold War. See also: COLD WAR; STRATEGIC DEFENSE INITIATIVE; UNITED STATES, RELATIONS WITH

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Garthoff, Raymond L. (1994). The Great Transition: American-Soviet Relations and the End of the Cold War. Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution. Shultz, George P. (1993). Turmoil and Triumph: My Years as Secretary of State. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons.

  RAYMOND L. GARTHOFF

  side pressed for the broadest possible repayment of Russian obligations, but offered little in loans and trade credits. The Soviets pushed for as much Western financed trade and technological assistance as possible, but conditioned limited debt repayment on the recovery of the Soviet economy. Moreover, Foreign Commissar Georgy Chicherin angered the Western representatives by calling for comprehensive disarmament and representation for the colonial peoples in the British and French empires. The impasse between Russia and the West, combined with a similar stalemate between the Anglo-French side and Germany, caused Berlin and Moscow to conclude a political and economic pact, the Rapallo Treaty. Thus, the Genoa Conference ended in failure, though the USSR succeeded in gaining recognition as an integral part of European diplomacy and in bolstering its relationship with Germany. See also: WORLD WAR I

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Fink, Carole. (1984). The Genoa Conference: European Diplomacy, 1921-1922. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. White, Stephen. (1985). The Origins of Detente: The Genoa Conference and Soviet-Western Relations, 1921-1922. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

  TEDDY J. ULDRICKS

  GENOA CONFERENCE

  The Genoa Conference, convened in April and May 1922, was an international diplomatic meeting of twenty-nine states, including
Britain, France, Italy, Germany, Russia, and Japan, but not the United States. It was summoned to resolve several problems in the postwar restructuring of Europe, including the desire to reintegrate Soviet Russia and Weimar Germany into the political and economic life of Europe on terms favorable to the dominant Anglo-French alliance. The Allies wanted Moscow to repay foreign debts incurred by previous Russian governments, compensate foreign owners of property nationalized by the Bolsheviks, and guarantee that revolutionary propaganda would cease throughout their empires.

  The invitation for Soviet participation in the conference facilitated Moscow’s drive for peaceful coexistence with the West and for the substantial foreign trade, technology, loans, and investment required by the New Economic Policy. Both sides failed to achieve their objectives. The Anglo-French

  GENOCIDE

  Genocide is a word coined after World War II to designate a phenomenon that was not new-the extermination, usually by a government, of a group of people for their ethnic, religious, racial, or political belonging. The term implies both a deliberate intent as well as a systematic approach in its implementation. Until international law came to terms with the Holocaust of the Jewish people in Europe, the extermination of such groups was considered as a crime against humanity or as a war crime, since wars tended to provide governments the opportunity to execute their designs. In a resolution adopted in 1946, the U.N. General Assembly declared genocide a crime under international law-its perpetrators to be held accountable for their actions. Two years later, with the full support of the USSR, the same body approved the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide that went into effect soon after.