Encyclopedia of Russian History

by James Millar

  Evolving step by step after the German invasion of the Soviet Union, the alliance was a virtual marriage of necessity between the two Western democracies and Stalin’s communist government, impelled by the reality of war and a common threat to all three powers, as well as the necessity of joining military and political forces to achieve victory in the war. The motives and attitudes of alliance members varied over time according to the military situation and the member states’ political aims. To varying degrees, the Big Three shared certain wartime goals in addition to victory: for instance, mutual military assistance, formulation of a common unified wartime military strategy, establishment of a postwar international security organization, and elimination of any future threats from Germany and Japan.

  The decisive stage in the formation of the Grand Alliance occurred after the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, when, prompted by fear that Germany might win the war, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt declared their support for the Soviet Union as “true allies in the name of the peoples of Europe and America.” Great Britain and the Soviet Union signed a mutual aid treaty in July 1941, and Stalin endorsed the peace aims of Roosevelt’s and Churchill’s Atlantic Charter in September. In November the United States solidified the alliance by extending lend-lease assistance to the Soviet Union. Thereafter, a steady stream of agreements and periodic meetings between unofficial representatives, ministers, and heads of state of the three countries formalized the alliance. The most important ministerial meetings took place in London (September-October 1941) and Moscow (October 1941 and October 1943) and at the Big Three summits at Tehran (November 1943-January 1944), Yalta (Crimea) (February 1945), and Potsdam (July-August 1945). During wartime, tensions emerged within the alliance over such vital issues as the adequacy of lend-lease aid, military coordination among Allied armies, the opening of a second front on mainland Europe, the postwar boundaries of the Soviet Union, the political structure of liberated European countries, Soviet participation in the war against Japan, European reconstruction, and the shape and nature of postwar peace. See also: CHINA, RELATIONS WITH; FRANCE, RELATIONS WITH; GREAT BRITAIN, RELATIONS WITH; UNITED STATES, RELATIONS WITH; WORLD WAR II

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Churchill, Winston S. (1950). The Grand Alliance. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Feis, Herbert. (1957). Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin: The War They Waged and the Peace They Sought. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Kimball, Warren F. (1997). Forged in War: Roosevelt, Stalin, Churchill and the Second World War. New York: Morrow. Stoler, Mark A. (2000). Allies and Adversaries: The Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Grand Alliance, and U.S. Strategy in World War II. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

  DAVID M. GLANTZ

  GRAND PRINCE

  GRAND PRINCE

  The title of “grand prince” designated the senior prince of the Rurikid dynasty in Rus principalities from the era of Kievan Rus until 1721.

  In scholarly literature on Kievan Rus the term grand prince is conventionally used to refer to the prince of Kiev. Succession to the position of grand prince was determined by principles associated with the rota system, according to which the position passed laterally from the eldest member of the senior generation of the dynasty to his younger brothers and cousins. When all members of that generation died, those members of the next generation whose fathers had actually held the position of grand prince of Kiev became eligible to inherit the position in order of seniority.

  Despite common usage of the term in scholarly literature, the absence of the title “grand prince” and even the title “prince” in contemporary sources, including chronicles, treaties, charters, diplomatic documents, seals, and coins, suggests that they were rarely used during the Kievan era. The title “grand prince” in tenth-century treaties concluded between the Rus and the Byzantines has been interpreted as a translation from Greek formulas rather than a reflection of official Rus usage. The title also occurs in chronicle accounts of the deaths of Yaroslav the Wise (1054), his son Vsevolod (1093), and Vsevolod’s son Vladimir Monomakh (1125), but this usage is regarded as honorific, borrowed from Byzantine models, and possibly added by later editors.

  “Grand prince” was first used as an official title not for a prince of Kiev, but for Vsevolod “the Big Nest” of Vladimir-Suzdal (ruled 1176-1212). Within their principality it was applied to his sons Konstantin and Yuri as well. Outside of Vladimir-Suzdal, however, recognition of Vsevolod as grand prince, despite his dynastic seniority, was inconsistent, and during the very late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries the title was occasionally attributed to rulers of Kiev.

  The title “grand prince” came into more common and consistent use during the fourteenth century. In addition to its use by the prince of Vladimir, it was also adopted by the princes of Tver, Riazan, and Nizhny Novgorod by the second half of the century. The princes of Moscow, who acquired an exclusive claim to the position of grand prince of Vladimir during this period, joined the title to the phrase “of all Rus” to elevate themselves above the other grand princes. During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, as they absorbed the other Rus principalities into Muscovy and subordinated their princes, they not only monopolized the title “grand prince,” but also began to use other titles conveying the meaning of sovereign (gosudar or gospodar). From 1547, when Ivan IV “the Terrible” was coronated, until 1721, when Peter I “the Great” adopted the title “emperor,” the rulers of Muscovy used “grand prince and tsar” as their official titles. See also: KIEVAN RUS; ROTA SYSTEM; RURIKID DYNASTY

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Poppe, Andrzej. (1989). “Words That Serve the Authority: On the Title of ‘Grand Prince’ in Kievan Rus.” Acta Poloniae Historica 60:159-184.

  JANET MARTIN

  GREAT BRITAIN, RELATIONS WITH

  Russia’s relations with Great Britain have been marked by chronic tension. During the nineteenth century, the British were keenly aware of tsarist Russia’s expansion into Central Asia and of the menace it might hold for lands in the British Commonwealth, particularly India. Twice during that century the British invaded Afghanistan to forestall what they perceived as a Russian threat to occupy the country and use it as a staging area for an attack on India. Prophetic of George Kennan’s “X” telegram of 1946 and the U.S. policy of containment, the British foreign minister Lord Palmerston said in 1853: “The policy and practice of the Russian government has always been to push forward its encroachments as fast and as far as the apathy or want of firmness of other governments would allow it to go, but always to stop and retire when it was met with decided resistance and then to wait for the next favorable opportunity.” That same year the British decided to resist the effort by Tsar Nicholas I (1796-1855) to enhance Russian power and influence over the Black Sea region and the Ottoman Empire. War broke out between Russia and Turkey in October 1853 over a dispute about religious rights in the Holy Land. Great Britain and France joined forces with Turkey and laid siege to Sevastopol, Russia’s naval base in the Crimea, and in September 1855 the Russians were forced to accept defeat. The Treaty of Paris (March 30, 1856),

  GREAT BRITAIN, RELATIONS WITH

  ending the war, was a serious diplomatic setback for Russia, because it guaranteed the integrity of Ottoman Turkey and obliged Russia to surrender southern Bessarabia, at the mouth of the Danube. The Crimean War failed to settle the Russian-British rivalry, but it impressed upon Nicholas’s successor, Alexander II, the need to overcome Russia’s backwardness in order to compete successfully with Britain and the other European powers.

  As a further result of the Crimean War, Austria, which had sided with Great Britain and France, lost Russia’s support in Central European affairs. Russia joined the Triple Entente with Britain and France in 1907, more as a result of the widened gap between it and the two Germanic powers and improved relations with Britain’s ally, Japan, than out of any fondness for Britain and France. When Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated (Ju
ne 28, 1914), Russia was not prepared to see Austria-Hungary defeat Serbia, a Slavic country, and the mobilization systems and interlocking alliances of the great powers undermined all attempts to avert a general war. The general disruption caused by World War I contributed to the revolutions in February and October 1917.

  The Bolshevik Revolution enraged the British. Vladimir Lenin and other communists called on the workers in all countries to overthrow their capitalist oppressors and characterized the war as caused by rivalries between capitalist and imperialist countries like Britain. Lenin withdrew Russia from the war and signed a separate peace treaty with Germany at Brest-Litovsk in 1918. In the aftermath, Soviet support for national liberation movements in the empire, and of anti-British sentiment and activity in the Middle East, was a special source of annoyance to Britain. To avenge the Brest-Litovsk treaty, and alarmed that the Germans might transfer troops to the Western Front, the British, French, and Japanese intervened in Russia’s Civil War, deploying troops to Murmansk, Arkhangelsk, and Vladisvostok, and later funneling material and money to the White armies opposing the Red Army. Winston Churchill (minister of munitions in 1917) made no secret of his antipathy toward Bolshevism, aiming to “strangle the infant in its crib.”

  Soviet policy toward Britain during the 1920s and 1930s was marked by contradictions. On the one hand, Josef Stalin tried to expand his diplomatic and commercial contacts with this archetypical imperialist power, as part of an effort to win recognition as a legitimate regime. On the other hand, he and his colleagues in the Kremlin remained wary of an anti-Soviet capitalist alliance and worked for the eventual demise of the capitalist system. Then, with the League of Nations weakened by the withdrawal of Japan and Germany, the Versailles Peace Treaty openly flaunted by Adolf Hitler’s rearming of Germany, and the world economy crashing in the Great Depression, Stalin began thinking of an alliance with Britain as protection against Germany. When Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain capitulated to Hitler at Munich in 1938, Stalin decided to make a pact with the Nazis and did so the following year. But on June 22, 1941, Hitler renounced the nonaggression treaty and invaded the Soviet Union, thus precipitating the Grand Alliance between Britain, the Soviet Union, and United States. Churchill’s cynical words reveal his true feelings about Stalin and the Slavic country to the east: “If Hitler had invaded Hell, I would find something nice to say about the Devil in the House of Commons.”

  The USSR lost twenty million lives and suffered incalculable destruction during World War II. The conflict ended in the total defeat of the Axis powers, with the Red Army occupying Albania, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Romania, and Hungary. Relations between Britain and the Soviet Union chilled rapidly. Churchill warned of the hazards of growing Soviet domination of Europe (a descending “iron curtain”) in a historic March 5, 1946, speech at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri. The formation of two military alliances, NATO (1949) and the Warsaw Pact (1955). solidified the Cold War, which lasted until 1989.

  In the postwar era, the Soviet Union perceived Britain as an imperialist power in decline, especially after it relinquished most of its colonies. Nevertheless, Britain remained an important power in Soviet eyes because of its nuclear forces, its leadership of the British Commonwealth, and its close ties with the United States. In general, however, Soviet relations with Britain took a back seat to Soviet relations with France (especially during the presidency of Charles de Gaulle) and West Germany (especially during the administration of Willy Brandt). This may have been because Britain, unlike West Germany, was a united country and thus not susceptible to Soviet political pressure exerted through the instrument of a divided people, and because the British Communist Party, because of its small size, had less influence in electoral politics than the French Communist Party. Given its close trade ties with the United States, Britain was less dependent economically than other West European states on

  GREAT NORTHERN WAR

  Soviet and East European trade and energy resources. Britain also fulfilled its obligations as a NATO member, whereas France withdrew in 1966 from the military side of the alliance.

  Even after the collapse of communist regimes throughout Eastern Europe in 1989 and the end of the Soviet Union in December 1991, the Soviet-era division of Europe continued to influence Russia’s foreign policy toward Britain and other West European countries. Although the Warsaw Pact was disbanded, NATO extended its reach, admitting three former Soviet allies (Hungary, Poland, and the Czech republic) in 1999. Some Russian hardliners feared that NATO would embrace all of Russia’s former allies and deprive it of its traditional European buffer zone. Nevertheless, the al Qaeda terrorist attack on New York’s World Trade Center on September 11, 2001 fostered closer ties between Russian president Vladimir Putin and other Western leaders, including British prime minister Tony Blair. New security threats that transcend state borders, such as global networks of suicidal terrorists, chemical and biological warfare, international organized crime, cyberwar, and human trafficking, all underscore the need for greater cooperation among sovereign states. See also: CRIMEAN WAR; GRAND ALLIANCE; NORTH ATLANTIC TREATY ORGANIZATION; WORLD WAR II

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Adams, Ralph James Q. (1993). British Politics and Foreign Policy in the Age of Appeasement, 1935-39. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Blackwell, Michael. (1993). Clinging to Grandeur: British Attitudes and Foreign Policy in the Aftermath of the Second World War. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. Eudin, Xenia Joukoff, and Slusser, Robert. (1967). Soviet Foreign Policy, 1928-1934; Documents and Materials. University Park: Penn State University Press. Keeble, Curtis. (1990). Britain and the Soviet Union, 1917-1989. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Kennan, George F. (1960). Soviet Foreign Policy, 1917-1941. Princeton, NJ: Van Nostrand. Pravda, Alex, and Duncan, Peter J. S., eds. (1990). Soviet-British Relations since the 1970s. New York: Cambridge University Press. Ross, Graham. (1984). The Foreign Office and the Kremlin: British Documents on Anglo-Soviet Relations, 1941-45. New York: Cambridge University Press. Ulam, Adam B. (1968). Expansion and Coexistence: The History of Soviet Foreign Policy, 1917-67. New York: Praeger. Ullman, Richard. (1961-1972). Anglo-Soviet Relations, 1917-1921, 3 vols. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

  JOHANNA GRANVILLE

  GREAT NORTHERN WAR

  The Great Northern War (1700-1721) was the main military conflict of Peter the Great’s reign, ending in a Russian victory over Sweden that made Russia an important European power and expanded Russia’s borders to the Baltic Sea, including the site of St. Petersburg. The war began in the effort of Denmark and Poland-Saxony to wrest control of territories lost to Sweden during the seventeenth century, the period of Swedish military hegemony in northern Europe. When the rulers of those countries offered alliances to Peter in 1698 and 1699, he saw an opportunity to recover Ingria, the small territory at the eastern end of the Gulf of Finland that Russia had lost to Sweden in 1618. Possession of Ingria would once again give Russia access to the Baltic Sea, which seems to have been Peter’s principal aim. To achieve this aim Peter built a European-style army and a navy based in the Baltic. The war also served as a major stimulus to Peter’s reforms.

  The initial phase of the war (1700-1709) was marked by Swedish successes. Peter’s attempt to capture the port of Narva in Swedish-held Estonia ended in catastrophic defeat on November 30, 1700, at the hands of Charles XII, king of Sweden. The defeat meant the destruction of most of Peter’s new army, which he then had to rebuild. Fortunately, Charles chose to move south into Poland, hoping to unseat August II from the throne of Poland and expand Swedish influence. In 1706 Charles succeeded in forcing August II to surrender and leave the war and to recognize Stanislaw Leszczynski, a Swedish puppet, as king of Poland. In 1707 Charles moved east through Poland toward Russia, apparently hoping to both defeat and overthrow Peter and replace him with a more compliant tsar from among the Russian boyars. Charles also managed to convince Ivan Mazepa, the Het-man of the Ukrainian Cossacks, to join him again
st Peter, but in Russia itself there was no move in favor of Charles. Instead, the Russian army retreated before the Swedes, acquiring experience and mounting ever more effective resistance. Charles was forced south into Ukraine during the fall of

  GREAT NORTHERN WAR

  The Battle of Poltava in 1709 marked the turning point in the Great Northern War. © BETTMANN/CORBIS 1708, and Peter’s defeat of the Swedish relief column at Lesnaya (October 9, 1708) left him without additional food and equipment.

  The battle of Poltava (July 8, 1709) proved the turning point of the war. The Swedish army suffered heavy casualties and fled the field southwest toward the Dnieper River. When they reached the banks with the Russians in hot pursuit, they found too few boats to carry them across and had to surrender. Only Charles, his staff, and some of his personal guard escaped into Ottoman territory. Thus the way was clear for Peter to occupy the Baltic provinces and southeast Finland, then a Swedish possession, in 1710.

  By the end of 1710 Peter had achieved his principal war aims, for these conquests secured the approaches to St. Petersburg. In 1711 the outbreak of war with the Turks provided an unwelcome distraction, and he was able to turn his attention to the Northern War only in 1712. His allies now included the restored August II of Poland-Saxony, as well as Denmark and Prussia. Russian troops moved into northern Germany to support these allies, and Sweden’s German possessions, Bremen, Stralsund, and Stettin, fell by 1714. In 1713 Peter managed to occupy all of Finland, which he hoped to use as a bargaining chip in the inevitable peace negotiations. Charles XII, who returned to Sweden from Turkey in 1714, would not give up. Ignoring Sweden’s rapidly deteriorating economic situation, he refused to acknowledge defeat. Peter’s small but decisive naval victory over the Swedish fleet at Hang? peninsula on the Finnish coast in 1714 preserved Russian control over Finland and allowed Peter to harass the Swedish coast. A joint Russo-Danish project to invade Sweden in 1716 came to nothing, and the war continued until 1721 with a series of Russian raids along the Swedish coast. The death of Charles XII in 1718 even prolonged the war, for Great Britain, worried over Russian influence in the Baltic region and northern Germany, began to support Sweden, but it was too late. In 1721 the treaty of Nystad put an end to the war, allowing Russia to keep southeast Finland (the town of Viborg), In-gria, Estonia, and the province of Livonia (today