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Encyclopedia of Russian History

Page 153

by James Millar


  As a counterweight to Karamzin’s history of the state, publisher and journalist Nikolai Polevoi tried to create Istoriia Russkogo Naroda (A History of the Russian People), but he could not cope with the task. Instead of the history of society, his six-volume work, published between 1829 and 1833, was yet another version of the history of state power. He was unable to break away from the convention of organizing the material by ruling periods.

  In the nineteenth century, historiography became professional, and a majority of historical works were now created by scholars at universities. The development of Russian historiography was greatly affected by the philosophy of Georg Hegel and the works of German historians, especially the representatives of the German historical law school. From 1840 through the 1860s, in the works of Konstantin Kavelin, Sergei Soloviev, and Boris Chicherin, the Russian state (judicial) school of historiography was formed. According to the views of the historians of the Russian state school, Russia differed markedly from the West, where social development came from the bottom. In Russia, according to this view, the organizer of society, classes, and the relations between classes was the state. The society was typically weak, unorganized, and movable, which was supported by the geographical distribution of Russian people on the Western European plain, a circumstance that provided for no natural borders. For Kavelin, the state acted as a creator of history.

  The theoretical views of historians of the state school were most fully embodied in the Istoriia

  HISTORIOGRAPHY

  Rossii S Drevneishikh Vremen (History of Russia from Ancient Times), published in twenty-nine volumes between 1851 and 1879. This work was written by the greatest Russian historian, Sergei Mikhailo-vich Soloviev. His conception was characterized by the perception of the inner organic pattern of the historical process, defined by objective, primarily geographical, factors and of the state, as the supreme embodiment of the history of the people. He believed the most important factor of Russian history to be its colonization, and he saw the breakthrough in Russian history to be the reign of Peter the Great, who put Russia on the path to Europeanization.

  As a counterweight to the members of the state school, referred to as Westernizers, who believed that Russia was developing the same way as Western Europe, Slavophiles (among them Ivan and Konstantin Aksakov and Ivan and Petr Kireyevsky) believed that Russia’s development was independent and self-directed, and that Peter the Great’s reforms were artificial. They believed that it was necessary to return to the policies of the seventeenth century, when the tsar had the power of rule and the people had the power of opinion. They were influenced by German Romanticism, especially as expressed in Friedrich Schelling’s philosophy. Slavophiles did not create any significant historical works other than Ivan Belyaev’s Krestiane na Rusi (Peasants in Russia), published in 1860.

  In the second half of the nineteenth century, more and more works of Russian historians concerned the socioeconomic problems, the history of peasants and serfdom, and peasant communes. The eminent historian of this time period was Vasily Osipovich Klyuchevsky, who replaced his teacher, Soloviev, in the Department of Russian History at the Moscow University. Klyuchevsky believed that Russian history developed under the influence of various factors, geographical, economic, social, and political. Klyuchevsky’s great influence is partly explained by the brilliant style of his works, especially his lectures Kurs Russkoii Istorii (A Course of Russian History), first printed in 1880 as lithographs, appearing in five bound volumes between 1904 and 1921. He was known for his deeply psychological approach, and his portraits of Russian historical figures are still unmatched. Klyuchevsky was skeptical of Peter the Great’s reforms, believing them to be chaotically organized and prompted by the needs of the Northern War.

  Klyuchevsky’s school became the leading school in Russian historiography of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The members of this school included Paul Milyukov, Alexander Kizevet-ter, Mikhail Lubavsky, Mikhail Bogoslovsky, and others. Methodological searches were typical for Russian historians of that time: they were affected by ideas of neopositivism (Miliukov), neokantian-ism (Alexander Lappo-Danilevsky), and Marxism (Mikhail Tugan-Baranovksy, Petr Struve). The more popular general work on the history of Russia published in this period was Milyukov’s Ocherki Po Istorii Russkoii Kultury (Essays on the History of Russian Culture), which came out in several parts from 1896 to 1903. Milyukov formed a thesis about the simplicity and slowness of Russia’s historical process, and of the structure of Russian history as having been built from the top down. Standing apart from the supporters of Russia’s independent historical process, Nikolai Pavlov-Silvansky tried to prove its similarity to the Western European experience, postulating the presence of feudalism in medieval Russia in his Feodalizm v Drevnei Rusi (Feudalism in Old Russia) published in 1907.

  For the Moscow school generalizations were typical, but the historians of the St. Petersburg school (Konstantin Bestuzhev-Riumin, Sergei Platonov, Lappo-Danilevsky, and others) paid special attention to publication and the analysis of earlier historical sources.

  In general, Russian historiography of the early twentieth century blossomed early, but this ended abruptly with the October Revolution of 1917. After the Bolsheviks prohibited the teaching of history in schools and dismantled the historical departments in universities, the last citadel of non-Marxist historiography was the Academy of Sciences, but after the so-called Academic Affair and mass repressions against historians from 1929 to 1931, the Marxist-Leninist school of historiography became supreme in the USSR. See also: KARAMZIN, NIKOLAI MIKHAILOVICH KLYUCHEV-SKY, VASILY OSIPOVICH

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Byrnes, Robert F. (1995). V. O. Kliuchevsky: Historian of Russia. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Mazour, Anatole. (1975). Modern Russian Historiography. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. Sanders, Tomas, ed. (1999). Historiography of Imperial Russia. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharp. Vernadsky, George. (1978). Russian Historiography: A History. Belmont, MA: Nordland.

  OLEG BUDNITSKII

  HOLY SYNOD

  HOLY ALLIANCE

  The Holy Alliance is the name given to the treaty signed on September 26, 1815, in Paris by the mon-archs of Austria, Prussia, and Russia. Its maker and prime mover was Tsar Alexander I. In 1815 after the downfall of Napoleon, Alexander was at the height of his powers. A romantic, an idealist, indeed something of an evangelical who had experienced a religious conversion in 1812, Alexander had fallen under the influence of a spiritualist, Baroness Julie von Kr?dener, the wife of one of his diplomats, and the alliance was the product of nightly prayer meetings between the two. The alliance called upon the three powers to deal with one other and with their peoples on the basis of the Christian Gospel so there could emerge a fraternal union of rulers and peoples that would forever rid the earth of the scourge of war. At the insistence of the Austrian chancellor, Klemens von Metternich, Alexander’s ally in the war against Napoleon, “fraternal” was struck out and changed to “a paternal alliance of monarchs over their peoples,” lest the former clause be interpreted by Russia in a manner that would conflict with the language of other treaties under negotiation at this time.

  Two common criticisms of the Holy Alliance are that its members (which in time included most the sovereigns of Europe) forged it into an instrument of oppression against their subjects, and, more important, that Alexander used it as a base to attain hegemony in Europe. Neither criticism is persuasive. The first can be challenged on factual grounds. The aspirations of the overwhelming majority of Europeans in the aftermath of the devastation of the Napoleonic Wars ran to one thing and one thing only: peace. National rights, national liberties, and the like were at this time simply not matters of priority. Moreover, the Holy Alliance powers exercised considerable restraint after 1815, as demonstrated by the extent to which they allowed multiple revolutionary fuses to be lit before they stepped in-in a real sense they allowed revolutions to explode (the Spanish and Italian revolutions of 1820-1821; the revolutions in Fr
ance, Belgium, the Papal States, and Poland in 1830-1831; those in France, Germany, Austria, and Italy in 1848). Similarly, the argument that Alexander was bent on expansion in Europe overlooks the many things he did that pulled the opposite way. With a combination of threats and persuasion, he forced Prussia from the path of aggrandizement in Poland and onto that of cooperation with Austria. He resisted repeated appeals from the smaller German states for an anti-Austrian alliance-a move that he believed would be inimical to the interests of the general peace. Finally, he continually urged Russians to respect Turkish interests in the Balkans and especially in Greece. The fact is that Alexander was a committed moderate statesman who happened to believe what he said, and what he said illustrates a point often forgotten by historians and political sci-entists-that there is a place in the international system for principles and moral values. See also: NAPOLEON I; VIENNA, CONGRESS OF

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Knapton, Ernest John. (1939). The Lady of the Holy Alliance: The Life of Julie de Kr?dener. New York: Columbia University Press. Nicolson, Harold. (1946). The Congress of Vienna: A Study in Allied Unity, 1812-1822. New York: Harcourt, Brace. Schroeder, Paul. (1994). The Transformation of European Politics, 1763-1848. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

  DAVID WETZEL

  HOLY SYNOD

  The governing body of the Russian Orthodox Church from 1721 to 1917.

  On January 25, 1721, Peter the Great formally established an Ecclesiastical College to rule and reform the Russian Orthodox Church. This new governing body was renamed the Most Holy Governing Synod at its first session in February and replaced the former office of Patriarch, which had been in abeyance since the death of the last incumbent, Adrian, in 1700. The creation of the Synod, modeled after the state-controlled synods of the Lutheran church, was an integral part of Peter’s wider program for the reform of Russia’s secular administrative and military machine, a program aimed at improving efficiency, eradicating abuses, and, above all, increasing the Sovereign’s control of revenue.

  The Synod was entrusted with the administration of all church affairs. A governing statute called the Ecclesiastical Regulation was written by Archbishop Feofan Prokopovich, with amendments by Peter. According to the statute, the Synod was to

  HOMELESS CHILDREN

  have twelve clerical members appointed by the tsar, although in practice there were always fewer. Despite the powers granted by the statute, ecclesiastical authority was effectively reduced in 1722 when Peter created the office of over-procurator to oversee the Synod. The over-procurator was to be a lay official whose chief duty was to be the Sovereign’s “eye,” to “ensure that the Synod does its duty.” In theory the Synod was meant to be equal to its secular counterpart, the Senate, but in reality ecclesiastical government had very little autonomy and was firmly subordinate to the tsar. Collegial administration guaranteed the Sovereign firmer control over the church than patriarchal administration had allowed, and removed the challenge to the tsar’s authority that a patriarch had represented.

  Despite the formal recognition of the Synod in 1723 by four Eastern patriarchs, Russian clergy resented the abolition of Russia’s patriarchate, the domination of the Synod by Peter’s handpicked foreign clergy, and the interference in church affairs by the over-procurator. Nonetheless, attempts to restore the patriarchate after Peter’s death in 1725 failed. Instead, the office of over-procurator (in abeyance from 1726) was restored in 1741, gaining exclusive access to the tsar in 1803. From 1824 the over-procurator exercised effective authority over all aspects of church administration and held ministerial rank. The best-known incumbent, Kon-stantin Petrovich Pobedonostsev (1880-1905), was able to wield far-reaching influence during his procuratorship.

  After the election of the First Imperial Duma in 1905, deputies began to voice concern over the Synod’s subservience to the procurator and tsar, but only after Nicholas II’s abdication could steps be taken to restore the autonomy of the church. In July 1917 the Provisional Government abolished the post of over-procurator and invited the Synod to call elections to a council to decide the future of church administration. In November 1917 a council of 564 delegates reestablished the patriarchate and elected Metropolitan Tikhon of Moscow as Patriarch of All Russia, thus bringing to an end Peter the Great’s system of Synodal governance. See also: ORTHODOXY; PETER I; POBEDONOSTSEV, KON-STANTIN

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Cracraft, James. (1971). The Church Reform of Peter the Great. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Freeze, Gregory. (1983). The Parish Clergy in the Nineteenth Century. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Hughes, Lindsey. (1998). Russia in the Age of Peter the Great. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

  DEBRA A. COULTER

  HOMELESS CHILDREN

  Homeless children, or besprizorniki, constituted one of the most vexing social problems facing the new Soviet state, caused by cumulative effects of World War I (1914-1917), the Russian Revolution and Civil War (1918-1921), and cold, hunger, and disease, which claimed the lives of millions of parents. The catastrophic famine of 1921 and 1922 produced millions of additional orphaned and abandoned children. Divorce, single motherhood, unemployment, and economic dislocation pushed surviving children out on the streets. By 1922, historian Alan Ball estimates, there were seven million homeless children in Russia.

  These homeless children represented a profound crisis for the Bolshevik government. They roamed the country alone and in groups, often following rail arteries to Moscow, Rostov-on-the-Don, Samara, Saratov, Tashkent, and other cities. Seemingly omnipresent waifs begged for food in train stations and other public places. Most resorted to stealing, petty crimes, and prostitution. The state sent children to special homes (detdoma), long-term boarding institutions run by the Commissariat of Enlightenment (Narkompros). Initially intended to offer programs capable of instilling in the waifs an instinct for the collective and preparing them to join the ranks of the proletariat, these children’s homes were overwhelmed by the sheer volume of homeless children. Many children’s homes lacked food and heat and were rife with dysentery, scurvy, and syphilis. Countless children escaped from these institutions, preferring to take their chances on the streets. Labor communes, most notably the secret police’s Dzerzhinsky Labor Commune run by Anton Makarenko, sought to rehabilitate young delinquents and met with mixed success.

  Convinced that socialized child rearing was an impossible ideal, the state, beginning in 1925, shifted its focus back to the family as the basic unit for social structure. The 1926 Family Code emphasized the family as a unit for effecting social

  HRUSHEVSKY, MIKHAIL SERGEYEVICH

  change rather than the state; thousands of bespri-zorniki left state-funded children’s homes and were adopted. By 1927 besprizorniki were considered less a pedagogical than a social problem stemming from the breakdown of the Soviet family. Increasingly, the state relied on punishment rather than pedagogy to clear the streets of besprizorniki, ordering militia sweeps of the children in the 1930s. The problem of homeless children did not go away; collectivization and the famine of 1932 and 1933 produced another wave of homeless children. Most of these besprizorniki were placed in children’s homes and special schools for young delinquents. The number of homeless children continued to increase during times of severe social strain, notably World War II and the collapse of the Soviet Union, though not on the scale that the country witnessed in the 1920s. See also: FAMILY CODE OF 1926

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Ball, Alan M. (1994). And Now My Soul Is Hardened: Abandoned Children in Soviet Russia, 1918-1930. Berkeley: University of California Press. Goldman, Wendy. (1993). Women, the State and Revolution: Soviet Family Policy and Social Life, 1917-1936. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Stevens, Jennie. (1982). “Children of the Revolution: Soviet Russia’s Homeless Children (Besprizorniki) in the 1920s.” Russian History 9(2-3):242-264. Stolee, Margaret Kay. (1988). “Homeless Children in the USSR, 1917-1957.” Soviet Studies 40:64-83.

  JACQUELINE M.
OLICH

  HONOR AND DISHONOR See BESCHESTIE. founded new scholarly journals, and established his school of Ukrainian history. After the 1905 Revolution Hrushevsky lived in St. Petersburg and Kiev, where he became increasingly involved in liberal politics. In Kiev he founded the Ukrainian Scientific Society (1907), as well as a cluster of journals and newspapers. Arrested and exiled to eastern Russia during World War I, Hrushevsky emerged after the February Revolution as a recognized leader of moderate Ukrainian nationalists. In March 1917 he was elected president of the Central Rada (Council), which eventually developed into a Ukrainian parliament. During the Revolution Hrushevsky moved to the left and joined the Ukrainian Party of Socialist Revolutionaries, which had a majority in the Rada. On the last day of its existence, April 29, 1918, the Rada elected Hrushevsky president of the Ukrainian People’s Republic.

 

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