Encyclopedia of Russian History
Page 169
With mass publishing commonplace in the big cities of Russia by 1900, publishers in those centers continued to increase readerships, some with papers that primarily shocked or entertained. In the first category was Rumor of St. Petersburg; in the second, St. Petersburg Gazette, for which Anton Chekhov wrote short stories pseudonymously. The copeck newspapers of Moscow and St. Petersburg provided broad coverage at little cost for urban readers. Making a selling point of pictures and fiction, by 1870 Adolf Fyodorovich Marks lined up nine thousand paid subscriptions to meet the initial costs of his illustrated magazine, The Cornfield, which was the first of the so-called thin journals, and increased readership to 235,000 by century’s turn. The government itself entered into mass production of its inexpensive newspaper for peasants, Village Messenger, and achieved a press run of 150,000.
High reporting standards set by long-time publisher Alexei Sergeyevich Suvorin, on the other hand, won a large readership for the conservative New Times, the daily he had acquired in 1876. Reputedly the one paper read by members of the Imperial family, New Times merited respect for publishing reporters such as Vasily Vasilevich Rozanov, one of the best practitioners of the cryptic news style typical in modern journalism. Imperial funding to friendly publishers like Suvorin, regardless of need, continued to 1917 through subsidies and subscription purchases. (Other recipients of lesser stature were Russian Will, Contemporary Word, Voice of Moscow, and Morning of Russia.) Another paper receiving help from the government was Russian Banner, the organ of the party of the extreme right wing in Russia after 1905, the Union of the Russian People. On the other end of the political spectrum, satirical publications targeting high officials and Tsar Nicholas II flourished in the years 1905 through 1908, though many were short-lived. One count shows 429 different titles of satirical publications during these years.
One outstanding newspaper, Russian Word of Moscow, became Russia’s largest daily. Credit goes to the publisher of peasant origins, Ivan D. Sytin, who followed the journalistic road urged on him by Chekhov by founding a conservative daily in 1894 and transforming it into a liberal daily outside party or government affiliations. Sytin was no writer himself, but in 1901 he hired an excellent liberal editor, Vlas Doroshevich, who became one of Russia’s most imitated journalists and a prose stylist whom Leo Tolstoy ranked as second only to Chekhov. Doroshevich gained the title king of feuilletonists by dealing with important issues in an engaging, chatty style. As editor of Word, he ordered each reporter to make sense of breaking events by writing as if he were the reader’s informative and entertaining friend. At the same time he barred intrusion by the business office into the newsroom, and kept Sytin to his promise not to interfere in any editorial matters whatsoever. Through these journalistic standards, Doroshevich built Russian Word into the only million-copy daily published in Russia prior to the Revolution of 1917.
Pravda, not Russian Word, however, would be the paper that dominated the new order established by Lenin’s Bolsheviks. In the early twenty-first century, the front section of the building that housed Word abuts the building of Izvestiia, another Bolshevik paper from 1917 that has, in its post-communist incarnation, become one of Russia’s great newspapers. Pravda, the huge Soviet-era daily with a press-run of more than six million, was first and foremost the organ of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the USSR and it perpetuated Lenin’s idea that the press in a socialist society must be a collectivist propagandist, agitator, and organizer. Other newspapers during the Soviet era were bound to follow Pravda’s political line, expressed in the form of long articles and the printing of speeches of high officials, and to promote the achievements of Soviet life. Regional and local papers, little distinguishable
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from Pravda in format, had leeway to cover local news, and specialized papers had scope to introduce somewhat different coverage, as well. In any event, the agitational purpose of Soviet papers meant that Western concepts of independent reporting and confidentiality of sources had no place in journalism in the USSR.
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the new Constitution of the Russian Federation, approved by popular referendum on December 12, 1993, recognized freedom of thought and speech, forbade censorship, and guaranteed “the right to freely seek, obtain, transmit, produce, and disseminate information by any legal method.” The Constitution prohibited the creation of a state ideology that could limit the functioning of the mass media. Within months, in June of 1994, the Congress of Russian Journalists insisted that journalists resist pressure on the reporting of news from any source.
Russian journalists, working to these high standards, have sometimes paid a price for their commitment to objective reporting. Journalist Anna Politkovskaya, for writing critical dispatches from Chechnya for the small, biweekly newspaper New Gazette, was detained for a period by the FSB, the federal security service, and received numerous threats to her personal security. When Gregory Pasco, the naval officer turned journalist, exposed nuclear waste dumping in the Pacific Ocean by the Russian fleet, a court convicted him of treason. Other Russian journalists who engaged in forthright reporting have been killed under mysterious circumstances.
Major Russian newspapers have not managed to establish their own financial independence, because they are owned by wealthy banks and resource companies closely connected to the federal government. Most newspapers outside of Moscow and St. Petersburg (from 95 to 97% of them, according to the Glasnost Foundation) are owned or controlled by governments at the provincial or regional level. One of their tasks is to assist in the reelection of local officials. Overall, only a handful of newspapers in Russia are independent journalistic voices in the early twenty-first century. On the other hand, controls on journalism in Russia are no longer monolithic, as in the Soviet era, and citizens of the Russian Federation had access to varied sources of news reports in the print and electronic media. The Internet newspaper lenta.ru, for instance, offers coverage comparable to a Western paper. See also: BELINSKY, VISSARION GRIGORIEVICH; CENSORSHIP; CHERNYSHEVSKY, NIKOLAI GAVRILOVICH; HERZEN, ALEXANDER IVANOVICH INTELLIGENTSIA; KATKOV, MIKHAIL NIKIFOROVICH; MIKHAILOVSKY, NIKOLAI KONSTANTINOVICH; NEWSPAPERS; SUVORIN, ALEXEI SERGEYEVICH; SYTIN, IVAN DMITRIEVICH; THICK JOURNALS
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Ambler, Effie. (1972). Russian Journalism and Politics: The Career of Aleksei S. Suvorin, 1861-1881. Detroit: Wayne State University Press. McReynolds, Louise. (1991). The News under Russia’s Old Regime: The Development of a Mass Circulation Press. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Norton, Barbara T., and Gheith, Jehanne M., eds. (2001). An Improper Profession: Women, Gender, and Journalism in Late Imperial Russia. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Ruud, Charles A. (1982). Fighting Words: Imperial Censorship and the Russian Press, 1804-1906. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
CHARLES A. RUUD
JUDAIZERS
A diverse group of heretics in Novgorod (c. 1470- 1515), sometimes referred to as the Novgorod-Moscow heretics.
The Judaizing “heresy” arose in Novgorod in the years 1470 and 1471, after a Kievan Jew named Zechariah (Skhary) proselytized the priest Alexei, who in turn enticed the priest Denis and many others, including the archpriest Gavril, into Judaism. Around 1478, Ivan III, who had just subjugated Novgorod, installed them in the chief cathedrals of the Moscow Kremlin. In 1484 or 1485, the influential state secretary and diplomat Fyodor Kurit-syn and the Hungarian “Martin” joined with Alexei and Denis and eventually attracted, among others, Metropolitan Zosima (r. 1490-1494), as well as Ivan III’s daughter-in-law Elena of Moldavia, Meanwhile, Archbishop Gennady of Novgorod (r. 1484-1504) discovered the Novgorod heretics and started a campaign against them, which was later taken up by Joseph of Volotsk. Synods were held in Moscow in 1488 and 1490, leading to an auto-da-f? in Novgorod and to the imprisonment of Denis and several others. Alexei had already died, however, and several others, like the historiographer-copyist Ivan Cherny, fled. Joseph’s faction forced
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Zosima from office and convened another Moscow synod in 1504, which condemned five heretics to death, including the late Kuritsyn’s brother Ivan Volk, a state secretary expert in the law, and Archimandrite Kassian of Novgorod’s Yurev Monastery. Others, like the merchant Semon Klenov, were imprisoned.
The accusations against the “heretics” reveal a hodgepodge of tenets rather than a coherent sect. The dissidents allegedly elevated Old Testament law, denigrated Christian scripture and patristic writings, attacked icons and monasticism, and denied the Trinity and the Incarnation. They dissimulated in the presence of steadfast adherents of Orthodoxy, practiced astrology and black magic, and after the end of the Russian Orthodox year 7000 (1492 C.E.) ridiculed Christian writings that had predicted the Second Coming around that time, and especially the New Testament for describing its own era as the last epoch. They also opposed the condemnation of heretics and demanded that repentant heretics not be punished.
Whatever Jewishness lies behind these accusations may go back to the scriptural, astronomical, and philosophical interchanges between Jews and Orthodox Christians in western Rus during the fifteenth century. Fyodor Kuritsyn’s “Laodician Epistle,” a chain poem, is reminiscent of Jewish wisdom literature. In addition, the dissidents were more open to secular culture and rationalism than most representatives of the official church. Some of the accusations of heresy may have derived from issues pertaining to specific icons, to various Nov-gorodian practices, to the use of Jewish astronomical knowledge, to Moscow’s treatment of conquered Novgorod, and even to church lands. Whatever the case, when a similar outbreak of dissidence occurred in Novgorod and Moscow during the 1550s, it was attributed to Protestant, not Jewish, influences. The phenomenon of dissidence prompted Archbishop Gennady to assemble a coterie of Orthodox and Catholic experts to compile the first complete Slavonic Bible and make other useful translations. See also: IVAN III; JOSEPH OF VOLOTSK, ST.; KURITSYN, FY-ODOR VASILEVICH; NOVGOROD THE GREAT; ORTHODOXY; POSSESSORS AND NON-POSSESSORS
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Klier, John. (1997). “Judaizing without Jews? Moscow-Novgorod, 1470-1504.” In Culture and Identity in Muscovy, 1359-1584, ed. Ann M. Kleimola and Gail D. Lenhoff. Moscow: ITZ-Garant. Tauber, Moishe. (1995). “The Kievan Jew Zacharia and the Astronomical Works of the Judaizers.” In Jews and Slavs, vol. 3, ed. Wolf Moskovich, Shmuel Shvarzbard, and Anatoly Alekseev. Jerusalem: Hebrew University Press.
DAVID M. GOLDFRANK
JULY DAYS OF 1917
Abortive Bolshevik uprising in Petrograd in July 1917.
On July 3-5, 1917, in Petrograd, militant soldiers, sailors, and factory workers staged an abortive uprising. For weeks, local Bolshevik, Anarchist, and Left Socialist Revolutionary organizers had agitated against the Provisional Government and for immediate transfer of power to the Soviets of Workers and Soldiers Deputies. This call to action resonated with workers engaged in bitter labor conflicts and among garrison soldiers facing deployment to the front. July 3 witnessed a flurry of meetings, demonstrations, and strikes. That evening tens of thousands of soldiers and workers, led by left socialist agitators, marched on the city center and insisted that the Soviet assume power. However, the Soviet’s Menshevik and Socialist Revolutionary leaders, already engulfed in a crisis in the government coalition, refused.
The Bolshevik Military Organization and Petersburg Committee pushed for an uprising while the Central Committee wavered. Leon Trotsky, Grigory Zinoviev, and Lev Kamenev initially urged restraint but tentatively endorsed the demonstrations in the early hours of July 4. The party’s leader, Vladimir Lenin, remained absent from Pet-rograd until midday.
On July 4 huge crowds of armed workers, soldiers, and sailors controlled the city’s streets; nearly four hundred people died in scattered fighting and random shootings. Crowds again demanded that unwilling Soviet leaders accept power. Lenin and the Central Committee meanwhile debated the possibility of a successful seizure of power. By evening, the tenor of events had changed dramatically. When the government publicly alleged that Lenin was a German agent, several garrison units turned against the demonstrations. Rumor spread that sol713
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diers were marching on Petrograd to defend the government. By morning on July 5, the inchoate seizure of power collapsed. The government arrested several Bolshevik leaders, on whom it blamed the uprising. Lenin went into hiding, and his party suffered a significant temporary decline.
The July Days resonated throughout Russia- rallies for Soviet power, for instance, took place in Moscow, Saratov, Krasnoyarsk, and other provincial cities-but its chief significance lay in exposing the fragility of the Provisional Government and in accelerating the polarization of Russian politics and society.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Rabinowitch, Alexander. (1968). Prelude to Revolution: The Petrograd Bolsheviks and the July 1917 Uprising. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Wade, Rex A. (2000). The Russian Revolution, 1917. New York: Cambridge University Press.
MICHAEL C. HICKEY
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KABARDIANS
Kabardians are one of the titular nationalities of the north Caucasian Republic of Kabardino-Balkaria in the Russian Federation. The population of the republic, whose capital city is Nalchik, is 790,000, of whom 48 percent are Kabardian. Of these, 55 percent are rural and engaged in agriculture, animal husbandry, and metallurgy, as well as in health services in the well-known spa resorts of the region. Kabardians also live in the adjacent Stavropol Krai, the Krasnodar Krai, and in North Ossetia.
Kabardian is linguistically classified as East Circassian, and the Kabardians belong to the same eth-nolinguistic family as the Adyge and the Cherkess who live in neighboring republics. Policies on nationalities during the Soviet era established these three groups as separate “peoples” and languages, but historical memory and linguistic affinity, as well as post-Soviet ethnic politics, perpetuate notions of ethnic continuity. An important element in this has been the contact, since the break-up of the Soviet Union, with Kabardians living in Turkey, Syria, Israel, Jordan, western Europe, and the United States. These are the descendents of migrants who left for the Ottoman Empire in the late nineteenth century after the Russian conquest of the Caucasus. In the 1990s a number of Kabardian families from the diaspora settled in Nalchik, but integration remains fraught with social and legal problems.
The Kabardians are largely Muslim, though a small Kabardian Russian Orthodox group inhabits the city of Mozdok in Ossetia. Other religious influences, including Greek Orthodox Christianity and indigenous beliefs and rituals, can still be discerned in cultural practices. The Soviet state discouraged Islamic practice and identity but supported cultural nation-building. Kabardian folk-dance groups (i.e., “Kabardinka”) have achieved widespread fame.
In the post-Soviet period, interethnic tensions led, in the early 1990s, to an attempted partition of the republic between the two nationalities, but this did not come to pass. The wars in Abkhasia (between 1992 and 1993) and Chechnya (1994-1997; 1999-2000) affected Kabardian sympathies and politics, causing the Russian state to intermittently infuse the republic with resources to prevent the spreading of conflict. Islamic movements, generally termed “Wahhabism,” are in some evidence, and mosque building and religious instruction and practice are on the increase.
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See also: ABKHAZIANS; ADYGE; CAUCASUS; CHERKESS; CHECHNYA AND CHECHENS; ISLAM; NATIONALITIES POLICIES, SOVIET; NATIONALITIES POLICIES, TSARIST
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Baddeley, John F. (1908). The Russian Conquest of the Caucasus. London: Longmans, Green amp; Co. Borxup, Marie Bennigsen, ed. (1992). The North Caucasus Barrier: The Russian Advance towards the Muslim World. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Gammer, Moshe. (1994). Muslim Resistance to the Tsar: Shamil and the Conquest of Chechnia and Daghestan. London: Frank Cass. Jaimoukha, Amjad. (2001). The Circassians: A Handbook. London: Curzon Press. Jersild, Austin. (200
2). Orientalism and Empire: North Caucasus Mountain Peoples and the Georgian Frontier, 1854-1917. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queens University Press. Matveeva, Anna. (1999). The North Caucasus: Russia’s Fragile Borderland. Great Britain: The Royal Institute of International Affairs.
SETENEY SHAMI
KADETS See CONSTITUTIONAL DEMOCRATIC PARTY.
KAGANOVICH, LAZAR MOYSEYEVICH
(1893-1991), Stalinist; deputy prime minister of the Soviet Union from 1944 to 1957.
Known for his viciousness, Lazar Kaganovich was a staunch Stalinist and a ruthless participant in the purges of the 1930s. Born near Kiev, Ukraine, Kaganovich became active in the Social Democratic Party from 1911 and served as the first secretary of the Ukrainian Communist Party from 1925 to 1928. A brilliant administrator, Kaganovich served on the Presidium of the CPSU from 1930 to 1957 and held numerous important posts, including first secretary in the Moscow Party Organization (1930-1935), key administrator of the Agricultural Department of the Central Committee (1933), people’s commissar of transport (1935), and people’s commissar of heavy industry (1935). In December 1944 he was appointed deputy prime minister of the Soviet Union.