Encyclopedia of Russian History

by James Millar

  KAZAKHSTAN AND KAZAKHS

  A woman lights candles during a Russian Orthodox ceremony in northern Kazakhstan, a region heavily populated by ethnic Russians. © AFP/CORBIS

  By the mid-1600s the Kazakhs were again under pressure, this time from the Jungarian (Dzhun-garian) Oriots or Kalmyks who attacked westward from Mongolia. Divided as they were, the Kazakhs at first had difficulty in opposing the invaders, and the conflict dragged on into the 1700s. Although the Kazakhs then did unite briefly to win some major victories, the menace only lifted after the Manchus decisively vanquished the Oriot-Kalmyks in 1758. In the interim, the Kazakhs had drifted gradually but steadily into the orbit of Imperial Russia. Consequently, some leaders began seeking support from the Russians in their struggles. Thus the khans and other leaders of the Small Horde in 1731, of the Middle Horde in 1740, and of part of the Great Horde in 1742, agreed to accept Russian suzerainty. But matters were not that straightforward, and while Russian scholars generally regard such treaties as evidence of the Kazakhs’ “voluntary union” with their empire, subsequent Kazakh historians disagree. They argue that this was a mere tactic in a larger game of playing Russia off against Manchu China, maintain that the khans lacked the requisite authority to make such concessions, and as evidence point to the frequent cases of resistance to and uprisings against the Russian colonizers. A textbook appearing in the new Republic of Kazakhstan charges that the tsarist authorities even encouraged the Oriot-Kalmyk attacks as a means of driving the Kazakhs into Russian arms. So, as elsewhere, history has become a major weapon in modern Kazakhstan’s bitter ethnic and nationalist debates.

  From 1730 to 1840 St. Petersburg’s rule was exercised through the governor-general of Orenburg. As Russian expansion southward became progressively more organized and effective, the authorities were able to abolish the traditional Kazakh

  KAZAKHSTAN AND KAZAKHS

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  TURKMENISTAN

  TAJIKISTAN

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  ^7J Kazakhstan, 1992 © MARYLAND CARTOGRAPHICS. REPRINTED WITH PERMISSION forms of leadership. They deposed the khan of the Middle Horde in 1822, that of the Small Horde in 1824, and that of the Large Horde in 1848. Meanwhile, they also created the new Bukei (Bukej) or Inner Horde in 1812. Then Bukei, younger son of the Small Horde’s Khan Nurali, received permission to move some 1,600 tents into lands between the Urals and Volga, which had been abandoned by the western Oriot-Kalmyks, who had fled to China. These Kazakhs eventually settled in the Province of Astrakhan and by the mid-1800s had some 150,000 tents. At this time the Large Horde meanwhile had some 100,000 tents, the Small Horde 800,000, and the Middle Horde 406,000 tents.

  In the mid-1800s St. Petersburg organized the governor-generalships of the Steppe and of Turkestan to manage the Kazakhs and Central Asians to the south. During the late 1800s a growing wave of Russian and other Slavic (largely Ukrainian) peasant immigrants flowed into the region’s northern sections and began settling on Kazakh lands. The resulting discontent of the Kazakhs and other Central Asians boiled over in the great revolt of 1916 and reemerged again during the civil strife between 1917 and 1920.

  During that conflict the intellectuals of the Alash Orda sought to establish a Western-style Kazakh state. Many eventually supported the Communists in the creation of the Kirghiz (Kazakh) Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (ASSR) as part of Soviet Russia in 1920. Reorganized as the Kazakh ASSR in 1925, it became a constituent republic under Josef

  731

  KAZAN

  Stalin in 1936 and remained so until December 1991. But despite its “democratic” constitution, during the 1930s Kazakhstan underwent the horrors of collectivization, of the forced settlement of the nomadic stockbreeders, of the resulting famine and epidemics, and of deportations and executions. Meanwhile, the purges decimated the Kazakh intelligentsia and political leadership. The result was a reported 2.2 million Kazakh deaths (a 49% loss), so that there were fewer Kazakhs in the USSR in 1939 than in 1926. Equally disturbing, by the decade’s end the republic was being flooded by deportees from elsewhere, converted into a basic element of Stalin’s Gulag Archipelago, and from 1949 into a testing ground for nuclear weapons as well.

  Although a new Soviet Kazakh educated elite slowly emerged after 1938, their position in their own nominal state was threatened further by the new influx of hundreds of thousands of Russian, Ukrainian, and German immigrants during Nikita Khrushchev’s Virgin Lands agricultural program in the 1950s. The mixed results of this effort, the problems raised by nuclear testing on the republic’s territory, and the fact that by 1979 the Kazakhs reportedly were outnumbered by Russians (41% to 36%), further fueled their ethnic resentments. These exploded in riots that gripped the capital of Alma-Ata in December 1986 when Din-mukhammed Kunayev, the ethnic Kazakh longtime head of the republican Communist Party, was replaced by a Russian in December 1986. But in April 1990 Nursultan Nazarbayev, another ethnic Kazakh, assumed the post of Party chief. With the collapse of the USSR in 1991, he charted the course that established the Republic of Kazakhstan and brought it into the new CIS. Emerging as virtual president-for-life from the votes of 1995 and 1999, and backed by his own and his wife’s families and elements of his Large Horde clan, he has preserved the unity of his ethnically, religiously, and culturally diverse state, which awaits the development of the Caspian oil reserves as a means of alleviating the crushing poverty that afflicts many of its citizens, Kazakhs and others alike. See also: CENTRAL ASIA; ISLAM; KUNAYEV, DIN-MUKHAMMED AKHMEDOVICH; NATIONALITIES POLICIES, SOVIET; NATIONALITIES POLICIES, TSARIST; NAZARBAYEV, NURSULTAN ABISHEVICH

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Akiner, Shirin. (1986). Islamic Peoples of the Soviet Union, 2nd ed. London: KPI. Bremmer, Ian, and Taras, Ray, eds. (1993). Nations and Politics in the Soviet Successor States. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Grousset, Rene. (1970). The Empire of the Steppes: A History of Central Asia. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University. Hildinger, Erik. (1997). Warriors of the Steppe: A Military History of Central Asia, 500 BC-1700 AD. New York: Sarpedon. Krader, Lawrence. (1963). Peoples of Central Asia. Bloom-ington: Indiana University Press. Olcott, Martha Brill. (1995). The Kazakhs, 2nd ed. Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press. Olcott, Martha Brill. (2002). Kazakhstan: Unfulfilled Promise. Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Wixman, Ronald. (1984). The Peoples of the USSR: An Ethnographic Handbook. London: Macmillan.

  DAVID R. JONES

  KAZAN

  Kazan is the capital and major historic, cultural, and economic center of the autonomous republic of Tatarstan, Russia. It is located on the left bank of the Volga River where the Kazanka River joins it, eighty-five kilometers north of the Kama tributary. In 2002 it had an estimated population of 1,105,300.

  The traditional understanding is that the name comes from the Turkic and Volga Tatar word qazan, meaning “kettle.” A rival theory has been proposed that it derives from the Chuvash xusan/ xosan, meaning “bend” or “hook,” referring to the bend of
the Volga near which Kazan is located. The Bulgars founded Iski Kazan in the thirteenth century as one of the successors to their state, which had been destroyed by the Mongols. At that time, it was located forty-five kilometers up the Kazanka. Around the year 1400, it was moved to its present location. Ulu Muhammed, who had been ousted from the Qipchaq Khanate in 1437, defeated the last ruler of the principality of Kazan to establish a khanate by 1445. It was an important trading center, with an annual fair being held nearby.

  During the first half of the sixteenth century, the khanate of Kazan was involved in a three-cornered struggle with Muscovy and the Crimean khanate for influence in the western steppe area. Ivan IV conquered the city in 1552, ending the

  KELLOGG-BRIAND PACT

  Khanate of Kazan. Muscovy then used Kazan as an advanced staging area for further expansion down the Volga. In 1555 the archepiscopal see of Kazan was established.

  From the late sixteenth century on, Kazan was the gateway to Siberia, as people and supplies were funneled through the town en route to the east, and furs and minerals were brought west. It was made capital of the Volga region in 1708, and Peter I had the ships for his Persian campaign built there. The Slavonic-Latin Academy, which became the Kazan Theological Academy, was founded in 1723 but abolished after 1917. From 1723 to 1726 the Cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul was built in Kazan. The first lay provincial secondary school was founded there in 1758.

  Kazan was sacked by Emelian Pugachev in 1774, but Catherine II rebuilt the city on a gridiron design and named it a provincial capital in 1781. During the eighteenth century, light industry and food production developed, as well as a theater, which led to a number of similar theaters being founded in the nineteenth century. In 1804 the University of Kazan was founded, which helped to establish the city as an intellectual center. The first provincial newspaper was published there in 1811. Kazan was also considered a major manufacturing center, the products of which included prepared furs, leather manufacture, shoes, and soap. In the 1930s heavy industry developed, such as aircraft production and transportation and agricultural machinery. More recent industries include the production of chemicals, electrical engineering, and precision equipment, as well as oil refining. In 1945 the Kazan branch of the Academy of Sciences was established. Presently, Kazan has a philharmonic society, a museum of Tatar culture, and a theater devoted to the production of Tatar operas and ballets. See also: MUSCOVY; TATARSTAN AND TATARS

  KELLOGG-BRIAND PACT

  The Kellogg-Briand Pact, also known as the Pact of Paris, was the creation of French Foreign Minister Aristide Briand and U.S. Secretary of State Frank B. Kellogg in 1928. Parties to this treaty pledged themselves to “renounce the resort to war as an instrument of national policy in their mutual relations” and to resolve all international disputes by “peaceful means alone.” This agreement was signed in Paris on August 27, 1928, by France, the United States, and thirteen other powers. Soon it was endorsed by almost every country in the world, including the Soviet Union, Britain, Germany, and Japan. The treaty contained no enforcement mechanism and was, therefore, merely a pious promise to avoid war.

  Soviet ratification of the pact on August 29, 1928, was part of a “peace offensive” spearheaded by Deputy Commissar of Foreign Affairs Maxim M. Litvinov. Beyond attempts to improve bilateral relations with the great powers and Russia’s smaller neighbors, this campaign included efforts to promote broad measures of disarmament and to involve the USSR in the multilateral diplomacy of Europe. The pact was also supplemented by the Litvinov Protocol, signed on February 9, 1929, by the USSR, Poland, Rumania, and Latvia (and subsequently by Lithuania, Iran, and Turkey), pledging the peaceful resolution of all disputes among the signatories. Soviet participation in the pact and the protocol represented a victory for Litvinov’s policy of constructive engagement with the dominant Western powers and a defeat for his nominal chief, Foreign Commissar Georgy Chicherin. It also marked a temporary victory for Nikolai Bukharin and other moderate Politburo members who supported the New Economic Policy and advocated security through peace and cooperation with the great powers.

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Bukharaev, Ravil. (1995). Kazan: The Enchanted Capital. London: Flint River. Keenan, Edward L. (1979-1980). “Kazan-The Bend.” Harvard Ukrainian Studies 3/4: 484-96. Matthews, David J., and Ravil Bukharaev, eds. (2000). Historical Anthology of Kazan Tatar Verse: Voices of Eternity. Richmond, England: Curzon Press. Pelenski, Jaroslaw. (1974). Russia and Kazan: Conquest and Imperial Ideology (1438-1560s). The Hague: Mouton.

  DONALD OSTROWSKI

  See also: BUKHARIN, NIKOLAI IVANOVICH; LITVINOV, MAXIM MAXIMOVICH; NEW ECONOMIC POLICY

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Ferrell, Robert H. (1952). Peace in Their Time: The Origins of the Kellogg-Brian Pact. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Jacobson, Jon. (1994). When the Soviet Union Entered World Politics. Berkeley: University of California Press.

  TEDDY J. ULDRICKS

  KERENSKY, ALEXANDER FYODOROVICH

  KERENSKY, ALEXANDER FYODOROVICH

  (1881-1970), leading figure of the Provisional Government in 1917.

  Alexander Kerensky was born on May 4, 1881, in Simbirsk, Russia. He studied history and law at St. Petersburg University. In 1906 he became a defense lawyer in political cases and soon became a well-known public figure. In 1912, Kerensky was elected to the Fourth Duma. Although he described himself as a socialist and associated with the Socialist Revolutionary Party (SRs), he was the mildest of socialists, his views constituting a blend of moderate socialism with left-wing liberalism.

  During the February Revolution he seemed to be everywhere-giving a speech here, haranguing soldiers there, scurrying in and out of meetings, issuing orders, dramatically arresting members of the old regime and equally dramatically rescuing others from mob violence. A young man of thirty-five, he emerged as the popular hero of the February Revolution and the new government, the object of public adulation; his face adorned postcards and store windows. When the Petrograd Soviet was formed on March 27, he was elected vice-chairman. He was the only Socialist to enter the Provisional Government when it was formed on March 2 and more and more became its key figure, serving in succession as minister of justice (March-May), minister of war (May-September), and minister-president (July-November), and adding the title of commander in chief of the army in September. Indeed, more than any other political figure of 1917 he identified completely with the Provisional Government and in turn came to be identified with it, both in 1917 and after.

  In May and June 1917 he became the government’s focal point for preparing a major military

  Prime Minister Alexander Kerensky salutes while inspecting his troops in 1917. © HULTON-DEUTSCH COLLECTION/CORBIS

  K.G.B.

  offensive, taking long tours of the front to stimulate fighting enthusiasm among soldiers. Despite the unpopularity and disastrous outcome of the offensive, Kerensky’s personal reputation survived, and he became minister-president of the new, second coalition government. Moreover, as other leading political figures left the government, Kerensky became more and more dominant within it. Even as Kerensky achieved complete leadership of the government, however, both its and his own popularity eroded as the government failed to solve problems and to fulfill popular aspirations (despite its substantial achievements). The Kornilov Affair in September, a conflict growing out of the complex relation between Kerensky and General Lavr Kornilov that many saw as a counterrevolutionary attempt, earned Kerensky the enmity of both left and right and completed the destruction of his reputation. Crowds that earlier had cheered him as the hero of the revolution now cursed him Kerensky remained head of the government after the Kornilov Affair, but his popularity was gone, and his personal authority swiftly declined. His fateful decision was to move against the Bolsheviks on the eve of the Second Congress of Soviets; this sparked the October Revolution, which swept him from power.

  After the Bolshevik Revolution, Kerensky spent several weeks underground, trying u
nsuccessfully to organize an anti-Bolshevik movement. In May 1918, he made his way out of the country and lived the rest of his life in exile, where he was active in emigr? politics, delivered lectures, and wrote several accounts of the revolution and his role in it. He died on June 11, 1970, in the United States.

  Kerensky was both the heroic and the tragic figure of the Russian Revolution of 1917. Thin, pale, with flashing eyes, theatrical gestures, and vivid verbal imagery, he was a dramatic and mesmerizing speaker with an incredible ability to move his listeners. Huge crowds turned out to hear him. As the year wore on, however, Kerensky’s oratory could not compensate for the government’s failures. The same speech-making that had made him a hero in the spring earned him scorn and a reputation as an empty babbler by autumn’s end. The new paper currencies issued by the Provisional Government under his leadership were popularly called “Kerenki,” and because inflation quickly made them worthless, his name thus took on something of that meaning as well. It was a tragic fall for the hero of February.

  Alexander Kerensky, leader of the 1917 Provisional Government. THE ART ARCHIVE/MUS?E DES 2 GUERRES MONDIALES PARIS/DAGLI ORTI See also: FEBRUARY REVOLUTION; KORNILOV AFFAIR; OCTOBER REVOLUTION; PROVISIONAL GOVERNMENT

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Abraham, Richard. (1987). Alexander Kerensky: The First Love of the Revolution. New York: Columbia University Press. Kerensky, Alexander. (1965). Russia and History’s Turning Point. New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce. Kolonitskii, Boris I. (1997). “Kerensky.” In Critical Companion to the Russian Revolution, 1914-1921. Bloom-ington: Indiana University Press.

  REX A. WADE

  K.G.B. See STATE SECURITY, ORGANS OF.

  KHABAROV, YEROFEI PAVLOVICH

  KHABAROV, YEROFEI PAVLOVICH

  (c. 1610-1667), adventurer, explorer of Siberia.