Encyclopedia of Russian History

by James Millar

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Brown, Clarence. (1973). Mandelstam. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Cavanagh, Clare. (1995). Osip Mandelstam and the Modernist Creation of Tradition. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Freidin, Gregory. (1987). A Coat of Many Colors: Osip Mandelstam and His Mythologies of Self-Presentation. Berkeley: University of California Press. Shentalinskii, Vitalii. (1996). Arrested Voices: Resurrecting the Disappeared Writers of the Soviet Regime. New York: Free Press.

  JUDITH E. KALB

  MANIFESTO OF 1763

  Signed by Empress Catherine II, this lengthy, detailed document that invited foreign settlers to Russia, was published in St. Petersburg by the Senate on August 5,1763. The official English version appears in Bartlett, Human Capital (1979). It evolved from several circumstances. In October 1762 the newly crowned empress ordered the Senate to encourage foreign settlement (except Jews) as a means to reinforce “the well-being of Our Empire.” In response, a short manifesto of mid-December 1762 was translated into “all foreign languages” and printed in many foreign newspapers. Both manifestoes crystallized Russian government thinking about immigration in general by considering specific cases and problems amid European popula-tionist discourse over many decades.

  Catherine II championed “populationism” even before she gained the throne, probably from reading German cameralist works that postulated increasing population as an index of state power and prestige. Also, Peter the Great had formulated in a famous decree of 1702 the policy of recruiting skilled Europeans, and Catherine endorsed the Petrine precedent. The notion that Russia was underpopulated went back several centuries, an issue that had become acute with the empire’s recent expansion, and the Romanov dynasty’s rapid Eu-ropeanization. Cessation of the European phases of the Seven Years’ War (1756-1763) also suggested that the German lands might harbor a reservoir of capable individuals and families eager to settle Russia’s huge empty, potentially rich spaces.

  The impatient empress felt pressured to demonstrate her governing abilities by pursuing peaceful policies that her immediate predecessors had barely

  MANSI

  begun. Moreover, she was determined to repair the economic-financial ravages of the war that had just ended. It was one thing to declare a new policy, however, and something else to institute it. In preparing the two manifestoes of 1762-1763 the Senate discovered many partial precedents and several concrete impediments to welcoming masses of immigrants. More than six months elapsed between the issuance of the two manifestoes, during which time governments were consulted and institutions formulated to care for the anticipated newcomers. It was decided that the manifesto should list the specific lands available for settlement and not exclude any groups. Drawing on foreign precedent and the suggestion of Senator Peter Panin, the manifesto of 1763 established a special government office with jurisdiction over new settlers, the Chancery of Guardianship of Foreigners. The first head, Count Grigory Orlov, Catherine’s common- law husband and leader of her seizure of the throne, personified the office’s high status. The new Russian immigration policy offered generous material incentives, promised freedom of religion and exemption from military recruitment, and guaranteed exemption from enserfment and freedom to leave. These provisions governed immigration policy until at least 1804 and for many decades thereafter. The manifesto of 1763 did not specifically exclude Jews, although Elizabeth’s regime banned them as “Killers of Christ,” for Catherine highly regarded their entrepreneurship and unofficially encouraged their entry into New Russia (Ukraine) in 1764.

  European immigrants responded eagerly to the manifesto, some twenty thousand arriving during Catherine’s reign. Germans settling along the Volga were the largest group, especially the Herrnhut (Moravian Brethren) settlement at Sarepta near Saratov and Mennonite settlements in southern Ukraine. Because of the empire’s largely agrarian economy, most settlers were farmers. The expense of the program was large, however, so its cost- effectiveness is debatable. A century later many Volga Germans resettled in the United States, some still decrying Catherine’s allegedly broken promises. See also: CATHERINE II; JEWS; ORLOV, GRIGORY GRIG-ORIEVICH; PALE OF SETTLEMENT

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Bartlett, Roger P. (1979). Human Capital: The Settlement of Foreigners in Russia 1762-1804. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Khodarkovsky, Michael. (2002). Russia’s Steppe Frontier: The Making of a Colonial Empire, 1500-1800. Bloom-ington: Indiana University Press.

  JOHN T. ALEXANDER

  MANSI

  The 8,500 Mansi (1989 census), formerly called Voguls, live predominantly in the Hanti-Mansi Autonomous Region (Okrug), in the swampy basin of the Ob river. Their language belongs to the Ugric branch of the Finno-Ugric family. It has little mutual intelligibility with the related Hanti language, farther northeast, and essentially none with Magyar (Hungarian). Most Mansi have Asian features. One of the most distinctive features of Mansi (and Hanti) culture is an elaborate bear funeral ceremony, honoring the slain beast.

  The Mansi historical homeland straddled the middle Urals, southwest of their present location on the Konda River. They offered spirited resistance to Russian encroachment during the 1400s, highlighted by prince Asyka’s counterattack in 1455. The Russians destroyed the last major Mansi principality, Konda, in 1591. Within one generation, Moscow ignored whatever capitulation treaties had been signed. As settlers poured into the best Mansi agricultural lands, the Mansi were soon reduced to a small hunting and fishing population. By 1750 most were forced to accept the outer trappings of Greek Orthodoxy, while practicing animism in secret. Russian traders reduced people unfamiliar with the notion of money and prices to loan slavery that lasted for generations.

  When the Ostiako-Vogul National Okrug Dis-trict-the present Hanti-Mansi Autonomous Oblast-was created in 1930, the indigenous population was already down to 19 percent of the total population. By 1989, the population had dropped to 1.4 percent, due first to a massive influx of deportees and then to free labor, after discovery of oil during the 1950s. The curse of Arctic oil impacted the natives, who were crudely dispossessed, as well as the fragile ecosystem. Gas torching and oil spills became routine.

  Post-Soviet liberalization enabled the Hanti and Mansi to organize Spasenie Ugry (Salvation of Yu-gria, the land of Ugrians) that gave voice to indigenous and ecological concerns. Thirty-seven percent of the Mansi population (and few young

  MARI EL AND THE MARI

  people) spoke Mansi in the early 1990s. A weekly newspaper, Luima Serikos, had a circulation of 240 in 1995. Novels on Mansi topics by Yuvan Sestalov (b. 1937) have many readers in Russia. See also: FINNS AND KARELIANS; NATIONALITIES POLICIES, SOVIET; NATIONALITIES POLICIES, TSARIST; NORTHERN PEOPLES

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Forsyth, James. (1992). A History of the Peoples of Siberia: Russia’s North Asian Colony, 1581-1990. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Taagepera, Rein. (1999). The Finno-Ugric Republics and the Russian State. London: Hurst.

  REIN TAAGEPERA

  MARI EL AND THE MARI

  The Mari, or Cheremis, are an indigenous people of the European Russian interior; their language and that of the Mordvins compose the Volgaic branch of the Finno-Ugric language family.

  As subjects of the Volga Bolgars and Kazan Tatars, medieval Mari tribes experienced cultural and linguistic influences mainly from their Turkic neighbors. Later on, Slavic contacts became prominent, and the Russian language became the principal source of lexical and syntactic borrowing. The early twentieth-century initiatives to create a single literary language did not come to fruition. Consequently, there are two written standards of Mari: Hill and Meadow. The speakers of various western, or Hill Mari, dialects constitute hardly more than 10 percent of the Mari as a whole.

  In the basin of the Middle Volga, the medieval Mari distribution area stretched from the Volga-Oka confluence to the mouth of the Kazanka River. Under Tatar rule, the Mari were active participants in Kazan’s war efforts. Apparently due to their loyalty and
peripheral location, Mari tribal communities were granted home rule. However, the final struggle between the Kazan Khanate and Moscow brought an intraethnic cleavage: the Hill Mari sided with the Russians, whereas the Meadow Mari remained with the Tatars until the fall of Kazan in 1552.

  The submission to Moscow was painful: The second half of the sixteenth century saw a series of uprisings, known as the Cheremis Wars, which decimated the Meadow Mari in particular. The Russian invasions triggered population movements that also reshaped the Mari settlement area: a part of the Meadow Mari migrated to the Bashkir lands and towards the Urals. For about two hundred years, the resettlement was sustained by land seizures, fugitive peasant migrations, and Chris-tianization policies. The outcome of all this was the formation of the Eastern Mari. In terms of religion, these Mari have largely kept their traditional “paganism,” whereas their Middle Volga coethnics are mostly Orthodox, or in a synchretic way combine animism with Christianity.

  The Mari ethnic awakening took its first steps with the 1905 and 1917 Revolutions. In 1920 the Bolsheviks established the Mari autonomous province. It was elevated to the status of an autonomous republic in 1936-the year of the Stalinist purges of the entire ethnic intelligentsia. Since 1992, the republic has been known as the Republic of Mari El.

  At the time of the 1989 census, 324,000 Mari out of a total of 671,000 were residents of their titular republic. There the Mari constituted 43.2 percent of the inhabitants, whereas Russians made up 47.5 percent. Outside Mari El, the largest Mari populations were found in Bashkortostan (106,000) as well as in Kirov and Sverdlovsk provinces (44,000 and 31,000 respectively). Indicative of linguistic assimilation, 17 percent of the Mari considered Russian their native language during the 1994 microcensus.

  In 2000 Mari El was a home for 759,000 people. Within Russia, it is an agricultural region, poor in natural resources and heavily dependent on federal subsides. Within the republic’s political elite, the Mari have mainly performed secondary roles, and this situation has deteriorated further since the mid-1990s. Because Russians outnumber the Mari, and because the Mari still lag behind in terms of urbanity, education, and ethnic consciousness, Russians dominate the republic’s political life. See also: FINNS AND KARELIANS; NATIONALITIES POLICIES, SOVIET; NATIONALITIES POLICIES, TSARIST.

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Fryer, Paul, and Lallukka, Seppo. (2002). “The Eastern Mari.” «http://www.rusin.fi/eastmari/home.htm». Lallukka, Seppo. (1990). The East Finnic Minorities in the Soviet Union: An Appraisal of the Erosive Trends. (AnMARKET SOCIALISM nales Academiae Scientiarum Fennicae, Ser. B, vol. 252). Helsinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia. Taagepera, Rein. (1999). The Finno-Ugric Republics and the Russian State. London: Hurst.

  SEPPO LALLUKKA

  MARKET SOCIALISM

  The economic doctrine of market socialism holds that central planners can make active and efficient use of “the market” as a mechanism for implementing socially desired goals, which are developed and elaborated through central planning of economic activity. Focusing on the elimination of private property and wealth, and on the central determination and control of all investment and development decisions, it posits that the planned determination and adjustment of producers’ and asset prices could allow markets to implement the desired allocations in a decentralized manner without sacrificing central or social control over outcomes or incomes. Thus egalitarian social outcomes and dynamic economic growth can be achieved simultaneously, without the disruptions and suffering imposed by poorly coordinated private investment decisions resulting in a wasteful business cycle.

  The idea of market socialism arose from the realization that classical socialism, involving the collective provision and distribution of goods and services in natural form, without the social contrivances of property, markets, and prices, was not feasible, since rational collective control of economic activity requires calculations that cannot rely consistently on “natural unit” variables such as energy or labor amounts. It also became clear that the existing computing capabilities were inadequate for deriving a consistent economic plan from a general equilibrium problem. This led, in the Socialist Calculation Debate of the 1930s, to the suggestion (most notably by Oskar Lange) that a Socialist regime, assuming ownership of all means of production, could use markets to find relevant consumers’ prices and valuations while maintaining social and state control over production, income determination, investment, and economic development. Managers would be instructed to minimize costs, while the planning board would adjust producers’ prices to eliminate disequilibria in the markets for final goods. Thus, at a socialist market equilibrium, the classical marginal conditions of static efficiency would be maintained, while the State would ensure equitable distribution of incomes through its allocation of the surplus (profit) from efficient production and investment in socially desirable planned development.

  Another version of market socialism arose as a result of the reform experiences in east-central Europe, particularly the labor-managed economic system of Yugoslavia that developed following Marshal Tito’s break with Josef Stalin in 1950. This gave rise to a large body of literature on the “Illyrian Firm” with decentralized, democratic control of production by workers’ collectives in a market economy subject to substantial macroeco-nomic planning and income redistribution through taxation and subsidies. The economic reforms in Hungary (1968), Poland (1981), China after 1978, and Gorbachev’s Russia (1987-1991) involved varying degrees of decentralization of State Socialism and its administrative command economy, providing partial approximations to the classical market socialist model of Oskar Lange. This experience highlighted the difficulties of planning for and controlling decentralized markets, and revealed the failure of market socialism to provide incentives for managers to follow the rules necessary for economic efficiency. Faced with these circumstances, proponents of market socialism moved beyond state ownership and control of property to various forms of economic democracy and collective property, accepting the necessity of real markets and market prices but maintaining the classical socialist rejection of fully private productive property. The early debates on market socialism are best seen in Friedrich A. von Hayek (1935), while the current state of the debate is presented in Pranab Bardhan and John E. Roemer (1993). See also: PERESTROIKA; PLANNERS’ PREFERENCE; SOCIALISM; STATE ORDERS

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Bardhan, Pranab, and Roemer, John E., eds. (1993). Market Socialism: The Current Debate. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Granick, David. (1975). Enterprise Guidance in Eastern Europe: A Comparison of Four Socialist Economies. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Hayek, Friedrich A. von, ed. (1935). Collectivist Economic Planning: Critical Studies on the Possibilities of Socialism. London: Routledge. Kornai, J?nos. (1992). The Socialist System: The Political Economy of Communism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

  MARRIAGE AND FAMILY LIFE

  Lange, Oskar, and Taylor, Fred M. (1948). On the Economic Theory of Socialism. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

  RICHARD ERICSON

  MARRIAGE AND FAMILY LIFE

  As elsewhere in Europe, marriage and family life in Russia have varied across time and by social group, reflecting the complex interplay of competing ideals, changing patterns of social and economic organization, differing forms of political organization and levels of state intrusiveness, and the effects of cataclysmic events. If in the long run the outcome of this interplay of forces has been a family structure and dynamic that conform essentially with those found in modern European societies, the development of marriage and the family in Russia nevertheless has followed a distinctive path. This development can be divided into three broad periods: the centuries preceding the formation of the Russian Empire during the early eighteenth century, the imperial period (1698-1917), and the period following the Bolshevik Revolution and establishment of the Soviet state in October 1917. While the pace of development and change varied significantly between different social groups during each of these
periods, each period nonetheless was characterized by a distinctive combination of forces that shaped marital and family life and family structures. In Russia’s successive empires, moreover, important differences also often existed between the many ethno-cultural and religious groups included in these empires. The discussion that follows therefore concerns principally the Slavic Christian population.

  PRE-IMPERIAL RUSSIA

  Although only limited sources are available for the reconstruction of marital and family life in medieval Russia, especially for nonelite social groups, there appears to have been broad continuity in the structure and functioning of the family throughout the medieval and early modern periods. Family structures and interpersonal relations within marriage and the family were strongly shaped by the forms of social organization and patterns of economic activity evolved to secure survival in a harsh natural as well as political environment. Hence, constituting the primary unit of production and reproduction, and providing the main source of welfare, personal status, and identity, families in most instances were multigenerational and structured hierarchically, with authority and economic and familial roles distributed within the family on the basis of gender and seniority. While scholars disagree over whether already by 1600 the nuclear family had begun to displace the multi-generational family among the urban population, this development did not affect the patriarchal character or the social and economic functions of either marriage or the family. Reflecting and reinforcing these structures and functions, the marriage of children was arranged by senior family members, with the economic, social, and political interests of the family taking precedence over individual preference. Land and other significant assets, too, generally were considered to belong to the family as a whole, with males enjoying preferential treatment in inheritance. Marriage appears to have been universal among all social groups, with children marrying at a young age, and for married women, childbirth was frequent.