by James Millar
Under the impact of growing political repression, Mikhailovsky evolved from liberal critique of the government during the 1860s through shortlived hopes for a pan-Slav liberation movement (1875-1876) to clandestine cooperation with the People’s Will Party, thus broadening the purely social goals of the original populism to embrace a political revolution (while at the same time distancing himself from the morally unscrupulous figures connected to populism, such as Sergei Nechayev). He authored articles for underground publications, and after the assassination of Alexander II (1881) took part in compiling the address of the People’s Will’s Executive Committee to Alexander III, an attempt to position the organization as a negotiating
MIKHALKOV, NIKITA SERGEYEVICH
partner of the authorities. In the subsequent crackdown on the movement, Mikhailovsky was banned from St. Petersburg (1882), and Otechestvennye za-piski was shut down (1884). Only in 1884 was he able to return to an editorial position by informally taking over the journal Russkoye bogatstvo (Russian Wealth). He then emerged as an influential critic of the increasingly popular Marxism, which he saw as converging with top-down industrialization policies of the government in its disdain for and exploitative approach to the peasantry. Simultaneously, he polemicized against Tolstovian anarchism and anti-intellectualism. In spite of the ideological hegemony of Marxists at the turn of the century, Mikhailovsky’s writings were highly popular among the democratic intelligentsia and provided the conceptual basis for the neo-populist revival, represented by the Socialist Revolutionary and the People’s Socialist parties in the 1905 and 1917 revolutions. Moreover, his work resonates with subsequent Western studies in the peasant-centered “moral economy” of peripheral countries. See also: INTELLIGENTSIA; JOURNALISM; MARXISM; NEKRASOV, NIKOLAI ALEXEYEVICH; POPULISM
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Billington, J.H. (1958). Mikhailovsky and Russian Populism. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Edie, James M.; Scanlan, James P.; and Zeldin, M.B., eds. (1965). Russian Philosophy, vol. 2. Chicago, IL: Quadrangle Books. Ivanov-Razumnik, R.I. (1997). Istoria russkoi obshch-estvennoi mysli. Vol. 2. Moscow: Respublika, Terra. pp. 228-302. Ulam, Adam B. (1977). In the Name of the People: Prophets and Conspirators in Prerevolutionary Russia. New York: Putnam. Venturi, Franco. (2001). Roots of Revolution, revised ed., tr. Francis Haskell. London: Phoenix Press. Walicki, A. (1969). The Controversy Over Capitalism: Studies in the Social Philosophy of the Russian Populists. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
DMITRI GLINSKI
MIKHALKOV, NIKITA SERGEYEVICH
(b. 1945), film director, actor.
Nikita Mikhalkov is the best-known Russian director of the late-Soviet and post-Soviet period. Mikhalkov was born in Moscow to a family of accomplished painters, writers, and arts administrators. His father was chief of the Soviet Writers’ Union, and his brother, Andrei Mikhalkov-Konchalovsky, is also a successful director. Mikhal-kov first came to national and international attention with his film Slave of Love (1976), which depicts the last days of prerevolutionary popular filmmaking. He made several more films about late-nineteenth-century elite culture, including Unfinished Piece for Player Piano (1977), Oblomov (1980), and Dark Eyes (1987). Five Evenings (1978) is a beautifully photographed, finely etched treatment of love and loss set just after World War II. Urga (aka Close to Eden, 1992) is a powerful portrait of economic transformation and cultural encounter on the Russian-Mongolian border. Anna, 6-18 (1993) is a series of interviews with the director’s daughter, which highlights the difficulties of growing up in late-communist society. Burnt by the Sun (1994), which won a U.S. Academy Award for best foreign language film, treats the complicated personal politics of the Stalinist period. The Barber of Siberia (1999) is a sprawling romantic epic with Russians and Americans in Siberia-an expensive multinational production which failed to win an audience. All of Mikhalkov’s films are visually rich; he has a deft touch for lightening his dramas with comedy, and his characterizations can be subtle and complex.
Mikhalkov has also had a successful career as an actor. Physically imposing, he often plays characters who combine authority and power with poignancy or sentimentality. During the late 1990s, Mikhalkov became the president of the Russian Culture Fund and the chair of the Union of Russian Filmmakers. See also: MOTION PICTURES
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Beumers, Bergit. (2000). Burnt By the Sun. London: I.B. Tauris. Horton, Andrew, and Brashinsky, Michael. (1992). The Zero Hour. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Lawton, Anna. (1992). Kinoglasnost: Soviet Cinema in Our Time. New York: Cambridge University Press. Shalin, Dmitri N., ed. Russian Culture at the Crossroads: Paradoxes of Postcommunist Consciousness. Boulder, CO: Westview.
JOAN NEUBERGER
MILITARY ART
MIKOYAN, ANASTAS IVANOVICH
(1895-1978), Communist Party leader and government official.
Anastas Ivanovich Mikoyan occupied the summits of Soviet political and governmental life for more than five decades. One of Stalin’s comrades, he was a political survivor. Armenian by birth, Mikoyan joined the Bolsheviks in 1915, playing a leading role in the Caucasus during the civil war (1918-1920). In 1922 he was elected to the Communist Party’s Central Committee, by which time he was already working confidentially for Josef Stalin. After Vladimir Lenin’s death (1924) he staunchly supported Stalin’s struggle against the Left Opposition. His loyalty was rewarded in 1926 when he became the youngest commissar and Politburo member. Appointed commissar of food production in 1934, he introduced major innovations in this area. By 1935 he was a full member of the Politburo. While not an aggressive advocate of the Great Terror (1937-1938), Mikoyan was responsible for purges in his native Armenia. In 1942, after the German invasion, he was appointed to the State Defense Committee, with responsibility for military supplies. After Stalin’s death (1953) he proved a loyal ally of Nikita Khrushchev, the only member of Stalin’s original Politburo to support him in his confrontation with the Stalinist Anti-Party Group (1957). Mikoyan went on to play a crucial role in the Cuban missile crisis (1962), mediating between Khrushchev, U.S. president John F. Kennedy, and Cuban leader Fidel Castro, whom he persuaded to accept the withdrawal of Soviet missiles from Cuba. He was appointed head of government in July 1964, three months before signing the decree dismissing Khrushchev as party first secretary. Under Leonid Brezhnev he gradually relinquished his roles in party and government in favor of writing his memoirs, finally retiring in 1975. See also: ANTI-PARTY GROUP; ARMENIA AND ARMENIANS; CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS; LEFT OPPOSITION; PURGES, THE GREAT
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Medvedev, Roy. (1984). All Stalin’s Men. (1984). Garden City, NY: Anchor Press. Taubman, William; Khrushchev, Sergei; and Gleason, Abbott, eds. (2000). Nikita Khrushchev. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
ROGER D. MARKWICK
MILITARY ART
Military art is the theory and practice of preparing and conducting military actions on land, at sea, and within the global aerospace envelope.
Historically, Russian military theorists held that the primary function of military art was attainment of victory over an adversary with the least expenditure of forces, resources, and time. This postulation stressed a well-developed sense of intent that would link the logic of strategy with the purposeful design and execution of complex military actions. By the end of the nineteenth century, Russian military theorists accepted the conviction that military art was an expression of military science, which they viewed as a branch of the social sciences with its own laws and disciplinary integrity. Further, they subscribed to the idea, exemplified by Napoleon, that military art consisted of two primary components, strategy and tactics. Strategy described movements of main military forces within a theater of war, while tactics described what occurred on the battlefield. However, following the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905, theorists gradually modified their views to accommodate the conduct of operations in themselves, or operatika, as a logical third component lying between-and linking-strategy and tactics. This proposition further evolved durin
g the 1920s and 1930s, thanks primarily to Alexander Svechin, who lent currency to the term “operational art” (operativnoye iskusstvou) as a replacement for operatika, and to Vladimir Triandafillov, who analyzed the nature of modern military operations on the basis of recent historical precedent. Subsequently, the contributions of other theorists, including Mikhail Tukhachevsky, Alexander Yegorov, and Georgy Isserson, along with mechanization of the Red Army and the bitter experience of the Great Patriotic War, contributed further to the Soviet understanding of modern military art. However, the theoretical development of strategy languished under Josef Stalin, while the advent of nuclear weapons at the end of World War II called into question the efficacy of operational art. During much of the Nikita Khrushchev era, a nuclear-dominated version of strategy held near-complete sway in the realm of military art. Only in the mid-1960s did Soviet military commentators begin to resurrect their understanding of operational art to correspond with the theoretical necessity for conducting large-scale conventional operations under conditions of nuclear threat. During the 1970s and
MILITARY DOCTRINE
1980s emphasis on new reconnaissance systems and precision-guided weaponry as parts of an ongoing revolution in military affairs further challenged long-held convictions about traditional boundaries and linkages among strategy, operational art, and tactics. Further, U.S. combat experience during the Gulf War in 1990-1991 and again in Afghanistan during 2001 clearly challenged conventional notions about the relationships in contemporary war between time and space, mass and firepower, and offense and defense. Some theorists even began to envision a new era of remotely fought or no-contact war (bezkontaknaya voynau) that would dominate the future development of all facets of military art. See also: MILITARY, IMPERIAL ERA; MILITARY, SOVIET AND POST-SOVIET
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Menning, Bruce W. (1997). “Operational Art’s Origins.” Military Review 76(5):32-47. Svechin, Aleksandr A. (1992). Strategy, ed. Kent D. Lee. Minneapolis: East View Publications.
BRUCE W. MENNING
MILITARY DOCTRINE
In late Imperial Russia, a common basis for joint military action; in the Soviet Union and the Russian Federation, an assertion of military posture and policy.
The Soviet and Russian understanding of military doctrine is often a source of confusion because other societies usually subscribe to a narrower definition. For most Western military and naval establishments, doctrine typically consists of the distilled wisdom that governs the actual employment of armed forces in combat. At its best, this wisdom constitutes a constantly evolving intellectual construct that owes its origins and development to a balanced understanding of the complex interplay among changing technology, structure, theory, and combat experience.
In contrast, doctrine in its Soviet and Russian variants evolved early to reflect a common understanding of the state’s larger defense requirements. The issue first surfaced after 1905, when Russian military intellectuals debated the necessity for a “unified military doctrine” that would impart effective overall structure and direction to war preparations. In a more restrictive perspective, the same doctrine would also define the common intellectual foundations of field service regulations and the terms of cooperation between Imperial Russia’s army and navy. In 1912, Tsar Nicholas II himself silenced discussion, proclaiming, “Military doctrine consists of doing everything that I order.”
A different version of the debate resurfaced soon after the Bolshevik triumph in the civil war. Discussion ostensibly turned on a doctrinal vision for the future of the Soviet military establishment, but positions hardened and quickly assumed political overtones. War Commissar Leon Trotsky held that any understanding of doctrine must flow from future requirements for world revolution. Others, including Mikhail V. Frunze, held that doctrine must flow from the civil war experience, the nature of the new Soviet state, and the needs and character of the Red Army. Frunze essentially envisioned a concept of preparation for future war shaped by class relations, external threat, and the state’s economic development.
Frunze’s victory in the debate laid the foundations for a subsequent definition of Soviet and later Russian military doctrine that has remained relatively constant. Military doctrine came to be understood as “a system of views adopted by a given state at a given time on the goals and nature of possible future war and the preparation of the armed forces and the country for it, and also the methods of waging it.” Because of explicit linkages between politics and war, this version of military doctrine always retained two aspects, the political (or sociopolitical) and the military-technical. Thanks to rapid advances in military technology, the latter aspect sometimes witnessed abrupt change. However, until the advent of Mikhail S. Gorbachev and perestroika, the political aspect, which defined the threat and relations among states, remained relatively static.
The disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991 led to a recurring redefinition of the twin doctrinal aspects that emphasized both Russia’s diminished great-power status and the changing nature of the threat. Nuclear war became less imminent, military operations more complex, and the threat both internal and external. Whatever the calculus, the terms of expression and discussion continued to reflect the unique legacy that shaped Imperial Russian and Soviet notions of military doctrine.
MILITARY-ECONOMIC PLANNING
See also: FRUNZE, MIKHAIL VASILIEVICH; MILITARY, IMPERIAL ERA; MILITARY, SOVIET AND POST-SOVIET; TROTSKY, LEON DAVIDOVICH
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Frank, Willard C., and Gillette, Phillip S., eds. (1992). Soviet Military Doctrine from Lenin to Gorbachev, 1915-1991. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. Garthoff, Raymond L. (1953). Soviet Military Doctrine. Glencoe, IL: Free Press..
BRUCE W. MENNING
MILITARY-ECONOMIC PLANNING
In the world wars of the twentieth century, it was as important to mobilize the economy to supply soldiers’ rations and equipment as it was to enlist the population as soldiers. Military-economic planning took root in the Soviet Union, as elsewhere, after World War I. The scope of the plans that prepared the Soviet economy for war continues to be debated. Some argue that war preparation was a fundamental objective influencing every aspect of Soviet peacetime economic policy; there were no purely civilian plans, and everything was militarized to some degree. Others see military-economic planning more narrowly as the specialized activity of planning and budgeting for rearmament, which had to share priority with civilian economic goals.
The framework for military-economic planning was fixed by a succession of high-level government committees: the Council for Labor and Defense (STO), the Defense Committee, and, in the postwar period, the Military-Industrial Commission (VPK). The armed forces general staff carried on military-economic planning in coordination with the defense sector of the State Planning Commission (Gosplan). Gosplan’s defense sector was established on the initiative of the Red Army commander, Mikhail Tukhachevsky, who pioneered the study of future war and offensive operations associated with the concept of deep battle. To support this he advocated ambitious plans for the large-scale production of combat aircraft and motorized armor. Tukhachevsky crossed swords at various times with Josef V. Stalin, Vyacheslav Molotov, and Kliment Voroshilov. The military-economic plans were less ambitious than he hoped, and also less coherent: Industry did not reconcile its production plans beforehand with the army’s procurement plan, and their interests often diverged over the terms of plans and contracts to supply equipment. To overcome this Tukhachevsky pressed to bring the management of defense production under military control, but he was frustrated in this too. His efforts ended with his arrest and execution in 1937.
Military-economic plans required every ministry and workplace to adopt a mobilization plan to be implemented in the event of war. How effective this was is difficult to evaluate, and the mobilization plans adopted before World War II appear to have been highly unrealistic by comparison with wartime outcomes. Despite this, the Soviet transition to a war economy was successful; th
e fact that contingency planning and trial mobilizations were practiced at each level of the prewar command system may have contributed more to this than their detailed faults might suggest.
During World War II the task was no longer to prepare for war but to fight it, and so the distinction between military-economic planning and economic planning in general disappeared for a time. It reemerged after the war when Stalin began bringing his generals back into line, and the security organs, not the military, took the leading role in organizing the acquisition of new atomic and aerospace technologies. Stalin’s death and the demotion of the organs allowed a new equilibrium to emerge under Dmitry Ustinov, minister of the armament industry since June 1941; Ustinov went on to coordinate the armed forces and industry from a unique position of influence and privilege under successive Soviet leaders until his own death in 1984. It symbolized his coordinating role that he assumed the military rank of marshal in 1976. See also: GOSPLAN; TUKHACHEVSKY, MIKHAIL NIKOLAYE-VICH; USTINOV, DMITRY FEDOROVICH; WAR ECONOMY
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Barber, John, and Harrison, Mark, eds. (2000). The Soviet Defence-Industry Complex from Stalin to Khrushchev. Basingstoke, UK: Macmillan. Harrison, Mark (2001). “Providing for Defense.” In Behind the Fa?ade of Stalin’s Command Economy: Evidence from the Soviet State and Party Archives, ed. Paul R. Gregory. Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press. Samuelson, Lennart. (2000). Plans for Stalin’s War Machine: Tukhachevskii and Military-Economic Planning, 1925-1941. Basingstoke, UK: Macmillan.
