Encyclopedia of Russian History
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Morozov’s greed led him to appropriate vast estates for himself. They totalled over 80,000 desi-atinas (216,000 acres) with over 55,000 people in 9,100 households; this made him the second wealthiest Russian of his time. (The wealthiest individual was Nikita Ivanovich Romanov, Tsar Mikhail’s uncle, who led the opposition to Moro-zov’s government.) In 1645 the government, in response to a middle service class provincial cavalry petition, promised that the time limit on the recovery of fugitive serfs would be repealed as soon as a census was taken. The census was taken in 1646-1647, but the statute of limitations was not repealed. All the while Morozov’s extensive correspondence with his estate stewards reveals that he was recruiting peasants from other lords and moving such peasants about (typically from the center to the Volga region) to conceal them. Morozov was also active in the potash business: he ordered his serfs to cut down trees, burn them, and barrel the ashes for export. See also: ALEXEI MIKHAILOVICH; ASSEMBLY OF THE LAND; BOYAR; CHANCELLERY SYSTEM; ENSERFMENT; LAW CODE OF 1649
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Crummey, Robert Owen. (1983). Aristocrats and Servitors: The Boyar Elite in Russia, 1613-1689. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Hellie, Richard. (1971). Enserfment and Military Change in Muscovy. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
RICHARD HELLIE
MOROZOV, PAVEL TROFIMOVICH
(c. 1918-1932), young man murdered in 1932 who became a hero for the Pioneers (members of the Soviet organization for children in the 10 to 14 age group); celebrated in biographies, pamphlets, textbooks, songs, films, paintings, and plays.
Soviet accounts of the life of Pavel Morozov are mythic in tone and often contradictory. All agree that he was born in the western Siberian village of Gerasimovka, about 150 miles from Sverdlovsk (Ekaterinburg), probably in December 1918. He and
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his younger brother Fyodor were murdered on September 3, 1932. The Morozov murders were taken up by the local press about two weeks after they happened; in late September 1932, the central children’s press became aware of the case, and reporters were dispatched to Siberia to investigate and to press for justice against the boys’ supposed murderers. In December 1932, the boys’ grandparents, their uncle, their cousin, and a neighbor stood trial; four of the five were sentenced to execution.
Like most child murders, the death of the two Morozov brothers provoked outrage; equally typically, press coverage dwelt on the innocence and goodness of the victims. But since the murders also took place in an area that was undergoing collectivization, they acquired a specifically Soviet political resonance. They were understood as an episode in the “class war”: A child political activist and fervent Pioneer had been slaughtered by kulaks, wealthy peasants, as a punishment for exposing these kulaks’ activities.
Additionally, it was reported that Pavel (or, as he became known, “Pavlik”) had displayed such commitment to the cause that he had denounced his own father, the chairman of the local collective farm, for providing dekulakized peasants with false identity papers. His murder by his relations was an act of revenge, and an attempt by them to prevent Pavlik from pushing them into collectivization. All in all, Pavlik came to exemplify virtue so resolute that it preferred death to betrayal of principle. Learning about his life was an important part of the teaching offered the Pioneers; the anniversaries of his death were commemorated with pomp, and statues of Pavlik went up all over the Soviet Union.
But indoctrination did not lead to the emergence of millions of “copycat Pavliks.” Memoirs and oral history suggest that most children found the story disturbing, rather than inspiring, even during the 1930s. And during the World War II, attention switched to another type of child hero: the boy or girl who refused to convey information, even under torture. To the postwar generations, Pavlik was a nasty little stukach, squealer. Learning about his life was a chore, and he had far less appeal than the Komsomol war heroine Zoya Kos-modemyanskaya. Indeed, surveys indicate that by 2002, the eightieth anniversary of his death, many respondents either could not remember who Pavlik was, or remembered his life inaccurately (e.g., “a hero of the Great Patriotic War”). Statues of him had disappeared (the Moscow statue in 1991), and streets had been renamed. Though the Pavlik Morozov museum in Gerasimovka was still open, few visitors bothered to call there. See also: CIVIL WAR OF 1917-1922; FOLKLORE; PURGES, THE GREAT
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Druzhnikov, Iurii. (1997). Informer 001: the Myth of Pavlik Morozov. (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers. Kelly, Catriona. (2004). Comrade Pavlik: The Life and Legend of a Soviet Boy Hero. London: Granta.
CATRIONA KELLY
MOSCOW
Moscow is the capital city of Russia and the country’s economic and cultural center.
Moscow was founded by Prince Yuri Vladimiro-vich Dolgoruky in 1147 on the banks of the Moscow River. Its earliest fortifications were raised on the present-day site of the Kremlin. Located in Russia’s forest belt, the city was afforded a limited degree of protection from marauders from the south. Its location adjacent several rivers also made it a good trade center. By 1325, following the sacking of Kiev and the imposition of the Mongol Yoke, Moscow’s princes obtained the sole right to rule over the Russian territories and collect tribute for the Golden Horde. The head of the Russian Orthodox church relocated to Moscow in recognition of the city’s growing authority. A prince of Moscow, Ivan III, ultimately rid Russia of Mongol rule, following which the city became the capital of the expanding Muscovite state, which reunited the Russian lands by diplomacy and military conquest from the fourteenth to the eighteenth centuries.
During the period of expansion, the young state was thrown into chaos when Ivan IV passed away without leaving an heir. His unsuccessful efforts to regain access to the Baltic Sea and Black Sea had left the state further exhausted. In the ensuing power struggle, the country was invaded by several foreign armies before the Russian people were able once again to gain control of Moscow and elect a new tsar, marking the beginning of the Romanov dynasty (1613-1917).
In 1713, Peter the Great moved the Russian capital to St. Petersburg, which he had built on the Baltic Sea as “Russia’s window to the West.”
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Moscow, which Peter loathed for its traditional Russian ways, remained a major center of commerce and culture. Further, all Russian tsars were crowned in the city, providing a link with the past. Recognizing the city’s historical importance, Napoleon occupied Moscow in 1812. He was forced from the city and defeated by the Russian Army as foreign invaders before him had been.
The Bolsheviks moved the capital of Russia back to Moscow when German forces threatened Petro-grad (previously St. Petersburg) in 1918. When the Germans left Russian land later that year, the capital remained in Moscow and has not been moved since.
During the Soviet era, a metro and many new construction projects were undertaken in Moscow as the city grew in population and importance. At the same time, many cultural sites, particularly churches, were destroyed. As a consequence, Moscow lost much of its architectural integrity and ancient charm. In an effort to recover this, the Russian government has engaged in a number of restoration projects in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union. One of the most important has been the rebuilding of the Savior Cathedral, which was meant to mark the city’s spiritual revival.
With a population of approximately 8.5 million people (swelling to more than 11 million on workdays), Moscow is the largest city in Russia and its capital. The Kremlin houses the Presidential Administration while both chambers of the national legislature are located just off of Red Square. The prime minister and his most important deputies have their offices in the White House, the building on the banks of the Moscow River that formerly was the location of the Russian Federation’s legislature. The various ministries of the government, which report to the prime minister, are located throughout the city.
The city’s government historically has occupied a high profile in national politics. This is particularly true
of the mayor, who is directly elected by the city’s residents for a four-year term. The mayor appoints the Moscow city government and is responsible for the administration of the city. Among the city’s administrative responsibilities are managing more than half of the housing occupied by Muscovites, managing a primary health-care delivery system, operating a primary and secondary school system, providing social services and utility subsidies, maintaining roads, operating a public transportation system, and policing the city. Legislative power lies with the Moscow City Duma, but the mayor has the power to submit bills as well as to veto legislation to which he objects. The city’s citizens elect the City Duma in direct elections for a four-year term. It comprises thirty-five members elected from Moscow’s electoral districts.
Not only is Moscow the country’s political capital, it is also the country’s major intellectual and cultural center, boasting numerous theaters and playhouses. Its attractions include the world-renowned Bolshoi Theater, Moscow State University, the Academy of Sciences, the Tretyakov Art Gallery, and the Lenin Library. Only St. Petersburg rivals it architecturally.
Not surprisingly, given its political and cultural importance, Moscow is Russia’s economic capital as well, attracting a substantial portion of foreign investment. The city is the country’s primary business center, accounting for 5.7 percent of industrial production. More importantly, it serves as the home for most of Russia’s export-import industry as well as a major hub for international and national trade routes. As a consequence, the standard of living of Muscovites is well above that of the rest of the country. All of this owes in large part to the substantial degree of economic restructuring that has occurred in the city since 1991 in response to the introduction of a market economy. There has been particularly strong growth in finance and wholesale and retail trade.
The growth of Moscow’s economy has not come without problems. Muscovites are increasingly concerned about crime as well as the plight of pensioners and the poor. They are also concerned about the strain being placed on the city’s transportation system, increasing environmental pollution caused by the increased use of automobiles, and the degradation of the city’s infrastructure, including its schools and health care system. See also: ACADEMY OF SCIENCES; ARCHITECTURE; BOLSHOI THEATER; KREMLIN; LUZHKOV, YURI MIKHAILOVICH; MOSCOW ART THEATER; MUSCOVY; ST. PETERSBURG; YURY VLADIMIROVICH
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Colton, Timothy J. (1995). Moscow: Governing the Socialist Metropolis. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Government of the City of Moscow. (2002). “Information Memorandum: City of Moscow.” «http://www. moscowdebt.ru/eng/city/memorandum».
TERRY D. CLARK
MOSCOW AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY
MOSCOW AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY
A voluntary association chartered in 1819, the Moscow Agricultural Society was a forum for discussing agricultural policy. Its membership came mainly from the serf-owning nobility and included prominent Slavophiles of the 1850s. In the 1830s Finance Minister Egor Kankrin provided a small financial subsidy, but the society’s main support came from its members. Its meetings, exhibitions, and publications were devoted to issues of agricultural innovation, such as new crops and species of livestock and new methods of crop rotation. Its earliest activities included a model farm (khutor) near Moscow and an agricultural school. After the end of serfdom in 1861, the society’s focus turned to economic and administrative questions: taxation, the agricultural role of the new zemstvo organs of local government, the provision of agricultural credit, the creation of a Ministry of Agriculture. It cooperated with the Free Economic Society and other organizations in a multivolume study of handicraft trades (1879-1887), advocated expansion of grain exports through the construction of railroad lines and storage facilities, and promoted the mechanization of agriculture. The Moscow Agricultural Society corresponded with agricultural societies in other countries, and with local affiliates in various parts of Russia. At the beginning of the twentieth century some of its members advocated abolition of the peasant commune and the encouragement of private land ownership and a market economy. Others helped create the All-Russian Peasant Union in 1905, and later the moderate League of Agrarian Reform. The organization was dissolved after 1917, but its library was preserved in the Central State Agricultural Library of the All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences. See also: AGRICULTURE; FREE ECONOMIC SOCIETY; PEASANTRY; SLAVOPHILES; ZEMSTVO
ROBERT E. JOHNSON
MOSCOW ART THEATER
Celebrating its centennial anniversary in 1998, The Moscow Art Theater (MAT) represents a twentieth-century bastion of theatrical art. MAT insured the dramatic career of Anton Chekhov, introduced European trends in stage realism to Russia, and solidified the role of the director as the artistic force behind dramatic interpretation and the united efforts of designers. MAT also significantly reformed the procedures by which plays were rehearsed and set new standards for ensemble acting that ultimately influenced theaters around the world. The majority of its productions created realistic illusions, replete with sound effects, architectural details, and archeologically researched costumes and sets.
Following the 1882 repeal of the 1737 Licensing Act, which had made Russian theater an imperial monopoly, playwright Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko (head of Moscow’s acting school, the Moscow Philharmonic Society) and actor Konstan-tin Stanislavsky (founder of the renowned theater club, The Society of Art and Literature) founded MAT as a shareholding company. Nemirovich instigated their first legendary meeting in 1897. The enterprise opened in 1898 as The Moscow Publicly Accessible Art Theater, its name embracing the founders’ idealistic hopes of providing classic Russian and foreign plays at prices that the working class could afford and fostering drama that educated the community. The first company comprised thirty-nine actors-Nemirovich’s most talented students, notably Olga Knipper, later Chekhov’s wife; Vsevolod Meyerhold, the future theatricalist director; and Ivan Moskvin, who still performed his popular 1898 role of Tsar Fyodor on his seventieth birthday in 1944-joined with Stanislavsky’s most successful amateurs, including his wife Maria Lilina and Maria Andreyeva, the future Bolshevik and wife to Maxim Gorky.
Within a few seasons, financial difficulties and lack of governmental funding forced the founders to raise ticket prices, to drop “Publicly Accessible” from their name, and reluctantly to accept the patronage of the wealthy merchant Savva Morozov. In 1902 Morozov financed the construction of their permanent theater in the art nouveau style and equipped it with the latest lighting technology and a revolving stage.
Following the 1917 revolution, MAT’s realistic productions attracted support from the liberal Commissar of Enlightenment, playwright Anatoly Lunacharsky, and Lenin (who was said to have especially admired Stanislavsky’s performance as the fussy Famusov in Alexander Griboyedov’s Woe from Wit). In 1920, MAT became The Moscow Academic Art Theater, its new adjective betokening state support. At this time, Lunacharsky also intervened on behalf of the destitute Stanislavsky in order to secure for him and his family a house with two rooms for rehearsals.
MOSCOW ART THEATER
During the 1930s, Stanislavsky strenuously objected to the appointment of Mikhail Geits (1929) as MAT’s political watchdog and to governmental pressure to stage productions with insufficient rehearsal. Believing in Stalin’s good intentions, Stanislavsky naively appealed to the Soviet leader, winning a pyrrhic victory. Stalin placed MAT under direct governmental supervision in 1931, changing its name to The Gorky Moscow Academic Art Theater one year later, despite the fact that none of Maksim Gorky’s plays had been staged since 1905. Under Stalinism, MAT received special privileges denied other artists, in return for public proof of political loyalty. Because of its past dedication to realism, MAT’s history could easily be seen as constituting the vanguard of Socialist Realism. Stalin thus turned the company into the single most visible model for Soviet theater, and Stanislavsky’s system of actor training, purged of its spiritual and symbolist components, into the sole curriculum
for all dramatic schools. Press campaigns ensured this interpretation of MAT’s work, even as Stanislavsky’s continuing evolution as an artist threatened the view. Given Stanislavsky’s international renown, Stalin could not afford the public scandal that would result from his arrest. Instead, Stalin “isolated” Stanislavsky from his public image, maintaining the ailing old man in his house, the site of his internal exile (1934-1938).
Nemirovich and Stanislavsky administered the theater jointly from its inception until 1911 when Stanislavsky’s experimental stance toward acting and his growing interest in symbolist plays created unbearable hostility between them. Thereafter, Ne-mirovich managed the theater until his death in 1943, and Stanislavsky moved his experiments into a series of adjunct studios, some of which later became independent theaters. Stanislavsky continued to act for MAT until a heart attack in 1928, to direct until his death in 1938, and to influence MAT from the sidelines, as he had in 1931. He administered MAT only in Nemirovich’s absence, most notably in 1926 and 1927, when Nemirovich toured in the United States. Among the theater’s subsequent administrators, actor and director Oleg Yefremov (1927-2000) had the greatest impact on the company. He had studied with Nemirovich at the Moscow Art Theater’s school, and founded the prestigious Sovremennik (Contemporary) Theater in 1958, and spoke to the conscience of the country after Stalin’s death. He reinvigorated MAT’s psychological realism in acting while he relaxed its history of realistic design. When he took charge of MAT in 1970, he found an unwieldy company of more than one hundred actors. In 1987, with per-estroika (“reconstruction”) occurring in the Soviet Union, Yefremov decided to reconstruct the company by splitting MAT in two. Yefremov retained The Chekhov Art Theater in the 1902 art nouveau building, and actress Tatyana Doronina took charge of The Gorky Art Theater. While Yefremov focused on reviving artistic goals, Doronina made The Gorky a voice for the nationalists of the 1990s. With the fall of the Soviet Union, the Art Theater and all of Russia’s theaters struggled to survive. Not only did the loss of governmental subsidies create extraordinary financial instability, but the traditional audiences, who looked to theater for subversive political discussion, deserted theaters for television news. In 2000, Yefremov’s student, actor-director Oleg Tabakov, took reluctant charge of the theater’s uncertain future.