Encyclopedia of Russian History

by James Millar

  The initial German attack in 1941 involved three million troops and three thousand tanks but nevertheless achieved strategic surprise, catching the Soviet air force on the ground and most troops far from their operational areas. In spite of the unmistakable signs of a military build-up along the border, German reconnaissance flights over the western Soviet Union, and warnings from sources as diverse as communist spies and the British government, the Soviet government refused to mobilize for war. It preferred to avoid any action that might spark an accidental conflict, and this inaction proved disastrous once the war began.

  In the first months of the war German armored spearheads sliced through the unprepared, disorganized Red Army, encircling entire armies near Minsk, Kiev, and Viazma. The German success came at a great price, though. Casualties mounted, and supply lines became more tenuous as they lengthened. Soviet resistance stiffened as the Red Army deployed new tanks (T-34 and KV-1) and artillery (Katyusha rockets) that were technically much better than their German counterparts. Soviet reinforcements also poured in from the Far East after the Soviet spy Richard Sorge reported that Japan planned to move south against the United States and Great Britain rather than attack Siberia. A final factor in the USSR’s survival was the weather. Optimistic German planners expected to complete the conquest of Russia before the onset of the autumn rains. The delay in the start of the invasion due to the Balkans campaign, the unknown depth of the Red Army’s reserves, and its unexpectedly strong resistance meant that the German army faced winter in the field without suitable clothing or equipment.

  It also faced a Soviet population mobilized for resistance. Soviet propaganda publicized German atrocities against the civil population and lauded the suicidal bravery of pilots who crashed their planes into German bombers and of foot soldiers who died blowing up enemy tanks. Restrictions against the Orthodox Church were loosened, and church leaders joined party leaders in defiantly calling for a Holy War (the name of a popular song) against the foe. While the Soviet Union suffered enormous damage in 1941, it was not defeated.

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  See also: GERMANY, RELATIONS WITH; SORGE, RICHARD; WORLD WAR II

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Erickson, John. (1999). The Road to Stalingrad. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Glantz, David, and House, Jonathan. (1995). When Titans Clashed: How the Red Army Stopped Hitler. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas.

  A. DELANO DUGARM

  OPRICHNINA

  Tsar Ivan IV’s personal domain between 1565 and 1572, and by extension the domestic policy of that period.

  The term oprichnina (from oprich, “separate”) denoted a part of something, usually specific land-holdings of a prince or a prince’s widow. Ivan IV (the Terrible, or Grozny) established his Oprichnina after he unexpectedly left Moscow in December 1564. He settled at Alexandrovskaya sloboda, a hunting lodge northeast of Moscow, which became the Oprichnina’s capital. Ivan IV accused his old court of treason and demanded the right to punish his enemies. He divided the territory of his realm, his court, and the administration into two: the Oprichnina under the tsar’s personal control; and the Zemshchina (from zemlya, “land”), officially under the rule of those boyars who stayed in Moscow.

  The servitors were divided between the Zem-shchina and the Oprichnina courts on the basis of personal loyalty to the tsar, but the courts were largely drawn from the same elite clans. The Oprichnina court was headed by Alexei and Fyodor Basmanov-Pleshcheev, Prince Afanasy Vyazemsky, and the Caucasian Prince Mikhail Cherkassky, brother-in-law of Ivan IV. They were succeeded in around 1570 by the high-ranking cavalrymen Malyuta Skuratov-Belsky and Vasily Gryaznoy. The Oprichnina army initially consisted of one thousand men; later its numbers increased five- to sixfold. Most of them came from the central part of the country, although there were also many non-Muscovites (Western mercenaries, Tatar and Caucasian servitors) in the Oprichnina. Both the leading Muscovite merchants (the Stroganovs) and the English Muscovy Company also sought admission to the Oprichnina. To maintain the Oprichnina army, the tsar included in his domain prosperous peasant and urban communities in the north, household lands in various parts of the country (mostly in its central districts), mid-sized and small districts with numerous conditional landholdings, and some quarters of Moscow. The northern lands produced revenues and marketable commodities (furs, salt), the household lands provided the Oprichnina with various supplies, and the regions with conditional landholdings supplied servitors for the Oprichnina army. The territory of the Oprichnina was never stable, and eventually included sections of Novgorod. The authorities deported non-Oprichnina servitors from the Oprichnina lands and granted their estates to the oprichniki (members of the Oprichnina), but the extent of these forced resettlements remains unclear.

  The Oprichnina affected various local communities in different ways. The Zemshchina territories bore the heavy financial burden of funding the organization and actions of the Oprichnina; some Zemshchina communities were pillaged and devastated. In early 1570, the tsar and his oprichniki sacked Novgorod, where they slaughtered from three thousand to fifteen thousand people. At the same time, the lower-ranking inhabitants of Moscow escaped Ivan’s disgrace and forced resettlements. For taxpayers in the remote north, the establishment of the Oprichnina mostly meant a change of payee.

  The tsar sought to maintain a close relationship with the clergy by expanding the tax privileges of important dioceses and monasteries and including some of them in the Oprichnina. In exchange, he demanded that the metropolitan not intervene in the Oprichnina and abolished the metropolitan’s traditional right to intercede on behalf of the disgraced. The Oprichnina’s victims included Metropolitan Philip Kolychev, who openly criticized the Oprichnina (deposed 1568, killed 1569) and Archbishop Pimen of Novgorod, the tsar’s former close ally (deposed and exiled 1570).

  The Oprichnina policy was a peculiar combination of bloody terror and acts of public reconciliation. The social background of its victims ranged from members of the royal family and prominent courtiers, including some leaders of the Oprichnina court, to rank-and-file servitors, townsmen, and clergy. Indictments and repressions, however, were often followed by amnesties. The mass exile of around 180 princes and cavalrymen to Kazan and the confiscation of their lands (1565) were counterbalanced when they were pardoned and their

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  property partially restored. As a gesture of spiritual reconciliation with the executed, the tsar ordered memorial services in monasteries for more than three thousand victims. The Oprichnina involved the ritualization of executions and peculiar symbolism that alluded to the tsar and his oprich-niki as punitive instruments of divine wrath. The oprichniki dressed in black, acted like a pseudo-monastic order, and carried dog’s heads and brooms to show they were the “dogs” of the tsar who would sweep treason from the land.

  The tsar abolished the Oprichnina in 1572 after its troops proved ineffective during a raid of Tatars on Moscow. Together with the Livonian War, famines, and epidemics, the Oprichnina led to the country’s economic decline. During the Oprich-nina, Ivan IV thought to strengthen his personal security by taking to extremes such Muscovite political traditions as disgraces, persecution of suspects, and forced resettlements. The Oprichnina revealed the vulnerability of the social and legal mechanisms for personal protection when confronted by authorities exceeding the political system’s normal level of violence. Transgressions and sudden changes in policy contributed to the image of the tsar as an autocratic ruler accountable only to God. The court system, however, survived the turmoil of the Oprichnina. Despite the division of the realm and purges, members of established clans maintained their positions in the court hierarchy and participated in running the polity throughout the period of the Oprichnina.

  Some historians believe that the main force behind the Oprichnina was Ivan IV’s personality, including a possible mental disorder. Such interpretations prevailed in the Romant
ic historical writings of Nikolai Karamzin (early nineteenth century) and in the works of Vasily Klyuchevsky, foremost Russian historian of the early twentieth century. The American historians Richard Hellie and Robert Crummey offered psychoanalytical explanations for the Oprichnina, surmising that Ivan IV suffered from paranoia. Priscilla Hunt and Andrei Yurganov saw the Oprichnina as an actualization of the cultural myth of the divine nature of the tsar’s power and eschatological expectations in Muscovy. According to other historians, the Oprichnina was a conscious struggle among certain social groups. In his classic nineteenth-century Hegelian history of Russia, Sergei Solovyov interpreted the Oprichnina as a political conflict between the tsar acting in the name of the state and the bo-yars, who guarded their hereditary privileges. In the late nineteenth century, Sergei Platonov took those views further by arguing that the Oprich-nina promoted service people of lower origin and eliminated the hereditary landowning of the aristocracy. In the mid-twentieth century, Platonov’s conception was questioned by Stepan Veselovsky and Vladimir Kobrin, who reexamined the genealogical background of the Oprichnina court and the redistribution of land during the Oprichnina. According to Alexander Zimin, the Oprichnina was aimed at the main separatist forces in Muscovy: the church, the appanage princes, and Novgorod. Ruslan Skrynnikov accepted a modified multiphase version of Platonov’s views. See also: AUTOCRACY; IVAN IV

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Hellie, Richard. (1987). “What Happened? How Did He Get Away with It? Ivan Groznyi’s Paranoia and the Problem of Institutional Restraints.” Russian History 14(1-4):199-224. Hunt, Priscilla. (1993). “Ivan IV’s Personal Mythology of Kingship.” Slavic Review 52:769-809. Platonov, Sergei F. (1986). Ivan the Terrible, ed. and tr. Joseph L. Wieczynski, with “In Search of Ivan the Terrible,” by Richard Hellie. Gulf Breeze, FL: Academic International Press. Skrynnikov, Ruslan G. (1981). Ivan the Terrible, ed. and tr. Hugh F. Graham. Gulf Breeze, FL: Academic International Press. Zimin, A. A. (2001). Oprichnina, 2nd ed. Moscow: Ter-ritorriya.

  SERGEI BOGATYREV

  ORDIN-NASHCHOKIN, AFANASY LAVRENTIEVICH

  (c. 1605-1680), military officer, governor, diplomat, boyar.

  Afanasy Lavrentievich Ordin-Nashchokin was born to a gentry family near Pskov in the first quarter of the seventeenth century, probably around 1605. He received an unusually good education for a Russian of the time, learning mathematics and several languages, and entered military service at fifteen. Exposed at a young age to foreign customs, he put his insights and ideas to good use throughout his life. In 1642 he helped settle a border dispute with Sweden, honing his talents for careful

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  preparation, thorough investigation, and skillful negotiation. Next he led a mission to Moldavia, gaining experience and valuable information on the Poles, Turks, Cossacks, and Crimeans who populated the tsar’s southern borders. For most of the 1650s he served as a military officer and governor of several regions in western Russia. While working to draw the local population to Moscow’s side and achieving diplomatic agreements with Cour-land and Brandenburg, he also pondered ways to improve Russia’s military, economic, and political standing. In 1658 he was able to achieve some of his greater goals in negotiating the three-year Va-liesar truce with Sweden, gaining Russia peace, free trade, Baltic access, and all the territories it had conquered in the region. For this coup Ordin-Nashchokin received the rank of dumny dvoryanin (consiliar noble).

  In 1660 his son Voin, likewise educated in foreign languages and customs, fled to Western Europe. A grieving and humiliated Ordin-Nashchokin requested retirement, but the tsar was reluctant to lose his able statesman and refused to hold the father accountable for his son’s actions. Ordin-Nash-chokin continued to negotiate for peace with Poland and to govern Pskov, becoming okolnichy (a high court rank) in 1665.

  The peak of his career came in 1667 when he signed the Andrusovo treaty, ending a long war with Poland and establishing guidelines for a productive peace. For this achievement he was made boyar (the highest Muscovite court rank) and head of the Department of Foreign Affairs (Posolsky Prikaz). The same year he dispatched envoys to nearly a dozen countries to announce the peace and offer diplomatic and commercial ties with Russia. He also drew up the New Commercial Statute, aimed at stimulating and centralizing trade and industry and protecting Russian merchants. Over the next four years as head of Russia’s government he enacted administrative reforms; supervised the construction of ships; established regular postal routes between Moscow, Vilna, and Riga; expanded Russia’s diplomatic representation abroad; and began the compilation of translated foreign newspapers (kuranty). The number and character of his innovations have sometimes led to his description as a precursor of Peter the Great.

  By 1671, however, his day was passing. Always outspoken and demanding, he began to irritate the tsar with his contentiousness. Worse, his views of international politics-he perceived Poland as Russia’s natural ally, Sweden as its natural foe- no longer fit Moscow’s immediate interests. Arta-mon Matveyev, the more flexible new favorite, was ready to step in. In 1672 Ordin-Nashchokin retired to a monastery near Pskov to be tonsured under the name Antony. In 1679 he briefly returned to service to negotiate with Poland, but soon retreated to his monastery and died the next year. See also: ANDRUSOVO, PEACE OF; BOYAR; MATVEYEV, AR-TAMON SERGEYEVICH; OKOLNICHY; TRADE STATUTES OF 1653 AND 1667

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Kliuchevsky, V. O. (1968). “A Muscovite Statesman. Or-din-Nashchokin.” In A Course in Russian History: The Seventeenth Century, tr. Natalie Duddington. Chicago: Quadrangle Books. O’Brien, C. Bickford. (1974). “Makers of Foreign Policy: Ordin-Nashchokin.” East European Quarterly 8: 155-165.

  MARTHA LUBY LAHANA

  ORDZHONIKIDZE, GRIGORY KONSTANTINOVICH

  (1886-1937), leading Bolshevik who participated in bringing Ukraine and the Caucasus under Soviet rule and directed industry during the early five-year plans.

  Grigory Konstantinovich (“Sergo”) Ordzhonikidze was born in Goresha, Georgia, to an impoverished gentry family. In 1903, while training as a medical assistant, he joined the Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social Democratic Workers’ Party, and in 1906 met Josef Stalin, with whom he formed a close, lifelong association. After a time in prison and exile, Ordzhonikidze traveled to Paris where in 1911 he met Vladimir Lenin and studied in the party school. In January the following year, Or-dzhonikidze became a member of the Bolshevik Central Committee and organizer of its Russian Bureau. Returning to Russia, he was again arrested in April 1912 and spent the next five years in prison and then Siberian exile. During 1917 Ordzhonikidze was a member of the Executive Committee of the Petrograd Soviet. After the Bolshevik takeover, he participated in the civil war in Ukraine and southern Russia and played a leading role in extending Soviet power over Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Geor1113

  ORGANIZED CRIME

  gia. A close ally of Stalin, Ordzhonikidze was promoted to the Central Committee of the Communist Party in 1921. He remained in charge of the Tran-scaucasian regional Party organization until 1926, when he became a Politburo candidate member, chairman of the Party’s Central Control Commission and commissar of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspectorate (Rabkrin). During the First Five-Year Plan, Ordzhonikidze organized the drive for mass industrialization. In 1930 he was promoted to full Politburo membership and in 1932 was appointed commissar for heavy industry. During the mid-1930s, Ordzhonikidze sought to use his proximity to Stalin to temper the Soviet leader’s increasing use of repression against party and economic officials. Although Ordzhonikidze’s sudden death in early 1937 was officially attributed to a heart attack, it is more likely that, in an act of desperate protest at the impending terror, he committed suicide. See also: BOLSHEVISM; INDUSTRIALIZATION, SOVIET; STALIN, JOSEF VISSARIONOVICH

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Haupt, Georges, and Marie, Jean-Jacques, eds. (1974). Makers of the Russian Revolution. London: Allen and Unwin. Khlevniuk, Oleg V. (1995). In Stalin�
��s Shadow: The Career of “Sergo” Ordzhonikidze. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe.

  NICK BARON

  ORGANIZED CRIME

  The term Russian mafia is widely used, but Russian-speaking organized crime is not all Russian, nor is it organized in the same ways as the Italian mafia. Russian-speaking organized crime emerged in the former Soviet Union, and during the decade after the collapse it became a major force in transnational crime.

  Because Russia’s immense territorial mass spans Europe and Asia, it is easy for organized crime groups to have contacts both with European and Asian crime groups. Russia’s crime groups have a truly international reach and operate in North and South America as well as in Africa. Thus they have been among the major beneficiaries of globalization. Russia’s technologically advanced economy has given Russian organized crime a technological edge in a world dominated by high technology. Moreover, the collapse of the social control system and the state control apparatus have made it possible for major criminals to operate with impunity both at home and internationally.

  During the 1990s, Russian law enforcement declared that the number of organized crime groups was escalating. Between 1990 and 1996, it rose from 785 to more than 8,000, and membership was variously estimated at from 100,000 to as high as three million. These identified crime groups were mostly small, amorphous, impermanent organizations that engaged in extortion, drug dealing, bank fraud, arms trafficking, and armed banditry. The most serious forms of organized crime were often committed by individuals who were not identified with specific crime groups but engaged in the large-scale organized theft of state resources through the privatization of valuable state assets to themselves. Hundreds of billions of Russian assets were sent abroad in the first post-Soviet decade; a significant share of this capital flight was money laundering connected with large-scale post-Soviet organized crime involving people who were not traditional underworld figures. In this respect, organized crime in Russia differs significantly from the Italian mafia or the Japanese Yakuza-it is an amalgam of former Communist Party and Komsomol officials, active and demobilized military personnel, law enforcement and security structures, participants in the Soviet second economy, and criminals of the traditional kind. Chechen and other ethnic crime groups are highly visible, but most organized crime involves a broad range of actors working together to promote their financial interests by using violence or threats of violence.