Encyclopedia of Russian History

by James Millar

  Within the fortress the dominant feature is the Cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul, designed by Trezzini in a radical departure from traditional Russian church architecture. Trezzini created an elongated structure, whose baroque dome on the eastern end is subordinate to the tower and spire over the west entrance. The tower was the focus of Peter’s interest and had priority over the rest of the structure, which was not completed until 1732. By 1723, the spire, gilded and surmounted with an angel holding a cross, reached a height of 367 feet (112 meters), which exceeded the bell tower of Ivan the Great by 105 feet (32 meters).

  On the interior, the large windows that mark the length of the building provide ample illumination for the banners and other imperial regalia. It is not clear whether this great hall was origi1175

  PETER THE GREAT

  nally intended to serve as a burial place for the Romanov tsars; but with the death of Peter the Great, this function was assumed from the Archangel Cathedral in the Kremlin. The centerpiece of the interior is the gilded icon screen, designed by Ivan Zarudnyi and resembling the triumphal arches erected to celebrate Peter’s victories. The frame was carved between 1722 and 1726 by craftsmen in Moscow and assembled in the cathedral in 1727. Some of the cathedral’s ornamentation was lost after a lightning strike and fire in 1756, although prompt response by the garrison preserved the icon screen and much of the interior work.

  The eighteenth century witnessed the construction of many other administrative and garrison buildings within the fortress, including an enclosed pavilion for Peter’s small boat and the state Mint. At the turn of the nineteenth century the fortress became the main political prison of Russia. Famous cultural and political figures detained there include Alexander Radishchev, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and Nikolai Chernyshevsky. In 1917, the garrison sided with the Bolsheviks and played a role in the shelling of the Winter Palace. During the early twenty-first century the fortress serves primarily as a museum. See also: MENSHIKOV, ALEXANDER DANILOVICH; PETER I

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Brumfield, William Craft. (1993). A History of Russian Architecture. New York: Cambridge University Press. Hamilton, George Heard. (1975). The Art and Architecture of Russia. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin Books.

  WILLIAM CRAFT BRUMFIELD

  PETER THE GREAT See PETER I. PETRASHEVSKY, MIKHAIL See BUTASHEVICH-PETRASHEVSKY, MIKHAIL VASILIEVICH.

  PETRASHEVTSY

  Given the oppressive power of the state under Nicholas I and the weakness of civil society in Russia, the political ferment that rocked Europe during the 1840s took the relatively subdued form of discussion groups meeting secretly in private homes. The most important of such groups met on Friday evenings in the St. Petersburg home of a young official of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Mikhail Butashevich-Petrashevsky, from late 1845 until the group was disbanded by the police in a wave of repression following the revolutions that erupted in Western Europe in 1848. More than one hundred members of the group were arrested and interrogated, and twenty-one of the leading figures were condemned to death. In an infamous instance of psychological torture, on December 22, 1849, the condemned men were led to the scaffold and hooded, and the firing squad ordered to shoulder arms, before an imperial adjutant rode up with a last-minute reprieve commuting the sentences to imprisonment or banishment. Among those sent to Siberia was the novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky, who later depicted the members of the group in his novel The Possessed.

  The meetings of the Petrashevtsy, as the police labeled the men who met in Petrashevsky’s home, were open to invited guests as well as regular members. Thus, over the course of the group’s existence, several hundred men took part in the discussions. Some attendees were wealthy landowners or eminent writers or professors, such as the poets Alexei Pleshcheyev and Apollon Maikov and the economist V. A. Milyutin. The majority, however, were of modest means and held middle- or low-ranking positions in state service or were students or small-scale merchants. Serious about political ideas, they amassed a large collection of works in several languages on political philosophy and economics. While Petrashevsky himself was committed to the utopian socialism of Charles Fourier, and socialist thought was the dominant theme of the discussions, members of the group held a range of ideological and tactical approaches to the problem of transforming Russian society. Their most important project was the publication in 1845 and 1846 of A Pocket Dictionary of Foreign Terms, an effort to propagate their ideas through political articles disguised as dictionary entries. The censors eventually realized the subversive nature of the dictionary and ordered it confiscated, but not in time to prevent the sale of part of the second, more radical, edition.

  The Petrashevtsy were not opposed in principle to a violent overthrow of the tsar’s government, but in practice most saw little hope of a successful revolution in Russia and therefore advocated partial reforms such as freedom of speech, freedom of

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  PETRUSHKA

  press, and reform of the judicial system. The more radical members, led by Nikolai Speshnev, hoped to transform the group into a revolutionary organization that would prepare the ground for an armed revolt. Through subsidiary discussion circles that branched off from the original group, such as the one to which the novelist Nikolai Chernyshevsky belonged while a university student, the Petra-shevtsy played an important role in propagating socialist ideas in Russia. See also: CHERNYSHEVSKY, NIKOLAI GAVRILOVICH; DOS-TOYEVSKY, FYODOR MIKHAILOVICH; NICHOLAS I

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Seddon, J. H. (1985). The Petrashevtsy: A Study of the Russian Revolutionaries of 1848. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press. Walicki, Andrzej. (1979). A History of Russian Thought: From the Enlightenment to Marxism. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

  KATHRYN WEATHERSBY

  He became interested in Christian politics and was an activist during the Revolution of 1905. He established the newspaper God’s Truth in Moscow in 1906 and was elected to the first Duma as a Constitutional Democrat.

  Petrov never served in the Duma, however, because he was charged before an ecclesiastical court with false teaching. Although exonerated, he was confined to a monastery under church discipline. Despite popular sympathy for Petrov, the church defrocked him in 1908 and banned him from the capital and from public employment. He then became a journalist for a liberal newspaper, The Word. After the revolutions of 1917 he emigrated to Serbia, and then in 1922 to France. He died in Paris in 1925.

  Petrov’s main importance was in his contribution to the development of a modern, liberal understanding of Christianity in the Russian Orthodox context. See also: ORTHODOXY

  PETROV, GRIGORY SPIRIDONOVICH

  (1868-1925), Orthodox priest and a leading proponent of Christian social activism.

  Grigory Petrov was born in Iamburg, St. Petersburg province. He was educated at the diocesan seminary and the St. Petersburg Ecclesiastical Academy (1887-1891), and on graduating became a priest in a St. Petersburg church.

  Petrov was also active as a writer. In his most successful work, The Gospel as the Foundation of Life (1898), he argued that Christian believers were required to apply the literal teachings of Jesus to every aspect of their lives in order to begin building the Kingdom of God here on earth. Petrov knew of the American Social Gospel movement, but his ideas were shaped by his encounters with new conceptions of pastorship and Christian activism then developing among the clergy of St. Petersburg.

  Petrov’s writings found a ready audience and made him famous. In 1903, however, conservatives began to attack his ideas in the ecclesiastical press, and as a result in 1904 the church dismissed Petrov from his pulpit and banned him from public speaking. Nevertheless, Petrov continued to write.

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Valliere, Paul. (1977). “Modes of Social Action in Russian Orthodoxy: The Case of Father Petrov’s Zateinik.” Russian History 4(2):142-158.

  JENNIFER HEDDA

  PETRUSHKA

  Petrushka was a Russian puppet theater spectacle and also the name of its
main character (cf. the English Punch).

  The play Petrushka seems to derive from a native older Russian buffoon and minstrel tradition and the Western European puppet theater tradition with its roots in the Italian commedia dell’arte. Possible evidence of the Petrushka play in Russia is found as early as 1637 in an engraving and description by a Dutch traveler, Adam Olearius. From around the 1840s to the 1930s, the Petrushka show was one of the most popular kinds of improvisa-tional theater in Russia, often performed at fairs and carnivals and on the streets on a temporary wooden stage (balagan). The show was presented by two performers, one of whom manipulated the puppets, while the other played a barrel-organ. Recorded textual variants from the nineteenth

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  PETTY TUTELAGE

  and twentieth centuries depict the adventures of Petrushka, a dauntless prankster and joker, who uses his wit as well as a vigorously wielded club to get the better of his adversaries, who often represent established authority. The themes tend to be sexist and violent. Petrushka is usually dressed in a red caftan and pointed red cap, and has a hunchback, a large hooked nose, and a prominent chin. The most popular scenes involve Petrushka and a handful of characters, among them his fianc?e or wife, a gypsy horse trader, a doctor or apothecary, an army corporal, a policeman, the devil, and a large fluffy dog. Igor Stravinsky’s ballet Petrushka (1911) is probably the most famous adaptation of this puppet theater show. See also: FOLKLORE; FOLK MUSIC; STRAVINSKY, IGOR FYO-DOROVICH.

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Kelly, Catriona. (1990). Petrushka: The Russian Carnival Puppet Theatre. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Zguta, Russell. (1978). Russian Minstrels: A History of the Skomorokhi. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

  PATRICIA ARANT

  vestment purposes. Third, each industrial ministry redistributed profits earned by firms subordinate to them among these same firms. Finally, ministry officials responded to requests from enterprise managers to change or “correct” output plan targets or input allocations over the course of the planning period if circumstances precluded successful plan fulfillment.

  During perestroika, numerous policies were adopted to reduce petty tutelage by industrial ministry officials over Soviet enterprise operations. Some view the reduction of ministerial tutelage and the corresponding increase in decision-making authority by enterprises as a cornerstone of pere-stroika. Ministry officials were to cease exercising routine daily control over enterprises and focus instead on long-term issues such as promoting investment and technological advance. However, performance measures applied to the industrial ministry remained linked to the performance of their firms, and the ministry retained control over funds and resources to be allocated to Soviet enterprises. Consequently, in practice, it is unlikely that petty tutelage declined. See also: GOSPLAN; TECHPROMFINPLAN

  PETTY TUTELAGE

  Petty tutelage in the Soviet economy meant that the day-to-day operations of enterprises could be (and frequently were) directly influenced or controlled by decisions or actions of the industrial ministry to which the enterprise was subordinate. While Soviet enterprise managers ultimately were responsible for producing the goods identified by planners, industrial ministry officials exercised control over the firm in a number of ways. First, the industrial ministry annually allocated the plan targets among the enterprises subordinate to it, thereby defining changes in output requirements by firm over time. That is, ministry officials were responsible for disaggregating the targets they received from Gosplan, the State Planning Committee, and preparing the annual enterprise plan, the techpromfinplan. Second, industrial ministry officials distributed the financial resources provided to them by state committees to individual firms. Financial resources included funds for wages and inBIBLIOGRAPHY Berliner, Joseph S. (1957). Factory and Manager in the USSR. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Gregory, Paul R. (1990). Restructuring the Soviet Economic Bureaucracy. New York: Cambridge University Press.

  SUSAN J. LINZ

  PHOTOGRAPHY

  The development of photography in Russia during the nineteenth century followed a history similar to that of other European countries. After Louis-Jacques-Mand? Daguerre and William Henry Fox Talbot made public their methods for capturing images on light-sensitized surfaces in 1839, I. Kh. Gammel, corresponding member to the Russian Academy of Sciences, visited both inventors to learn more about their work and collected samples of daguerreotypes and calotypes for study by Russian scientists. The Academy subsequently commissioned Russian scientists to further investigate both

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  PHOTOGRAPHY

  processes. As elsewhere, Russian experimenters quickly introduced a variety of refinements to the initial processes.

  Photography found immediate popular success in Russia with the establishment of daguerreotype portrait studios in the 1840s. The similarity of the photograph to the Orthodox icon (an image that is believed to be a direct and truthful record of a physical being) heightened the early reception of photography and resulted in the persistence of portraiture as a major genre in Russia. While the first generation of photographers was largely foreign, native practitioners soon appeared. Some, such as Sergei Levitsky, achieved international recognition for their role in the development of photography. A personal acquaintance of Daguerre, Levitsky established studios in both France and Russia, serving as court photographer for the Romanovs and Napoleon III. During the later nineteenth century, Russian photography became institutionalized with the establishment of journals, professional societies, and exhibitions.

  While photography was initially largely rejected as an art, it became widely accepted with the emergence of Realism. Russian photographers used the camera to capture the changing social landscape that accompanied the liberation of the serfs and growing urbanization. Simultaneously, ethnographic photography became an important genre with the expansion of the Russian Empire and the opening of Central Asia. Numerous photographic albums and research projects documented the peoples, customs, landscape, and buildings of diverse parts of the Russian Empire. With the rise of Symbolism, a younger generation of pictorialist photographers rejected the photograph as document in pursuit of more aestheticizing manipulated images.

  At the turn of the century, technological developments led to the appearance of popular illustrated publications and the emergence of modern press photography. The Bulla family established the first Russian photo agency; they documented such events as the Russo-Japanese War, World War I, and the 1917 Revolutions. The growing commercial availability of inexpensive cameras and products rendered photography more pervasive in Russia. However, with the commercialization of photography, Russian practitioners became increasingly dependent upon foreign equipment and materials. With the outbreak of World War I, photographers were largely cut off from their supplies, and the ensuing crisis severely limited photographic activity until the mid-1920s.

  After the October Revolution, Russian photography followed a unique path due to the ideological imperatives of the Soviet regime. The Bolsheviks quickly recognized the propaganda potential of photography and nationalized the photographic industry. During the civil war, special committees collected historical photographs, documented contemporary events, and produced photopropaganda. In the early 1920s, Russian modernist artists, such as Alexander Rodchenko, experimented with the technique of photomontage, the assembly of photographic fragments into larger compositions. With the growing politicization of art, photomontage and photography soon became important media for the creation of ideological images. The 1920s also witnessed the foundation of the Soviet illustrated mass press. Despite a shortage of experienced photojournalists, the development of the illustrated press cultivated a new generation of Soviet photographers. Mikhail Koltsov, editor of the popular magazine Ogonek, laid the groundwork for modern photojournalism in the Soviet Union by establishing national and international mechanisms for the production, distribution, and preservation of photographic material. Koltsov actively promoted phot
ographic education and the further development of both amateur and professional Soviet photography through the magazine Sovetskoye foto.

  During the First Five-Year Plan, creative debates emerged between modernist photographers and professional Soviet photojournalists. While both groups shunned aestheticizing pictorialist approaches and were ideologically committed to the development of uniquely Soviet photography, differences arose concerning creative methods, especially the relative priority to be given to the form versus content of the Soviet photograph. These debates stimulated the further development of Soviet documentary photography. The illustrated magazine USSR in Construction (SSSR na stroike; 1930-1941, 1949) was an important venue for Soviet documentary photography. Published in Russian, English, French, and German editions, it featured the work of top photographers and photomontage artists. Like the nineteenth-century ethnographic albums, USSR in Construction presented the impact of Soviet industrialization and modernization in diverse parts of the USSR in filmlike photographic essays. As the 1930s progressed, official Soviet photography became increasingly lackluster and formulaic. Published photographs