Encyclopedia of Russian History

by James Millar

  Soviet polar exploration resumed after World War II. A new generation of researchers, including A.A. Afanasyev, Vasily Burkhanov, Mikhail So-mov, Alexei Treshnikov, Boris Koshechkin, and others, came to the forefront. A second North Pole outpost (SP-2) was established in 1950, and until the late 1980s, the USSR operated at least two SP stations at any given time. In 1977, the atomic icebreaker Arktika became the first surface vessel to reach the North Pole.

  As for the Antarctic, Russian mariners Fabian Bellingshausen (1770-1852) became, in 1820, one of the first three explorers knowingly to sight the Antarctic continent (the first person to sight Antarctica remains a matter of debate). The USSR did not engage in serious exploration of the Antarctic until 1956. During the International Geophysical Year of 1957-1958, the USSR was one of twelve nations to establish stations in Antarctica. In 1959, the USSR signed the Antarctic Treaty, which went into effect in 1961. As with the Arctic, the collapse of the USSR in 1991 made it difficult for the Russians to continue Antarctic research, although Russia still maintains stations there year-round. See also: BERING, VITUS JONASSEN; CHIRIKOV, ALEXEI ILICH

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Armstrong, Terence. (1958). The Russians in the Arctic. London: Methuen. Armstrong, Terence. (1965). Russian Settlement in the North. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. McCannon, John. (1998). Red Arctic: Polar Exploration and the Myth of the North in the Soviet Union, 1932-1939. New York: Oxford University Press. Taracouzio, T. A. (1938). Soviets in the Arctic. New York: Macmillan.

  JOHN MCCANNON

  POLES

  The Poles represent the northwestern branch of the Slavonic race. They speak Polish, a member of the Western Slavic branch of the Indo-European language family. It is most closely related to Be-lorussian, Czech, Slovak, and Ukrainian. From the very earliest times the Poles have resided on the territory between the Carpathians, Oder River, and North Sea. Boles-law I “Chrobny” or the Brave (967-1025) united all the Slavonic tribes in this region into a Polish kingdom, which reached its zenith at the close of the Middle Ages and slowly declined during the mid to late eighteenth century. Hostility to Polish nationalism formed a common bond between the Russian, Prussian, and Austrian governments. Thus, Poland was partitioned four

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  times. The first partition (August 1772) divided one-third of Poland between the three above-named countries. The second partition (January 1793) was mostly to the advantage of Russia; Austria did not acquire land. In the third partition (October 1795), the rest of Poland was divided up between the three autocracies. After the defeat of Napoleon and collapse of his puppet state, the Grand Duchy of Warsaw (1807-1814), a fourth partition occurred (1815), by which the Russians pushed westward and incorporated Warsaw. Until then Warsaw had been situated in Prussian Poland from 1795 to 1807. Potent anti-Russian sentiment has long prevailed among the Poles who are predominantly Catholic, especially during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as evidenced by four popular uprisings against the Slavic colossus to the east: 1768, 1794, 1830-1831, and 1863. According to the 1890 census about 8,400,000 Poles resided in the Russian Empire.

  Finally in 1918, an independent Poland was reconstituted. Later in August 1939 a pact was signed between Adolf Hitler’s Germany and Josef Stalin’s Soviet Union, which contained a secret protocol authorizing yet a fifth partition of Poland: “In the event of a territorial and political rearrangement of the areas belonging to the Polish state the spheres of influence of Germany and the USSR shall be bounded approximately by the line of the rivers Narew, Vistula, and San.” The next month Hitler’s Germany invaded Poland; the Red Army did not interfere.

  After more than four decades of the Cold War, during which Poland was a Soviet “satellite” and belonged to the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact, partially free elections were held in 1989. The Solidarity movement won sweeping victories; Lech Walesa became Poland’s first popularly elected post-Communist president in December 1990. In 1999 Poland joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, along with Hungary and the Czech Republic. It is scheduled to enter the European Union in 2004. See also: NATIONALITIES POLICIES, SOVIET; NATIONALITIES

  POLICIES, TSARIST; POLAND

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Connor, Walter D., and Ploszajski, Piotr. (1992). The Polish Road from Socialism: The Economics, Sociology, and Politics of Transition. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe. Hunter, Richard J., and Ryan, Leo. (1998). From Autarchy to Market: Polish Economics and Politics, 1945-1995. Westport, CT: Praeger. Lukowski, Jerzy, and Zawadzki, Hubert. (2002). A Concise History of Poland. New York: Cambridge University Press. Michta, Andrew A. (1990). Red Eagle: The Army in Polish Politics, 1944-1988. Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press. Snyder, Timothy. (2003). The Reconstruction of Nations: Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus, 1569-1999. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

  JOHANNA GRANVILLE

  POLICE See STATE SECURITY, ORGANS OF.

  POLISH REBELLION OF 1863

  After decades of harsh limits on Polish autonomy, many Poles were hopeful that the situation would improve after the 1855 coronation of Alexander II. There were indeed concessions: Martial law was lifted, an amnesty was declared for all political prisoners, a new Archbishop of Warsaw was named (the position had been vacant since 1830), and censorship was made somewhat less restrictive. In 1862 a Pole named Aleksander Wielopolski was made governor of the Polish Kingdom, in an attempt to cooperate with the aristocratic elite and marginalize more radical national separatists and democratic revolutionaries. All these attempts at conciliation failed, as patriotic demonstrations broke out in late 1861 and intensified throughout 1862. The Russians tried to suppress these protests with deadly force, but that only generated more anger among the Poles, and the unrest spread.

  Wielopolski tried to quash the disturbances on the night of January 23 by organizing an emergency draft into the army targeted at the young men who had been leading the demonstrations. This, too, failed, as it prompted the national movement leaders to proclaim an uprising (which was being planned in any case). The rebels proclaimed the existence of the “Temporary National Government,” which would lead the revolt and (they hoped) pave the way for a true independent Polish government afterwards.

  The “January Uprising” (as it is known in Poland) was fought primarily as a guerrilla war, with small-scale assaults against individual Russian units rather than large pitched battles (which the Poles lacked the forces to win). Over the next one and one-half years, 200,000 Poles took part in

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  the fighting, with about 30,000 in the field at any one moment.

  After the revolt was crushed, thousands of Poles were sent to Siberia, hundreds were executed, and towns and villages throughout Poland were devastated by the violence. All traces of Polish autonomy were lost, and the most oppressive period of Russification began. See also: POLAND

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Leslie, R. F. (1963). Reform and Insurrection in Russian Poland, 1856-1865. London: University of London, Athlone Press. Wandycz, Piotr. (1974). The Lands of Partitioned Poland, 1795-1918. Seattle: University of Washington Press.

  BRIAN PORTER

  POLITBURO

  The Politburo, or Political Bureau, was the most important decision-making and leadership organ in the Communist Party, and has commonly been seen as equivalent to the cabinet in Western political systems. For most of the life of the Soviet system, the Politburo (called the Presidium between 1952 and 1966) was the major focus of elite political life and the arena within which all important issues of policy were decided. It was the heart of the political system.

  The Politburo was formally established at the Eighth Congress of the Party in March 1919 and held its first session on April 16. Formed by the Central Committee (CC), the Politburo was to make decisions that could not await the next meeting of the CC, but over time its smaller size and more frequent meeting schedule meant that effective power drained into it and away from the CC. There had been smaller gr
oupings of leaders before, but these had never become formalized nor had they taken an institutional form. The establishment of the Politburo was part of the regularization of the leading levels of the Party that saw the simultaneous creation of the Orgburo and Secretariat, with these latter two bodies meant to ensure the implementation of the decisions of leading Party organs, in practice mostly the Politburo.

  From its formation until late 1930, the Politburo was one arena within which the conflict between Josef Stalin and his supporters on the one side and successive groups of oppositionists among the Party leadership was fought out, but with the removal of Mikhail Tomsky in 1930, the last open oppositionist disappeared from the Politburo. Henceforth the body remained largely controlled by Stalin. Its lack of institutional integrity and power is illustrated by the fact that various of its members were arrested and executed during the terror of the mid- to late 1930s. After World War II, the Politburo ceased even to meet regularly, being effectively replaced by ad hoc groupings of leaders that Stalin mobilized on particular issues and when it suited him.

  Following Stalin’s death in 1953, the leading Party organs resumed a more regular existence, although Nikita Khrushchev’s style was not one well suited to the demands of collective leadership; he often sought to bypass the Presidium. Under Leonid Brezhnev, the Politburo became more regularized, and the overwhelming majority of national issues seem to have been discussed in that body, although an important exception was the decision to send troops into Afghanistan in 1979. For much of the Mikhail Gorbachev period, too, the Politburo was at the heart of Soviet national decision making, although the shift of the Soviet system to a presidential one and the restructuring of the Politburo at the Twenty-Eighth Congress in 1990 effectively sidelined this body as an important institution.

  The Politburo was always a small body. The first Politburo consisted of five full and three candidate (or nonvoting) members; at its largest, when it was elected at the Nineteenth Congress in 1952 and was probably artificially large because Stalin was planning a further purge of the leadership (it was also envisaged that there would be a small, inner body), it comprised twenty-five full and eleven candidate members. Generally in the post-Stalin period it had between ten and fifteen full and five to nine candidates. Membership has tended to include a number of CC secretaries, leading representatives from state institutions (although the foreign and defense ministers did not become automatic members until 1973) and sometimes one or two republican party leaders. Gorbachev changed this pattern completely in 1990 by making all republican party leaders members of the Politburo along with the general secretary and his deputy, and eliminating candidate membership. It was overwhelmingly a male institution, with only two women (Ekaterina Furtseva and Alexandra Bir-iukova) gaining membership, and it was always dominated by ethnic Slavs, especially Russians.

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  While the frequency of Politburo meetings is somewhat uncertain for much of its life, it seems to have met on average about once per week in the Brezhnev period and after, with provision for a further meeting if required. Meetings were attended by all members plus a range of other people who might be called in to address specific items on the agenda. In addition, some issues were handled by circulation among the members, thereby not requiring explicit discussion at a meeting. No public differences of opinion between Politburo members were aired before the breakdown of many of the rules of Party life under Gorbachev, and public unanimity prevailed. It is not clear that votes were actually taken; issues seem to have been resolved through discussion and consensus. Whatever the process, the Politburo was the central leadership site of the Party and the Soviet system as a whole. See also: BREZHNEV, LEONID ILICH; CENTRAL COMMITTEE; COMMUNIST PARTY OF THE SOVIET UNION; GORBACHEV, MIKHAIL SERGEYEVICH; PRESIDIUM OF SUPREME SOVIET; STALIN, JOSEF VISSARIONOVICH

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Laird, Roy D. (1986). The Politburo: Demographic Trends, Gorbachev and the Future. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Lowenhardt, John; Ozinga, James R.; and van Ree, Erik. (1992). The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Politburo. London: UCL Press.

  GRAEME GILL

  POLITICAL PARTY SYSTEM

  Following years of one-party politics in the Soviet Union, post-communist Russia experienced a burst of party development during the 1990s. Still, Russia’s party system remains underdeveloped. Although political parties run candidates in national parliamentary elections, Russia’s first two presidents, Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin, chose not to affiliate themselves with political parties. Russia’s constitution gives the president the power to form the government without reference to the balance of party strength in the parliament. Politicians in the State Duma usually affiliate themselves with parties or party-like factions, but almost no parties have well-developed organizational bases among the electorate. Most voters have only dim conceptions of the policy positions of the major political parties. New parties constantly form and dissolve. The function often ascribed to political parties in developed democracies-that of linking voters’ interests with the policy decisions of government- is scarcely visible in Russia. Nonetheless, a rudimentary party system was in place by the late 1990s.

  Russia’s parties may be characterized as falling into five major types. On the left are Marxist-Leninist parties. The most prominent example is the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, headed by Gennady Zyuganov. The CPRF is characterized by a militantly anti-capitalist stance, which it combines with appeals to Russian statist, nationalist, and religious traditions. It is the strongest political party in Russia both in its membership and in the number of votes it attracts in elections (it can count on the support of about 20 to 25 percent of the electorate). It also enjoys a distinct ideological identity in voters’ minds. Despite its large following, however, it has been unable to exercise much influence in policy making at the national level. Other parties on the left are still more radical in their ideologies and call for a return to Soviet-era political and economic institutions; some expressly advocate a return to Stalinism.

  A second group of parties can be called “social democratic.” They accept the principle of private ownership of property. At the same time, they call for a more interventionist social policy by the government to protect social groups made vulnerable by the transition from communism. The party headed by Grigory Yavlinsky, called Yabloko, is an example. Yabloko attracts 7 to 10 percent of the vote in national elections. Other parties that identify themselves as social democratic-including a party organized by former president Mikhail Gorbachev-have fared poorly in elections.

  A third group of parties strongly advocate market-oriented policies. They press for further privatization of state assets, including land and industrial enterprises. They also seek closer integration of Russia with the West and the spread of values such as respect for individual civil, political, and economic liberties. The most prominent example of such a party is the Union of Rightist Forces, which drew around 8 percent of the vote in the 2000 parliamentary election.

  A fourth group of parties appeal to voters on nationalist grounds. Some call for giving ethnic Russians priority treatment in Russia over ethnic minorities. Others demand the restoration of a

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  Russian empire. They denounce Western influences such as individualism, materialism, and competitiveness. Some believe that Russia’s destiny lies with a Eurasian identity that straddles East and West; others take a more straightforwardly statist bent and call for restoring Russian military might and centralized state power. Nationalist groups are numerous and skillful at attracting attention, but tend to be small. However, Vladimir Zhirinovsky’s Liberal Democratic Party of Russia gained some successes in elections during the 1990s (22% in 1993, 12% in 1995).

  The fifth group may be called “parties of power.” These are parties that actively avoid taking explicit programmatic stances. They depend instead on their access to state power and the provision of patronage ben
efits to elite supporters. Their public stance tends to be centrist, pragmatic, and reassuring. The major party of power in the 2000 election was “Unity,” which benefited from an arms-length association with Vladimir Putin. The problem for parties of power is that they have little to offer voters except their proximity to the Kremlin; if their patrons reject them or lose power, they quickly fade from view.

  Many voters can identify a party that they prefer over others, but Russian voters on the whole mistrust parties and feel little sense of attachment to them. Likewise most politicians, apart from Communists, feel little loyalty or obligation to parties. The conditions favoring the development of a party system-a network of civic and social associations able to mobilize support behind one or another party, and a political system in which the government is based on a party majority in parliament-remain weak in Russia. It is likely that the development of a strong, competitive party system will be a protracted process. See also: COMMUNIST PARTY OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION; LIBERAL DEMOCRATIC PARTY; UNION OF RIGHT FORCES; YABLOKO.

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Colton, Timothy J. (2000). Transitional Citizens: Voters and What Influences Them in the New Russia. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Fish, M. Stephen. (1996). Democracy from Scratch: Opposition and Regime in the New Russian Revolution. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. McFaul, Michael. (2001). Russia’s Unfinished Revolution: Political Change from Gorbachev to Putin. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. White, Stephen; Rose, Richard; and McAllister, Ian. (1996). How Russia Votes. Chatham, NJ: Chatham House Publishers.

  THOMAS F. REMINGTON

  POLL TAX See SOUL TAX.

  POLOTSKY, SIMEON