Encyclopedia of Russian History

by James Millar

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Hellie, Richard. (1971). Enserfment and Military Change in Muscovy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Hellie, Richard, ed. and tr. (1988). The Muscovite Law Code (Ulozhenie) of 1649. Irvine, CA: Charles Schlacks.

  RICHARD HELLIE

  PONOMAREV, BORIS KHARITONOVICH

  (1905-1995), party official and historian.

  Boris Ponomarev was a leading Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) ideologue who for three decades (1954-1986) headed the International Department of the CPSU Central Committee, the body responsible for relations with foreign communist parties. Ponomarev joined the Bolsheviks in 1919. A civil war veteran (serving from 1918 to 1920), he graduated from Moscow State University in 1926. From 1933 to 1936, at a time when historiography was coming under party control, he was deputy director of the CPSU’s Institute of Red Professors. He was on the executive committee of the Comintern, the Soviet-dominated organization of international communist parties, in its last years (1936-1943), and later head of the Comintern’s successor, the Cominform (1946-1949).

  1205

  POPOV, ALEXANDER STEPANOVICH

  In 1954 he became head of the International Department. He was elected to the Central Committee in 1956. A party historian, he was elected a candidate member of the Academy of Sciences in 1959, becoming a full Academician in 1962. After Nikita Khrushchev’s denunciation of Josef Stalin at the Twentieth CPSU Congress in 1956, Ponomarev led the team of historians who wrote the new, official History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (1959), which replaced Stalin’s notorious Short Course history (1938). But Stalin’s portrait continued to hang on Ponomarev’s office wall. Appointed a secretary of the Central Committee in 1961, he eventually rose to the rank of candidate member of the Politburo in 1972. Never comfortable with reform, Ponomarev, in 1986, was removed as head of the International Department by Mikhail Gorbachev, who retired him from the Central Committee in April 1989. See also: CENTRAL COMMITTEE; COMMUNIST PARTY OF THE SOVIET UNION

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Brown, Archie, ed. (1989). Political Leadership in the Soviet Union. Houndmills, Basingstoke, UK: Macmillan with St Antony’s College, Oxford. Nekrich, Aleksandr. (1991). Forsake Fear: Memoirs of an Historian, tr. Donald Lineburgh. Boston: Unwin Hy-man.

  ROGER D. MARKWICK

  POPOV, ALEXANDER STEPANOVICH

  (1859-1905), prominent mathematician and physicist.

  Russia claims that Alexander Stepanovich Popov invented the radio before the Italian scientist Guglielmo Marconi. Determining who was the official inventor of the radio is complicated by nationalistic pride, inadequate documentation of events, and differing interpretations of what constitutes inventing the radio. By what most persons in the West consider objective analysis of the facts known, however, Marconi’s work invariably is recognized as having priority over Popov’s. However, Popov’s numerous achievements do merit both recognition and respect. Popov was the chair of the Department of Physics at St. Petersburg University in 1901 and director of the St. Petersburg Institute of Electrical Engineering in 1905. On May 7, 1895, Popov demonstrated that a receiver could detect the electromagnetic waves produced by lightning discharges in the atmosphere many miles away. Popov’s receiver consisted of a “coherer” made of metal filings, together with an antenna, a relay, and a bell. The relay was used to activate the bell that both signaled the occurrence of lightning and served as a “decoherer” (tapper) to ready the coherer to detect the next lightning discharge. The value this instrument could have in weather forecasting was obvious. In 1865 the Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell had predicted that electromagnetic waves existed. In 1888 a German scientist Heinrich Hertz had proven that electromagnetic waves definitely did exist. Still, no one had yet found any practical use for these electromagnetic or “Hertzian” waves.

  Almost a year after his first experiment, Popov conducted another public experiment on March 24, 1896 that demonstrated the transmission and reception of information by wireless telegraphy. On that day the Russian Physical and Chemical Society convened at St. Petersburg University. Wireless telegraph signals, transmitted a distance of more than 800 feet (243 meters) from another building on the campus, were audible to all in the meeting room. One professor stood at the blackboard and recorded the alphabetical letters represented by the Morse code signals. The letters spelled out the name “Heinrich Hertz.”

  Unfortunately this experiment was never officially recorded. Meanwhile Guglielmo Marconi filed an application for the patent on wireless telegraphy on June 2, 1896, and his first public demonstration occurred in July of that year. Although both of Popov’s experiments took place before Marconi filed the patent, it is widely known that Marconi had already made considerable breakthroughs prior to Popov’s March 24, 1896, experiment, including the transmission and reception of simple messages. Nevertheless, Popov’s achievements were recognized. In 1900 he was awarded a Gold Metal at the Fourth World Congress of Electrical Engineering. See also: TELEVISION AND RADIO

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Birch, Beverley. (2001). Guglielmo Marconi: Radio Pioneer. Woodbridge, CT: Blackbirch Press. Kraeuter, David W. (1992). Radio and Television Pioneers: A Patent Bibliography. Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press.

  1206

  POPULAR FRONT POLICY

  Radovskii, M. I. (1957). Alexander Popov, Inventor of Radio. Moscow: Foreign Language Pub. House.

  JOHANNA GRANVILLE

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Colton, Timothy J. (1996). Moscow: Governing the Socialist Metropolis. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press.

  ERIK S. HERRON

  POPOV, GAVRIIL KHARITONOVICH

  (b. 1936), economist and democratic reformer; mayor of Moscow.

  Gavriil Popov was born and educated in Moscow. While studying at Moscow State University (MGU), he headed the Komsomol organization. He joined the economics faculty at MGU in 1959, eventually becoming dean in 1977. In his academic career, Popov authored numerous articles and books focusing on economic management and was editor of the Academy journal Voprosi Ekonomiki (Economic Questions) from 1988 to 1991.

  Popov moved from economic research and advising to political activism, consulting with government on management reforms starting in the mid-1960s. The apex of his political career occurred during the late 1980s and early 1990s. After joining the Congress of People’s Deputies in 1989, Popov founded and co-chaired the Inter-Regional Deputies’ Group (MDG) with Boris Yeltsin, Yury Afanasiev, and Andrei Sakharov. The MDG advocated democratic reforms; Popov adopted a pragmatic stance relative to other leaders in the group. In March 1990, reformers won control of the Moscow City Council, and Popov was elected chairman. He resigned from the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in July 1990.

  In June 1991, Popov became the first popularly elected mayor of Moscow, with Yuri Luzhkov as his vice-mayor. After opposing the August coup attempt, he pursued reforms such as privatization of housing and retail establishments. He resigned from the post of mayor in June 1992, and subsequently formed electorally unsuccessful organizations. His Russian Movement for Democratic Reforms (RDDR) did not win enough votes to gain party-list seats in the 1993 Duma elections. He later joined with other politicians to form the Social Democrats, a party that participated in the 1995 and 1999 elections and likewise failed to gain seats. Popov founded Moscow International University and became its president. He continues to publish commentaries on public policy issues. See also: INTER-REGIONAL DEPUTIES’ GROUP; MOSCOW

  POPOV, PAVEL ILICH

  (1872-1950), author of the first “balance of the national economy,” the forerunner of the tool of economic analysis now known as input-output.

  Pavel Popov went to St. Petersburg in 1895 to enter the university, but once there he was diverted to participation in the revolutionary movement. He was arrested and spent the years 1896 to 1897 in prison. Exiled to Ufa gubernia, he began to study statistics and in 1909-1917 worked in the Tula zemstvo as a statistician. After the February Revolution he became head o
f the department of the agricultural census in the Ministry of Agriculture in the provisional government. After the Bolsheviks came to power in 1918, he became the first chairman of the Central Statistical Administration. He was an able organizer and, among other things, oversaw development of the first “balance” of inputs and outputs. He continued as chairman of the Central Statistical Administration until 1926, and then had a long, apparently untroubled, career in the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic Gosplan until his death. During the early, statistical, stage of his career, he published some books and reports but apparently nothing after he became associated with Gosplan. Thus, apart from the input-output work, his contribution to Soviet economics was as an organizer rather than as an economic thinker or theorist. See also: CENTRAL STATISTICAL AGENCY; GOSPLAN

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Spulber, Nicolas. (1964). Foundations of Soviet Strategy for Economic Growth: Selected Soviet Essays, 1924-1930. Bloomington: Indiana University Press

  ROBERT W. CAMPBELL

  POPULAR FRONT POLICY

  Comintern policy during the mid-1930s that encouraged cooperation between communist and

  1207

  POPULISM

  non-communist parties in order to stop the spread of fascism.

  During the 1930s, Soviet foreign policy changed several times in response to the evolving political situation in Europe. At the beginning of the decade, Josef Stalin would not allow cooperation between communist and noncommunist parties. This policy had particularly tragic results in Germany, where enmity between communists and socialists divided the opposition to the Nazis. After Adolf Hitler’s rise to power and his adoption of an aggressive anti-Soviet foreign policy, Stalin began to fear the spread of fascism to other European countries and the possible creation of an anti-Soviet bloc. In response to this potential threat, the Soviet Union changed policy and promoted collective security among non-fascist states. In 1934 the USSR joined the League of Nations and the following year signed a mutual defense treaty with France and Czechoslovakia. Stalin realized that the program of the Communist International had to be brought into line with the new Soviet foreign policy, and a Comintern congress was called for the summer of 1935 in order to accomplish this transformation.

  The Seventh Comintern Congress met in Moscow in July-August 1935. Five hundred delegates representing sixty-five communist parties participated and elected Georgi Dimitrov, a Bulgarian communist, as general secretary of the Comintern. In this capacity, Dimitrov delivered the keynote address and outlined the new policy. Declaring that “fascism has embarked upon a wide offensive,” Dimitrov called for the creation of a united anti-fascist front that included support for anti-fascist government coalitions. While maintaining that capitalism remained the ultimate enemy, Dimitrov argued that the immediate threat to the workers came from the fascists and that all communists should participate in the campaign to stop the spread of this dangerous movement. Whereas communists and communist parties previously had opposed all bourgeois and capitalist governments, and considered fascism simply a variant of capitalism, members of the Comintern were now being told to support bourgeois governments and to postpone the struggle against capitalism.

  The Popular Front concept had its greatest impact in Spain, France, and China. In Spain, the election of a Popular Front coalition in February 1936 led to civil war. After three years the forces of the fascist General Francisco Franco took power. In France, where the prospect of a fascist victory frightened the Soviet Union, a Popular Front government came to power in June 1936. Like all French governments of the time, it remained weak, and it fell after only one year. In China, the prospect of cooperation between the Nationalist government of Chiang Kai-shek and the communist forces of Mao Zedong led the Japanese military to launch a preemptive strike during the summer of 1937.

  In the end the Popular Front concept was not about an ideological shift in communist perceptions of the world, but a tactical Stalinist response to the specific threat of fascism as perceived during the mid-1930s. The defense of the Soviet Union took precedence over all other considerations, and in 1939 the Popular Front was abandoned with the signing of the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact. See also: LEAGUE OF NATIONS; NAZI-SOVIET PACT OF 1939

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Dimitrov, Georgi. (1935). United Front against Fascism and War; The Fascist Offensive and the Tasks of the Communist International in the Fight for the Unity of the Working Class Against Fascism. New York: Workers Library Publishers. Haslam, Jonathan. (1984). The Soviet Union and the Struggle for Collective Security in Europe, 1933-39. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Tucker, Robert C. (1990). Stalin in Power: The Revolution from Above, 1928-1941. New York: Norton. Ulam, Adam B. (1968). Expansion and Coexistence: The History of Soviet Foreign Policy, 1917-1967. New York: Praeger.

  HAROLD J. GOLDBERG

  POPULISM

  Scholars differ on the question of when the tendency known as populism (narodnichestvo) was most significant in Russian social and political thought. Some suggest that populism was prominent from 1848 to 1881; others, that it was a revolutionary movement in the period between 1860 and 1895. Soviet scholars primarily focused on the 1870s and 1880s. There is also disagreement about what populism represented as an ideology. There are three ways of looking at it: as a reaction against Western capitalism and socialism, as agrarian socialism, and as a theory advocating the hegemony of the masses over the educated elite.

  1208

  POPULISM

  As this should make evident, populism meant different things to different people; it was not a single coherent doctrine but a widespread movement in nineteenth-century Russia favoring such goals as social justice and equality. Populism in Russia is generally believed to have been strongly influenced by the thinking of Alexander Herzen and Nikolai Chernyshevsky, who during the 1850s and 1860s argued that the peasant commune (mir) was crucial to Russia’s transition from capitalism to socialism via a peasant revolution.

  There were three strands in the Russian populist movement. The first, classical populism, was associated with Peter Lavrovich Lavrov (1823-1900), a nobleman by birth who had received a military education and later became a professor of mathematics. Lavrov was an activist in the student and intellectual movement of the 1860s, and a consequence was forced to emigrate from Russia in 1870. His experience in the Paris Commune during the 1870s convinced him of the need for change, especially in the aftermath of the Great Reforms of the 1860s. In his Historical Letters (1868-1869), Lavrov stated that human progress required a revolution that would totally destroy the existing order. Again in his Historical Letters (1870) and in his revolutionary journal Vpered (Forward) from 1870 to 1872, Lavrov argued that intellectuals had a moral obligation to fight for socialism, and in order to achieve this goal they would have to work with the masses. As he saw it, preparation for revolution was the key. In The State in Future Society, Lavrov outlined the establishment of universal suffrage, the emergence of a society in which the masses would run the government, and above all, the introduction of the notion of popular justice.

  The second type of Russian populism was more conspiratorial, for it grew out of the failure of the classical variant to convert the majority of the Russian people to socialism via preparation and self-education. The major thinkers here were Peter G. Zaichnevsky (1842-1896), Sergei G. Nechaev (1847- 1883), and Peter Nikitich Tkachev (1844-1885). Zaichnevsky, in his pamphlet Young Russia, called for direct action and rejected the possibility of a compromise between the ruling class (including liberals) and the rest of society. He argued that revolution had to be carried out by the majority, using force if necessary, in order to transform Russia’s political, economic, and social system along socialist lines. Not surprisingly, Zaichnevsky’s ideas are often seen as a blueprint for the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. Nechaev pointed to two lessons that could be learned from the failure of classical populism: first, the need for tighter organization, stricter discipline, and better planning, and second, the effort to g
o to the people had proved that the intelligentsia were very remote from the masses. In his Catechism of a Revolutionary, Nechaev argued that individual actions must be controlled by the party and advocated a code for revolutionaries in which members were dedicated, committed to action not words, adhered to party discipline, and above all, were willing to use every possible means to achieve revolution. Finally, Tkachev, who is probably the most significant of the three chief conspiratorial populists, advocated a closely knit secret organization that would carry out a revolution in the name of the people. For obvious reasons, he is often described as the forerunner of Vladimir Lenin or as the first Bolshevik. All three of these thinkers envisioned a revolution by a minority on behalf of the majority, followed by agitation and propaganda to protect its gains. The similarity to the events around the 1917 October Revolution is evident.

  Populists of the classical and conspiratorial varieties rejected terrorism as a method, and Tkachev maintained that it would divert energy away from the revolution. The terrorist wing of Russian populism, however, insisted that agitprop and repeated calls for revolution would accomplish nothing, and therefore direct action was essential. This position was associated with the two main groups that grew out of the Land and Freedom (Zemlya i Volya) organization, People’s Will (Narodnaia Volya), and Black Partition (Cherny Peredel). The failure of the earlier populist movements and the situation in late nineteenth-century Russia (i.e., no political parties or real trade unions, government intervention in every area of life) led to a direct attack on the state, culminating in the assassination of Alexander II in March 1881. Although the clamp-down and greater censorship that followed this event reduced the degree of terrorism, they did not eliminate it altogether, as shown by the emergence of a workers’ section and young People’s Will after 1881.