Encyclopedia of Russian History

by James Millar

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Freeze, ChaeRan Y. (2002). Jewish Marriage and Divorce in Imperial Russia. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England.

  CHAERAN Y. FREEZE

  RABKRIN

  Rabkrin is the contracted name of Narodnyi Kom-missariat Raboche-Krest’ianskoi Inspektsii (The People’s Commissariat of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspection), the Soviet governmental institution responsible between 1920 and 1934 for overseeing state administration.

  On February 7, 1920, the Soviet Central Executive Committee established Rabkrin to succeed the People’s Commissariat for State Control (estabSee also: CENTRAL CONTROL COMMISSION; SOVNARKOM; STALIN, JOSEF VISSARIONOVICH

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Rees, E. A. (1987). State Control in Soviet Russia. The Rise and Fall of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspectorate, 1920-1934. Basingstoke: Macmillan.

  NICK BARON

  RACHMANINOV, SERGEI VASILIEVICH

  (1873-1943), one of the most famous of Russian composers.

  Sergei Vasilievich Rachmaninov was born in Oneg, Russia. He first established himself with his much-performed Prelude in C Sharp Minor, presented

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  with Rachmaninov at the piano in the Moscow Conservatory auditorium in 1892. A few years later he composed his famous Piano Concerto No. 2 in C Minor. Soon after these successes he was appointed conductor at the Bolshoi Theater. Among his other works were an opera (Aleko, 1892), The Bells (a dramatic choral symphony composed in 1910), three instrumental symphonies, three other piano concertos, the Vocalise (two versions, 1916 and 1919) and other songs, the Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini (1934), and the Symphonic Dances (1940).

  With the coming of the Bolshevik seizure of power in Russia in 1917, Rachmaninov exiled himself first to Germany, then to the United States. In the United States he had conducted his first (in 1909) but by no means only concert tour. His several succeeding appearances in New York City’s Carnegie Hall won him early fame. Critics remarked at the unusual span of his hands as his fingers raced through the rich chords and arpeggios.

  After his departure from Russia, Rachmani-nov’s writing remained outstanding. Found in the repertoires of orchestras worldwide, the Symphony No. 3 in A Minor (1936) is a stunning work whose structure is studied in music school composition classes. Some of Rachmaninov’s music was included in film scores. Among these was the eerie music of “Isle of the Dead” in a 1945 film with Boris Karloff. Various parts of his other works turn up in many films.

  Rachmaninov’s music is considered Romantic while bearing traces of typically Russian themes and style of composition. Although banned in Soviet Russia for more than seventy years, Rach-maninov’s music is as much admired in his homeland as the music of Tchaikovsky, Mussorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, or Stravinsky. Beginning just before the demise of Communist rule in the early 1980s, Rachmaninov’s music again adorned the repertoires of Russian orchestras. See also: BOLSHOI THEATER; MIGHTY HANDFUL; MUSIC

  ALBERT L. WEEKS

  RADEK, KARL BERNARDOVICH

  (1885-1939), revolutionary internationalist and publicist.

  Born Karl Sobelsohn to Jewish parents in Lvov, Karl Radek dedicated his life to international revolution and political writing. He was active in socialist circles from age sixteen and in 1904 joined the Social Democratic Party of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania. Before World War I, Radek moved comfortably among Europe’s Marxist revolutionaries. He became a member of the German Social Democratic Party’s left wing in 1908, and wrote on party tactics and international affairs for the party’s press.

  Radek opposed World War I and was active in the Zimmerwald movement, an international socialist antiwar movement organized in 1915. He joined the Bolsheviks after the 1917 Revolution and was a delegate to the Brest-Litovsk peace talks, although he opposed the treaty and supported the Left Communist opposition. Nonetheless, in 1918, he became the head of the Central European Section of the Commissariat of Foreign Affairs and helped to organize the founding congress of the German Communist Party. In 1919, he was elected to the Bolshevik Party’s Central Committee and became the Comintern secretary. He was removed from this post in 1920, but remained a member of the Comintern’s executive committee and the Central Committee, and was active in German communist affairs until 1924.

  In 1924, Radek sided with Trotsky’s Left Opposition and in consequence was removed from the Central Committee. That same year he also opposed changes in Comintern policy and thus was removed from its executive committee. He was expelled from the Party in 1927 and exiled. After recanting his errors in 1929, he was readmitted to the Party and became the director of the Central Committee’s information bureau and an adviser to Joseph Stalin on foreign affairs. Radek helped to craft the 1936 Soviet constitution, but later that year he was arrested and again expelled from the Party. At his January 1937 Moscow show trial, he was convicted of being a Trotskyist agent and sentenced to ten years in prison. He died in 1939.

  Radek published routinely in the Soviet press and authored several books on Comintern and international affairs. See also: CENTRAL COMMITTEE; COMMUNIST INFORMATION BUREAU; COMMUNIST INTERNATIONAL; COMMUNIST PARTY OF THE SOVIET UNION; LEFT OPPOSITION; PURGES, THE GREAT; TROTSKY, LEON DAVIDOVICH

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Lerner, Warren. (1970). Karl Radek: The Last Internationalist. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

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  Radek, Karl B., with Haupt, Georges (1974). “Karl Bern-hardovich Radek.” In Makers of the Russian Revolution, ed. Georges Haupt and Jean-Jacques Marie, tr. C.I.P. Ferdinand and D.M. Bellos. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

  WILLIAM J. CHASE

  RADISHCHEV, ALEXANDER NIKOLAYEVICH

  (1749-1802), poet, thinker, and radical critic of Russian society.

  Alexander Nikolayevich Radishchev was arrested for sedition by Catherine II in 1790 for the publication of a fictional travelogue. Newly promoted from assistant director to director of the St. Petersburg Customs and Excise Department, he had benefited from Catherine’s earlier enthusiasm for the European Enlightenment. Following service as a page at the Imperial Court from 1762 to 1767, he had been selected as one of an elite group of students sent to study law at Leipzig University, where he had absorbed the progressive thinking of the leading French philosophes. After completing his studies in 1771 he returned to Russia, where he responded to Catherine’s encouragement for translating the works of the European thinkers of the Enlightenment. His first literary venture, in 1773, was a translation of Gabriel Bonnot de Mably’s Observations sur l’histoire de la Gr?ce, which idealized republican Sparta. Radishchev’s first significant original work, published in 1789, was his memoir, Zhitie Fedora Vasilevicha Ushakova (The Life of Fedor Vasilevich Ushakov), recalling idealistic conversations with a fellow student in Leipzig on oppression, injustice, and the possibilities for reform. This was a prelude for Puteshestvie iz Peterburga v Moskvu (A Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow), in which an observant, sentimental traveler discovers the various deficiencies in contemporary Russian society.

  At each staging post, an aspect of the state of Russian society is revealed. For example, at Tosna, the traveler observes feudalism; at Liubani, it is forced peasant labor. Chudovo brings unchecked bureaucratic power to his attention; he learns of autocracy at Spasskaya Polest; and at Vydropusk his attention is taken by the imperial court and courtiers. Other stops along the road illuminate issues such as religion, education, health, prostitution, poverty, and censorship in an encyclopedic panorama of a sick society. No single cure is proposed for Russia’s ills, but the underlying message is that wrongs must be righted by whatever means prove to be effective.

  Deeply affected by the French Revolution of 1789, Catherine now read the work as an outrageous attempt to undermine her imperial authority. An example was made of Radishchev in a show trial that exacted a death sentence, later commuted to Siberian exile. He was p
ermitted to return to European Russia in 1797, but he remained in exile until 1801. Crushed by his experiences, he committed suicide the following year. His Journey remained officially proscribed until 1905. Its author’s fate, however, as much as the boldness of its criticism, had won Radishchev the reputation of being the precursor of the radical nineteenth-century intelli-gensia. See also: CATHERINE II; ENLIGHTENMENT, IMPACT OF; INTELLIGENTSIA

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Clardy, Jesse V. (1964). The Philosophical Ideas of Alexander Radishchev. New York: Astra Books. Lang, David M. (1959). The First Russian Radical: Alexander Radishchev (1749-1802). London: Allen and Un-win. McConnell, Allen. (1964). A Russian Philosophe: Alexander Radishchev 1749-1802. The Hague: Nijhoff.

  W. GARETH JONES

  RADZINSKY, EDVARD STANISLAVICH

  (b. 1936), playwright, author, popular historian, and television personality.

  A man of the 1960s, Edvard Radzinsky was born in Moscow to the family of an intellectual. He trained to be an archivist but began writing plays during the late 1950s. During the 1960s and the 1970s Radzinsky dominated the theatrical scene in Moscow and gained international recognition. His early plays explored the themes of love, commitment, and estrangement (101 Pages About Love; Monologue About a Marriage; “Does Love Really Exist?,” Asked the Firemen). In the final decades of stagnation under mature socialism, Radzinsky wrote a cycle of historical-philosophical plays exploring the

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  RAIKIN, ARKADY ISAAKOVICH

  themes of personal responsibility, the struggle between ideas and power, and the roles of victim and executioner (Conversations with Socrates; I, Lunin; and Theater in the Time of Nero and Seneca). In the same period he also wrote several grotesques that drew their inspirations from great literary themes and myths: The Seducer Kolobashkin (the Faust legend) and Don Juan Continued (Don Juan in modern Moscow).

  Radzinsky refused to define his dramatic imagination by the political events of 1917 and looked to a larger intellectual world. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, he shifted his creative efforts to literature, writing Our Decameron on the decon-struction of the Soviet intellectual life and history, as well as writing unconventional biographies of Nicholas II (The Last Tsar), Stalin, and Rasputin. In each work Radzinsky enjoyed access to new archival sources and wrote for a popular audience. His works became international bestsellers. Some historians criticized the special archival access he obtained through his close ties with the government of Boris Yeltsin. Others noted his invocation of mystical and spiritual themes in his treatment of the murder of the tsar and his family. Radzin-sky has shown a profound interest in the impact of personalities on history but is much opposed to either a rationalizing historicism or an ideology-derived historical inevitability. Radzinsky became a media celebrity thanks to his programs on national television about riddles of history. In 1995 he was elected to the Academy of Russian Television and was awarded state honors by President Yeltsin. Appointed to the Government Commission for the Funeral of the Royal Family, Radzinsky worked diligently to have the remains of Nicholas II and his family buried in the cathedral at the Peter and Paul Fortress in St. Petersburg. See also: NICHOLAS II; RASPUTIN, GRIGORY YEFIMOVICH; STALIN, JOSEF VISSARIONOVICH; THEATER

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Kipp, Maia A. (1985). “The Dramaturgy of Edvard Radzin-skii.” Ph.D. diss. University of Kansas, Lawrence. Kipp, Maia A. (1985). “Monologue About Love: The Plays of Edvard Radzinsky.” Soviet Union/Union Sovi?tique 12(3):305-329. Kipp, Maia A. (1989). “In Search of a Synthesis: Reflections on Two Interpretations of E. Radzinsky’s ‘Lunin, or, the Death of Jacques, Recorded in the Presence of the Master.’” Studies in Twentieth Century Literature 3(2):259-277. Kipp, Maia A. (1993). “Edvard Radzinsky.” In Contemporary World Writers ed. Tracy Chevalier. London: Saint James Press. Radzinsky, Edvard. (1992). The Last Tsar: The Life and Death of Nicholas II. New York: Doubleday. Radzinsky, Edvard. (1996). Stalin. New York: Double-day. Radzinsky, Edvard. (2000). The Rasputin File. New York: Nan A. Telese.

  JACOB W. KIPP

  RAIKIN, ARKADY ISAAKOVICH

  (1911-1987), stage entertainer, director, film actor.

  Arkady Raikin ranks as one of the most popular and acclaimed stage entertainers of the Soviet era. He was particularly well known for his uncanny ability to alter his appearance through the use of makeup, and his witty, satirical monologues and one-man sketches endeared him to several generations of fans. As a young man Raikin worked for a short time as a lab assistant in a chemical factory, but his real passion was acting. He enrolled in the Leningrad Theater Institute, and upon his graduation in 1935 he found employment with the Leningrad Theater of Working-Class Youth (TRAM). He also found his way into the movies, and in 1938 he starred in The Fiery Years and Doctor Kaliuzhnyi. He also appeared in films later in his life and wrote and directed the 1974 television film People and Mannequins.

  But Raikin devoted the bulk of his creative energies to entertaining on the stage. In 1939 he joined the prestigious Leningrad Theater of Stage Entertainment and Short Plays (Leningradsky teatr estrady i miniatyur), and in 1942 he became artistic director of the theater. He remained affiliated with this theater for the remainder of his career, even after it moved to Moscow in 1982, where it was renamed the State Theater of Short Plays. Raikin also found success as master of ceremonies for stage shows that allowed him to entertain audiences.

  His many awards included People’s Artist of the USSR (1968), Lenin Prize (1980), and Hero of Socialist Labor (1981). In 1991 the Russian government honored him by issuing a postage stamp in his name, and the Satyricon Theater (formerly the State Theater of Short Plays) was named in Raikin’s honor in 1991.

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  RAILWAYS

  See also: MOTION PICTURES; THEATER

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Beilin, Adolf Moiseevich. (1960). Arkadii Raikin. Leningrad: Iskusstvo. Uvarova, E. (1986). Arkadii Raikin. Moscow: Iskusstvo.

  ROBERT WEINBERG

  RAILWAYS

  The first Russian railways, built as early as 1838, were tsarist whimsies that ran from St. Petersburg to the summer palaces of Tsarskoye Selo and Pavlovsk. Emperor Nicholas I (r. 1825-1855) ordered the construction of these and the Moscow-St. Petersburg line, which, according to legend, the tsar designed by drawing a line on a map between the two cities using a straight-edge and pencil. One hundred fifty years later, the railway system had expanded to almost 150,000 kilometers (90,000 miles), or almost two-thirds the length of the network serving the United States. With 2.3 times the territory of the United States, however, the net density of the Soviet Union’s rail system was only about one-fourth as concentrated. It was, and is, a system of trunk lines with very few branches, which supplied only minimum service to major sources of tonnage.

  Naturally, this spartan system was severely strained at any given time. Soviet freight turnover was more than 2.5 times as great as that of the United States, making it the most densely used rail network in the world. At the time of the collapse of the USSR, Soviet railways carried 55 percent of the globe’s railway freight (in tons per kilometer) and more than 25 percent of its railway passenger-kilometers. Compared to other domestic transportation alternatives, Soviet railways had no comparison: They hauled 31 percent of the tonnage, accounted for 47 percent of the freight turnover (in billions of ton-kilometers), and circulated almost 40 percent of the inter-city passenger-kilometers.

  REGIONAL RAIL SYSTEMS AND COMMODITIES

  In the Russian Federation of the early twenty-first century, the leading rail cargoes, ranked according to tonnage, comprise coal, oil and oil products, ferrous metals, timber, iron ore and manganese, grain, fertilizers, cement, nonferrous metals and sulfurous raw materials, coke, perishable foods, and mixed animal feedstocks. The most conspicuous Russian carrier is the Kemerovo Railway, which hauls more than 200 million tons of freight per year, two-thirds of which is coal from the mines of the Kuznetsk Basin (Kuzbas), Russia’s greatest coal producer. When the West Siberian and Kuz
netsk steel mills operate at full capacity, the Kemerovo Line also carries iron and manganese, iron and steel metals, fluxing agents, and coke. Rounding out the freight structure are cement and timber.

  The only other railway that ships more than 200 million tons of freight is the Sverdlovsk, or Yekaterinburg, Railway in the Central Urals. The system’s most important cargoes include timber from the nearby forests; ferrous metals from iron and steel mills at Nizhniy Tagil, Serov, Chusovoy and others; and petroleum products from the refineries at Perm and Omsk. Other heavily used railways comprise the October (St. Petersburg), Moscow, North Caucasus, South Ural, and Northern lines, each shipping more than 140 million tons per year. The much-heralded Baikal-Amur Mainline (BAM) Railway, which became fully operational in December 1989, remains Russia’s most lightly used network. Three-fifths of the freight it transports is coal from the South Yakutian Basin.

  REGIONAL BOTTLENECKS

  In terms of combined freight and passenger turnover (ton- and passenger-kilometers), the world’s most heavily used segment of railroad track stretches between Novokuznetsk in the Kuzbas and Chelyabinsk in the southern Urals. Parts of the Kemerovo, West Siberian, and South Urals railways each maintain a share of this traffic. While touring the Soviet Union in 1977, geographer Paul Lydolph observed train frequencies on this segment as often as one every three minutes in different locations and at various times during the day. By the 1990s, operating at 95 percent of its capacity, the West Siberian arm of the Trans-Siberian Railway was critically overloaded. Ironically, 40 percent of the freight cars were usually empty: Had these cars not been on the track, the West Siberian line would have been running at only 48 percent of capacity! Such was the waste inherent in the Soviet centrally planned command economy.