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Encyclopedia of Russian History

Page 312

by James Millar


  The existence of a large second economy, and particularly its illegal part, had important implications for Russia’s economy both before and after the collapse of the USSR. First, underground activity hinders an accurate understanding of the economy and impedes policy-making by distorting various statistics, including GDP data, household incomes and their distribution, and employment. Additionally, the illegal economy weakens the feedback to policy-makers on government decisions and actions, undermines official institutions, and promotes corruption. From an efficiency point of view, the illegal economy suffers from the black market’s need for secrecy, which results in poor flows of information, greater operational uncertainty, and suboptimally small-scale production.

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  SECOND SECRETARY

  Economic distortions also appear because some activities are easier to hide than others. At the same time, the second economy often benefits a centrally planned economy by improving incentives and resource allocation. During the post-Soviet transition, the existence of the second economy restricted the government’s ability to tax and regulate excessively. On the margin, the net balance between the second economy’s costs and benefits to society depends on its size and other factors, and is a difficult empirical question. See also: BLACK MARKET; COMMAND ADMINISTRATIVE ECONOMY

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Alexeev, Michael, and Pyle, William. (2003). “A Note on Measuring the Unofficial Economy in the Former Soviet Republics.” Economics of Transition 11(1): 153-175. Grossman, Gregory. (1977). “The ‘Second Economy’ of the USSR.” Problems of Communism 26(5):25-40. Grossman, Gregory. (1979). “Notes on the Illegal Private Economy and Corruption.” In Soviet Economy in a Time of Change, Vol. 1, Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office. Grossman, Gregory. (1982). “The ‘Shadow Economy’ in the Socialist Sector of the USSR.” In The CMEA Five-Year Plans (1981-1985) in New Perspective. Brussels: NATO Colloquium. Johnson, Simon; Kaufmann, Daniel; and Shleifer, Andrei. (1997). “The Unofficial Economy in Transition.” Brookings Papers on Economic Activity 2:159-239. Leitzel, Jim. (1995). Russian Economic Reform. New York: Routledge. Schneider, Friedrich, and Enste, Dominik. (2000). “Shadow Economies: Size, Causes, and Consequences.” Journal of Economic Literature 38(1):77-114. Treml, Vladimir, and Alexeev, Michael. (1994). “The Growth of the Second Economy in the Soviet Union and Its Impact.” In Issues in the Transformation of Centrally Planned Economies, ed. Robert Campbell. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

  MICHAEL ALEXEEV

  SECOND SECRETARY

  The second secretary was the number-two position at every level, from top to bottom, of the administrative apparatus (secretariat) of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). From Central

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  Committee headquarters (“the Center”) in Moscow at the top to the republics, provinces, and cities below, secretariats were the Party’s hands-on executive organs. They controlled the work of more than 200,000 full-time officials and employees, known collectively as the nomenklatura. The second secretaries were key figures because at every level of authority they controlled the appointment of Party and government officials.

  The topmost secretary in Moscow was general secretary, or sometimes called the first secretary. The latter term was likewise applied to local number-one secretaries at the middle and lower rungs of the Party hierarchy. Second-in-command in these secretariats was the second secretary. His function was to administer crucial personnel matters throughout the given political-administrative region or locale in the USSR. In republics or other units where the first secretary was drawn from a titular ethnic group, the second secretary was always a Russian for oversight.

  The second secretary had the authority to appoint and dismiss nomenklaturists at the various levels of Party and government rule. Any number of Party functionaries who were later promoted from below to Moscow Center earned their status by having served as second secretaries.

  In Josef Stalin’s time, one of the most powerful officials of this kind was Georgy Malenkov, who functioned largely as Stalin’s number-two man-in-charge of personnel, or de facto second secretary. Like other second secretaries, top to bottom, Malenkov was also a member of the Party’s most important political organ, the Politburo, which at the local levels was called the “Buro.” After Stalin’s death in March 1953, Malenkov functioned briefly as first secretary and then was transferred to the office of prime minister of the USSR.

  It was not unusual for former secretaries, especially second secretaries, to assume high government office at some level of Party or state administration. Any number of important Party officials and members of the central Politburo were first secretaries at one time or another, and many were also once second secretaries on lower rungs of the Party hierarchy.

  In the final period of Soviet rule (after 1985), Yegor Ligachev was perhaps the best-known second secretary. After serving as a second secretary in various provincial administration, he was transferred to Moscow in 1983. There, because he was in charge of personnel affairs at the top, Ligachev became the second most powerful figure in the

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  SECTARIANISM

  party when Mikhail Gorbachev became general secretary in 1985. Ligachev was soon embroiled in policy and personnel disputes with both Gorbachev and the then first secretary of the Moscow Party apparatus, Boris Yeltsin. As second secretary, Ligachev remained a key figure in the regime down to the demise of communist and Soviet rule in Russia in late 1991. See also: COMMUNIST PARTY OF THE SOVIET UNION; GENERAL SECRETARY; GORBACHEV, MIKHAIL SERGEYEVICH; YELTSIN, BORIS NIKOLAYEVICH

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Reshetar, John S. (1971). The Soviet Polity Government and Politics in the USSR. New York: Dodd, Mead. Towster, Julian. (1948). Political Power in the USSR, 1917-1947: The Theory and Structure of Government in the Soviet State. New York: Oxford University Press. Weeks, Albert L. (1987). The Soviet Nomenklatura: A Comprehensive Roster of Soviet Civilian and Military Officials. Washington, DC: Washington Institute Press.

  ALBERT L. WEEKS

  SECRETARIAT

  The Secretariat of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) was the administrative arm of the Communist Party. Initially a handful of party workers, the Secretariat evolved into a powerful bureaucracy with oversight of the entire Soviet political system and economy. Although the size of the Secretariat was modest in comparison to the giant governmental bureaucracy, its power was not. It was the apparat and those who worked in the Secretariat were the apparatchiki. Headed by the General (or First) Secretary and the other Secretaries of the Central Committee of the CPSU, the Secretariat became the body that ensured that Soviet political and economic organs followed party policy. Josef Stalin was responsible for building the Secretariat, and Nikita Khrushchev was responsible for reaffirming and renewing its power. Its influence diminished only under Mikail Gorbachev, who in his final years, turned to the power of the Presidency and a Presidential Cabinet of Ministers, which was created in 1990.

  At the height of its power, the Secretariat headed by its powerful General Secretary determined the agenda of the Politburo and the Central Committee. Attention usually focused on the General Secretary, and to a lesser degree, the dozen or so Secretaries who worked with him, rather than the larger bureaucracy that constituted the Secretariat. See also: COMMUNIST PARTY OF THE SOVIET UNION

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Huskey, Eugene. (1992). Executive Power and Soviet Politics: The Rise and Decline of the Soviet State. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe. Nogee, Joseph L., ed. (1985). Soviet Politics: Russia after Brezhnev. New York: Praeger. Smith, Gordon B. (1992). Soviet Politics: Struggling with Change, 2nd ed. New York: St. Martin’s Press.

  NORMA C. NOONAN

  SECTARIANISM

  Religious dissent from the Russian Orthodox Church.

  The word sect entered the Russian language in the eighteenth century from the Latin word secta. Long used in the Catholic Church to indica
te groups or parties that had separated themselves from orthodox teaching, the word was adopted by the Russian Orthodox Church during the reign of Peter the Great (r. 1682-1725) to label the increasing numbers of religious dissenters.

  The first substantial movement of Christian dissent occurred only in the seventeenth century in response to the liturgical and bureaucratic innovations of Patriarch Nikon of Moscow (r. 1652-1658). By the 1680s, those who opposed these new reforms called themselves “Old Believers”; many of them withdrew from the Church and society to create their own purified communities on the outskirts of the Muscovite state. Although Old Believers were sometimes tarred with the label “sect,” by the late nineteenth century Russian Orthodox here-siology began to reserve the word sectarian for the growing numbers of religious dissenters who had separated themselves from the state church for reasons other than Nikon’s reforms. In accordance with this usage, this article deals only with those sectarians who were not Old Believers. It also does not deal with the fourteenth-century Judaizers and its predecessors.

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  THE FAITH OF CHRIST (FLAGELLANTS) AND THE CASTRATES

  The Faith of Christ (khristovshchina) arose in the seventeenth century. Its members continued to visit the Orthodox state church, but also met in secret assemblies where they repeated the Jesus prayer (Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner) until the Holy Spirit descended upon them and they danced, prophesied, and spoke in tongues. In their secret assemblies, they believed that they had recovered the original faith and practice of Christ. Following a realized eschatology, they also believed that Christ had returned spiritually to dwell in their leaders whom they called Christs and Mothers of God. They composed a rich repertoire of spiritual songs celebrating these leaders and their faith. The adherents of the Faith of Christ practiced an intense asceticism that included celibacy, restricted diet, long periods of prayer, and fasting. Over time, some of them flagellated themselves, and so they became known as flagellants. This label was applied indiscriminately to many different sectarians, most of whom did not practice flagellation.

  The Faith of Christ established broad religious, social, and economic networks across the Russian Empire. The grave of the monastery peasant Danilo Filippov (d. c. 1700), one of the early leaders of the sect, was located in a small village near Kostroma; it attracted pilgrims from cities and towns all over central Russia for at least two centuries. The members of the Faith of Christ used money earned in the textile trade to support their co-religionists who entered Orthodox monasteries.

  In 1733 and again in 1745, extensive state investigations sought to eliminate the movement by arresting and sentencing hundreds of suspects. By forcing the defendants to confess falsely to horrible crimes of secret mass orgies, infanticide, and cannibalism, the inquisitors of the second commission helped to create a powerful myth that envisioned the flagellants as a dangerous, homicidal, sexually perverted fifth column within Russian society.

  By the 1760s, some members of the Faith of Christ, not satisfied with vows of celibacy, began castrating themselves. Under the leadership of the fugitive peasant Kondraty Selivanov (d. 1832), these castrates broke away from the Faith of Christ and created their own peculiar rituals and eschatology. In its rich tradition of spiritual songs, the Castrates claimed that their leader Selivanov was actually Emperor Peter III (r. 1762)-the unfortunate husband of Catherine the Great (r. 1762-1796).

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  Though the real Peter III was killed in Catherine’s 1762 coup, the Castrates held that he actually escaped to Orel province where, as the peasant Kon-dratii Selivanov, he was arrested and exiled to Siberia. After Catherine’s death, the legend claims that Emperor Paul (r. 1796-1801) recalled Selivanov to St. Petersburg, where he recognized him as his father.

  Although Selivanov lived and taught freely in St. Petersburg from 1802 to 1820, he spent the last twelve years of his life in a monastery prison in Suzdal. Thanks in part to their severe asceticism, many of the Castrates became wealthy merchants. Because they were severely persecuted, the Castrates outwardly adhered to the Orthodox Church and often proved to be generous patrons.

  SPIRITUAL CHRISTIANITY: DUKHOBORS AND MOLOKANS

  Spiritual Christianity, another powerful strain of sectarianism, arose as an apocalyptic movement in the 1760s in the black-earth region of Tambov province. Preaching that the day of the Lord was imminent, Ilarion Pobirokhin (fl. 1762-1785) called on true Christians to stop venerating icons and to reject the Orthodox sacraments and priesthood. Instead of kissing icons, they kissed one another, and especially their leader, as the image of God. They met together regularly to read the Bible, sing spiritual psalms of their own composition, and listen to their teachers’ sermons.

  Despite state efforts to repress them, the Spiritual Christians, who were also called the Dukhobors (Spirit-Wrestlers), survived. In an effort to isolate them from their Orthodox neighbors, the Russian state in 1802 first resettled them in Melitopol in Crimea, and then in 1841-1845 forcibly moved them to the Caucasus. In these isolated colonies, the Dukhobors largely governed themselves and followed their own folkways. Led by charismatic descendants of Pobirokhin and a Council of Elders, the Dukhobors preached that God’s Spirit lived in all people, both men and women. Although they used the Bible, they emphasized their own oral tradition of spiritual psalms, which they called the Living Book.

  By the 1880s, the Dukhobors numbered about twenty thousand. A radical group of Dukhobors led by Petr Verigin (d. 1935) preached pacificism, rejected military service, and struggled to take over the community in 1886-1898. In 1898, Verigin led his followers to immigrate to Canada.

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  SECTARIANISM

  A second group of Spiritual Christians, known as the Molokans (milk-drinkers, because they did not observe the Orthodox fasting periods in which milk was forbidden), broke away from the Dukhobors. Semen Uklein (d. 1809), an erstwhile follower of Ilarion Pobirokhin, insisted on the authority of the Bible, and went on to preach his own version of Spiritual Christianity throughout the provinces of the lower Volga in 1790s. Like the Dukhobors, the Molokans rejected icons, sacraments, and priesthood. But as serious students of the Bible, Uklein’s followers also observed Old Testament holidays and dietary restrictions.

  In the 1830s, a group of inspired apocalyptic Molokan prophets predicted that the world would end in 1836 and introduced ecstatic dancing and singing into the Molokan meetings. Lukian Petrov Sokolov (d. 1858) led his followers to Mount Ararat to await the return of Christ. Despite the failure of this prophecy, these Molokan “Jumpers” retained their ecstatic practices and regrouped under a new charismatic leader, Maksim Rudometikin (d. 1877). From the late nineteenth century, new prophets taught pacifism and their new apocalyptic visions encouraged the Jumpers to emigrate and establish colonies in California, South America, Mexico, and Arizona.

  WESTERN RELIGIOUS MOVEMENTS

  In the 1830s, German pietists introduced a revival in the German colonies of the Ukraine. By the 1860s, this revival, which emphasized personal prayer and a Bible study hour [Stunde in German], had been adopted by Ukrainian and Russian peasants who lived near the German colonists. Although initially these Shtundists, as they came to be called, wanted to remain in the Orthodox Church, the Orthodox hierarchy rejected their independent Bible studies and the Protestant doctrine of salvation through faith alone. Ultimately, many of these Ukrainian and Russian peasants turned away from Orthodoxy to embrace Baptism. In 1867, Nikita Voronin, a convert from Molokanism, was the first Russian to receive baptism. A Russian Baptist Union was created in 1884.

  Other Protestant movements also gained Russian adherents. German and American preachers brought Seventh-Day Adventism into Russia in the 1880s. In the 1870s in the northern capital of St. Petersburg, the pietistic preaching of the English Lord Radstock established a pietistic following that later helped to support the formation of a
Union of Evangelical Christians in 1909. Overwhelmed by the 1905 revolution, the tsarist government issued an edict of religious toleration that allowed much greater freedom of worship-though not of proselytizing-to most sectarians. Baptists, Molokans, Seventh-Day Ad-ventists, and Evangelical Christians created their own legal organizations, published newspapers, books, and journals. A 1912 census counted 393,565 sectarians (not including the Old Believers). Taken together, Baptists and Evangelical Christians were the largest group, with more than 143,000 adherents; Molokans represented the next largest group with 133,935.

  THE SOVIET PERIOD

  After the 1917 revolution, the Bolshevik government initially courted sectarians, but this policy came to an end in 1929 with the First Five Year Plan. In the 1930s, the Soviet Union attempted to eliminate religion altogether by closing and destroying churches and arresting religious leaders. This policy failed, and resistance to the forced collectivization of agriculture actually provoked new apocalyptic sectarian movements which attacked the Soviet state as the “red dragon” of the Apocalypse. Persecution of the Orthodox Church forced some of its members underground to form the True Orthodox Church. Rejecting the Moscow Patriarchate as hopelessly compromised, the members of the True Orthodox Church claimed that they alone maintained the true faith.

 

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