by James Millar
The German invasion of the USSR in 1941 forced Josef Stalin to moderate his antireligious policies and to allow limited legal existence of sectarian groups. In 1944, Baptists and Evangelical Christians formed the All-Union Council of Evangelical Christians and Baptists, and soon Adven-tists also were granted a national organization. Dissatisfaction with the limits on religious freedom and a renewed antireligious campaign under Nikita Khrushchev led some Baptists and Adven-tists to form independent, underground organizations in the 1960s: the Council of Churches of Evangelical Christian Baptists and the True and Free Seventh-Day Adventists. The Soviet period also witnessed the vigorous growth of Pente-costals, who had first appeared in Russia in 1913. In the 1970s and 1980s, circles of educated urban intellectuals sometimes faced persecution for their interest and participation in Eastern religions, including Tibetan Buddhism and the Hare Krishna movement.
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THE POST-SOVIET PERIOD
In 1990 the Soviet parliament passed a law allowing complete religious freedom and ushered in a new, open spiritual marketplace. Missionaries from the United States and Western Europe helped to establish and finance Mormon ward, Jehovah’s Witnesses kingdom halls, and charismatic and evangelical churches. Underground movements, such as the True Orthodox Christians, the International Society of Krishna Consciousness, and the Baptist Council of Churches, emerged to compete in the new atmosphere.
The new freedom, and the collapse of the Soviet economic and political systems, also encouraged the formation of new sectarian movements. Distressed by the moral degeneration of Russian society, prophets from the Church of the Transfiguring Theotokos claimed that the Mother of God had appeared to warn Russia and the world of an impending judgment. The White Brotherhood, a syncretic movement, combining elements of Hinduism and Orthodox Christianity, gathered to witness the end of the world in Kiev in 1993.
Alarmed by these apocalyptic movements and by the influx of foreign missionaries, the Russian parliament in 1997 passed a new law that favored the traditional religions of Russia. Local administrations have interpreted the law quite differently, so that the Jehovah’s Witnesses, who have peacefully established their headquarters in St. Petersburg, have also had to defend themselves in Moscow courts.
Sectarianism first became significant in Russia in the seventeenth century. On the one hand, sectarianism represented the growth of individual initiative and freedom, as religious virtuosi took upon themselves the responsibility of constructing and living out new religious visions. But on the other hand, the classification and enumeration of sects reflect the growth of bureaucratic systems of social control in both state and church. The continued vitality of sectarianism in the twenty-first century is a product of the dialectic between these two opposite trends. See also: OLD BELIEVERS; ORTHODOXY; PROTESTANTISM
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Anderson, John. (1994). Religion, State and Politics in the Soviet Union and Successor States. New York: Cambridge University Press. Bolshakoff, Serge. (1950). Russian Nonconformity: The Story of “Unofficial” Religion in Russia. Philadelphia: Westminster Press.
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Conybeare, Frederick C. (1962). Russian Dissenters. New York: Russell and Russell. Engelstein, Laura. (1999). Castration and the Heavenly Kingdom: A Russian Folktale. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Sawatsky, Walter. (1981). Soviet Evangelicals since World War II. Scottdale, PA: Herald Press. Witte, John, and Bourdeaux, Michael, eds. (1999). Pros-elytism and Orthodoxy in Russia: The New War for Souls. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Press.
J. EUGENE CLAY
SECURITY COUNCIL
The April 1991 law creating the office of president of the Russian Federation also created a Security Council, succeeding the security council created by Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev in November 1990 and presumably modeled after the National Security Council in the United States. Formally established by a March 1992 law, the Security Council was chaired by the president and met once per month, with a staff of about two hundred and half a dozen commissions working at its direction. Since 1993 its membership has varied, at the discretion of the president, from seven officials in 1996 to more than twenty-five since 2000, when it included the prime minister and the heads of the “power ministries” (defense, foreign affairs, interior, emergencies, Federal Border Service, and Federal Security Service) plus the justice minister, the procurator-general, the heads of the two houses of parliament, and the governors of the seven federal districts created by President Vladimir Putin.
Back in 1992 the Security Council was supervised by State Secretary Gennady Burbulis, and its first secretary was the industrialist Yuri Skokov. It was seen as a conservative counter-balance to the liberal foreign minister, Andrei Kozyrev. Some speculated that it might become a new Politburo, well-insulated from democratic accountability. In practice the council never became a decision-making forum, but merely provided analysis and advice to the president. It was supposed to exercise a coordinating role and enforce and extend presidential control, but in practice the ministries of defense and foreign affairs jealously guarded their autonomy. The council was periodically tasked with drawing up guidelines or concepts for Russian foreign policy, but these did not have much
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SERAPION BROTHERS
influence on actual decision-making. And far from being a springboard for ambitious politicians, it was more a tool for Boris Yeltsin to balance rival figures.
Skokov was replaced as secretary in June 1993 by a former Soviet general, Yevgeny Shaposhnikov, and then in October 1993 by a Yeltsin crony, Oleg Lobov. In June 1996 Alexander Lebed was appointed secretary, in return for his support of Yeltsin in the second round of the presidential election. Lebed was assigned to end the war in Chechnya, and much to everyone’s surprise he succeeded, signing a peace accord and withdrawing Russian troops. Concerned about Lebed’s growing popularity, Yeltsin created a separate Defense Council in July and fired Lebed in October, accusing him of plotting a military coup. Lebed was replaced by the anodyne politician Ivan Rybkin, with the controversial oligarch Boris Berezovsky as his deputy, in charge of reconstructing Chechnya. (Berezovsky quit in November 1997.)
From March to September 1998, the Security Council was headed by an academic, Andrei Kokoshin. He was replaced by a KGB general, Nikolai Boryuzha, who in turn was followed in March 1999 by Vladimir Putin, who was simultaneously head of the Federal Security Service (FSB). In November 1999 Putin was replaced at the council by his deputy at the FSB, Sergei Ivanov. In March 2001 Ivanov became defense minister, and the former interior minister, Vladimir Rushailo, became Security Council secretary.
During Vladimir Putin’s presidency, the Security Council became slightly more visible as a forum through which he tried to press forward with military reforms obstinately resisted by the generals. The new National Security Concept drawn up by the council in 2000 stressed internal threats, such as Chechen terrorism, over traditional security concerns, such as nuclear deterrence. See also: POLITBURO; PRESIDENCY; PRESIDENTIAL COUNCIL
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Adams, Jan. S. (1996). “The Russian National Security Council.” Problems of Post-Communism 43(1):35-42. Derleth, J. William. (1996). “The Evolution of the Russian Polity: The Case of the Security Council.” Communist and Post-Communist Studies 29(1):43-58.
PETER RUTLAND
SERAPION BROTHERS
The Serapion Brothers were a group of poets and writers who insisted on the political autonomy of the artist and the affirmation of imagination and creative art. They argued that in order to remain authentic, the writer’s voice needed freedom from all social or political constraints. They denounced the use of literature for utilitarian purposes and never adopted a specific model of literary production.
The Serapion Brothers began meeting in 1921 at the Petrograd House of Arts at the suggestion of Viktor Shklovsky. The group, which eventually included Konstantin Fedi
n, Ilya Gruzdev, Vsevolod Ivanov, Veniamin Kaverin, Lev Lunts, Nikolai Nikitin, Elizaveta Polonskaya, Vladimir Pozner, Mikhail Slonimsky, Nikolai Tikhonov, and Mikhail Zoshchenko, adopted its name after a tale by E. T. A. Hoffmann. Shklovsky occasionally participated, and Maxim Gorky supported members with material assistance and help in publishing their work. The group met weekly to read and discuss one another’s work, focusing on the refinement of the craft of writing and leaving each member to develop his or her own message, sometimes engaging in heated debates about the purpose or meaning of literature.
The closest the Brotherhood came to publishing a manifesto was Lev Lunts’s “Why We are the Serapion Brothers” (Pochemu my Serapionovy Bratya, 1922), in which he proclaimed that “Art is real, like life itself. And, like life itself, it is without goal and without meaning: It exists because it cannot help but exist.” This statement of the group’s purpose sparked a sharp debate with Marxist critics who insisted on the utilitarian use of literature for common ideological purposes. Lunts, however, stressed the autonomy of literature from political purposes or control and, simultaneously, the preservation of diverse ideological positions within the brotherhood. The one collective work the group published, the First Almanac (Serapionovy Brat’ia. Al’mankh pervy, 1922) demonstrates this wide range of style and philosophy. Throughout the 1920s they promoted a nonpolitical approach to literature, tolerance, and friendship, and their connections continued after the group’s dissolution in 1929. See also: CULTURAL REVOLUTION
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Hickey, Martha Weitzel. (1999). “Recovering the Author’s Part: The Serapion Brothers in Petrograd.” Russian Review 58(1):103-123.
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Kern, Gary, and Collins, Christopher, eds. (1975). The Serapion Brothers: A Critical Anthology. Ann Arbor: Ardis.
ELIZABETH JONES HEMENWAY
SERBIA, RELATIONS WITH
From the first days of the initial Serb uprising in 1804 (against the tyranny of the Janissaries, military units that had evolved from being the elite troops of the Ottoman Empire into semi-independent occupiers) until 1878 (when Belgrade obtained complete independence from the Porte at the Congress of Berlin), relations with Serbia were central to Russia’s foreign policy. However, as Serbia pursued both independence from Istanbul and expansion of the state to include all Serb lands (Bosnia, Hercegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, and Vojvodina), Russia often found itself drawn into Serbian foreign affairs as Belgrade came to depend upon (and use) Russian support for its own ends. This led to a relationship that offered Serbia the greatest advantages as St. Petersburg became captive to two critical forces: 1) the emergence of Panslavism, a movement that stressed the solidarity of the Slavic peoples ostensibly under Russian leadership, and 2) the Eastern Question, the increasing vacuum in southeastern Europe brought about by the rapid decay of the once great Ottoman Empire, which presented an inviting target of opportunity for the great powers.
The romantic image of Orthodox Christians fighting the Muslim Turks for freedom continuously vexed St. Petersburg. On the one hand, advisers generally supported a policy of moderation in the region and a concentration on domestic needs. However, Panslavists, who had a powerful effect upon Russian public opinion, attacked the notion of passivity toward their Christian and Slavic brethren who, they claimed, were suffering at the hands of either the Turks or the Habsburgs.
After the disastrous Crimean War and the subsequent humiliating Treaty of Paris in 1856, Russia was confronted by conflicting goals: the need to deal with internal problems as well as to restore its influence in the Balkans. When a revolt began in Hercegovina against the Turks in 1875, the lore and lure of Slavic Christians rising up against their Muslim occupiers proved to be intoxicating. Russians immediately volunteered to support the insurrection. General M. G. Chernyayev took command of
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the Serbian army, and by 1876 Serbia was at war with the Porte.
The conflict however was disastrous for Serbia. Not only was the country poorly prepared for war, but friction arose between the Russian and Serbian forces as Chernyayev proved to be an inept commander. While events inside Serbia deteriorated, St. Petersburg concluded a series of agreements with Vienna, providing that in the event Russia went to war with the Turks, the Habsburgs would be neutral.
In April 1877, Panslavist pressure forced Russian Foreign Minister Alexander Gorchakov to join the conflict, the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878. Despite military setbacks, Russia forced the Turks to sign the Treaty of San Stefano. However, Russia’s victory proved to be short-lived as the other great powers quickly blocked St. Petersburg’s designs to obtain primacy in the region through the creation of a “big” Bulgaria. At the 1878 Congress of Berlin, the powers compelled Russia to concede on the issue of an enlarged Bulgarian state, while the Turks were forced to grant complete independence to Serbia (as well as Romania and Greece). However, Russian support for Bulgaria had alienated Belgrade. For the next quarter-century, Serbia distanced itself from Russia. Only the murder of King Alexander Obrenovic in 1903 and the assumption of power by Peter Karadjordjevic led to a reorientation of Serbian policy back to regional cooperation and a reliance on Russia (especially after the Bosnian crisis of 1908-1909, which saw the formal annexation of Bosnia-Hercegovina by Austria-Hungary).
Weakened by the events of the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905 and the Revolution of 1905, Russia could not challenge Vienna in 1908 on behalf of its Serbian client state. Nevertheless, the Bosnian crisis pushed Belgrade and St. Petersburg closer together. The former became solely dependent upon Russia for support among the great powers, while the latter realized that it had to support its Serbian ally in the future lest it lose influence in the region. Russia now sought to foster a regional alliance between Serbia and Bulgaria, an act that led to the formation of a Balkan League and subsequently the Balkan Wars of 1912-1913. These wars, the unintended consequence of Russia’s attempt to create a defensive alliance in the region to counter the Habsburgs, further destabilized southeastern Europe and left Russia even more tethered to Belgrade.
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During the days and weeks following the assassination of Habsburg archduke Franz Ferdinand in June 1914, Russia steadfastly backed its sole remaining Balkan ally, a critical factor leading to the outbreak of World War I. In its attempt to support Belgrade against Austro-Hungarian demands, Russia now found itself immersed in a conflict for which it was ill prepared and that would lead to the destruction of the Romanov monarchy. See also: BULGARIA, RELATIONS WITH; MONTENEGRO, RELATIONS WITH; PANSLAVISM; TURKEY, RELATIONS WITH; YUGOSLAVIA, RELATIONS WITH
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Glenny, Misha. (2000). The Balkans: Nationalism, War, and the Great Powers, 1804-1999. New York: Viking Penguin. Jelavich, Barbara. (1974). St. Petersburg and Moscow: Tsarist and Soviet Foreign Policy, 1814-1974. Bloom-ington: Indiana University Press. Jelavich, Charles, and Jelavich, Barbara. (1977). The Establishment of the Balkan National States, 1804-1920. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Rossos, Andrew. (1981). Russia and the Balkans: Inter-Balkan Rivalries and Russian Foreign Policy, 1908-1914. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
RICHARD FRUCHT
SEREDNYAKI
The serednyaki, or middle peasants, were peasants whose households in the 1920s had enough land to support their extended family (dvor) and sometimes even the hiring of one of the poorer bednyaki or landless batraki of the neighborhood in busy seasons. In practice, some of the middle peasants lived no differently from the poorer classes; they too had no draft horse (malomoshchnyi) and might likewise hire out a family member in the village community or send him to a nearby city or rural enterprise as wage labor. Many were illiterate. Other members of this intermediate stratum of peasants, however, were prosperous (zazhitochnye or krepkie) and thus close to the richer kulaks who constituted about 5 to 7 percent of the peasantry. These be
tter-off peasants would sell some surplus grain if provided an incentive in the form of manufactured goods, and thus were crucial to the alliance of workers and peasants (smychka) that was supposed
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to be the political basis of the New Economic Policy (NEP) of 1921 to 1928.
Although the Marxist-Leninist categories barely fit the complex reality of the Russian countryside, Vladimir Lenin expected the serednyaki to be tolerant of Bolshevik power and policies in the rural areas, and saw them as a temporary ally until such time as the regime could afford to incorporate them into more modern collective farms. There was a danger, however, that industrious middle peasants who prospered would became petty bourgeois allies of the kulaks and thus would oppose Soviet industrialization and the heavy taxes and price discrimination it required. The Marxist-Leninist category of middle peasant, unlike the traditional terms bednyak or kulak, meant little to the peasants themselves. Many other factors besides ownership of productive capital influenced their behavior. Populist students of the peasantry, notably A. V. Chayanov, and later sociologists have challenged this conceptualization of the NEP village as too static.
The schematic class analysis of the Soviet countryside was not merely ideological. Depending on one’s class, one could obtain benefits or avoid penalties. Poor peasants enjoyed tax exemptions and preferential admission to schools and Communist Party organizations; kulaks (along with priests and the bourgeois) were deprived of these and even of the right to vote. Late in the NEP, taxes on middle peasants increased, though not as much as those imposed on the kulaks. Not surprisingly, middle peasants endeavored to be officially identified as poor-for example, by referring to past proletarian occupations. They would sometimes try to hide their prosperity by hiring out some labor or a horse. Nonetheless, when forced requisitioning of grain was reinstated in 1928, the prosperous peasants were affected adversely. “Dekulakization” and collectivization in 1929 to 1931 made it even more important to avoid official identification with the richest peasant stratum. See also: KULAKS; PEASANT ECONOMY; PEASANTRY
