Encyclopedia of Russian History

by James Millar

  Each service class revolution has been a response by Russia’s rulers to perceptions of significant military threats from foreign adversaries. The first can be dated roughly to 1480, when Russia threw off the Mongol yoke. From then the independent state was on its own and faced foreign threats from various quarters, but the major one was from Lithuania, the largest state in Europe with holdings in Vyazma, about 100 miles (160 kilometers) from Moscow. Moscow’s conquest of the Republic of Novgorod in 1478, the execution and deportation of its secular and religious elite, and the annexation of their vast lands created the opportunity for the creation of a service class, the backbone of the new service state. The Novgoro-dian lands were handed out as service landholdings (pomestie) to provincial cavalrymen for their maintenance. These cavalrymen had no independent base and were totally beholden to Moscow. They were ranked according to perceived service performance and compensated accordingly. In exchange for the pomestie, they had to serve Moscow for life. As Moscow annexed other territories, it converted them to pomestie tenure. In time, Moscow had a corps of 25,000 pomestie cavalrymen at its beck and call to confront any military emergency. This method of fielding an army was deemed so effective that in 1556 the government mobilized all seignorial land and required estate owners to provide the army with one fully equipped, outfitted cavalryman for each 100 cheti (1 chet = 11/3 acres) of populated land.

  In 1480 a master ideology was lacking to support the forming service state, but it did not take long for one to appear. At the beginning of the sixteenth century, Joseph, the abbot of Volokolamsk Monastery, advanced the precept of Agapetos (fl. 527-548) that “in his person the ruler is a man, but in his authority he is like God.” This conflicted with the views of Grand Prince Ivan III, who wanted to annex all church lands and convert them into pomestie holdings; his son Basil III, who preferred to let the church continue to own a third of all the populated land of Russia; and other churchmen who believed that the church should not be so involved in “the world.” This variation on the divine right of kings gave the Russian ruler unquestioned control over everything. The idea reigned at least until 1905, probably until 1917.

  Such military might and autocratic pretensions needed financial means and bureaucratic coordination to support them. After 1300 the government apparatus was part of the Moscow ruler’s household, but around 1480 specialization began to develop in the grand princely household administration. Around 1550 special chancelleries with their own record-keeping apparatus began to develop to keep track of the service land fund, the provincial cavalry, the new infantry arquebusiers who had been created to complement the cavalry, and the taxes needed to support these activities. By

  ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

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  SERVICE STATE

  the mid-seventeenth century there were about forty of these chancelleries, which seemingly were as efficient and professional as any similar, contemporary organs on Earth.

  The last element in the construction of the service state was the inclusion of the masses. To support the cavalry, the peasantry was definitively enserfed between the 1580s and 1649. In an attempt to ensure the stability of the government’s cash receipts, the townsmen were bound to their urban places of residence and granted monopolies on trade and industry and the right to own urban property. By 1650 the service state was fully formed. Its completion had been forced by the June 1648 Moscow rebellion against the corrupt regime of Boris Morozov, which compelled the government to convoke the Assembly of the Land, whose product was the Law Code of 1649.

  During the Thirteen Years’ War (1654-1667), the old military service class’s obsolescence was revealed, and it was replaced by new formation regiments commanded by foreign officers. Yet the old landed service class retained its privileges and its monopolies over much of the country’s land and peasant labor. This proved to be the trajectory of all service classes: creation, hegemony, decline, and obsolescence-yet retaining all privileges.

  The second service class revolution was the product of Peter the Great’s perception that Sweden’s Charles XII desired to annex Russia. After losing to Charles at Narva in 1700, Peter completely revitalized the service state. All the surviving military servicemen were put back in harness, the dependency of the serfs on the landowners was strengthened, the army was reformed, the Table of Ranks of 1721 told the service state’s agents where they belonged in the merit-based hierarchy, and the government apparatus was reformed. The Orthodox Church, which had been created by the state in 988 and was nearly always the state’s obedient servant, was converted into a department of the state government with the creation of the Holy Synod in 1721. This continued the secularization of the church administration that had been introduced in 1649 but had been halted when Tsar Alexei died in 1676. Alexei’s son Peter made the clergy more active members of the service state by requiring them to report to the police what they heard in confessions as well as to read government edicts to the populace from the pulpit.

  Peter articulated one of the basic principles of the service state: anyone was eligible to serve, as

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  long as he performed the duties demanded of him. This was absolutely crucial in holding together an ever-expanding multinational empire. Peter articulated this in comments about his foreign minister, Pyotr Shafirov, a Jew, and other Jewish people in his administration: “I could not care less whether a man is baptized or circumcised, only that he knows his business and he distinguishes himself by probity.” In the perfectly operating service state, there was no place for nationalism (such as Russification) or persecution of national minorities or alien religions (e.g., Jews). Those occurred only at times when the service state was in decline.

  The Petrine service state was very successful in defeating Sweden and putting Russia’s other major adversaries-the Rzeczpospolita and the Crimean Khanate-on the defensive and ultimately exterminating them. These successes lessened the demands on the service state, and in 1762 Peter III freed the gentry land- and serf-owners from compulsory military service. Need for revenue forced most younger gentry to render military service anyway.

  The other major personnel segment of the service state, the peasantry, was not freed in 1762, and the condition of the seignorial serfs was abased to the extent that they became akin to slaves by 1800. Defeat during the Crimean War (1853-1856) did not provoke Russia to initiate another service class revolution, although a dozen major reforms were enacted between 1861 and 1874. In 1861 all seignorial serfs were freed from slavelike dependency on their owners, but were bound instead to their communes and were allowed to move freely only in 1906. This largely ended the second service class revolution, although the autocratic monarchy persisted until February 1917.

  Certain features of the service state did not die in 1762, 1861, or even 1906. The government maintained its pretensions to control all higher culture by censoring literature, the theater, all art exhibitions, and musical performances. Secret police surveillance was continuously strengthened as the government used repression, jailing, and exile in its attempts to cope with the rising revolutionary movement opposed to the autocracy and serfdom. The industrialization of Russia launched by Minister of Finance Sergei Witte during the 1890s was a demonstration of service state power reminiscent of Peter I and anticipating Josef Stalin.

  ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

  SEVASTOPOL

  The October Revolution abolished Christianity and the Agapetos formula as the regime’s ideology. The Bolsheviks replaced it with Marxist-Leninist dialectical historical materialism. Stalin, sensing a threat from the United Kingdom in 1927, used the new ideology to legitimize his launching of the third service class revolution in 1928.

  The Soviet service state proved unable to manage the economy efficiently, but the service class remained during the Leonid Brezhnev (1964-1982), Yuri Andropov (1982-1984), and Konstantin Cher-nenko (1984-1985) years. The Soviet service class had already begun to generate into a privileged elite (what Milovan Djilas termed �
��the new class”) by the end of the 1930s, and this degeneration had turned into a rout by 1985. By the middle of the 1970s “the working class pretended to work and the state pretended to pay them.” The general trend was for people to go to work to socialize with their friends, not to produce anything. By the time of the coup of August 19, 1991, attempting to overthrow Mikhail Gorbachev, the privileged elite (the “nomenklatura”) rode around in their own private motorcars and went straight to the head of long lines for ordinary consumer goods such as newspapers and magazines while getting most of their goods from closed stores open only to the privileged elite. It was obvious that the Soviet service state was no longer working, could not make the economy grow or improve the lives of its subjects, and was little more than a debauchery of corruption. Gorbachev, another believer in socialism, tried to reform the system, but it proved impossible. The service state lost its teeth when he repealed Article 6 of the Brezhnev constitution, which had given the Communist Party a monopoly on Soviet political life. The Communist Party had also assumed a monopoly on all elite positions, so that one had to be a member of the CPSU to hold many jobs. That had not been true during the times of Stalin and Nikita Khrushchev. This change was another sign of the degeneration of the service state under Brezhnev.

  When Gorbachev delivered the coup de grace to the Soviet service state, no one wept. The service state was a major Russian “contribution” to the human experience. Whether there ever will be a fourth service class revolution remains to be seen. See also: ECONOMIC GROWTH, SOVIET; ECONOMY, TSARIST; INDUSTRIALIZATION; MILITARY, IMPERIAL ERA; MILITARY, SOVIET AND POST-SOVIET; RUSSIAN ORTHODOX CHURCH; SERFDOM

  ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Hellie, Richard. (1971). Enserfment and Military Change in Muscovy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Hellie, Richard. (1987). “What Happened? How Did He Get Away with It? Ivan Groznyi’s Paranoia and the Problem of Institutional Restraints.” Russian History 14:199-224. Hellie, Richard. (2002). “The Role of the State in Seventeenth-Century Muscovy.” In Modernizing Muscovy, ed. J. T. Kotilaine and Marshall T. Poe. Leiden: Brill. Kliuchevskii, V. O. (1960). A History of Russia. 5 vols., tr. C. J. Hogarth. New York: Russell amp; Russell. Swianiewicz, Stanislaw. (1965). Forced Labor and Economic Development: An Enquiry into the Experience of Soviet Industrialization. London: Oxford University Press. Tucker, Robert C. (1990). Stalin in Power: The Revolution from Above, 1928-1941. New York: Norton. Voslensky, Michael. (1984). Nomenklatura: The Soviet Ruling Class, tr. Eric Mosbacher. Garden City, NY: Doubleday.

  RICHARD HELLIE

  SEVASTOPOL

  City and naval base on the southwestern tip of the Crimean Peninsula in Ukraine.

  With its excellent harbors and anchorages, Sevastopol has an advantageous location from which to conduct operations in the Black Sea. The city stands on the southern shore of Sevastopol Bay and has a population of 390,000-75 percent Russian and 20 percent Ukrainian. The site of ancient settlements, modern Sevastopol was founded by Prince Grigory Potemkin in 1783 after the conquest of the Crimean Khanate. Admiral F.F. Mekenzy, commander of the newly created Black Sea Fleet, placed a naval station there, and in 1784 the settlement was named Sevastopol.

  In 1804 Alexander I’s government declared Sevastopol the primary naval base of the Black Sea Fleet. The naval base and the city grew significantly during the second quarter of the nineteenth century when Admiral Mikhail Lazarev served as fleet commander. By 1844 the city had a population of more than forty thousand, making it the largest city in Crimea. Sevastopol became the major base for fitting out and repairing warships. Its defenses grew in extent and quality.

  In 1853 Admiral Pavel Nakhimov’s squadron sailed from there to Sinope, where it annihilated a

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  SEVEN-YEAR PLAN

  Turkish squadron. During the Crimean War, Anglo-French forces besieged Sevastopol. The defense was immortalized by Leo Tolstoy, one of the defenders, in his Sevastopol Tales. Sevastopol fell to the Anglo-French forces in September 1855.

  Following the Crimean War, Sevastopol suffered decline, because the peace treaty denied Russia the right to maintain a fleet in the Black Sea. With the remilitarization of the Black Sea after 1870 Sevastopol regained its importance as a naval base for a modern ironclad fleet.

  Sevastopol was associated with rebellion, mutiny, and civil war. In 1830 government restrictions to combat a cholera epidemic set off a revolt among sailors and civilians. In June 1905 the battleship Potemkin sailed from Sevastopol on its way to mutiny over bad meat. During the Russian civil war Sevastopol was the headquarters of Baron Peter Wrangel’s White Army. The Red Army under Mikhail Frunze stormed Crimea in October 1920, and Wrangel evacuated his army to Istanbul.

  During World War II Sevastopol was the site of an eight-month siege by German and Rumanian forces under Field Marshal Erich von Manstein and fell in July 1942. On May 9, 1944, the Soviet Fourth Ukrainian Front under the command of Marshal Fyodor Tolbukhin liberated the city.

  Following the end of the existence of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russia and Ukraine entered into negotiations over Sevastopol. During the early twenty-first century the city is a special region within Ukraine, not under the government of Crimea, and the Russian and Ukrainian navies share the naval base. See also: BLACK SEA FLEET; CRIMEA; CRIMEAN WAR; UKRAINE AND UKRAINIANS; WHITE ARMY

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Curtiss, John Shelton. (1979). Russia’s Crimean War. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Tolstoy, Leo. (1961). Sebastopol. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

  JACOB W. KIPP

  feasible, leaving the country without a perspective plan for the first time in three decades. In one of his many reorganizations, Khrushchev substituted a Seven-Year Plan to run from 1959 to 1965. It included his new priorities for a much larger chemical industry, more housing, substitution of oil and gas for coal in the production of electricity and for powering the railroads, and more emphasis on agriculture, especially in the eastern areas.

  Planned targets for 1965 were ambitious, and some were even raised in October 1961. Despite considerable growth of housing construction, meat production, and consumer durables, fulfillment was not achieved in many areas. Khrushchev had grand hopes for the chemical industry and agriculture, but the targets for mineral fertilizers, synthetic fibers, and the grain harvest were all missed. Civilian investment rates fell, and national income (defined in Marxist concepts) was underfulfilled by four to seven percent. Gross production volume of producers goods did exceed the long-term plan, with an index (1959 = 100) of 196 achieved versus 185-188 planned, while consumer goods fell below it, 160 actual versus 162-165 planned.

  The shortfalls can perhaps be explained by the strain of increased expenditures on space and military ventures in these years and the complexity of planning for more tasks. The continual sovnarkhoz (regional economic council) reorganizations, which put considerable strain on Gosplan to coordinate supplies, probably also had a negative impact on overall results. See also: FIVE-YEAR PLANS; GOSPLAN

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Nove, Alec. (1969). An Economic History of the U.S.S.R. London: Allen Lane.

  MARTIN C. SPECHLER

  SEVEN-YEAR PLAN

  Following the rise of Nikita Khrushchev to primacy among the leaders of the Soviet Union, the sixth five-year plan (1956-1960) was abandoned as in1374

  SEVEN YEARS’ WAR

  The Seven Years’ War (1756-1763) involved nearly every European state and was watershed in world history. It arose as a result of the Anglo-French colonial rivalry and because of the growing might of Prussia in central Europe, which threatened the interests of Austria, France, and Russia. The outENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

  SHAHUMIAN, STEPAN GEORGIEVICH

  come ensured that England became the dominant power in North America, and the war consolidated the growing power and prestige of Frederick the Great’s Prussia. For this, he could thank Russia and its bizarre participation in the war. Internally, Russ
ian actions in the Seven Years’ War also brought about a palace coup and the subsequent rule of Catherine II.

  Prussia had emerged as a potential European power by the middle of the eighteenth century. Under Frederick II (r. 1740-1786), Prussian policies became increasingly ambitious. Frederick wanted to consolidate his power and territories gained at the expense of Austria during the 1840s. Austria, for its part, desired a return of territories such as Silesia. Russia and France also worried over Prussian power and potential incursions near their respective borders. When war broke out between France and England over their North American territories, Prussia signed an alliance with England in January 1756. The alliance brought a rapprochement between France and Austria. By the end of 1756, Russia signed a new alliance with its traditional ally, Austria. The sides had been drawn.

  After war broke out in 1756 on the continent, Frederick’s forces enjoyed success against the Aus-trians. By April 1756 the Prussians reached Prague. In the Bohemian capital the Austrians rallied, and Frederick’s forces retreated. At that point Austria’s allies, including Russia, entered the conflict. Despite the numbers stacked against him, Frederick continued to win surprising victories, and 1757 established his reputation as a brilliant commander.

  The following year brought mixed results and mounting casualties for the Russians, who lost twelve thousand troops at August’s Battle of Zorn-dorf. In 1759 the allies, and particularly Russia, ratcheted up the pressure. Led by General Pyotr Saltykov, the Russian army occupied Frankfurt in June 1759. By 1760 Frederick had only half the numbers of his Russian and Austrian opponents, who began to close the circle against Frederick. Russian commanders in particular focused on Berlin, and even occupied the Prussian capital for three days in September and October 1760. Exhausted by the continuous marching demanded of eighteenth-century warfare, the two sides fought no serious battles for the rest of 1760 and most of 1761. Frederick’s situation, however, was grave. Russia and Austria could count on more soldiers and supplies, and Prussia was cut off from Silesia, a major supplier of food.