by James Millar
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY
SLUTSKY, YEVGENY YEVGENIEVICH
Russian Thought, tr. Hilda Andrews-Rusiecka. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Williams, Christopher, and Hanson, Stephen E. (1999). “National Socialism, Left Patriotism or Superimpe-rialism? The Radical Right in Russia.” In The Radical Right in East-Central Europe, ed. Sabrina P. Ramet. University Park: Penn State University Press.
CHRISTOPHER WILLIAMS
SLUTSKY, BORIS ABROMOVICH
(1919-1986), Russian poet and memoirist.
Brought up in Kharkov, Boris Abramovich Slutsky moved to Moscow in 1937 to study law and soon began a simultaneous literature course. On the outbreak of World War II he volunteered and went into battle as an infantry officer. Soon wounded in action, he spent the remainder of the war as a political officer, joining the Party in 1943. He ended up as a highly decorated Guards major, having campaigned all the way to Austria.
In 1945 he returned to Moscow and after convalescence made a living writing radio scripts, but in 1948 he was deprived of this work because of his Jewish origin. Sponsored by Ilya Erenburg, he was accepted in the Union of Writers in 1957 and thereafter was a professional poet. He made a lasting reputation with unprecedentedly unheroic poems about the war, but he was soon upstaged by the more flamboyant younger poets of the Thaw under Nikita Khrushchev, poets more concerned with the future than with the past. Slutsky steadily continued publishing original poetry and also translations, until on the death of his wife in 1977 at which point he suffered a mental collapse, which was underlain by the lingering effects of his wounds. Thereafter he was silent. From the beginning of his career Slutsky acquiesced in the censoring of his work, never moving into dissidence; notoriously, in 1958 he spoke and voted for the expulsion of Pasternak from the Union of Writers, an action for which he privately never forgave himself.
After Slutsky’s death, it was found that well over half of his poetry had never been published. The appearance of this suppressed work in the decade after he died revealed that Slutsky had been by far the most important poet of his generation. In hundreds of short lyrics he had chronicled his life and times, paying attention to everything from high politics to the routines of everyday life and tracing the evoluENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY tion of his society from youthful idealism through terrible trials to decline and imminent fall. He created a distinctive poetic language, purged of conventional poetic ornament, that has been highly influential. His prose memoirs about his military service, equally plain and unconventional, were only published fifty years after the end of the war. See also: THAW, THE; UNION OF SOVIET WRITERS; WORLD WAR II
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Slutsky, Boris. (1999). Things That Happened, ed. and tr. G. S. Smith. Glas (Moscow, Russia), English; v. 19. Moscow, GLAS; Chicago: Ivan Dee.
GERALD SMITH
SLUTSKY, YEVGENY YEVGENIEVICH
(1880-1948), mathematical statistician and economist.
The most profoundly original of all Russian contributors to economic theory, Yevgeny Slutsky was born in Yaroslavl and studied mathematics in Ukraine. His first major publications were in the field of statistics and on the importance of cooperatives. In 1915 he published a seminal article on the theory of consumer behavior. This demonstrated how the consequence of a price change on the quantity of a good demanded could lead to a residual variation in demand, even with a compensating increase in income. John Hicks rediscovered this work in the West in the 1930s, naming the Slutsky equation the “Fundamental Equation of Value Theory.” After 1917 Slutsky worked on analyzing the effects of paper currency emission, on the axiomatic foundations of probability theory, and on the theory of stochastic processes. This yielded a new conception of the stochastic limit.
As a consequence, in 1925 Nikolai Kondratiev asked Slutsky to join the Conjuncture Institute in Moscow, for which he wrote his groundbreaking paper on the random generation of business cycles. This opened up a new avenue of cycle research by hypothesizing that the summation of mutually independent chance factors could generate the appearance of periodicity in a random series. In the 1920s Slutsky also worked on the praxeological foundations of economics, but with the closure of the Conjuncture Institute in 1930, he turned back to statistics. He subsequently worked in the Central
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Institute of Meteorology, in Moscow University, and in the Steklov Mathematical Institute. Here Slutsky computed the functions of variables, which led to the posthumous publication of tables for the incomplete Gamma-function and the chi-squared probability distribution. He died of natural causes in 1948. See also: KONDRATIEV, NIKOLAI DMITRIEVICH
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Allen, R. G. D. (1950). “The Work of Eugen Slutsky.” Econometrica. 18:209-216. Slutsky, E. E. (1937). “The Summation of Random Causes as the Source of Cyclic Processes.” Economet-rica 5:105-146. Slutsky, E. E. (1953). “On the Theory of the Budget of the Consumer.” In American Economic Association, Readings in Price Theory. London: Allen amp; Unwin.
VINCENT BARNETT
SMOLENSK ARCHIVE
The Smolensk Archive comprises the Smolensk regional records of the All-Union Communist Party from the October Revolution in 1917 to the German invasion of the USSR in 1941. The German Army captured the Smolensk Archive when it invaded Russia in 1941 and in 1943 moved the contents to Vilnius. They were subsequently recovered by the Soviet authorities in Silesia in March 1946. American intelligence officers removed the files to a restitution center near Frankfurt am Main in 1946.
The archive contains the incomplete and fragmentary records of the Smolensk and Western Oblast (regional) committees (obkom). These include the minutes of meetings, resolutions, decisions, and directives made by Communist Party officials, as well as details on Party work relating to agriculture, especially collectivization policy, machine tractor stations, trade unions, industry, armed forces, censorship, education, women, the control commission, and the purges. The archive also contains secret police, procuracy, court, and militia reports as well as private and personal files and the miscellaneous records of the city (gorkom) and district (raikom) committees. Between 5 and 10 percent of the archive does not pertain to Smolensk, but comprises material seized by the Germans in other parts
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of the USSR. The originals of these documents were presented to the National Archives in Washington, D.C. Pursuant to an agreement made at the 1998 Washington Conference on Holocaust Era assets, the United States returned most of the archive to Russia on in December 2002. The archives were especially important to Western scholars because they provided an insider’s perspective on many historical developments that would otherwise have been unavailable in the era before Mikhail Gorbachev raised the restrictions on access to Soviet archival materials. See also: ARCHIVES; COMMUNIST PARTY OF THE SOVIET UNION
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Fainsod, Merle. (1958). Smolensk under Soviet Rule. London: Macmillan. Getty, J. Arch. (1999). Origins of the Great Purges: The Soviet Communist Party Reconsidered, 1933-38. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Grimsted, Patricia Kennedy. (1995). “The Odyssey of the ‘Smolensk Archive’: Plundered Communist Records for the Service of Communism.” In Carl Beck Occasional Papers in Russian and East European Studies, No. 1201. Pittsburgh: Center for Russian and East European Studies, University of Pittsburgh. National Archives and Records Service. (1980). Guide to the Records of the Smolensk Oblast of the All-Union Communist Party of the Soviet Union, 1917-41. Washington, DC: Author.
CHRISTOPHER WILLIAMS
SMOLENSK WAR
This unsuccessful campaign to recover the western border regions lost to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth at the end of the Time Of Troubles marked Muscovy’s first major experiment with the new Western European infantry organization and line tactics.
The Treaty of Deulino (1618) ended the Polish military intervention exploiting Muscovy’s Time Of Troubles and established a fourteen-year armistice between Muscovy and the Polish-Lithua
nian Commonwealth. But it came at a high price for the Muscovites: the cession to the Commonwealth of most of the western border regions of Smolensk, Chernigov, and Seversk. This was a vast territory, running from the southeastern border of Livonia to just beyond the Desna River in northeastern
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY
SMOLNY INSTITUTE
Ukraine. It held more than thirty fortress towns, the most strategic of which was Smolensk, the largest and most formidable of all Muscovite fortresses and guardian of the principal western roads to Moscow. Upon his return from Polish captivity in 1619, Patriarch Filaret, father of Tsar Mikhail, made a new campaign to recover Smolensk, Chernigov, and Seversk from the Poles the primary objective of Muscovite foreign policy.
Most of the diplomatic preconditions for such a revanche appeared to be in place by 1630, and by this point the Muscovite government had succeeded in restoring its central chancellery apparatus and fiscal system. It was now able to undertake a massive reorganization and modernization of its army for the approaching war with the Commonwealth. It imported Swedish, Dutch, and English arms to the cost of at least 50,000 rubles; it offered large bounties to recruit Western European mercenary officers experienced in the new infantry organization and line tactics; and it set these mercenary officers to work forming and training New-Formation Regiments-six regiments of Western style infantrymen (soldaty), a regiment of heavy cavalry (reitary), and a regiment of dragoons (draguny). These regiments were drilled in the new European tactics and outfitted and salaried at treasury expense, unlike the old Pomestie-based cavalry army. The New Formation infantry and cavalry would comprise a little more than half of the 33,000-man expeditionary army on the upcoming Smolensk campaign. Muscovy had never before experimented with New Formation units on such a scale.
The death of Polish King Sigismund III in April 1632 led to an interregnum in the Commonwealth and factional struggle in the Diet. Patriarch Filaret took advantage of this confusion to send generals M. B. Shein and A. V. Izmailov against Smolensk with the main corps of the Muscovite field army. By October, Shein and Izmailov had captured more than twenty towns and had placed the fortress of Smolensk under siege. The Polish-Lithuanian garrison holding Smolensk numbered only about two thousand men, and the nearest Commonwealth forces in the region (those of Radziwill and Gon-siewski) did not exceed six thousand. But the besieging Muscovite army suffered logistical problems and desertions; their earthworks did not completely encircle Smolensk and did not offer enough protection from attack from the rear. Meanwhile the international coalition against the Commonwealth began to unravel, with the result that in August 1633, Wladyslaw IV, newly elected King
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY
of Poland, arrived in Shein’s and Izmailov’s rear with a Polish relief army of 23,000 and placed the Muscovite besiegers under his own siege. In January 1634 Shein and Izmailov were forced to sue for armistice in order to evacuate what was left of their army. They had to leave their artillery and stores behind.
On their return to Moscow, Shein and Izmailov were charged with treason and executed. By the terms of the Treaty of Polianovka (May 1634) the Poles received an indemnity of twenty thousand rubles and were given back all the captured towns save Serpeisk. The next opportunity for Muscovy to regain Smolensk, Seversk, and Chernigov came a full twenty years later when Bogdan Khmelnit-sky and the Ukrainian cossacks sought Tsar Alexei’s support for their war for independence from the Commonwealth. See also: FILARET ROMANOV, METROPOLITAN; NEW-FORMATION REGIMENTS; POLAND; THIRTEEN YEARS’ WAR
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Fuller, William C, Jr. (1992). Strategy and Power in Russia, 1600-1914. New York: Free Press.
BRIAN DAVIES
SMOLNY INSTITUTE
Catherine II (the Great) founded the Smolny Institute for Girls, officially the Society for the Upbringing of Noble Girls, in 1764. Its popular name comes from its site in the Smolny Monastery on the left bank of the Neva River in St. Petersburg. Inspired by Saint-Cyr, a boarding school for girls in France, Smolny was part of Catherine’s educational plan to raise cultured, industrious, and loyal subjects.
Ivan Betskoy, the head of this reform effort, was heavily influenced by Enlightenment theorists. Drawing on the ideas of John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Betskoy’s pedagogical plan for Smolny emphasized moral education and the importance of environment. Girls lived at Smolny continuously from age five to eighteen without visits home, which were deemed corrupting. As at all-male schools such as the Corps of Cadets and the Academy of Arts, Smolny stressed training in the fine arts, especially dance and drama. The curriculum also included reading, writing, foreign languages,
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physics, chemistry, geography, mathematics, history, Orthodoxy, needlepoint, and home economics. The range of subjects led Voltaire to declare Smolny superior to Saint-Cyr. In 1765, a division with a less extensive curriculum was added for the daughters of merchants and soldiers.
Catherine held public exams and performances of plays at Smolny, and took her favorite pupils on promenades in the Summer Gardens. Portraits of these favorites were commissioned from the painter Dmitry Levitsky. Smolny also became a stop for visiting foreign dignitaries. Its graduates were known for their manners and talents and were considered highly desirable brides. Some became teachers at the school, and a few were promoted to ladies-in-waiting at court.
Peter Zavadovsky, who directed Catherine’s commission to establish a national school system, succeeded Betskoy as de facto head of Smolny in 1783. He replaced French with Russian as the school’s primary language and altered the curriculum to emphasize the girls’ future roles as wives and mothers.
After Catherine’s death in 1796, Maria Fe-dorovna took over the institute and made changes that set Smolny’s course for the rest of its existence. The school’s administration became less personal and more bureaucratic. The age of admittance was changed from five to eight, in recognition of the importance of mothering during the early years of a child’s life, and the rules forbidding visits home were relaxed.
Throughout the nineteenth century, Smolny maintained its reputation as the most elite educational institution for girls. Its name was regarded as synonymous with high cultural standards, manners, and poise, although sometimes its graduates were considered naive and ill-prepared for life outside of Smolny. The many references to Smolny in the Russian literature of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries attest to the school’s cultural significance.
In October 1917, Vladimir Lenin and the Bolsheviks appropriated the Smolny Institute and made it their headquarters until March 1918. Since then, the Smolny campus has continued to be used for governmental purposes, eventually becoming home to the St. Petersburg Duma. Several rooms have been preserved as a museum of the institute’s past. See also: CATHERINE II; EDUCATION; ENLIGHTENMENT, IMPACT OF; ST. PETERSBURG
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
Black, Joseph L. (1979). Citizens for the Fatherland: Education, Educators, and Pedagogical Ideals in Eighteenth Century Russia. New York: Columbia University Press. Nash, Carol. (1981). “Educating New Mothers: Women and the Enlightenment in Russia.” History of Education Quarterly 21:305-306.
ANNA KUXHAUSEN
SMYCHKA
Smychka, meaning “alliance” or “union” in Russian, was used during the New Economic Policy (NEP), particularly by those Bolsheviks who supported a moderate policy toward the peasantry, to describe a cooperative relationship between workers and peasants.
In 1917 the revolutionary alliance of proletariat and peasantry against the tsarist ruling classes led to victory, but by the end of the Civil War the smychka had been severely weakened by harsh War Communism policies of forcible confiscation of grain. Vladimir Lenin introduced the NEP in 1921 to restore the smychka, ending confiscatory policies toward the peasantry and allowing limited private enterprise.
The Bolsheviks were in the awkward position of claiming to represent the proletariat but a
ctually ruling over a peasant population that they regarded as potentially bourgeois. In the 1920s they debated what policies should be applied to the peasantry, that is, what the smychka should mean. In his last writings, particularly “On Cooperation” and “Better Fewer, But Better” (both 1923), Lenin argued that the smychka meant gaining the peasants’ trust by recognizing and meeting their needs. Through cooperatives, he said, the vast majority of peasants could be gradually won over to socialism. Nikolai Bukharin, Alexei Rykov, and others members of the right built their program of gradual evolution to socialism on Lenin’s last writings, seeing the smychka as a permanent feature of Soviet life and calling for concessions to the peasantry. The left feared that the peasant majority could swallow the revolution and resisted concessions, hoping that rapid industrialization would end the need for alliance with the peasantry.
The inherent tensions between Bolshevik goals and peasant needs threatened to rupture the smychka. In the 1923 Scissors Crisis, prices for agriENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY
SOBCHAK, ANATOLY ALEXANDROVICH
cultural products plummeted at the same time that those of state-produced manufactured goods rose sharply, opening a price gap that discouraged peasants from marketing agricultural products. Adjustments kept the smychka in place, and 1925 was the high point of pro-peasant policies. The Grain Crisis of 1928 and subsequent defeat of the right weakened the smychka, and the massive collectivization drive of 1929-1930 ended it completely. See also: COLLECTIVIZATION OF AGRICULTURE; GRAIN CRISIS OF 1928; NEW ECONOMIC POLICY; SCISSORS CRISIS; WAR COMMUNISM
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Cohen, Stephen F. (1971). Bukharin and the Bolshevik Revolution. New York: Random House. Lewin, Moshe. (1968). Russian Peasants and Soviet Power. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.
