Encyclopedia of Russian History

by James Millar

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  DeGeorge, Richard T. (1969). Soviet Ethics and Morality. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Evans, Alfred B., Jr. (1993). Soviet Marxism-Leninism: The Decline of an Ideology. Westport, CT: Praeger. Mehnert, Klaus. (1962). Soviet Man and His World, tr. Maurice Rosenbaum. New York: Praeger. Smith, Hedrick. (1983). The Russians, updated edition. New York: Times Books.

  ALFRED B. EVANS JR.

  SOVIET-POLISH WAR

  The Soviet-Polish War was the most important of the armed conflicts among the East European states emerging from World War I. The Versailles settlements failed to delineate Poland’s eastern border. The Entente powers hoped that the Bolshevik Revolution was temporary, and that a Polish-Russian

  ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

  SOVKHOZ

  border would be established after the victory of White Russian forces. As the eastern command of the German Army withdrew after the armistice of November 11, 1918, Vladimir Lenin in Moscow and J?zef Pilsudski in Warsaw planned to fill the vacuum. Lenin hoped to export revolution, Pilsudski to lead an East European federation.

  In early 1919, Lenin’s main concern was the White Russian forces of Anton Denikin. Pilsudski did not support Denikin, a Russian nationalist who treated eastern Galicia as part of a future Russian state. In late 1918, Pilsudski watched as the Red Army moved on Vilnius and Minsk. Pilsudski’s offensive began in April 1919, his forces taking Vilnius on April 21 and Mnsk on August 8. In collaboration with Latvian troops, Poland took Daugavpils on January 3, 1920, returning the city to Latvia. By then Denikin was in retreat, and the Red Army could turn to an offensive against the remnants of independent Ukrainian forces.

  The Ukrainian National Republic of Symon Petliura allied with Poland in April 1920. With Ukrainian help, Pilsudski took Kiev on May 7, 1920, only to find his troops overwhelmed by the forces of Soviet commanders Mikhail Tukha-chevsky and Semen Budenny. On July 11 Great Britain proposed an armistice based upon the Curzon Line, which left Ukraine and Belarus to Moscow. These terms displeased Pilsudski, but Polish prime minister Stanislaw Grabski had agreed to similar ones in negotiations with British prime minister David Lloyd George. Moscow’s replies questioned the future of independent Poland, and the Red Army encircled Warsaw in August.

  With the exception of its Ukrainian ally, Poland faced this attack alone. The French sent a military legation, but its counsel was unheeded. Pilsudski himself planned and executed a daring counterattack against the Bolshevik center, shattering Tukhachevsky’s command. He then drove the Red Army to central Belarus. The Battle of Warsaw of August 16-25, 1920, was called by DAbernon “the eighteenth decisive battle of the world.” It set the westward boundary of the Bolshevik Revolution, saved independent Poland, and ended Lenin’s hopes of spreading the Bolshevik Revolution by force of arms to Germany.

  The Soviet-Polish frontier, agreed at Riga on March 18, 1921, was itself consequential. Poland abandoned its Ukrainian ally, as most of Ukraine was still under Soviet control. Yet the war forced the Soviets to reconsider nationality questions, and

  ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

  led to the establishment of the Soviet Union as a nominal federation in December 1922. During the 1930s, Josef Stalin blamed Polish agents for shortfalls in Ukrainian food production, and he ethnically cleansed Poles from the Soviet west. These preoccupations flowed from earlier defeat.

  Riga divided Belarus and Ukraine between Poland and the Soviet Union. The Red Army seized western Belarus and western Ukraine from Poland in September 1939 thanks to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Treaty, undoing the consequences of Riga and encouraging forgetfulness of the Polish-Bolshevik War. Yet more than any other event, the Polish-Bolshevik War defined the political and intellectual frontiers of the interwar period in eastern Europe. See also: CIVIL WAR OF 1917-1922; POLAND; WORLD WAR I

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  D’Abernon, Edgar Vincent. (1931). The Eighteenth Decisive Battle of the World. London: Hodder and Stoughton. Davies, Norman. (1972). White Eagle, Red Star. New York: St. Martin’s. Gervais, C?line, ed. (1975). La Guerre polono-sovi?tique, 1919-1920. Lausanne: L’Age de l’Homme. Palij, Michael (1995). The Ukrainian-Polish Defensive Alliance. Edmonton, AB: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies. Ullman, Richard H. (1972). The Anglo-Soviet Accord. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Wandycz, Piotr. (1969). Soviet-Polish Relations, 1917-1921. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

  TIMOTHY SNYDER

  SOVKHOZ

  The sovkhoz, or state farm, the collective farm (kolkhoz), and the private subsidiary sector, were the three major organizational forms used in Soviet agricultural production after the collectivization of Soviet agriculture, a process begun by Josef Stalin in 1929. Although the concept of the state farm originated earlier under Vladimir Lenin during the period of war communism, the serious development of state farms began during the 1930s as the Soviet state exercised full control over the agricultural sector.

  The state farm might be described as a factory in the field in the sense that it was full state property,

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  financed by state budget (revenues flowed into and expenses were paid by the state budget), and subject to the state planning system, and workers (rabochy) on state farms were paid a contractual wage. All of these major characteristics of the state farm distinguished it from the collective farm.

  The sovkhoz was organized in a fashion similar to an industrial enterprise. The farm was headed by a state-appointed director, and the connection between labor force and sovkhoz resembled the structure of the industrial enterprise. Most important, capital investment for the sovkhoz was funded by the state budget. Thus, although prices paid by the state for sovkhoz produce were lower than for compulsory deliveries from collective farms, state farms were in a financially much better position. This was a major reason for the subsequent conversion of weak collective farms into state farms in the post-World War II years, a process enhanced by the Soviet policy of agro-industrial integration and the ultimate development of the agroindustrial complex comprising collective and state farms and industrial processing capacity.

  The role of state farms in Soviet agriculture grew steadily during the Soviet era. The number of state farms grew from less than 1,500 in 1929 to just over 23,000 by the end of the Gorbachev era in the late 1980s. This expansion resulted partly from state policy-the amalgamation and conversion of collective farms to state farms-and partly from the use of state farms in special programs expanding the area under cultivation, such as the Virgin Lands Program. State farms were large. During the 1930s, for example, state farms were on average roughly 6,000 acres of sown area. By the 1980s, they averaged more than 11,000 acres of sown area per farm.

  There were considerable differences in the output patterns between collective and state farms, and state farms were viewed as more productive and more profitable than collective farms. Generally speaking, the role of the state farms increased over time from modest proportions in the early 1930s. The sovkhoz came to be important in the production of grain, vegetables and eggs, less important for meat products. During the transition era of the 1990s, state farms were reorganized using joint stock arrangements, although the development of land markets remained constrained by opposition to private ownership of land. See also: AGRICULTURE; COLLECTIVE FARM; COLLECTIVIZATION OF AGRICULTURE

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  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Davies, R. W.; Harrison, Mark; and Wheatcroft, S. G., eds. (1994). The Economic Transformation of the Soviet Union, 1913-1945. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Gregory, Paul R., and Stuart, Robert C. (2001). Russian and Soviet Economic Performance and Structure, 7th ed. New York: Addison Wesley Longman. Volin, Lazar. (1970). A Century of Russian Agriculture. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

  ROBERT C. STUART

  SOVNARKHOZY

  Regional bodies that administered industry and construction in the USSR.

  The Sovnarkhozy (acronym for Sovety Narod-n
ogo Khozyaistva, or Councils of the National Economy) were state bodies for the regional administration of industry and construction in Russia and the USSR that existed from 1917 to 1932 and again from1957 to 1965.

  The first Sovnarkhozy were created in December 1917 by the Supreme Council of the National Economy. Each of them had power over areas ranging in size from small districts up to several provinces. They were associated with local institutions such as soviets and were responsible to the Supreme Council for restoring the economy of their area after World War I and then the civil war. As the Soviet economy developed during the 1920s, control of industry was divided between the Supreme Council of the National Economy (which retained control of important strategic industries) and the Sovnarkhozy. The Sovnarkhozy were abolished in 1932 when the Supreme Council was divided into three separate industrial commissariats.

  Sovnarkhozy were reintroduced during Nikita Khrushchev’s 1957 effort to decentralize the economy. The USSR was divided into 105 Sovnarkhozy responsible to republican Councils of Ministers for the industry in the regions, except armaments, chemicals, and electricity, which at first remained under central control. The system had a fundamental weakness due to the lack of centralized direction and coordination, and Sovnarkhozy often pursued local interests and considered only the needs of their own region. In 1962 and 1963 attempts were made to reform the system, such as amalgamating the Sovnarkhozy and reviving the

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  SOYUZ FACTION

  Supreme Council of the National Economy, but in 1965 Leonid Brezhnev and Alexei Kosygin abolished the Sovnarkhozy and reestablished the central industrial ministries. See also: ECONOMIC GROWTH, SOVIET; KOSYGIN REFORMS; REGIONALISM

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Nove, Alec. (1982). An Economic History of the U.S.S.R. Basingstoke, UK: Penguin. Prokhorev, Aleksandr M., ed. (1975). Great Soviet Encyclopedia: A Translation of the Third Edition. New York: Macmillan.

  DEREK WATSON

  SOVNARKOM

  Acronym for Sovet Narodnykh Komissarov (Council of People’s Commissars), the government of the early Soviet republic.

  Sovnarkom was formed by Vladimir Lenin in October 1917 as the government of the new revolutionary regime. The word commissars was used to distinguish the new institution from bourgeois governments and indicate that administration was being entrusted to commissions (commissariats), not to individuals. Initially membership included Lenin (chairperson), eleven departmental heads (commissars), and a committee of three responsible for military and naval affairs. Until 1921, under Lenin, Sovnarkom was the real government of the new Soviet republic-the key political as well as administrative body-but after 1921 political power passed increasingly to Party bodies.

  With the creation of the USSR in 1924, Lenin’s Sovnarkom became a union (national) body. Alexei Rykov was chairperson of the Union Sovnarkom from 1924 to 1930, then Vyacheslav Molotov from 1930 to 1941, and Josef Stalin from 1941 to 1946, when the body was renamed the Council of Ministers. There were two types of commissariats: six unified (renamed “union-republican” under the 1936 constitution), which functioned through parallel apparatuses in identically named republican commissariats, and five all-union with plenipotentiaries in the republics directly subordinate to their commissar.

  In 1930 Gosplan was upgraded to a standing commission of Sovnarkom and its chairperson

  ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

  given membership. By 1936 the number of commissariats had risen to twenty-three, and by 1941 to forty-three. A major trend was the replacement of an overall industrial commissariat by industry-specific bodies.

  The 1936 constitution granted Sovnarkom membership to chairpersons of certain state committees. It also formally recognized Sovnarkom as the government of the USSR, but deprived it of its legislative powers. By this time the institution was and remained a high-level administrative committee specializing in economic affairs. See also: COMMISSAR; COUNCIL OF MINISTERS, SOVIET; LENIN, VLADIMIR ILICH; MOLOTOV, VYACHESLAV MIKHAILOVICH; RYKOV, ALEXEI IVANOVICH; STALIN, JOSEF VISSARIONOVICH

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Rigby, Thomas Henry. (1979). Lenin’s Government: Sovnarkom, 1917-1922. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Watson, Derek. (1996). Molotov and Soviet Government: Sovnarkom, 1930-41. Basingstoke, UK: CREES-Macmillan.

  DEREK WATSON

  SOYUZ FACTION

  The Soyuz faction was a group of hardliners in USSR Congress of People’s Deputies at the end of the Soviet era. Its leaders, Viktor Alksnis and Nikolai Petrushenko, had been elected as deputies from Latvia and Kazakhstan respectively, regions with large ethnic Russian populations that conservatives were trying to mobilize (in organizations called “in-terfronts”) to counter the independence movements that had sprung up under perestroika. While nationalists and communists dominated the USSR Congress of People’s Deputies elected in March 1989, democratic forces won the upper hand in the Russian Federation Congress of People’s Deputies, elected in the spring of 1990, which chose Boris Yeltsin as its leader.

  Alksinis came up with the idea of the Soyuz faction in October 1989. It was launched on February 14, 1990, but only became highly visible toward the end of the year, when conservatives mobilized to deter Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev from adopting the Five-Hundred Day economic reform program. Soyuz had close ties to the

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  army and security services, and its goal was to preserve the USSR. At its formal founding congress on December 1, 1990, Soyuz claimed the support of up to one quarter of the deputies in the USSR Congress. Its sister organization in the Russian Federation Supreme Soviet was Sergei Baburin’s Rossiya faction. Soyuz put increasing pressure on Gorbachev to end democratization by introducing presidential rule, suppressing disloyal political parties, and cracking down on nationalist movements in the non-Russian republics. It reportedly persuaded Gorbachev to fire Soviet Interior Minister Vadim Bakatin, who had agreed to the creation of separate interior ministries in each of the union republics. On November 11, 1990, Alksnis persuaded Gorbachev to address a meeting of one thousand military personnel elected as deputies to various soviets; he got a hostile reception. A week later, speaking in the USSR Supreme Soviet on November 17, Alksinis effectively called for Gorbachev’s overthrow. Still, no one could be sure whether Gorbachev would stick with democratization or opt for an authoritarian crackdown.

  In January 1991 KGB teams tried to overthrow the independent-minded governments in Latvia and Lithuania. This drew fierce international criticism, and Gorbachev disowned it. Apparently he had given up the idea of using force to hold the USSR together, for he now began pursuing a new union treaty with the heads of the republics that made up the USSR. In response, a Soyuz conference in April 1991 called for power to be transferred from Gorbachev to Prime Minister Valentin Pavlov or Anatoly Lukyanov, chairman of the USSR Supreme Soviet. Clearly the Soyuz group was laying the political and organizational groundwork for the coup attempt of August 1991, but the failure of the putsch sealed the fate of the USSR and of Soyuz, its most loyal defender. Alksnis was later one of the defenders of the anti-Yeltsin parliament in the violent confrontation of October 1993. Interviewed in 2002, he insisted that the USSR could have been saved if Gorbachev had acted more resolutely and not been “afraid of his own shadow.” See also: AUGUST 1991 PUTSCH; DEMOCRATIZATION; GORBACHEV, MIKHAIL SERGEYEVICH

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Dunlop, John B. (1995). The Rise of Russia and the Fall of the Soviet Empire. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Rees, E. A. (1992). “Party Relations with the Military and the KGB.” In The Soviet Communist Party in Disarray:

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  The XXVIII Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, ed. E. A. Rees. New York: St. Martin’s. Teague, Elizabeth. (1991). “The ‘Soyuz’ Group.” Report on the USSR 3(20):16-21.

  PETER RUTLAND

  SPACE PROGRAM

  The Russian space program has a long history. The first person in any count
ry to study the use of rockets for space flight was the Russian schoolteacher and mathematician Konstantin Tsiolkovsky. His work greatly influenced later space and rocket research in the Soviet Union, where, as early as 1921, the government founded a military facility devoted to rocket research. During the 1930s, Sergei Korolev emerged as a leader in this effort and eventually became the “chief designer” responsible for many of the early Soviet successes in space in the 1950s and 1960s.

  Under Korolev’s direction, the Soviet Union in the 1950s developed an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), with engines designed by Valentin Glushko, which was capable of delivering a heavy nuclear warhead to American targets. That ICBM, called the R-7 or Semyorka (“Number 7”), was first successfully tested on August 21, 1957. Its success cleared the way for the rocket’s use to launch a satellite.

  Both the United States and the Soviet Union had announced their intent to launch an earth satellite in 1957 during the International Geophysical Year (IGY). Fearing that delayed completion of the elaborate scientific satellite, intended as the Soviet IGY contribution, would allow the United States to be first into space, Korolev and his associates designed a much simpler spherical spacecraft. After the success of the R-7 in August, that satellite was rushed into production and became Sputnik 1, the first object put into orbit, on October 4, 1957. A second, larger satellite carrying scientific instruments and the dog Laika, the first living creature in orbit, was launched November 3, 1957. Three Soviet missions, Luna 1-3, explored the vicinity of the moon in 1959, sending back the first images of its far side. Luna 1 was the first spacecraft to fly past the moon; Luna 2, in making a hard landing on the lunar suface, was the first spacecraft to strike another celestial object.