Encyclopedia of Russian History

by James Millar

  GERARD J. LIBARIDIAN

  TERRITORIAL-ADMINISTRATIVE UNITS

  The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) was established on December 30, 1922, on the basis of a union treaty that was subsequently incorporated into the USSR constitution of January 31, 1924. The new federal state consisted of a complicated hierarchy of territorial-administrative units. This hierarchy was subsequently modified by amendment, by the adoption of new constitutions in 1936 and 1977, and by federal law. By the time Mikhail S. Gorbachev became Soviet leader in 1985, the hierarchy consisted of 15 Soviet socialist republics (SSRs, or union republics), 20 autonomous Soviet socialist republics (ASSRs), 8 autonomous oblasts (AOs), and 10 autonomous districts (okruga), for a total of 53 ethnically defined administrative units. There were in addition 120 nonethnically defined administrative units-the oblasts and 7 kraya. In addition, Moscow and Leningrad (St. Petersburg) were designated federal cities with an administrative status equal to that of the oblasts and kraya. With the dissolution of the USSR in December 1991, the fifteen union republics became independent states.

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  TERRORISM

  The Soviet successor state with by far the greatest number of territorial-administrative units within it was Russia (known in the Soviet period as the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic, or RSFSR, and renamed the Russian Federation in late 1991). Russia, which was also the only Soviet successor state that was formally designated a federation, included 31 ethnically defined administrative units-16 autonomous republics, 5 autonomous oblasts, and 10 autonomous okruga- which together covered approximately one-half of the territory of the RSFSR. In addition, the Russian Federation was made up of 49 oblasts, 6 kraya, and the federal cities of Moscow and St. Petersburg.

  Transforming Russia into a genuine federation with a well-designed and constitutionally protected division of powers between the federal government and the subjects of the federation has significantly complicated Russia’s transition from Soviet socialism. In 1991, the 16 autonomous republics and 4 of the 5 autonomous oblasts were given the status of republics. The remaining subjects of the federation-the 49 oblasts, 7 kraya, the federal cities of Moscow and St. Petersburg, the Jewish autonomous oblast, and the 10 autonomous okruga-were in effect equalized under law and became known as Russia’s regions. In April 1992, the Russian legislature recognized the division of Checheno-Ingushetia into separate Chechen and Ingush republics, which brought the total number of republics under Russian law to twenty-one. However, the refusal of Chechnya to accept its status as a constituent unit of the federation, and Chechnya’s insistence on recognition as an independent state, helped precipitate a war between Chechen independence supporters and the federal government in 1994 and again in 1999. See also: CHECHNYA AND CHECHENS; RUSSIAN FEDERATION; UNION OF SOVIET SOCIALIST REPUBLICS

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Constitution of the Russian Federation: With Commentaries and Interpretations by American and Russian Scholars, eds. Vladimir V. Belyakov and Walter J. Raymond. (1994). Lawrenceville, VA: Brunswick Publishing Company, and Moscow: Russia’s Information Agency-Novosti. Gleason, Gregory. (1990). Federalism and Nationalism: The Struggle for Republican Rights in the USSR. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Kaiser, Robert J. (1994). The Geography of Nationalism in Russia and the USSR. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

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  Lapidus, Gail W., and Walker, Edward W. (1995). “Nationalism, Regionalism, and Federalism: Center-Periphery Relations in Post-Communist Russia.” In The New Russia: Troubled Transformation, ed. Gail W. Lapidus. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Unger, Aryeh L. (1981). Constitutional Development in the USSR: A Guide to the Soviet Constitutions. New York: Pica Press.

  EDWARD W. WALKER

  TERRORISM

  A half-century of Russian history was bloodstained by revolutionary terrorism. Its first outburst was the abortive April 1866 assassination attempt against Tsar Alexander II by Dmitry Karakozov. From then on, extremists of different ideological persuasions, with varying degrees of success, resorted to acts of terror as part of their struggle against the contemporary sociopolitical order.

  Terrorist activity had a particularly strong impact on the country’s life during two distinct periods. The first was the so-called heroic period, between 1878 and 1881, when the Party of the People’s Will (Narodnaya Volya)-the first modern terrorist organization in the world-dominated the radical camp. Its campaign against the autocracy culminated in the assassination of Alexander II on March 1, 1881. Alexander III’s government succeeded in disintegrating the People’s Will; yet, after a twenty-year period of relative and deceptive calm, a new wave of terrorism erupted during the reign of Russia’s last tsar, Nicholas II (1894-1917). Its perpetrators were members of various newly formed left-wing organizations, who implicated themselves in terrorist acts even when their parties in theory rejected terrorism as a suitable tactic. As radical activity reached its peak during the 1905-1907 crisis, terrorism became an all-pervasive phenomenon, affecting not only the elite civil and military circles but every layer of society. During the first decade of the twentieth century, the terrorists were responsible for approximately 17,000 casualties throughout the empire. Their attacks were indiscriminate, directed at a broad category of alleged “watchdogs of the old regime” and “oppressors of the poor.”

  Although terrorism subsided by late 1907, largely as a result of severe repressive measures employed by Prime Minister Pyotr Stolypin, until the collapse of the imperial order in 1917 it remained

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  THAW, THE

  a threatening weapon in the hands of extremists seeking the demise of the tsarist regime. See also: NICHOLAS II; PEOPLE’S WILL THE; RED TERROR; ZHELYABOV, ANDREI IVANOVICH

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Footman, David. (1968). Red Prelude: A Biography of Zhelyabov. London: Barrie amp; Rockliff. Geifman, Anna. (1993). Thou Shalt Kill: Revolutionary Terrorism in Russia, 1894-1917. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

  ANNA GEIFMAN

  THAW, THE

  The Thaw describes the loosening of restrictions over the arts when Nikita Khrushchev served as general secretary of the Communist Party, after the death of Josef Stalin in 1953 until the mid-1960s. Although associated with the Secret Speech at the Twentieth Congress in 1956 when Khrushchev denounced some of Stalin’s dictatorial activities, the name derives from Ilya Ehrenburg’s 1954 book The Thaw. The novel hinted that Stalin’s death signaled an end to the long winter of sacrifice and persecution, and that a new era for socialism was emerging in which individuals’ private lives were valued as much as industrial productivity. Censorship eased, but its intensity varied as party leaders struggled to redefine the priorities of Soviet society.

  During the Thaw, all artistic media offered new themes and stylistic innovation that had been banned under Stalin. Literary magazines, called “thick” journals, published a wide array of new works. Most notably, in 1961 Novy mir, edited by Alexander, published Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, a portrayal of a labor camp inmate’s efforts to survive and maintain his dignity over the course of one day. Theater also flourished, especially with the 1956 creation of the Sovremennik, a troupe of recent graduates of the School of the Moscow Art Theater led by Oleg Efremov. The company championed the work of Viktor Rozov and young dramatists. Yuri Lyubimov directed Shchukin Theater School students in a watershed production of Bertolt Brecht’s The Good Person of Sechuan and in 1964 assumed the leadership of the Taganka Theater, which subsequently premiered several controversial plays.

  ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

  Theaters were increasingly able to stage synthetic theater, a movement that uses lights, sets, and music to evoke meaning rather than the rigid naturalist approach of accurate historical detail. Amateur student troupes, both traditional dramatic and sketch comedy, thrived. A new generation of poets emerged, including those whose works were later sta
ged as poetic theater by Lyubimov. One of those poets, Yevgeny Yevtushenko, penned “Babi Yar” (1961), which commemorated the Nazi slaughter of Jews and alluded to ongoing Soviet anti-Semitism. The poem became the basis of Dmitri Shostakovich’s Thirteenth Symphony, which premiered in late 1962 and was sharply criticized in the press. A new musical genre, with performers known as bards, performed private concerts of their guitar poetry. Films also appeared that focused on the difficulties of private lives, often with respect to the enormous losses of World War II: Mikhail Kalatozov’s Cranes are Flying (1957), Georgi Chukhrai’s Ballad of a Soldier (1958), and Andrei Tarkovsky’s Ivan’s Childhood (1961).

  There were definite limits to the party’s toleration of this expression. Boris Pasternak’s novel Dr. Zhivago was published in Italy in 1957 after it was banned at home. Awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1958, Pasternak declined the aware after he was attacked in the press and expelled from the Writers’ Union. In 1964 poet Joseph Brodsky was charged with parasitism, spent over two years in an Arctic labor camp, and later emigrated. When young painters and sculptors, including Ernst Neizvestny, showed their abstract works at the Manezh exhibition hall in late 1962, Khrushchev and other leaders expressed their acute dislike. On various occasions, Pasternak, Shostakovich, Neizvestny, Yevtushenko, and others apologized for works that were deemed unacceptable.

  In spite of the expanded opportunities, the absence of freedom of expression and other civil liberties led some intellectuals, labeled “dissidents” by the Party, to more direct opposition to the status quo. Beginning in this era, they circulated essays, memoirs of labor camps, and literature in manuscript form, known as samizdat, rather than submit their work to censors. They smuggled other works, referred to as tamizdat, abroad for publication. Although this group of intellectuals was small in number, it included scientist Andrei Sakharov, who called for an end to nuclear testing in the late 1950s and won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1968. When it became clear that the Thaw had been temporary, these individuals grew increasingly active

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  and were persecuted and sometimes imprisoned by the KGB.

  Scholars disagree on the end date of the Thaw. Some argue that it was 1964, when Khrushchev was ousted. Others maintain that the 1966 trial of dissidents Andrey Sinyavsky and Yuli Daniel marks its end. A third interpretation suggests 1968, when Soviet-led troops invaded Czechoslovakia, where the Thaw threatened the hegemony of its Communist Party. See also: COMMUNIST PARTY OF THE SOVIET UNION; EHRENBERG, ILYA GRIGOROVICH; KHRUSHCHEV, NIKITA SERGEYEVICH; TAGANKA; THEATER

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Alexeyeva, Ludmilla, and Goldberg, Paul. (1993). The Thaw Generation: Coming of Age in the Post-Stalin Era. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press. Brown, Deming. (1978). Soviet Russian Literature since Stalin. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press. Johnson, Priscilla, and Leopold Labedz, eds. (1965). Khrushchev and the Arts: The Politics of Soviet Culture, 1962-1964. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Rothberg, Abraham. (1972). The Heirs of Stalin: Dissidence and the Soviet Regime, 1953-1970. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Spechler, Dina R. (1982). Permitted Dissent in the USSR: Novy mir and the Soviet Regime. New York: Praeger Publishers. Taubman, William. (2003). Khrushchev: The Man and His Era. New York: W. W. Norton and Company. Woll, Josephine. (2000). Reel Images: Soviet Cinema and the Thaw. London: I. B. Tauris and Company.

  SUSAN COSTANZO

  THEATER

  Although modern theater in Russia was imported from Europe in the seventeenth century, earlier traditions demonstrate the importance of spectacle in Russian lives. Russians participated in numerous rituals associated with life transitions, such as marriages, births, and deaths, as well as seasonal agricultural rites. These rituals had both pre-Christian and Christian origins. From the eleventh until the mid-eighteenth century, both elite and peasant Russians were most often entertained by sko-romokhi, musicians whose singing, dancing, pup1536 petry, acrobatics, and animal acts included bawdy material that was reviled by the Russian Orthodox Church. Western-style theater arrived in Russia in the mid-seventeenth century when Tsar Alexei and his court enjoyed numerous foreign performers in various genres, and the first court theater operated from 1672 to 1676.

  Theater expanded as westernization accelerated in the eighteenth century. In addition to court theater, public theaters flourished in many cities in the first half of the century. The Kunst-Fuerst theater, considered the first public theater, staged translations using German actors from 1702 to 1706. Educational institutions established school theaters, the most influential of which operated in the Land Forces Cadet School. Its productions in the early 1750s included the works of Alexander Sumarokov (1718-1777), who also translated and directed plays in the style of classicism, the dominant trend in Europe at that time. Fyodor Volkov (1729-1763) organized a theater in Yaroslavl and moved his troupe to St. Petersburg in 1752. In 1756 Tsarina Elizabeth incorporated Volkov’s troupe into the Russian State Theater (the future Alexandrinsky Theater). Sumarokov directed this first state-subsidized theater, and Volkov played the leads. Dramatic works of the era included comedies, chivalry tales, biblical adaptations, and plays that glorified the monarchy and Russian Empire. Monarchs typically believed that theater should serve a didactic function, an assumption that continued well into the twentieth century.

  These trends continued during the reign of Catherine II in the second half of the eighteenth century. She built the Hermitage Theater in the Winter Palace. After the creation of the Imperial Theatrical School in 1779, Russian-born professional actors increasingly appeared on stage. Beginning in 1783 the Administration of Theaters oversaw and censored public theatrical activity. In addition to court theaters, St. Petersburg (and Moscow early in the next century) boasted heavily subsidized imperial theaters. Many provincial cities also maintained popular public (narodnye) theaters that reached a broad audience with a diverse repertoire. Count Peter Sheremetev and other wealthy nobles also operated private serfs’ theaters, which did not come under state supervision. Playwright Denis Ivanovich Fonvizin (1745-1792) is credited as the founder of authentically Russian drama, best exemplified by his comedy The Minor (1781). Classicism eventually gave way to sentimentalism, a style that emphasized emotion over reason.

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  THEATER

  Under Nicholas I, who reigned from 1825 to 1855, the Imperial Theater Administration developed an extensive series of rules and regulations for all aspects of theatrical activity. In spite of severe censorship, several outstanding dramas were written in an increasingly realist style. Alexander Gri-boedov (1794-1829) completed Woe from Wit (1824), an examination of the alienation of young disillusioned army officers who were scorned by a corrupt and superficial Russian elite after the Napoleonic wars. Other major Russian writers of this era wrote plays along with other genres. Alexander Pushkin (1799-1837) penned dramatic scenes, most notably his tragedy Boris Godunov (1825), in verse form. Nikolai Gogol (1809-1852) wrote The Government Inspector (1836), his most acclaimed work that satirizes corrupt officials and the supercilious elite of a Russian provincial town who mistake a stranger for a government inspector. Ivan Turgenev (1818-1883), also a well-respected novelist, wrote several plays, including A Month in the Country (1849-1850), that depict the everyday life of the elite.

  As plays achieved greater realism, the role of actors in the theatrical process changed. They too attempted to portray characters with greater naturalism, and as a result relied more on the author’s original intention and less on their own embellishment of roles. This evolution occurred in influential theater schools affiliated with the Alexandrinsky Theater in St. Petersburg and the Maly Theater in Moscow. The latter trained Mikhail Shchepkin (1788-1863), who is considered one of the greatest Russian actors. In the later part of the nineteenth century, new stars further developed the naturalist approach. The ranks increasingly included actresses, such as Maria Yermolova (1853-1928), Glikeria Fedotova (1846-1925), and Maria
Savina (1854-1915). Their popularity was enhanced by the repertory system, whereby a theater with a permanent company alternated many productions, rather than the single, long-running play with contractual performers.

  Alexander Ostrovsky (1823-1886) dominated playwriting in the 1860s and 1870s. His innovative depiction of all levels of society in his dramas was called “national realism” and often contrasted cruel, self-serving individuals with their simple, decent victims. He wrote almost fifty plays, including his most acclaimed, The Forest (1870). Another prominent playwright, Alexander Sukhovo-Kobylin (1813-1906), followed the tradition of Gogol’s satirical commentaries in Krechinsky’s WedENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY ding (1854), The Case (1861), and The Death of Tarelkin (1869). Later in the century, Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910), better known for his novels, wrote plays and adapted many of his didactic short stories for theater.

  Popular and provincial theaters complemented developments in the nineteenth century. Circuses, Petrushka puppet shows, and fairground theaters (balagany) amused spectators. Provincial theaters offered a wide variety of genres in an effort to appeal to a wide audience. In the latter part of the century after the emancipation of the serfs in 1861 and their increasing migration to urban areas, the people’s theater movement emphasized theatrical performance as a means to enlighten the masses. Beginning in 1882, private commercial theaters, such as the Korsh, were allowed in the capital cities and elsewhere, but censorship continued to hinder problematic plays. Amateur troupes provided added opportunities for performances.