Encyclopedia of Russian History
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bociurkiw, Bohdan R. (1996). The Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church and the Soviet State, 1939-1950. Edmonton: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies Press. Halecki, Oskar. (1958). From Florence to Brest (1439-1596). New York: Fordham University Press. Himka, John-Paul. (1999). Religion and Nationality in Western Ukraine: The Greek Catholic Church and Ruthenian National Movement in Galicia, 1867-1900. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press.
SERHY YEKELCHYK
UNION OF RIGHT FORCES
The Union of Right Forces (Soyuz Pravykh Sil, or SPS) was a political party that grew out of an association, geared toward the 1999 Duma elections, of a number of leaders’ structures, not one of which was able to enter the previous Duma on its own. The SPS included: the democratic bloc “A Just Cause”; the bloc “Voice of Russia,” founded as a gubernatorial bloc; and the movement “New Force” of the ex-premier Sergei Kiriyenko. “A Just Cause” brought a number of groups together around the party Russia’s Democratic Choice: the movement “Forward, Russia!,” “Common Cause,” the movement “Democratic Russia,” the party “Democratic Russia,” and an array of smaller organizations. In “Voice of Russia,” which originally consisted of seven organizations, only two, with Samara governor Konstantin Titov at the head, joined with the SPS; the others entered “All Russia.” “A Just Cause” had less severe losses at the time of the association: it only lost “Forward, Russia!” with Boris Fyo-dorov, who joined with Our Home Is Russia (NDR). The SPS list was headed by reformers from the second wave: Kiriyenko (“New Force”), ex-deputy prime minister and former Nizhegorod governor Boris Nemtsov (Russia’s Democratic Choice), and ex-minister Irina Khakamada (“Common Cause”). In the organization of the campaign and the elaboration of the program, a leading role was played
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by veteran reformers Anatoly Chubais and Yegor Gaidar.
The SPS leaders, presenting themselves as liberal statists, unequivocally supported the incipient war in Chechnya and entered into a full-format union with the Kremlin, using the patriotic sentiment in society and the growing popularity of premier Vladimir Putin (the campaign slogan was “Putin for president, Kiriyenko in the Duma!”). Alongside massive stadium shows as part of the “You’re Right!” campaign aimed at youth, the SPS advertised with a collection of signatures in support of a referendum to be held with four questions: concerning the protection of private property, the removal of immunity from the deputies of the Federal Assembly, limitation of military participation to those in service or under contract, and limitations on the president’s right to dismiss members of the government. After the elections, the Central Electoral Commission rejected almost one million of the 3.6 million signatures collected and refused to hold the referendum. The SPS candidates balloted in sixty-five majority districts and won in five, winners including Nemtsov and Khakamada. The original count was small (thirty-two delegates), but the experienced SPS did not become head of the pro-government coalition. Although in the second half of the term it gained control of several important committees, the SPS, under the leadership of Nemtsov (in May 2000, Kiriyenko, the original leader, was appointed plenipotientary to the president in the Privolga federal district), started to move in a highly oppositional direction. The SPS political council included Gaidar and Chubais, as well as Nemtsov, Khakamada, and Kiriyenko, who had suspended his membership.
Deeming the years of activity of the government formed in 2000 as a time of squandered possibilities, the SPS proposed a formula for success consisting of three components: a strong and effective state, a private competitive economy, and individual freedom. The SPS considered the following tasks of primary importance: (1) the defense of federalism (prohibition of a third term for governors, nationwide elections of the members of the Soviet Federation, and guaranteed funds for local self-government); (2) the creation of conditions for the attraction of capital and the return of emigr?s to Russia; (3) immediate realization of the following constitutional rights of citizens: the right to ownership of land, the right to move and to choose one’s place of residence, the right to information, which presupposes the defense of the independence
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of the media organizations (SMI), and the right to an independent and fair trial; (4) the introduction of a cumulative pension system, liberalization of labor relations, and effective restructurings in the Residential-Communal Management (ZhKKh) sphere; (5) guarantee of equal access to education, introduction of a single exam into the VUZy (institutions of higher learning); (6) creation of political conditions for full-scale regulation in Chechnya; and (7) military reform, providing for six-month service and transition to a contracted army no later than 2005.
Positioning itself as the mouthpiece of business interests, the SPS had an array of serious sponsors (including the energetic monopolist RAO UES of Russia, headed by the unofficial leader of the SPS, Anatoly Chubais, “Alpha-Group,” “Interros,” and so forth), allowing it to act with relative independence. See also: CHUBAIS, ANATOLY BORISOVICH; DUMA; GAIDAR, YEGOR TIMUROVICH; KIRIYENKO, SERGEI VLADILEN-OVICH; NEMTSOV, BORIS IVANOVICH
BIBLIOGRAPHY
McFaul, Michael. (2001). Russia’s Unfinished Revolution: Political Change from Gorbachev to Putin. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. McFaul, Michael, and Markov, Sergei. (1993). The Troubled Birth of Russian Democracy: Parties, Personalities, and Programs. Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press. McFaul, Michael; Petrov, Nikolai; and Ryabov, Andrei, eds. (1999). Primer on Russia’s 1999 Duma Elections. Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Reddaway, Peter, and Glinski, Dmitri. (2001). The Tragedy of Russia’s Reforms: Market Bolshevism against Democ-racry. Washington, DC: U.S. Institute of Peace Press.
NIKOLAI PETROV
UNION OF SOVEREIGN STATES
Gorbachev’s last effort to reconfigure and maintain the territorial integrity of the USSR.
During 1990 and 1991, Mikhail Gorbachev led efforts to reconfigure center-periphery relations in the USSR. He sought a new Union Treaty that would give more autonomy to the union republics and make the Soviet Union an actual functioning
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federation. Working with the recently elected presidents of the union republics, Gorbachev fashioned a Union of Soviet Sovereign Republics. However, six republics (Armenia, Estonia, Georgia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Moldova) refused to participate in the treaty negotiations and announced that they were seeking outright independence.
The nine remaining union republics reached agreement on June 17, 1991. A Party plenum approved the new treaty and scheduled a signing ceremony for August 20. But on August 19, hard-liners staged a coup in order to prevent the imminent demise of the USSR. When the coup failed, Gorbachev attempted to save some semblance of union. As an interim solution, a State Council, consisting of Gorbachev and the presidents of the remaining republics, was announced on September 5. Ten republics attended the first State Council session on September 6 and voted to recognize the independence of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. Georgia and Moldova did not attend.
In mid-September, the USSR Congress of People’s Deputies voted to work toward forming a Union of Sovereign States. The republics would receive much greater autonomy, while currency, defense, and foreign affairs would remain centrally controlled. There would be a USSR president and prime minister, but with fewer powers than under the Soviet system.
Gradually, Boris Yeltsin took the initiative away from Gorbachev. Yeltsin dissolved many USSR structures and reassigned others to Russian control. At a November 25 State Council meeting, he argued for a confederal structure in which the members conducted their own diplomacy and could form their own militaries. Outraged, Gorbachev stormed out of the room. Most republic leaders had been stalling until Ukraine’s referendum on independence, scheduled for December 1. When Ukraine voted for independence, the union’s fate
was sealed.
Meeting in the Belovezh forest on December 8, Yeltsin, Ukrainian president Leonid Kravchuk, and Belarusian parliamentary chair Stanislav Shushke-vich nullified the 1922 USSR Union Treaty. The remaining republics were caught by surprise, but they quickly signed onto the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) structure formed by the Belovezh Accords. Gorbachev was left out of the discussion and not invited to the first CIS meeting on December 21. Faced with the inevitable, Gorbachev resigned on December 25. Barely 40 of the 173 Council of Republic deputies reported to work
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on December 26, where they formally voted to dissolve the USSR. The Soviet Union was no more. See also: AUGUST 1991 PUTSCH; UNION TREATY
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Beissinger, Mark R. (1991). “The Deconstruction of the USSR and the Search for a Post-Soviet Community.” Problems of Communism 40(6):27-35. Brown, Archie. (1996). The Gorbachev Factor. New York: Oxford University Press. Dunlop, John B. (1993). The Rise of Russia and the Fall of the Soviet Empire. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Matlock, Jack F., Jr. (1995). Autopsy on an Empire. New York: Random House.
ANN E. ROBERTSON
UNION OF SOVIET SOCIALIST REPUBLICS
Although the Bolsheviks seized power in Russia in November 1917, it was not until 1922 that the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) was formed. At that time there were only four Soviet republics-the Russian republic (officially called the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic or RSFSR), Ukraine, Belorussia, and Transcaucasia. The name, USSR, was chosen deliberately to avoid that of any particular nation or country, since the hope of its founders was that, gradually, more and more countries throughout the world would join its ranks.
The USSR came to embrace almost every part of the Russian Empire at its most expansive. The Baltic states were forcibly incorporated in 1940, and in the post-World War II Soviet Union there were fifteen Union Republics. Some of them contained so-called Autonomous Republics which, like the Union Republics, were named after a nationality for which that territory was a traditional homeland.
According to the Soviet Constitution the USSR was a federation, but in reality many of the basic features of a federal system were lacking. The deficits included the lack of a clear definition of what lay within the jurisdiction of the component parts of the federation and what was the sole responsibility of the central authorities, the lack of any real autonomy for the fifteen republics, and the absence of an independent judicial body that
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could adjudicate in cases of dispute between the republics and Moscow. Moreover, the doctrine of democratic centralism that governed relations within the Communist Party (and in Brezhnev’s time was made a principle of the organization of the entire Soviet state) made a mockery of the federal principle. Democratic centralism was interpreted by Soviet communists to mean that the decisions of higher party organs were unconditionally binding on lower party bodies, and that they applied to the subjects of the federation, such as Ukraine, Kazakhstan, or Latvia, just as much as to a Russian province.
In practice, the degree to which the nationals of the various Soviet republics ran their republics, and the extent to which they were given some latitude to introduce local variation, changed over time. It was, however, only during the perestroika period that the federal forms gained legitimacy. Pressure grew from below, burgeoning from arguments in favor of a genuine federalism to press for a loose confederation and culminated in demands for complete independence. With the liberalization and partial democratization of the Soviet system after 1985, the fact that the Soviet Union had been divided administratively along national-territorial lines gained immense significance. Institutions that had made modest concessions to national consciousness in the case of nations of long standing (such as Armenia) and had contributed, unwittingly, to a process of nation-building in parts of Soviet Central Asia, began to use the resources at their disposal to pose fundamental challenges to the federal authorities in Moscow.
Not all the republics demanded independence, however, the three Baltic republics of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia were in the vanguard of the independence movement, and separatist sentiments also grew in Georgia. Ukraine was divided and only later fully embraced independent statehood. The Central Asian republics had independence virtually thrust upon them when Boris Yeltsin joined the leaders of Ukraine and Belorussia in December 1991 to proclaim that the USSR would cease to exist. Surveys of public opinion in Russia both before and after 1991 showed a majority of Russians in favor of preserving the Union, but in the aftermath of the failed coup against Mikhail Gorbachev of August 1991, Yeltsin chose to assert Russia’s independence from the USSR. Since Russia comprised approximately three-quarters of the territory of the USSR and roughly half of its population, this was the final blow to the state. The flag of the Union was lowered from the Kremlin on December 25, 1991, and replaced by the Russian tricolor. By the end of the month the USSR had ceased to exist.
A distinction can be drawn between the dismantling or transformation of the Soviet system, and the disintegration of the USSR. From the standpoint of democracy, the former was a necessity. The breakup of the Soviet Union was more ambiguous in respect of democratic developments. Some of the republics-notably the three Baltic states-became relatively successful democracies once they had gained their independence. A number of other successor states to the USSR became more authoritarian than they were in the last years of the Soviet Union.
During most of its existence the USSR was a major player on the international stage. While maintaining a highly authoritarian regime-except for the years of high Stalinism, when it is more appropriately termed totalitarianism, and the perestroika period that saw the development of political pluralism-the Soviet state was able to project its power and influence abroad. Its success in doing so depended more upon military might than on its economic achievements or political attractiveness.
Nevertheless, the USSR played the major part in the defeat of Nazi Germany in Europe in World War II and earned the gratitude of many citizens of Western Europe. The Soviet “liberation” of Eastern Europe, by contrast, led to the imposition of Soviet-style dictatorial regimes in that half of the continent and the suppression of freedom within East-Central Europe for another four decades. The interaction between the Soviet Union and what was known as the Communist bloc led ultimately, however, to important two-way influence once serious reform got underway in Moscow in 1987-1988. The changes in the USSR emboldened reformers and advocates of national independence in East-Central Europe. The fact that Soviet troops stayed in their barracks as the countries in the Eastern part of the continent broke free of Soviet tutelage in 1989 encouraged the most disaffected nationalities within the USSR itself, with the Lithuanians in the vanguard, to demand no less for themselves than had been attained by Poles, Hungarians, and Czechs. Thus, the Soviet control over Eastern Europe that had once seemed a source of strength of the USSR turned out, in the last years of the Soviet regime, to add to its own entropic pressures.
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Following the disintegration of the Union, the permanent place on the United Nations Security Council, which had belonged to the USSR since the formation of the United Nations, passed to the largest of the Soviet successor states, Russia. See also: BOLSHEVISM; COMMUNIST PARTY OF THE SOVIET UNION; ECONOMIC GROWTH, SOVIET; NATIONALISM IN THE SOVIET UNION; UNION OF SOVEREIGN STATES
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Kotkin, Stephen. (2001). Armageddon Averted: The Soviet Collapse 1970-2000. Oxford: Oxford University Press. McAuley, Mary. (1992). Soviet Politics 1917-1991. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Nove, Alec. (1993). An Economic History of the USSR 1917-1991. New York: Penguin. Schapiro, Leonard. (1971). The Communist Party of the Soviet Union, 2nd ed. New York: Random House. Service, Robert. (1998). The History of Twenti
eth Century Russia. New York: Penguin. Suny, Ronald G. (1994). The Revenge of the Past: Nationalism, Revolution, and the Collapse of the Soviet Union. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
ARCHIE BROWN
UNION OF SOVIET WRITERS
The Union of Soviet Writers (Soiuz sovetskikh pisatelei) was the first creative union organized by the Communist Party to solidify its influence on the arts. The Party leadership considered literature and other arts to be potent weapons which could work for or against them. For almost sixty years, the Union employed a mixture of enticements to mobilize writers behind the Party’s agenda, and punishments to discipline those believed to have transgressed.
The Union’s creation marked the final step in the politicization of Soviet literature. It replaced the less-inclusive Russian Association of Proletarian Writers (RAPP), which was dissolved in 1932. The new Union was open to all loyal Soviet writers. Although the Union’s creation was announced in May 1932, its founding Congress did not occur until August 1934. In the interim, an Organizational Committee dominated by Party officials developed the vaguely defined aesthetic doctrine of Socialist
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Realism, which became the guiding tenet of Soviet literature. Maxim Gorky was also involved in the Union’s creation, though scholars disagree about his actual role. The Union’s First Congress was a widely publicized event, with speeches by leading writers and prominent political figures.
The Union had chapters at the All-Union, republic, regional, and city level; however, there was no Russian Republic chapter until 1955. In theory, the Union’s activities were funded by membership fees; in reality it was heavily subsidized by the Soviet state. The Union’s controlling body was known at different times as the Presidium, Secretariat, or Litburo (Literary Bureau). Appointments to this body were controlled by the Communist Party’s Central Committee. Union leaders, who were often little-known writers, were expected to ensure the implementation of Party policies in literature. By having writers police one another, the Central Committee created the illusion of peer review and undermined group solidarity.